Because apparently none of the goyische friends I've mentioned this to so far had noticed

[kaberett]

Minor Captain America: The Winter Soldier spoiler under the cut.

The kid in the Triskelion control room? The one HYDRA commands at gunpoint to accelerate the Insight launch? The one who refuses, who goes blank with fear, who cries, who refuses?

He's Jewish.

Comments

[vass]

Yep. There's this fic about him on AO3 that I've been trying to find again, in which that's a Thing.

[alexseanchai]

How do you know?

(if it's something I should have noticed myself, in my defense I haven't actually seen the film yet)

[kaberett]

He's cast the way Hollywood casts people when they want to make really certain that they're getting across the point that this is a Jew who has suffered from anti-Semitism, i.e. he looks absolutely stereotypical. (Which I am not actually complaining about particularly - gods know my family does, stick a kippah on my dad and drop him in a European Jewish quarter and you'd never find him again - but is gently problematic in that, er, not all Jews look like that aksherly. cf Ethiopian Jews, to whom Israel is vilely racist.)

[alexseanchai]

Ah, okay.

[rmc28]

I had wondered, but I feel uncomfortable about saying "he looks Jewish" when I'm not sure?

[kaberett]

Heh. Fair. So I'm partly coming at this from a point of I get to claim this representation, this is mine, partly he looks like my family, and partly I guess I could go look up the actor's ethnicity, but I Have Met This Kind Of Hollywood Casting Before.

[rmc28]

It's kind of interesting, given how he is also very clearly positioned as the audience-identification figure at that point, with the tension drawn out just long enough for us to wonder if we would have the courage to do what's right, just an ordinary person with no powers or special weapons. (Or at least, that's always what runs through my mind at that point.)

I do love that Agent 13 saves him (though thanks to recessional I also cannot help thinking "step back Sharon, you have a ranged weapon for a reason, oh look you got knifed"), and that he gets a little cameo in Age of Ultron just to reinforce that he survived.

[kaberett]

Also, I've just looked the dude up and he is, in point of fact, Jewish.

<3

[kaberett]

The other thing I noted about that sequence is that the HYDRA agents killed an awful lot of, like, non-white people. That was... really obvious and deliberate, and on the one hand why the FUCK is most of the main cast still white, and on the other, yeah, I see what you did there.

[birke]

Interesting. I didn't notice that.

[davidgillon]

Echoing the old man in Avengers Assemble who refuses to bow down for Loki and is only saved by Cap's timely arrival.

[redsixwing]

I caught that echo, but didn't notice his ethnicity.

Which: v. cool. Thanks, kaberett!

[silveradept]

I believe in Avengers he refers obliquely to having lived through the camps and so he has no intention of doing something like bowing to Loki.

[jesse_the_k]

Kudos for the courage of your convictions, K. I thought he was Jewish (I'm also MOT) but not enough to speak out about it ;) lead on!