BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Oct 11 - 02:04 AM

The NLA has a copy of the script (in book form) for W.T. Moncrieff's play "Van Diemen's Land; or Settlers and Natives; an operatic drama in three acts."

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Oct 11 - 02:00 AM

Bruce-- I made a mistake in my post. Ignore that. I meant the NLA - the National Library of Australia. MtheGM, Van Diemen's Land means "Tasmania".

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Oct 11 - 12:59 AM

Bruce ~ I suspect that, although Van Diemen's Land was indeed the old name for the island of Tasmania, the name was used in much convict folksong and folklore for Australia in general ~~ "That Fatal Shore", as one of the songs calls it, used as the title [The Fatal Shore] for Robert Hughes 1987 distinguished history of convict transportation to Australia.

~M~

This is drift here ~ think I will repro this as intro post for a new thread on this topic.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 10:19 PM

*don't have*

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 10:11 PM

*overseas*

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 10:10 PM

Well, I did a Google search- and there is no online text, so you might have to look in archives- unless you have access to university archives. I did find an interesting period newspaper article but couldn't read the text.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 08:37 PM

Thanks, ME1. I'll do some digging tomorrow. Getting late here and I'm an old geezer, and if my earlier post is anything to go by, miserable, too.

Thank you again.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 08:24 PM

I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no idea! here in NSW, we only cover the convict history of our state in Year 2, with only occasional references in Australian history classes for high school, and only in learning about explorers who "found" other states.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 08:05 PM

ME1: where can I find the text of the play? There's a song of that name and I believe a movie of that title which was released a few years ago. The reference was to Tasmania as you know. I am not 'up on' that history and now you have piqued my interest big time.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 07:57 PM

Another theory I've discovered for how Ikey S. came to be identified with Fagin is that in the early 1800s there was a play called "Van Diemen's Land" with a character called Barney Fence, stereotyped Jew, and the fact is that after Ikey's trial, the play was retitled after the Barney character, who was renamed "Ikey Solomon".

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 07:20 PM

Thank you, 999!

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 06:58 PM

We're cool. Bad day here. My apologies.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 06:54 PM

and I will work on the story as soon as HSC exams are done and I can do a little background research for basic facts and do the rest as it develops. thank you again, 999, for the tip!

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 06:47 PM

And another btw- I will try and look at another poster's comments and what they're saying before posting a totally unrelated (to the previous post) comment. because (and 999, I have to say again that I truly appreciate your help, and thank you so much for it) it may help in getting rid of miscommunication, which I don't want when I'm discussing topics on the Internet.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 06:35 PM

999, sorry for offending you- again. I hate this- always end up offending someone and I don't know why. before you
quit permanently and never decide to help me again, I want to say that the first print appearance of that term that I know about is in a slang dictionary in the 1860s, so it seems like it isn't one of those cases. (BTW, again it may be too late, but sorry for offending you and I really appreciate your help. may not sound like it, but sometimes I can't understand what people mean to say on the Internet, *which is not a personal attack*)

MtheGM, don't know of any books, plays or anything where there's a character named Ikey who's a fence. Well, actually, I know of one, but it's historical fiction about you-know-who.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 09:06 AM

I quit. Best wishes with whatever you end up doing. Goodbye.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 08:24 AM

Who said it didn't, Morwen? But in what work is a 'character' so named?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 06:50 AM

BTW, about the use of "Ikey" to mean "fence"- and it being a 19th century nickname- because of this it does make a good and plausible name for a Jewish fence character.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 05:22 AM

Idiot that I am:

Me: Good day yesterday?
He: Uh. (Meaning 'not great'.)
Me: How many lynx you take?
He: Link. [Held up his forefinger to designate 'one'.]
Me: Uh. (Meaning 'oh, that's too bad'.)
He: Uh. (Meaning 'you got that right'.)

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 04:53 AM

I should point out that I was camped near his trap line (about a half mile), and during the week I stayed he came over about six times to have coffee and a few meals with me. What I just related was our longest conversation. That was back in 1983/4 or so. The word-use still isn't mentioned in any dictionary I've ever seen.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Oct 11 - 04:45 AM

Terms and dictionaries and thirty years.

I once wrote to a reputable dictionary company to inform the editors of a word-use I'd never seen or heard before that wasn't in their dictionary.

I was speaking with an old trapper in northern Alberta asking after his success the previous day. I don't recall exactly, but our conversation went something like

Me: Good day yesterday?
He: Uh. (Meaning 'not great'.)
Me: How many lynx you take?
He: [Held up his forefinger to designate 'one'.]
Me: Uh. (Meaning 'oh, that's too bad'.)
He: Uh. (Meaning 'you got that right'.)

I didn't pursue it at the time because he'd chosen trapping as his way of life and he didn't need someone having long talks with him, and I'd already pushed that limit.

