Not John Smith
Wait, are you saying that a fictional character’s being named Hershel Fink suggests that the character is Jewish??? The Royal Court theatre is shocked shocked to hear it.
[Al] Smith, the author of a new play coming to the Royal Court theatre this week, had given a lead character the name of Hershel Fink. But publicity for the production prompted angry complaints about Jewish stereotyping. In response, the famous venue on Sloane Square in London has now apologised and agreed to change the name, admitting that it was “unconscious bias” that had led to the Silicon Valley billionaire in the work being given this identity.
Being given this name, I think that should read. The Royal Court people claiming the character wasn’t given Jewish “identity” and that the name was…just a name.
In an official statement, the theatre management added that the character in Smith’s play, Rare Earth Mettle, which stars former Doctor Who actor Arthur Darvill, is not Jewish and that there is no reference to his faith or Jewishness in the show.
Except for the name. Ohhhh the name, says the Royal Court. We didn’t notice.
“The Royal Court claims they didn’t realise ‘Hershel Fink’ was a Jewish name. Hmmm. Somehow it just sounded so right for a world-conquering billionaire,” Baddiel posted on Twitter. This February, Baddiel’s new book, Jews Don’t Count, argued that antisemitic bias is the one prejudice that remains largely unpoliced in the “culture wars”.
“Hershel Fink” doesn’t strike me as Jewish at all. The only “Hershel” that springs to mind is Hershel Walker, the football player, who I don’t believe was Jewish. And “Fink” to me just means a disreputable person.
After googling them, I see both names have been associated with Jewish people. So may be intentional, or maybe they were as ignorant as I was.
It’s possible the they were just stupid. “Never attribute to malice that which can be explained as stupidity,” or something like that.
If I call someone a “fink,” am I being antisemitic?
No, you’re just being a 1920s gangster.
I also did not pick it as a jewish name, and I think it has something to do with the fact that Australia has a relatively small jewish population. I’m just not that acquainted with ‘jew’ names due to low exposure, so I can only really spot the more obvious ones. If Fink had been Finkenstein perhaps…
Ah, yes. Can’t have a (potentially) Jewish character be wealthy, or a mathematician, or a physicist, biologist, chemist, doctor, lawyer, banker, accountant, or deli owner. We certainly can’t have them be Jewish. We also can’t have Irish characters be fightin’ drunks, Italians be gangsters, Japanese know karate, Chinese eat with chopsticks, Englishmen be awkwardly foppish with bad teeth, Indians eat curry, Germans be humorlessly precise, Muslims be terrorists, priests be pederasts, gays love musical theater, Frenchmen be promiscuous, women be physically weaker than men, men be more violent than women, or anything else that might for whatever reason be associated with any demographic, ethnic or otherwise. That would be a stereotype, and stereotypes only ever marginalize and minoritize communities, because what is true of (fictional) individuals is true of their whole demographic.
It is to laugh.
Except the character is said to be based on Elon Musk, and there is a considerable history of pop culture sinister rich Jews—>anti-Semitism—>genocide, so I think the objection is reasonable, especially in the UK right now. (See: Corbyn)
I thought that ‘Hershel’ was an entirely fictional name; the only example of it I have ever encountered until this post was as the forename of an English archæologist/amateur detective in a series of Nintendo puzzle games.
Tigger, it’s a common Jewish name. I personally know at least three Jews with that name and zero non-Jews with that name.
(But rather old fashioned. Two of the three people I know with that name are over seventy years old.)
They are showing a television series of Germinal at the moment. It’s well done in general, but I was taken aback in episode 4 when the owner of a food shop that was ransacked by starving miners was given an appearance that could have been based on a Nazi poster illustrating what profiteering Jews look like. I find it hard to believe that it was accidental, but I’d like to be charitable.
To clarify my comments, I’m not saying the name shouldn’t be changed once it’s pointed out it could have Jewish overtones. It should be changed. I’m just saying mocking the claim by the creators of that name that such overtones were unintentional may not be merited.
The creators, maybe, but no one in the whole chain of people who made the play happen?
I don’t know. It can be tricky to know whether a name is Jewish or German (because there’s a lot of overlap), but clearly Hadley Freeman doesn’t think it’s such a stretch.
However I’m not taken aback by any of the comments except 5. I disagree with Nullius pretty strongly there.
GW, thank you! I looked on Wikipedia, and out of the (very long) list, found a couple of Herschels who were British (one of whom died in 1974; the other is a rabbi), but all the Hershels seem to be American. That’d explain why I never encountered the name in everyday life.
Oh, and there’s also this character, whom I ought to have heard about, because one of my grandsons played the game a lot. Not Jewish, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershel_Greene
I wasn’t very happy either with No. 5, but I took the comment to be sarcastic: in poor taste, but not necessarily exactly what Nullius thinks.
