The Perplexing Patterns of Antisemitism

My daughter and I were discussing the rise of antisemitism during the pandemic. She asked, “Why? What they’re saying makes no sense at all. And there are so few Jews, so why them?”

So, this is an article for my daughter and everyone who is simply perplexed about what antisemites are saying - because it has a history and that’s why it makes no sense, continues to exist and is dangerous. 


During the plague outbreak in 1712, Hamburg forbade Jews from the city in an attempt to stop the plague and the cholera outbreak of the 19th century in Germany was also blamed on the Jews. 

To discourage smallpox vaccines, anti-Semitic propaganda leaflets were distributed blaming them for the vaccine. 

So, there’s a long history of both blaming Jews for diseases and blaming them for measures to stop diseases. We shouldn’t focus on the obvious lack of logic: it is the hatred evoked that matters.

Dr. Gavin Yamey has written poignantly on this issue, both in articles and on twitter. He has often outlined the perplexing mix of Jews both being blamed for the pandemic and for the vaccines and lockdowns.

In Australia, IKEA was, “defaced with the hateful words, “NO JEW JAB FOR OZ”  while other “antisemitic posts are flourishing on many Australian anti-vaccine networks, including outright finger-pointing at Jews for creating and unleashing the virus.” 

Like many students of psychology, I’ve studied the antisemitism of WW II, and there is a great deal of evidence tying authoritarian parenting and societies to antisemitism. However, this pandemic teaches us a crucial fact: the history of antisemitism, in all its lack of logic, is passed down in families and to others, so these patterns evoke emotions and make sense only to a twisted mind of an antisemite. 

Which brings me to my daughter’s point, “There are so few Jews.” 

Indeed there are.

In Canada, a country that prides itself on tolerance and lack of bigotry, “Jewish Canadians are the most targeted religious group for hate crimes…those numbers are particularly troubling since the Jewish community accounts for only 1% of the population and yet are the targets of 17% of police-reported hate crime.” 

"As of 2021, the world's "core" Jewish population (those identifying as Jews above all else) was estimated at 15.2 million, or 0.19% of the 7.89 billion worldwide population.” 

So why have so few shouldered so much hatred? The answer is complicated and certainly I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are excellent resources on the subject that discuss family and societal factors that we should all know. 

However, these strange patterns - such as being blamed for making a disease worse and also for any measures to make it better - are history being repeated, literally. They make no sense.  However, we should all learn these patterns so we can watch for them, know them and help in any way we can. We should also explain to our children the inexplicable: how the twisted minds of antisemites have passed these patterns down through centuries to place an immense burden of hate on such a small group. 

For us, these incoherent statements merely perplex us, while to the antisemite they evoke hatred. And that hatred often translates into action. 

An annual report by Tel Aviv University's researchers on anti-Semitism shows that online antisemitism has risen, as have desecrations of Jewish cemeteries, memorials and synagogues. They also warn that, while in person hate crimes have decreased as a result of the lockdowns, there is every indication that they will increase when lockdowns are reduced. 

For children who haven’t learned these patterns and have no hatred to muster against Jews, leaving them perplexed by incoherent and strange statements by antisemites isn’t enough. We should explain the history of these patterns and that, when they reemerge, it harkens a dangerous time for Jews. Our children need to know that and do everything they can to help, because when we are long gone, that will be their job.

Peace and Order

At a dinner party I was once told by an American, that while Americans strive for 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’, Canadians get the very unsexy ‘Peace, Order and Good Government’.

At the risk of sounding dull as dishwater, I’m a big fan of peace, order and good government. It’s reassuring. Although peace and order in the Constitution Act of 1867 refers to large issues, most of us understand it as it’s exemplified in everyday life. The quiet way we line up to take our turn or stop our cars at a crosswalk to let children cross. The peace of quiet walks and stopping at a favourite store and getting some food. The way all my neighbours wave and chat.

Since the October 7^th Hamas attack against Israel, we are hearing more and more about Canadians being shouted at on the subway by mobs, shootings at schools and defaced places of worship. The places we shop owned by Jews and Muslims are being targeted by mobs and vandalized. Many Canadians are frightened by how the peace and order of everyday life has been shattered by violence and disorder.

People are saying that they simply aren’t safe anymore and where is the legal punishment for this? 

There are three separate hatred-related offences in Canada: advocating genocide, publicly inciting hatred, and willfully promoting hatred.

