that 47 minute long frozen sequel before coco is white supremacy

— m a r i s o l (@charolastre) November 25, 2017

But there’s another issue with Olaf’s Frozen Adventure. It takes place during the holiday season in the fictional kingdom of Arendelle, but because Disney must pay lip service to other cultures (Walt’s racist head is rolling over in its jar!), there are brief shots of non-Christmas traditions, including, yes, Chanukah:

Listen, Jews hail from all over the world, and can look like anyone, and the phrase “looking Jewish” is virtually meaningless. But… boy does that family appear generically white.

Plus, according to the fully-lit chanukiyah, it’s the eighth night of the holiday. What a fun coincidence that always seems to happen when non-Jews portray what they think Chanukah is like!

But there’s a bigger issue here: Disney has insisted on grounding the Frozen universe in a particular time and place— circa 1840, and Norway. Here’s the problem: There was no Chanukah in 1840 Norway, because there were no Jews there.

Jews were periodically allowed in Norway over the centuries, or given special dispensation to stay or travel. But a 1687 ban on Jews was reinforced in the Norwegian constitution of 1814 (Portuguese Jews might have been OK, but let’s be real— the family in this picture isn’t Portuguese). That law persisted until 1851— over a decade after this film takes place. And the first real Norwegian Jewish community didn’t exist until the 1890s (and didn’t last long, since the Holocaust was only fifty years away). So the odds of knocking on a door in Norway in 1840 and seeing a family playing dreidl were about as likely as the one knocking being a living snowman.

Yes, it’s a Disney movie. Yes, Arendelle is a fictional land that’s only Norwegian when it suits. Yes, it would be unfair to exclude Jews from the holiday season in a piece of American-created culture. But it’s still so weird and ridiculous to see shoehorned generic Chanukah imagery into a land that until that point would have still managed to be judenfrei.

Of course, Josh Gad, who voices Olaf, and Idina Menzel, who voices Elsa, are both Members of the Tribe, so that’s at least two Jews in Frozen, if not the kingdom of Arendelle. But regardless of Jews in the cast or on the creative team of the film, the historical revisionism here is a bit cringe-worthy. When you run Jewishness through the mass-market Disney wringer, and you get something as milquetoast as Walmart fruitcake.

(Thanks to Jewcy reader Adam Freilich for the tips.)

Image via YouTube.

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While Josh Gad is perhaps best known for voicing Olaf, the lovable/grating (your mileage may vary) snowman in Frozen, he’s most often cast as somewhat annoying, nerdy types. His big break was for originating the role of the weirdly nebbish Elder Cunningham in The Book of Mormon (seriously, why do so many Jews play the geeky Mormon character in that show?). He’s a physical “type,” to be sure— but there’s an unfortunate overlap between a short, round Jewish man with curly hair and bumbling characters onscreen. His next role, however, is a step away from that— and he’s excited about it.

Gad is one of the stars of Marshall, the upcoming Thurgood Marshall biopic telling the story of a young Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) while he works as a lawyer for the NAACP. The film revolves around Marshall’s role as the defense lawyer for Joseph Spell, a black chauffeur accused of sexual assault and attempted murder by Eleanor Strubing, a Greenwich, Connecticut socialite. Gad plays Sam Friedman, a local Jewish lawyer who’s never handled a criminal case who is tasked with teaming up with Marshall to defend Spell. The two men build a defense together while contending with both anti-black and anti-Semitic views.

(The real Friedman was important to both the case and this movie; his family was instrumental in passing the film’s script— co-written by a Connecticut Jewish lawyer who knew Friedman, as a matter of fact— into the right hands to get it produced.)

Gad spoke with Buzzfeed News about the film, and the conversation turned to the importance of Jewish Representation on screen. Gad talked about how refreshing this project is when most Hollywood creatives (especially the Jewish ones) shy away from making characters “too Jewish.” He is excited that Marshall takes the opposite response and really leans into Friedman’s Jewish identity.

“It was so important to illustrate how important faith was to this man, even if he didn’t wear his faith on his sleeve,” said Gad.

Early in Marshall, Friedman tries to hide his Jewish faith, believing that if he keeps his head down and doesn’t make too much noise he can get by without experiencing discrimination. He, unlike black men, has a chance to assimilate. Thurgood Marshall makes him realize that he can’t avoid oppression, that the case that they are fighting affects him, too. It’s a moral awakening, and one that it’s powerful to see a Jewish actor portray.

Gad may look the nebbish (because of continuing stereotypes), but it doesn’t mean he has to play bumbling shlemiels the rest of his career. This film is primarily about African American history, of course, but it also shows an example of Jews who chose to help others in a mutual struggle, rather than strive for personal comfort in American society.