The dictionary people informed me that words are not entered in their dictionary until after they have appeared in print. (I don't know if that applies in the case you mention.)

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 26 Oct 11 - 11:51 PM

999, looked at the page before. Thanks! the name was used as an insult, but it's an *old* insult (one page I looked at said it was 1830s American slang- but would a slang term really take THREE DECADES to appear in a slang dictionary?) and it was also a nickname for "fence", as I wrote.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 26 Oct 11 - 07:56 PM

http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/727/Jews.html

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 26 Oct 11 - 07:49 PM

So, for a Jewish fence character, it (as a 19th century nickname for Isaac) makes a lot of sense as a name. and the "Prince of Fences" (Ikey Solomon) could (or maybe not) have inspired the slang use of the name.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 26 Oct 11 - 07:34 PM

BTW, in dictionaries of Victorian criminal slang, "Ikey" meant: "a Jew, especially a receiver of stolen goods."

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 26 Oct 11 - 05:48 PM

The girls would presumably be mainly used to earn money on the streets in other ways.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 26 Oct 11 - 04:36 AM

Refresh.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 25 Oct 11 - 06:44 PM

refresh. Most accounts of Ikey's life which describe him as a kidsman mention other fences too or make statements like, "Many fences trained children to steal for them." BTW, does anyone know why mostly only boys are mentioned in references to kidsmen.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 25 Oct 11 - 04:26 AM

Anyone else want to discuss this?

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 24 Oct 11 - 05:07 PM

Refresh.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 10:13 PM

Refresh. I was thinking that it was because he was well-known, but he must have done something similar to be identified with the character, yet there is no record of him as a kidsman in the Old Bailey transcripts. but then does anyone know whether something like that would have been mentioned in a trial?

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 07:53 AM

Why that was, I don't know. Anyone have an idea why?

Many people seem to have an appetite for one-to-one identifications like that. It is illustrated in many Mudcat posts where there's an assumption that an episode in a song for example, has a single direct reference- "that's what it's about".

That is just restating the question, it doesn't answer it. It's just how many people react to stories and suchlike. Ambiguity is seen as something to be correcte4de rather than appreciated.

(I wasn't criticising your orig9onal post MtheGM, just using it as a useful way to identify what I was referring to, and expanding on the information we'd got in the light of what I'd just read.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 01:22 AM

==="I gather the story MtheGM had about the origin of the name Fagin isn't quite accurate - "The story goes that Dickens was bullied by a big Irish lad called Fagan in his days in the blacking factory, so called his first real villain by a similar, but not identical, name as a revenge on him."====

Yes, I know, Kevin. I went on later to modify my original post.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: Janie
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 11:21 PM

At least at this point, I have nothing to add, just want to comment that I appreciate the cogent discussion on this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 10:56 PM

Why that was, I don't know. Anyone have an idea why?

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 10:43 PM

Another point, on the issue of Fagin/ Ikey Solomon, is that Ikey Solomon, although he wasn't the only real-life inspiration, was associated with the Fagin character almost as soon as "Oliver Twist" came out in serial form, so people thought he was "the" real-life Fagin.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 05:46 PM

Thing one: write the story.

I think you'll find as the story develops, you'll be forced into research about aspects of what you're writing. That's normal. (Don't want a character brandishing a stainless steel dagger in the late 1800s because stainless steel wasn't invented until 1913.) I think Michael mentioned earlier that the devil's in the details. If so, he's right.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 05:34 PM

I gather the story MtheGM had about the origin of the name Fagin isn't quite accurate - "The story goes that Dickens was bullied by a big Irish lad called Fagan in his days in the blacking factory, so called his first real villain by a similar, but not identical, name as a revenge on him."

It's a bit more complicated - Bob Fagin (spelt that way) was Dickens mentor when he was in the blacking factory, teaching him how to put the labels on at record speed, so that impressed visitors used to line up to watch them. He seems to have been a friend of sorts, trying to help Dickens to find life a bit easier, stuck in the factory which he hated.

In an essay John Bayley (essay contained in this book suggests that "No wonder Fagin the criminal is such an ambivalent figure when the real Fagin's kindness had, so to speak, threatened to immure Dickens to the hopeless routine of the wage-slave. So passionate was the young Dickens's desire for the station in life to which he felt entitled, and so terrifying his sense that it was being denied him, that he must have hated the real Fagin for the virtue which he could not bear to accept or recognise in that nightmare world, because it might help to subdue him into it. The real Fagin's kindness becomes the criminal Fagin's villainy."

Whether Bob Fagin was Irish is unclear and unstated. Perhaps he was Jewish, for that matter - it's not an obvious name to give a Jewish character if you hadn't known a Jew with the name.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: Bert
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 04:43 PM

MorwenEdhelwen1,

Never mind the quality, feel the width. Was a TV show about an Irishman and a Jew.