For all three offences, there is no minimum punishment. Imprisonment, probation, or fines are possible. 

However, a provision in the Criminal Code addresses crimes motivated by hatred and allows increased penalties when an offender is sentenced for any criminal offence “if there is evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression.” So theoretically, these crimes should carry harsher punishments. 

Interestingly, and applicable to today’s crises, “In 2009, the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism was established by major federal political parties to investigate and combat antisemitism - particularly what is referred to as the new antisemitism. It is argued that this form of hate targets Israel, consisting of and fed by allegations of Israeli "war crimes" and similar claims. Anti-Israel actions that led to the formation of a Parliamentary Coalition included boycott campaigns on university campuses and in some churches, spilling over into attacks on synagogues, Jewish institutions and individuals.”

So, how is this playing out? Police forces are asking people to come forward and report, and many are increasing the officers dedicated to hate crimes. In Toronto, Chief Myron Demkiw said there has been a "staggering" increase in hate crimes since the Hamas October seventh attack,  most of the hate crimes - 40% of them - are antisemitic hate crimes and “the force's hate crime unit has been expanded from a team of six to 32. And that since Oct. 7^th, the unit has made 22 arrests and laid 58 charges.” This type of communication with the public, encouraging reporting as well as communicating that arrests and charges have occurred, goes a long way to making people feel safer and it needs to be communicated more. 

Perhaps part of the problem is that many hate crimes are shared on social media but without follow-up, so there appears to be no accountability. A widely shared video showed an Indigo store with posters and red paint, the posters depicting an image of the company’s Jewish CEO Heather Reisman and accusing her of “Funding Genocide.” There were, however, consequences for those involved. So far, eleven people have been arrested, charged and the investigation remains open. We have yet to hear what their punishment will be and if there will be jail time.

This dramatic rise in hate motivated crime is testing our laws, our police response, legal system and things may have to change to meet the challenge. We haven’t seen this level of hate crimes before and just like police forces are adding officers trained to deal with hate crimes, perhaps we need to finally ask if our legal system can properly charge those involved? Will the punishment serve as a deterrent to others who might want to embark on similar hate crimes? Will the police response to arrest people be swift enough to make people feel safe or are more tools needed?  Do we need strict minimum sentences to serve as a future deterrent? 

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions – just a fan of peace, order and good government who is very worried.

October 7th

I listened to an interview with Rachel Maddow, host of the MSNBC The Rachel Maddow Show on her research on the rise of antisemitism and she explained this:

When people tell you that a minority group are evil and they’re the reason things are bad, they are saying that some people among us are dangerous and these people shouldn’t be part of our democracy with rights to vote. We need someone to protect us from these people. So, its not just about telling us who to hate, it’s about undoing democracy and Maddow says we shouldn’t stand for it. It’s a powerful video.

This certainly fits with what we’ve seen with Anti-Asian hate and LGBTQ-hate – there are many narratives explaining why they’re ‘dangerous’ and shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone. Essentially, they shouldn’t be part of our democracy.

Now we’re seeing the rise of antisemitism and the same narrative holds. This topic is large, the events unfolding in the Middle East complicated and well beyond the scope of my small article. Further, I lack the expertise to talk about the history and lack the military expertise to talk about the war. I will write about only one thing: the October 7^th slaughter in Israel.

Over three thousand young people gathered to dance at the Supernova Sukkot in the desert, approximately 5 km from the Gaza Strip and near Kibbutz Re’im with a population of around 430.

The rave was billed as a celebration of "friends, love and infinite freedom” and attendees were prohibited from bringing weapons including guns and sharp objects. Sound like the kind of thing many young people we know, including our own children, would attend.

In the morning, Hamas came at the attendees from all directions, killing at least 260 people and abducting dozens as hostages. The massacre and hostage taking continued at nearby Kibbutz Re’im and in the end, over one thousand were slaughtered and hundreds taken hostage.

Hamas insurgents recorded their own deeds with GoPro cameras and that, combined with surveillance footage, has been aired to many including seasoned journalists who found the footage so gruesome that many had to leave.

"The worst part was the glee," Sabrina Maddeaux, a political columnist for the National Post, wrote in a piece published Monday, describing the apparent joy Hamas fighters took in their rampage across communities and at a music festival in southern Israel last month. Reporters described seeing images of burned babies and children, along with other indescribably graphic scenes.

