The Netflix film has drawn divisive reactions over its portrayals of Jews and Black Muslims
Kenya Barris, the creator-writer-producer behind titles like “Black-ish,” “Grown-ish” and “America’s Next Top Model,” has proven himself to be one of television’s most reliable hitmakers. More importantly, he knows how to get people talking.
On Jan. 23, Barris made his directorial debut with “You People.” The comedy instantly soared to the top of the Netflix charts, racking up more than 65.61 million viewing hours to date. That number is proportionate to the avalanche of heated posts, op-eds and reviews that flooded the internet as soon as the trailer dropped.
You've reached your article limit.
Unlock premium content with a subscription.
Click Here Already a subscriber? LoginA modern take on the forbidden lovers’ tale, with a heavy amount of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “You People” finds an interracial couple at the crosshairs of the culture wars. Ezra (Jonah Hill, who co-wrote the screenplay with Barris) is white and Jewish; Amira (Lauren London) is Black and Muslim. These differences prove disastrous when it comes to their families. Riddled with white guilt, Ezra’s mother Shelley (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) overcompensates to the point of offense, while Amira’s father Akbar (Eddie Murphy) disapproves of the union.
Online backlash has targeted the film’s humor, which leans heavily on racial and religious stereotyping. (Critics were more lukewarm; “You People” scored 42% on Rotten Tomatoes.) And yet the discourse to “You People” is just as fractured and diverse as the identity politics it attempts to satirize.
Among Jews, a common criticism is its failure to draw any distinction between whiteness and Judaism.
“[“You People”] takes as a given that Jews are white, and asks, instead, whether Jews are actually the worst kind of white people,” wrote Mira Fox in a blistering op-ed for Forward. “… The movie’s Jews are flat stereotypes — wealthy, neurotic, painfully uncool and often blithely racist.”
While Hill is indeed a white Ashkenazi Jew, the use of tropes feeds into the idea that all Jews are similar and assimilated. Lawrence Baron, a former history professor at San Diego State University, pointed out several examples in his character alone: Ezra works in finance, proposes to Amira with what he claims is a “Holocaust ring” to excuse its smallness, and offers to use his connections to help her get a job, “[implying that] that’s how Jews get through the world, through their personal connections.”
On the other hand, Ezra’s mother “could be any white liberal. Why she has to be Jewish – aside from taking exception to [Louis] Farrakhan, she’s just trying to prove how woke she is, and it’s pathetic,” Baron said.
The most provocative scene takes place at a dinner with both sets of parents. An argument comparing slavery and the Holocaust ends with Akbar, a member of the Nation of Islam, praising Farrakhan and voicing the conspiracy theory that Jews got rich through the slave trade.
Although this theory has been widely discredited since it was popularized in the ‘90s, “it’s not a minor issue,” said Baron. “And it pops up in some serious movies, where it’s handled with a lot more sophistication than it is here.”
Allison Josephs, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Jew in the City, went further, calling the scene “dangerous” during a recent News Nation appearance.
“The Nazis used propaganda to shift people’s perspective about the Jewish community,” she said. “Things that start off as funny jokes and ‘Haha, can’t you just take a joke and have humor?’ – when you slip conspiracy theories, when you erase a person’s identity, when there’s persecution in the past and present, and you replace that with whiteness and privilege and wealth, when the story is so much more complicated. People have no idea what we’re facing right now.”
Though no fault of its own, the film arrives at a particularly fraught moment for Black-Jewish relations on a national scale. Midway through its second week of streaming, Rep. Ilhan Omar – who is Black and Muslim – was removed from the U.S. Foreign Affairs Committee over her past criticisms of Israel in a deeply divisive move by House Republicans. In defending her, podcaster Joe Rogan said “the idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza.” Three months prior, the Brooklyn Nets suspended Kyrie Irving for promoting the conspiracy theory film “Hebrews to Negroes” weeks after Kanye West sported a “White Lives Matter” shirt and unleashed a flurry of antisemitic remarks.