As for the other comment, I think I was trying to say was that Jews were part of life in The East End. Surely to leave them out of a story set in London would definitely be prejudiced.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 04:18 PM

*that*

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 04:15 PM

EDIT: *know*

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 04:09 PM

Bert, I'm sorry I don't now what you are trying to say here.. can you please make it clearer?
(For the record, the story is going to be set in an East End neighbourhood- don't know which one yet, but if anyone knows one that would work, well- I'll take taht suggestion- with both a significant Black population and a significant Jewish population)

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: Bert
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 12:32 PM

Never mind the quality, feel the width.

A large percentage of the population of the East End was Jewish in Dickens' time and still is to this day. When I was at school in Forest Gate the only time that Jews were noticed was when they didn't have to take Religious Instruction lessons. Then they were envied and not criticized.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: Kent Davis
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 11:52 AM

Perhaps so, McGrath, although I've never thought of Oliver Twist or Mr. Brownlow as villians. Even Nancy and the Artful Dodger, for all their faults, don't seem like villians to me. Maybe I'm just an old softie.

Kent

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 11:42 AM

the only Jew among a crowd of Gentiles, and since he is a villian.

But the whole crowd are villains, one way and another. Does that mean they are stereotype Gentiles?

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: Kent Davis
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 10:50 AM

MorwenEdelwen1,

I thought I had answered your question, albeit in parts.

It would be possible to portray the guy as a self-deluded ethnic stereotype who imagines that Moses gave only nine commandments.

History and literature are full of characters who have deluded themselves into believing that they ARE what everyone else can see they are NOT.

It would not be possible to portray him as TRULY an observant (i.e., religious) Jew. It would not be possible because Judaism is truly incompatible with life as an unrepentant thief.

Although it would be possible to portray him as a self-deluded stereotype, it would very difficult to do so without reinforcing the stereotype.

Certain American television situation comedies of the 1960's and '70's suggest a possible way out of your dilemma, while also showing how difficult a task you have. (I don't know if these shows are known to you in Australia. I have heard that American television has infested the world, so perhaps they are.)

"Sanford and Son", portrayed Sanford, an African-American, in ethnically stereotypical ways. However, nearly all the characters were of the same ethnicity, which at least mitigated the stereotyping. "The Beverly Hillbillies" portrayed a family as Appalachian/Ozark stereotypes, but subverted the stereotypes so that, for example, the "dumb Hillbilly" ended up out-smarting the "sophisticated" Big City banker every time. Again, this mitigated the damage. The shows were popular even among the people who were being stereotyped.

Nevertheless,in my opinion, the shows did reinforce stereotypes; they just made the stereotypes less offensive.

I imagine it would be especially difficult to do what you are trying to do since, Fagin is (as far as I know) the only Jew among a crowd of Gentiles, and since he is a villian.

Kent


P.S. to MtheGM,

Pardon me, Sir! I plead "guilty" to parochialism. I had clean forgotten that "Oliver!" began life on the West End.

I did remember that "Sanford and Son" began life in the mother country as "Steptoe and Son", but whether "Steptoe and Son" involved sterotypes, I do not know.

Kent

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 07:07 AM

Thanks for that, McGrath of Harlow. Actually, a lot of fences (a significant percentage were Jewish, but not all ) were also kidsmen and trained children to steal for them because it was an easy and convenient way of getting the stolen goods. Also dealing in secondhand goods provided a good front- you could just not ask questions and convince yourself that what you're doing isn't that bad.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 06:56 AM

Well, Fagin was a thief as well as a fence, in the book, the film and the stage musical. Training kids to carry out the legwork and the fingerwork involved in stealing is a variety of theft.

But he doesn't need to have convinced himself that he is honest in order to be religiously observant. Just that he is doing what he has been forced to do by circumstances, maybe that what he has done is not that bad, and that he is an imperfect human being who can pray to be forgiven before it's too late.

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 04:34 AM

Kent, I knowyou're commenting on the play, not the book, but- Fagin was not a thief, he was a fence. You still haven;'t really answered my question: can fagin be portrayed as an observant Jew, who has convinced himeself taht he's honest?

Subject: RE: BS: Racial stereotypes in retellings?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 02:23 AM

We disagree on this matter, Kent; to the extent that I think it would be vain to continue on this particular aspect.

Re your other points, please don't be so parochial! Lionel Bart is British, and it was of course originally a West End, not a Broadway, musical.

Sweriously, though: indeed, the character was much softened by Bart, from a disgusting hypocritical villain, eventually hanged, to a lovable[ish] comic rogue who makes his getaway with at least some of his ill-gotten gains at the end.

Why not take time to read the book ~~ it is quite short in Dickensian terms, and very readable ~~ in order to be fully qualified to comment and compare?

~Michael~