There are still over 200 hostages in the hands of Hamas. We have seen a woman hostage naked and beaten on a truck paraded through Gaza. The terrorists have a baby who is 10 months old.

We have seen videos of people denying that these events happened and we’ve seen photos of the kidnapped torn down as ‘propaganda’. For those who wonder how people can deny the Holocaust, we’re seeing the denial in real time today.

There will also be people who may not deny these events but only want to talk about the ‘lead up’ to them and the war that followed them. There is no ‘lead up’ to justify this brutality, nor can you justify brutality by referring to any actions that followed it that were unknown at the time.

As Maddow said, this is identifying some minority as bad, dangerous and unfit to have democratic rights – human rights – whether it’s citizens of Israel or Jewish citizens of other countries.

On this Memorial Day 2023, when we honour those who fought for and preserved our democracy, I wanted to write a small article about the big events of October 7^th, 2023. In a democracy, all of us are equal, can vote and participate in the shaping our society and our world. If we exclude certain groups from these universal human rights whether it be those far away in Israel or Jewish citizens at home, we demolish the foundation of our democracy.

"Hate is as old as man and doubtless as durable."

It is with great regret that I’m writing a follow-up article to last month’s Peace and Order, where I looked at the hate laws in Canada and stated: “This dramatic rise in hate motivated crime is testing our laws, our police response, legal system and things may have to change to meet the challenge.

Well, things have certainly changed over the last month but in a most unwelcome way. We have increasing attacks on Jewish Canadian schools, businesses and homes, so much so that it’s making international news. 

To this international audience, our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, said, “We’re seeing right now a rise in antisemitism that is terrifying.” 

On the same news video, Rabbi Saul Emanuel adds, “It has become accepted that you can go after any Jewish target” 

Why has it become acceptable to some people to go after Jewish Canadians? If you watch the video it is clear that the business set on fire has “Free Palestine” written on their window. There is no doubt that a segment of the protesters are using the tragedy of mounting deaths in Palestine to mount attacks against Jewish Canadians. 

That said, many reasonable non-antisemitic Canadians are also decrying the deaths of innocents in Palestine. It’s a complicated situation but what is a clear, uncontested fact is that some of these protesters are using the situation to engage in antisemitic hate crimes. Rather than argue this point, a picture is worth a thousand words and here is one of targeted arson at a Jewish-owned deli in Toronto.  The owner is a Jewish Canadian and no one who is sensible can argue firebombing his business will change anything in Palestine. It is pure antisemitic hate. 

On social media, a photo of a poster put up in a Jewish neighbourhood depicts the scale of the problem and where it can lead, so let’s break it down. 

The poster graphic looks old-school, like something you would find in a history book on the rise of antisemitism before WWII. The words harken to something more modern and warrant an analysis. 

“Imagine being so vile, sneaky and disgusting that laws have to be created to keep normal people from hating or condemning you.”

Certainly the cliche trope of the ‘vile, sneaky and disgusting’ Jew is old and a way that bigots have long justified their bigotry by suggesting it is the victim not the aggressor that is responsible. It is as absurd as robbing a store at gunpoint and claiming the store deserved to be robbed. 

The part referencing “the laws created to keep people from hating or condemning you” refers to hate laws in Canada, referenced in my previous article. They are laws that keep all Canadians safe. They also keep our democracy safe because a democracy is, by definition, a society where all can vote and participate - any attempt to sideline groups from full rights and safety is, by its nature, antidemocratic. We know that historically and in the present day, authoritarian governments attack certain groups, sideline them or murder them, on their way into power and continue to do so in power to underline that only a select few get to make decisions about that country. Targeting any group is a blatant attack on the democratic rights of all Canadians. 

Canadian hate laws, born from a 1965 Special Committee on Hate Propaganda chaired by Judge Maxwell Cohen, have been expanded to recently include online hate speech. Hate laws were created to protect all Canadians, including Jewish Canadians.

In words that are as applicable today as they were then, Cohen said, "On the one hand, there was a new emphasis on individual freedom. On the other side, there was a growing recognition that these very liberties could be dangerously abused.”

“The preface to the 1965 report warns, "Hate is as old as man and doubtless as durable." It also contains a warning that could as easily refer to the current spread of anti-Asian slurs through social media as to the anti-Semitic pamphlets and slogans that emerged in Cohen's day.