Jews and Muslims alike have clocked the curious lack of religious practice in a story about religious differences. Jokes aside, there’s little to suggest the Cohens are Jewish beyond the first scene, which takes place at a Yom Kippur service. Even less developed is Amira’s relationship to Islam – she has, as Brooke Obie wrote for The Grio, “no Muslim community outside her family and a brief scene of their imam.”
“Where the racial and religious conflict premise could’ve been an interesting angle to explore in other hands,” she said, “Barris is only interested in Islam as a tool to antagonize Ezra’s Jewish family.”
In times like these, where is the line between humor and harm?
“It’s a satirical film and ADL historically gives a lot of leeway with satire,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement to TheWrap. “With that said, people are rightfully upset by how the film handles stereotypes and harmful conspiracy theories. In a film that makes an effort, even if a flawed one, to challenge prejudices, it was jarring to hear the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews were responsible for the transatlantic slave trade go virtually unchallenged.”
“We need to have uncomfortable conversations and satire is instrumental in driving those conversations,” he continued. “But the film is not an accurate reflection of the Black-Jewish relationship, a relationship which is vitally important and should not be trivialized for a few laughs.”
Where these topics are concerned, even “You People”s harshest critics can probably agree on the need for both humor and honest dialogue. Even if the film misses the mark, some say it should be praised for its ambition.
“I believe that there are conversations that have not been had yet. They might be [held at] the African American kitchen table, or the Jewish kitchen table, but they’re not had openly and out in public now,” said Wendy Eley Jackson, a film producer and lecturer at UC Santa Barbara. Hate “originates from home,” she said, so that’s where these talks must begin.
The film’s responsibility toward individual perspective versus group representation is a major point of contention – particularly when it comes to Barris. Throughout his career, the creator has been accused of perpetuating colorism by casting light-skinned Black actors and fixating on biracial stories.
“What I think the balance to that for ‘You People’ is maybe pushing why the writers – because everything starts with the writers – chose to do this and what [aspects came] from their personal experiences,” Jackson continued. “We can’t deny [Hill’s] personal experience, growing up Jewish, and you can’t deny [Barris] his experiences.”
User @moontwerk argued that her casting was a missed opportunity for more nuanced storytelling. “Lauren London is a Black Jewish woman and it’s annoying to me that Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris didn’t let You People tell a story that challenged the Black-White interracial couple trope in a more authentic and deeply personal way,” they tweeted.
Creating “commercially viable” projects has “opened up a lot of doors for a lot of other people to tell their versions of stories,” he argued. “And you know, the only color in Hollywood that really matters is green.”
As a Black creator with a major platform, does Barris have a duty to expand the scope of his own storytelling? The jury is out on that.
“The door to these opportunities, particularly for talent of color, is still just ajar. The door for creatives is open a little further,” said Miki Turner, an Associate Professor of Journalism at USC. “The biggest problem in this town is not about your skin color or lack thereof. It’s nepotism. And so [Barris] continues to work with the people he wants to work with.”
“At the end of the day,” she added, “they’re all people of color, regardless of their skin tone.”
Jackson said it’s important to tell stories like “You People” in a country where interracial marriage hasn’t even been legal for 100 years.
“When they talk about ‘you people,’ it’s more than just a title,” she said. In her personal experience, “it is a euphemism that people still use” as a pejorative for both Jewish and Black people.
What’s more, liking Barris’ work or “methodology” isn’t necessary in order to appreciate his creative impact. “One movie doesn’t always blanket all topics and make everyone happy… If one person can have an aha moment – ‘maybe I am a jerk about x, y and z’ – I think he would have done his job.”
Love it or hate it, laugh at its jokes or condemn them, “You People” has clearly stirred up some kind of conversation – maybe just not the one Barris had in mind.
“If you watch it in the spirit in which it was intended, [it’s] really trying to make us see how badly we’re treating each other,” Turner concluded. “Knowing [Barris], this is one of the things he’s always trying to do: to point the finger and say, ‘Look how stupid you’re being.’”
Harper Lambert
Harper first joined TheWrap as a member of the Audience Team in 2021 before becoming a film reporter. Her writings about movies, TV, and culture have appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, MovieMaker and the Daily Nexus, where she served as Editor in Chief. She also co-hosted and co-created the podcast "Hot Off The Pod" with support from the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.