In the season finale of the grand Marvel epic Moon Knight, a young Egyptian woman stares wide-eyed at the show’s heroine Layla, now a powerful avatar for the goddess Taweret, and asks adoringly, “Are you an Egyptian superhero?” And in a most authentic Egyptian tongue, Laila replies, “I am.”
Marvel truly deserves a pat on the back for breaking so many boundaries. It’s an authentically Egyptian story with a real Egyptian director, real Egyptian actors, and yes, a real Egyptian superhero. I can easily imagine that a person of Egyptian descent watching this series must be oozing with pride. How validating it must be to see one’s heritage — ancient animal gods and afterlife boats — as a source of strength, a source of wonder, even a source of super powers. It’s all the more striking when we consider how the American TV and film industry has historically marginalized and tokenized people of Middle Eastern descent.
But at what cost is all this pride won? It seems that the Egyptian culture pageant has come at the expense of another historically marginalized culture’s dignity. For those who have followed the series, a second ethnicity shares the spotlight, albeit briefly. Episode five reveals in no unsubtle terms that Marc Spector, the show’s protagonist, is Jewish. There’s a shiva, a rabbi, and a great shot of an inebriated Marc donning a kippah. Some have praised the show’s accurate portrayal of these solemn scenes. But it’s clear to all who are sensitive to this kind of thing that Marvel has given Judaism the very, very short end of the stick.
True, the series has received some criticism for the scene where Marc angrily throws off his kippah after the death of his abusive mother. But that’s just window dressing. How about this: for all the appeals to Egyptian authenticity, not a single one of the actors who plays Marc Spector — as a child, teenager, and adult — is Jewish. Nor are the actors who play his father and mother for that matter. The Hollywood Reporter beamed in an article about Moon Knight that 90% of the Egyptian roles went to Egyptian actors. That’s a fine statistic, especially compared to the number of Jewish roles that went to Jews - zero.
But the indignity goes even deeper. Lack of Jewish representation in its actors is a superficial problem. Beyond that lies a far more sinister problem: the utterly spiritless portrayal of Judaism itself. Unlike Egyptian mythology, Judaism confers no powers in Moon Knight. It doesn’t even offer Marc a path to psychological healing. He has an abusive Jewish mother and an impotent Jewish father. The powerful lifecycle ceremony of the shiva occurs twice within the episode — one for Marc’s brother and another taking place many years later for Marc’s mother. A shiva is an experience that offers powerful comfort to Jewish mourners both religious and non-observant, and yet in Moon Knight they serve as an ineffective backdrop to the characters’ inconsolable grief. All in all, Marc receives nothing but pain and alienation from his Jewish heritage.
To add salt to the wound Marc instead finds strength, meaning, and redemption in an authentic and vibrant Egyptian culture. As Moon Knight, he can stand up to the oppressed. With the help of Egyptian deities, he can make peace with his multiple personalities. Does this not smack of the worst kind of trivialization of another system of belief? Consider for a moment that Moon Knight’s storyline can be summarized as a Jewish man being possessed by an Egyptian god and taken to an Egyptian afterlife!
This is no isolated event. Jewish identity is just enough of a vanilla backstory in film and television that it can be safely sprinkled into a narrative without having to give it too much credence. In Marvel’s Hawkeye, the character of Kate Bishop walks into her aunt’s apartment, which happens to have a mezuzah on the door and an unlit menorah on the shelf. Nothing more is said of Kate’s Jewish connection, although the series relies heavily on the warm-fuzzies of Clint Barton and his family celebrating Christmas. Another recent example comes to mind. In Wes Anderson’s most recent masterpiece “The French Dispatch,” Benicio del Tor plays a mentally ill inmate who achieves world renown as a genius painter. During the brief montage of his early life it is explained that he is the son of a Jewish Mexican horse rancher. And that’s all you’ll ever hear about Moses’ Judaism for the rest of the film.
The Hebrews in the audience who watch these films and shows perk up momentarily when the big screen finally acknowledges their existence. Then the excitement dies down when it becomes clear that the character’s Judaism is at best an insignificant detail, and at worst an object of derision and mockery. As a general rule, the former usually occurs when the filmmakers are not Jewish. The latter usually occurs when the filmmakers are. Seth Rogan has practically made a career out of mocking his Jewish-ness, without a single instance of portraying the real meaning that Jewish heritage has offered for thousands of years to millions of people.
Perhaps it’s because Jews have so dominated the film and television industry that they’re no longer considered marginalized, and therefore nobody feels the need to “give them a voice.” Perhaps it’s because of the current misconception that Jews are “white” and are not really considered an ethnicity (as Whoopi infamously suggested). Either way, Jewishness now gets the worst of both worlds. It’s exotic enough to want to use it as a useful vehicle for storytelling, but not enough to treat it with any sort of reverence or respect.
I do feel joy for the Egyptians out there who finally have a role model to look up to in the Marvel Universe, and who can point with pride at the accurate and inspiring depictions of their heritage. I only wish that it didn’t have to come at the expense of portraying Jewishness yet again as a type of personal baggage to be avoided. For those of us in the audience who are still looking for a representation of Judaism that fills us with a sense of pride and authenticity, I guess we’ll just have to keep waiting.