Ours is "a world aware of the perils of falsehood disguised as fact and of conspirators eroding the community's integrity through pretending that conspiracies from elsewhere now justify verbal assaults," Cohen wrote. He called them "the non-facts and the non-truths of prejudice and slander.” 

By attacking Jewish Canadians and the laws of Canada, this poster highlights the dangers we face as a nation. 

Someone with a better mind than I will have to sift through many of these issues. How do we ensure the right to protest - a crucial democratic right - while protecting Canadians who are targeted by some of the protesters? It’s complicated. What is not complicated is this: Jewish Canadians are protected by the same laws that protect us all and there is no justification for any attacks on them. None.  

Politically Profitable Predators

“We have people coming into the country or trying to come in, we're stopping a lot of them, but we're taking people out of the country. You wouldn't believe how bad these people are.  These aren't people. These are animals." President Trump, May 16, 2018 (USA Today)

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Candidate Trump, June 16, 2015

"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population." Candidate Trump, written statement, December 7, 2015. (Source)

And no, I'm not using this as a segue way into criticism of our current President.  What I want to talk about is how various peoples have been made into politically profitable predators in American history.  From Native Americans to Blacks to Mexicans to Irish to Italians to Asians to Blacks to Native Americans and back to Mexicans to...  fill in the blank.  And the question always is, Who's next?

Native Americans, of course, have always considered a problem.  Back in 1702, Cotton Mather wrote of the Native Americans:

"The Natives of the Country now Possessed by the New-Englanders, had been forlorn and wretched Heathen ever since their first herding there; and tho' we know not When or How those Indians first became Inhabitants of this mighty Continent, yet we may guess that probably the Devil decoy'd those miserable Salvages [sic] hither, in hopes that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his Absolute Empire over them." (The New English History), Book III, p. 190 (1702)

Ignoring, of course, the fact that the Native Americans actually fed the original settlers from England and taught them how to plant maize, squash, and other New World foodstuffs... Without their help, the original settlers would not have survived.  Ingratitude, thy name is Mather.

Then there's this 1803 painting by American painter John Vanderlyn - Death of Jane McCrae - well, it's obvious what this tells us about the horrors of Native Americans in early America.  The story behind this is classic propaganda, classic use of the death of a beautiful white woman to justify whatever comes next.  There were two versions of the story:

(1) Jane (who was a Loyalist in the American Revolution) was on her way to meet with her fiance at the British camp at Ticonderoga, escorted by two Native American warriors.  (Remember that at this time the British were hiring Native Americans to fight on their side.)  The two got into a fight over how much they'd be paid for delivering her safely. So one of them killed and scalped her.

(2) Jane McCrea was killed by a bullet fired by pursuing Americans.  19th century historian James Phinney Baxter supported this version of events in his 1887 history of Burgoyne's campaign, saying that there was an exhumation of her body which showed she died of bullet wounds, and had no tomahawk wounds.

Guess which one got the most press?  The first version, of course.  It got spread around in newspapers, pamphlets, and letters.  British General Burgoyne wrote a letter to American general Horatio Gates, complaining about ill-treatment of British POWs. Gates' response was widely reprinted:

"That the savages of America should in their warfare mangle and scalp the unhappy prisoners who fall into their hands is neither new nor extraordinary; but that the famous Lieutenant General Burgoyne, in whom the fine gentleman is united with the soldier and the scholar, should hire the savages of America to scalp europeans and the descendants of europeans, nay more, that he should pay a price for each scalp so barbarously taken, is more than will be believed in England. [...] Miss McCrae, a young lady lovely to the sight, of virtuous character and amiable disposition, engaged to be married to an officer of your army, was [...] carried into the woods, and there scalped and mangled in the most shocking manner..."  (Wikipedia)

It also entered American legend thanks to James Fennimore Cooper, who used it in 1826's The Last of the Mohicans.  

And let's talk about Andrew Jackson, who launched the Indian Removals of the 1830s:  

"Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country and philanthropy has long been busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth.… But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another.… Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the condition in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?"

In other words, we want the land, so they've got to go.  And then, to justify it, consider the American Westerns, both in penny dreadfuls, novels, and movies:  until 1970's Little Big Man, most of them are all about chasing down and killing all the "savages" John Wayne and his buddies could find.  