Continuing the trend, the only Herschel I knew of was the astronomer William Herschel, so surname rather than given name.
As for Nullius’ post, I agree with the point and have made it myself here long ago. I made it in the context of a KFC ad that ran in Australia many years ago, as a tie-in to a scheduled cricket test match between Australia and the West Indies (multiple Caribbean nations pooling together to make one international team). The ad played it as an Australian fan seated amongst a group of Windies fans handing around some food to, I guess, make friends with them. The Australian fan was white, the Windies fans were black, and the food was of course fried chicken. Here’s the ad.
Some people might ask why the Australian fan was white or why the Windies fans were black, and I would say those casting decisions were reasonable given the racial demographics of the nations involved; Australia is largely white and the Caribbean nations are largely black. Despite this, the ad was called racist by Americans, who did not seem to realise that the association between black people and fried chicken was an American thing. At the time, I do not recall ever having seen the link except in American settings, but of course many American pundits barely realise that the outside world exists. Anyway, cancellation of that ad was called for from America (but not from the Windies, so far as I saw), and cancellation they got.
Anyway judge for yourself whether you think that ad was reasonable, I was bringing this up not to rehash that old post of mine but to point out the logical conclusion of this sort of thing. If chicken ads can’t include black people because of that historical association, then that is a de facto ban on portraying black people appreciating fired chicken. Should advertising casting directors simply avoid black people in chicken ads?
Likewise those other things Nullius brought up. People will say that this is necessary because it is automatically racist or _____ist to have a character match a negative stereotype of that demographic, but I don’t know that a ban is the answer. It would seem to me that such an approach would only serve to maintain that negative association in the public consciousness, while also putting restraints on writers and character casting.
I should add that I have not seen the play – but then again neither have the critics – so I’ve no idea how insulting this particular portrayal is. I have in the past asked the outrage merchants to explain the point I made above – doesn’t this amount to a de facto ban on e.g. black people enjoying fried chicken? And the response to this was that portrayals of such things aren’t banned don’t be silly, the portrayal just has to be done with respect. When I ask about how it ought to be done differently less vague terms, i.e. what does ‘with respect’ mean in this context, I was not given anything other than circular answers.
I was also told that such portrayals could be resumed once the negative stereotype had been publicly forgotten. When I asked how the public could possibly forget given that the furore raised in response to every such flub would only refresh the memory… communications stalled.
Two items:
1. Herschel Walker is a former American football player who is Black who is the leading Republican candidate for US Senate in Georgia next year, attempting to oust Raphael Warnock, Democrat, who is also Black.
2. I remember an MLK Day celebration at work many years ago when the cafeteria wanted to have an appropriate menu. They asked a group of Black employees for advice. The menu included fried chicken and watermelon, on the advice of the group. There was nonetheless controversy; it bothered me at the time, and was probably one of the incidents that figured later in my reassessment of some “woke” concepts like “cultural appropriation”.
Holms #16 – there is a strong association in New Zealand with Maori and Pasifika people’s love of KFC. This is often used by Pakeha to portray KFC lovers as in some way less than worthy.
KFC in NZ styles itself as Kiwi For Chicken.
“Kiwi for chicken” would certainly be insultingly paternalistic.
I would have immediately assumed Hershel Fink was a Jewish name for what it’s worth. I don’t know exactly why I would have made that assumption, other than it sounds very similar to other Jewish names I’ve heard.
KFC – I’m not really in their target market. Two bouts of food poisoning from the local KFC when I was in my late teens pretty much put me off for life. I might have had it 3-4 times since and all in the last 15 years. That said, I had heard the ‘Kiwi for Chicken’ marketing phrase in the past and thought it was patronising as all fuck. In the South Island where I live, the association with Maori/Pacifica people is less strong than it may be in the North Island.I have heard stories about people returning to the islands with polybins filled with KFC for a celebratory meal on arrival. Whether that’s true or apocryphal I have no idea. In general, most people I know regardless of race consider fried chicken to be delicious, just probably not KFC in particular. IN NZ I think you’d have to be determinedly looking for a reason to be racist to make an association like that, I don’t think it would occur to most people at all.
Hershel Fink screams “Jewish” to me. My grandfather (born in the 1910s, in Sweden while his parents were en route from Lithuania to Canada) was Herschel Paikin (though it was almost always anglicized to “Harry”). He considered himself culturally Jewish, though religiously was pretty much an agnostic/atheist. My son was given Herschel as a middle name (according to the Ashkenazi tradition of naming a child after a recently deceased ancestor).
I dunno about this either… there certainly are a number of evil Jewish billionaires (not Musk as far as I know) as well as ones that are not.