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The BBC’s wildly antisemitic children’s movie that came out in 2023
I’m amazed this ever got greenlit, and no one has apologised
Enid Blyton stories aren’t famous for their progressive stories or characters. Villains are universally foreign or working class, feminine girls are silly and prissy, and homophobia and racism are hardly subtle. So I know what you’re thinking: why is Madelaine cross that The Famous Five (2023) features a greedy, Jewish-coded slightly Yiddish-accented family who ‘founded the world’s first bank’ and filled it with ‘treasure looted from every town in the middle east’ and ‘hid the treasure’? Well, dear reader, absolutely none of that was in the original 1942 book. The villains in that? White English men who want to find the white Christian character’s ancestor’s gold.
How the hell did this get made? How has no one been fired for this?
I’m used to antisemitic-coded villains; dark/oily hair, effeminate, poor posture, sly manners, an unhealthy complexion, wiry and thin bodies, close relationships with their mother, obsessions with money, extreme greed, and no patriotic allegiance or concern for the law. The villain in this is all of the above, right down to his pencil moustache. But they don’t actually say he’s Jewish! I can hear you whine. No, of course, he’s just a grasping young man…