Meanwhile, there have been constant waves of immigration, and constant opposition to each and every wave:

WW1 propaganda
anti-Hun poster

In 1775, before the United States had gained its independence, Benjamin Franklin warned against the destructive forces of German immigration: 

“A Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them and will never adopt our Language or Customs any more than they can acquire our Complexion." (Source)  

Who knew that Germans were so alien?  Before WW1?  

There were the Irish, presented as drunk gorillas who should be banned

from immigrating to the US and once here, should certainly never be employed:  

             

Do you notice a theme here?  Comparing various groups / people to apes?  Or other animals?

Meanwhile, there were also the Italians, who were also seen as subhuman, either importers of anarchism or - of course - the Mafia.  Did you know that the largest lynching in the United States was in New Orleans, and the victims were Italians?  A popular police chief named Hennessey (Irish) was shot on his way home, and when he was asked, dying, who did it, he gasped, "Dagoes".  So they rounded up the usual suspects, 11 Italians, and tried them - and there was a mistrial!  So the mob went wild, and started killing people...  No one was ever tried.  And, in language that is tragically familiar, a NYT editorial called the victims “desperate ruffians and murderers. These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins…are to us a pest without mitigations.” Read the rest at the History Channel.  

But at least they weren't Chinese:

For a long time China was known as the Yellow Peril.  The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, prohibiting all immigration of  Chinese laborers, was followed up by massacres (Rock Springs, 1885, Hells Canyon 1887), and a general stereotyping of Chinese (and other Orientals) as apes, lesser men, primitives, children, madmen, and beings who possessed special powers, and who commonly kidnapped white women into white slavery, opium addiction, and eventually murdered them.  (Wikipedia)

Besides propaganda posters like the one to the left, white slavery was presented as a hideously common peril for white women in stories by Frank Norris (author of McTeague), Sax Rohmer (whose Chinese villain Fu Manchu threatened the world and its white women from 1913-1959) and True Confessions.  All of this propaganda was the basis for a series of American Immigration Acts that barred almost any Asian immigration of any kind to America until the 1960s.  Women had to be protected from the evil Orientals, and the only way to do that was to ban them entirely.

NOTE:  This is why both the 1960s movie and musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, and an impossibly bad movie from the 1980s, Angel III:  The Final Chapter, could STILL use white slavery by opium-smoking Asians as a major menace to the heroine(s).  

Of course, even the Chinese didn't / don't make such fearsome villains as blacks, going back to D. W. Griffiths' 1915 Birth of a Nation, (first titled The Klansman, BTW).  In that movie, Elsie (played by Lillian Gish) is saved by the KKK from the lustful mulatto Lynch (who came up with that name?), while the virginal white young Flora is forced to leap to her death to avoid being raped by a "freedman".  (Sounds like a rip-off of Last of the Mohicans to me, but then again, if it works with one ethnic group it'll work with any, I suppose.  Apes and other animals, you know.)  "There is no doubt that Birth of a Nation played no small part in winning wide public acceptance" for the KKK, and that throughout the film "African Americans are portrayed as brutish, lazy, morally degenerate, and dangerous." (History.com)  It was the perfect movie to reinforce the need for Jim Crow laws everywhere across the South, not to mention the holocaust of lynching.  And, as late as the 1970s, David Duke used the film to recruit members to the KKK.

Fast forward to the 1980s and Willie Horton.  Horton was released on a weekend furlough in June, 1986, and didn't come back.  In April, 1987, he raped a white woman.  In October, 1987 he was arrested and sentenced to 2 life sentences.  In 1988, Republican Presidential candidate George H. W. Bush's campaign put out the "Willie Horton" ad against Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis (who had been Governor of Massachusetts at the time, but was not the founder of the furlough program) to prove that Dukakis was weak on crime, i.e., would not protect [white] women.  It played into the stereotype that black men were big, ugly, dumb, violent, and dangerous, so let's stay super tough on crime.  It worked.  But I, for one, don't believe that anyone in the Bush campaign believed they were protecting women:  they were winning an election.

     

Sounds familiar to me.



P.S.  In case you're wondering about antisemitism, the long, long, long history of antisemitism in America begins with Peter Stuvaysant, the last Director-General of New Amsterdam.  During the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11 expelling Jews from areas under his control in western Tennessee, "as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled …within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order."  Lincoln rescinded the order ASAP, but.  Discrimination against Jews was standard and the cartoons and jokes horrific.  Watch Gregory Peck in Gentleman's Agreement some time, which was extremely controversial when it came out in 1947, because it exposed the standard discrimination against Jews in employment, education, housing, travel, restaurants, clubs, etc.