Marshall comes out this Friday, October 13. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer below:

Image via Open Road Films

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The Book of Mormon (the musical, not the scripture), opens with young Mormon missionary Elder Kevin Price trying to interest people in the holy Book of Mormon.  If a door-to-door missionary looked like Kevin Price—perfect hair, gleaming smile, all-American good looks—I would let him prattle about Jesus forever. As one of his peers gushes, Price is  the “smartest, best, most deserving Elder the world has ever seen.”

Other charming, put-together missionaries join in. They ring doorbells and sing in perfect harmony, smiling, complimenting houses, and praising their amazing holy book.

Then, the unkempt Elder Cunningham breaks the synchronicity, barging in and shouting: “HELLO WOULD YOU LIKE TO CHANGE RELIGIONS I HAVE A FREE BOOK WRITTEN BY JESUS!!!”

Price and Cunningham are a Mormon Odd Couple, a devoted Golden Boy partnered with a schlubby, loud, and shrill Star Wars nerd. Eventually, Cunningham reveals that he hasn’t even read the Book of Mormon, to Price’s horror. Together, they must go to Uganda to convert as many people to Mormonism as they can.

Andrew Rannells, whom Ben Brantley called a “human Ken doll,” originated the role of Elder Price on Broadway. Josh Gad—the voice of Olaf from Frozen, lest we forget—originated Elder Cunningham. Rannells went to an all-boys Catholic school in Omaha. Gad is Jewish, as was his understudy and eventual replacement Jared Gertner, as was Gertner’s understudy, Jon Bass (I could go on).

In the Chicago tour, the pair was played by Nic Rouleau, another Catholic school alumnus, and Ben Platt, another Jew. Although Platt deviates from the physical formula of previous Cunninghams (“You’re skinny, I’ll say it,” Rouleau says in an interview), he still looks more New York corned beef than Utah cornfield—in other words, visibly Jewish.

Gertner is the only actor to talk at length about how (at that time) every Elder Cunningham had been played by a Jewish person. In an interview with Jewish Journal, he explains, “Maybe if you’re looking for people who are very different from an all-American, uptight, very white, very blond person, then physically you’re going to look for a difference; maybe you’re going to find a Jewish person… And if there’s any Jewish humor in the show, it’s just humor that comes from us, because we actually all are Jewish.”

Sure, Jews are funny, but there are other types of people who look different than, say, Rannells and Rouleau. So why are Jews consistently cast as a Mormon? Is it anti-Semitism? Should we be offended?

Maybe—if the show’s character arcs didn’t end in brilliant subversion.

It turns out Price’s greatest asset in Utah is a liability in Uganda. He’s too full of his faith—and himself—to convince anyone to listen, let alone convert. His preaching of the “blonde-haired, blue-eyed voice of God” is profoundly tone-deaf (meaning “not receptive to his African audience.” Everyone who has played Elder Price sings beautifully). He bravely marches up to a warlord, confident that his faith will protect him. He is wrong.

On the other hand, Elder Cunningham breaks through to the Ugandans, not through strict adherence to the Scripture, but through creativity and adaptation. Unlike Price, he is willing to alter Mormon text to include problems like dysentery and AIDS, which are conspicuously absent from the original teachings. Cunningham starts as the comic relief and sidekick, but his weakness  in Utah—making things up—becomes his strength.

If  the embodiment of Mormonism starts out as a rigid literalist from the American Midwest heck-bent on converting as many people as possible, then clearly his physical—and ideological—opposite would be Jewish, or at least Jewish-coded.

Strangely, show-writers Trey Parker and Robert Lopez are not Jewish. The third writer, Matt Stone, is the exception, having a Jewish mother, though he identifies as Jewish only ethnically, and religiously as secular/agnostic.  Still, the show taps into Judaism’s inherent curiosity and questioning as a contrast to Price’s strict adherence to stories that, by his own admission, sometimes don’t make sense.

Yes, there is the immediate physical contrast of the Mormons’ perfect (usually light) hair and impeccable posture with the slouching Cunningham’s dark, wild Jewfro. There’s also the strong connection of Judaism and humor, as Gertner points out. But more important than the comedy of the mismatched duo is the musical’s message about faith.

At the end, a humbled Elder Price proclaims, “We are all Latter Day Saints, even if we change some things, or break the rules, or have complete doubt that God exists.” His new faith focuses on helping others, not his own personal glory. The conclusion wouldn’t be possible without the culture clash between not just the Americans and the Ugandans, but also between Price and Cunningham. When unquestioning faith fails, Price embraces what Cunningham represents: a fluid, realistic, but still hopeful religion—what Judaism happens to be known for.

That’s not to say that The Book of Mormon is like an inverted Jews for Jesus, trying to stealthily convince Mormons to become Jewish. The Book of Mormon ends with a message that is oddly both agnostic and faith-affirming. As irreverent as The Book of Mormon can be, at its heart is deep respect for whatever belief systems help create kinder, better people.

Image credits: Wikimedia and André-Pierre du Plessis via Flickr.

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