The Soft Propaganda of the Oscars

I was not intending to write about the Oscars this year as I usually do, in some shape or form, but in catching up with the nominees I began to see a pattern. Jews. Jewish experiences seemed to be disproportionately represented among the nominated films. It kind of made me uncomfortable, as if I were being played or emotionally manipulated — like you know you are when the movie soundtrack cues you to begin weeping or smiling with hope or gorgeously humane empathy even in the face of devastation.

A definition of propaganda is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view. Edward Bernays wrote the book on propaganda in 1928. It was called Propaganda. Get it? Bernays was a Jew. But so what. He was also the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who also wrote books, including The Future of an Illusion (1927) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). Freud was a Jew. But so what. He nailed it: Religion and aggression would doom us, each in their own ways. Oy!

Still, Bernays as a propagandist and Freud as the father of psychoanalysis, both knew how easy it was for people to be manipulated. Both implied that most people seem to live their lives as gaslight victims of the stronger. Even T.S. Eliot, who was not a Jew, and who some say may have hated Jews (but that may have been as a result of his overexposure to that crazy guy Ezra Pound who had to be straitjacketed eventually), that “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

Anyway, I have watched a bunch of the 2025 Oscar nominated films, as well as other recent films not nominated, but which I would have reviewed ordinarily, such as Riefenstahl, which I tried forever to find a decent stream that was not, you know, handy cam. I like candied ham. That film would be a natural one to watch. It reminded me so much of Inglourious Basterds, what with the revenge-seeking Jews out to kick the heck out Nazi schweinhunden and, more importantly, supposedly was based on a real-life unit of Jewish commandos out of Fort Detrick. It is an alternative history graphic novel-like Riefenstahl who sends the crazy guy with art school paint brush mustache to Siegfried Hell. (It was like good propaganda: Imagine if Bernays had helped blow up the United Fruit Gum Company, instead of helping the CIA kill peasants for fun and setting the stage for the migrant crisis at the US southern border decades later). The music cues: we cry, F*ck You, Adolf! Und your stilllife roses sucked, too. Directed by Tarantino. Not a Jew. What a pity.

I had a similar problem, for the longest time, procuring a copy of The Brutalist. Finally, I saw some of it. I like architecture more than the next guy probably. Albert Speer would have loved what the film had to say. Wrote one wag, “Speer-style Nazi buildings have a brutalistic tone with square columns and avoidance of details that point to a humanistic heritage.” This is a film about Jews. And the brutality meted out to them. No one is more humanistic than the Jewish people.

Oh, ha-ha, laugh now, hypocrite mon lecteur, my pretty little flowers of evil. But the brutal fact is that the Western tradition is largely an Abrahamic tradition, and Abe bequeathed us Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And God promised them all, more or less, a piece of the Promised Land pie. Very depressing and brutal, our collective cultural history. We mustn’t forget. First human, Cain, was a stone cold murderer; Abel, the second born, garnered all the love. Watch James Dean in East of Eden, you’ll see what I mean. (Watch out for the manipulative soundtrack though.) Ja, east of Eden, the second exile in a generation — where Adam and Eve told Cain to go f*ck himself, if he’s going to kill his brother. Eve was preggers with Seth, the third human, at that time. Have fun with animals. And Adam tore his fur and that was that.

2025 also saw a remake of Nosferatu (1922), the cinema classic that is based on the trials and tribulations of a Jew. Or maybe I’m thinking of A Complete Unknown, the Dylan biopic so incomplete and wrongheaded that I was terrified it betokened the first of many sequels, like Raven with a Broken Wing, followed by Coming as He Lifted Up His Fork, My So-called Friends, Too Much of Nothing, Theme from Big Lebowski, Alias Anyone You Please, etc. I may have actually woken up in fright exclaiming with a Homer Simpson-like scream. Dylan is a Jew. And a genius. Hell, can you name a Jew who is not? I can’t. Probably they are The Chosen People. Them and the African diaspora types. I’d start civilization over with American Jews and Africans any day. Fuck me.

Yeah, 2025 was the year of the Jew in film anyway. And this is always a good thing. We need constant reminders of the Holocaust. What we done. Fuck what happened to Christ, who was after all a Jew. That’s what made the excellent film, A Real Pain, so poignant. Culkin’s numb. He could use real pain. And he gets it — plenty. I don’t know about you, but I was moved. I fuckin hate those Nazis more than ever for what they did, and how they keep trying to make a comeback, like the South, always gonna rise again, and then they do and get to Washington and sing throwaway Disney tunes (“I’ll Make Mommy Proud Yet”) and dressed as boffo Vikings, and then suddenly everyone thinks we’ve been taken over by Trump instead of having voted the twice-impeached president, and convicted felon into office. Trump is not a Jew, but his buddy Bibi is, and Trump may have towers in Gaza, Greenland, and Moscow when this is all over and the smoke of hell has cleared. And Trump is a real pain.

And there were a couple of other films about Jews which you may not have thought as Jewish at first. Conclave. Holy smoke, that was a Jewish as you could get. Abe was like the Pope; God’s rep on Earth, the original Patriarch. Anyway, no Jews, no Conclave. And how modern this Conclavewas! one that finally tackled non-binary issues. Probably Francis had a heart attack thinking about what thus film implied,

And there was the non-nominated film September 5, another re-telling of the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympics by Palestinian terrorists. We immediately see the title light up on the screen and begin to weep, thinking October 7, September 11, Juneteenth — will the terrorism never end? Well, at least I wept, and I consider myself an honorary Jew. Like John Goodman in Lebowski. Cue the music. Goddamn Gentiles. You’ll get yours, I thought. Shut up, Donny.

And then there was the disruptor film, also about Jews: No Other Land, which won for Best Doco. And then Hamdan Balla, the film’s director, getting attacked by Israeli settlers. It was a gritty film in the rubble of civilization. AI is training on our behavior: Is it any wonder that they hallucinate. Half the time we can’t believe our own eyes.

Even the Best Picture of 2025 has at its heart Jews. Yes, Anora. Coney Island and the Russian connection was a first sign. Lots of Russian Jewish migrants there. Coney Island of the Mind, right? Ginsberg was a Jew. Idiot volunteered for MKULTRA. Did you see what they did to his song, Ma. One pundit says on Medium: “Sean Baker’s newest film is a square in the quilt of the modern Jewish pop culture diaspora.” Hot Damn. Ed Snowden is in Russia right now with wife, a former pole dancer. He used to spy on her, he says in his memoir, Permanent Record (2019), like the Israelis spy on Palestinians with their Pegasus software.

I come away from all this exposure to Jewishness feeling. And that’s good enough for now.

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