A short list of famous antisemites includes:  Charles Coughlin, Louis Farrakhan, Henry Ford, FDR (never forget he turned away the ship carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany), Joe Kennedy, Sr. (read his correspondence with Viscountess Astor), General Patton ("lower than animals"), Richard Nixon, Billy Graham (he's on the Nixon tapes saying things like "This [Jewish] stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain", and when Nixon mentioned that Graham was a friend of the Jews, Graham replied "But they don't know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country."[72]), and, of course, almost every troll on Breitbart and every white supremacist site you can stomach.  Some of them showed up for the Charlottesville, VA, August 11, 2017, "Unite the Right" rally, where they carried tiki torches while chanting Nazi and white supremacist slogans, including "White lives matter" and "Jews will not replace us." 

The depressing thing about humanity is that you have to educate each and every generation to be moral, compassionate, tolerant, kind, decent...  And obviously, we have a lot of work to do. 

Is It Noir? Revisiting The Merchant of Venice

MGM

 Some time back, I posited The Merchant of Venice was noir. Additionally, I said it could be a comedy as well, though just reading it, a lot of the nuance doesn't come through. Someone in the comments noted Shakespeare is meant to seen, not read. It just so happens I'm watching a Shakespeare play a week, including the questionably canonical Edward III. (I still posit Will was a script doctor on that one, and boy did it need doctoring.) My viewing has including live plays, Zoom readings by various local Shakespeare groups, and of course, movies either by the RSC or Hollywood and the UK cinema. And I've seen The Merchant of Venice now, this time the Al Pacino version.

Henry Winkler once said he noticed when English actors do Shakespeare, they sound like they're ordering a pastrami sandwich, but American Shakespearean actors sound like their doing classical oration. It's not necessarily a bad thing (and the exceptions to either are legion), but the assertion holds as a generalization. And here it works. 

Antonio, Bassano, and Portia are ordinary characters, their actors giving understated performances in this film. And then we have Shylock, who is not in very many scenes, but he has to cast a huge shadow over the proceedings. The bulk of the cast is English or English-trained. But Shylock is played by Al Pacino. And if Pacino does anything well, it's stealing every scene he's in.

But all the other things people say about this play? Antisemitic? It's actually a play about antisemitism, and once these characters step off the page, you realize the Bard took a very dim view about how the English treated the Jews under Queen Elizabeth and King James. But he's not talking about England. He's talking about Genoa and Venice. Right?

Is there a romance between Antonio and Bassano? Well, you can't read this play without at least picking up on an intense bromance. I love my male best friends, but I'm not risking bankruptcy or having Michael Corleone carve a pound of meat out of me to pay for their weddings. I might put a night at BW3 on my credit card, which my stepson and I did for our youngest. (The groom's alcohol-fueled transformation into Jack Sparrow was hilarious!) In the movie? It's not stated, but it's there. These men are more than just buddies, and fair Portia is a prize. 

But it's Shylock, the loan shark, who owns this play. And Pacino puts his lines in context. Most people are used to hearing Christopher Plummer's scenery-chewing Klingon reciting some of Shylock's lines in Star Trek VI. But as Chang gleefully tries to straight-up murder the crews of two starships, he rattles off out-of-context lines spinning in his chair and delivering the lines wrong. (It works in the context of this movie as it prompts McCoy to growl, "I'd give real money if he'd shut up!") Pacino is not going "Look at me! I know Shakespeare!" as he introduces his leetle friends to his enemies. No, the "Prick us, do we not bleed" speech isn't showing off. It's a man victimized by the world around pleading for his listeners to understand. He's a classic noir villain, wanting violence as revenge wrapped in legalism (with Cain, Richard Wright, and Jim Thompson taking copious notes), but he has a painful motivation. He's tired of being treated like garbage. He's good enough to take his money but spat upon otherwise? Shakespeare excels at this kind of character, one who will play the monster if he can't be the hero. Or even just a man. In this, he has much in common with Shakespeare's Richard III, but Dick is straight up a very bad man. Shylock just wants his due.

Oh. And it's still a comedy. I mean, Murphy's law, bromance, and everyone tripping all over themselves? It's like Succession on acid.