Brando’s Comments Draw Fire, Support : Jews Should Lead the Call for Diversity

Morning Report (Calendar, April 8) referred to Marlon Brando’s now-familiar remarks on “Larry King Live” about Jewish filmmakers in Hollywood. Apparently Brando was referring to ethnic stereotyping and a lack of diversity for nonwhite film roles. His remarks offended the Jewish Defense League and other sectors of the Jewish community.

As a Sephardic Jew who is in fact a minority within the larger Jewish community itself, I tend to agree with Brando’s criticism. During our recent Passover celebrations, Jews were reminded of our ancient slavery in Egypt, and we were urged to fight for social justice and equality for all peoples. While it’s difficult to expect modern-day Jews to feel much outrage at the fact that we were slaves more than 3,000 years ago, our experience with pogroms, the Holocaust and anti-Semitism is fresh enough that you would expect Jews to take a leadership role in fighting for multicultural equality.

But the fact remains that Jewish power brokers in Hollywood have paid scant attention to the history of other minorities. And when you look at films that have focused on the Jewish people themselves, rarely do you encounter stories about the Sephardim--Jews from southern Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East.

Indeed, Jews in the entertainment industry have displayed a remarkable lack of awareness of their own Semitic origins. One result of this narrow, Eurocentric worldview is their conspicuous insensitivity to Arabs, who have almost always been stereotyped as fedayeen, sheiks or terrorists, leaving by the wayside the great contributions Arab culture has made to world history.

That Jewish filmmakers have ignored much of their own history in part explains why they have not explored with greater intellectual integrity the stories of other non-Europeans.

Much of the history of Jews in Hollywood has been one of assimilation and embarrassment. That is, in an effort not to bring attention to themselves, Jews have traditionally changed their names and kept their religious and cultural activities to themselves.

Hollywood has followed a similar pattern in the casting of films.

Cecil B. DeMille hired the fair-skinned Charlton Heston to portray Moses. That Moses lived in the Middle East and was likely swarthy didn’t seem to play into DeMille’s concern for historical veracity. This kind of racial, religious and cultural dishonesty continues to this day, which is why we recently saw Richard Harris play Abraham in a TV movie and why Ben Kingsley appeared as Moses.

It’s time that Jews in Hollywood started taking responsibility for portraying the lives and history of all peoples with greater integrity and respect for the truth. It’s also time to end racial and cultural stereotyping. Because of their own experience with oppression and discrimination, Jews are well qualified to lead the fight for social and economic justice.

Those in positions of power in the entertainment industry can start by looking further than the bottom line. And besides, as screenwriter William Goldman famously observed, no one in Hollywood knows anything. Who’s to say that films with a non-Eurocentric point of view won’t make money at the box office?