MAD magazine artists reveal how anti-Semitism shaped American comics (video)

"In every local newspaper, there would be long lists for resort hotels in the Poconos or in certain parts of the Catskills, and they would just simply have the word 'restricted, '" recalls the late legendary MAD magazine artist Al Jaffee about life in mid-century America. "Every Jewish person knew what restricted meant — it meant restricted to Christians, and certainly not Black Christians, restricted meant no Blacks or no Jews."

This glimpse into mid-20th-century discrimination comes from a short video from Chicken Fat, a documentary-in-progress about Will Elder, one of MAD magazine's pioneering artists, directed by Gary VandenBergh.

This clip features interviews with comics luminaries describing the pervasive anti-Semitism that shaped their careers.

Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, explains in the film how Jewish artists like Elder brought "that alienated outsider's perspective, and that's what allowed them to see Norman Rockwell America clearly."

Paul Buhle, Professor Emeritus at Brown University, says that "Yiddish culture was a culture of outsiders. Jews in an America, which until the Holocaust, certainly looked upon Jews as dangerous, potentially subversive, but most especially not 'like us.'"

The comic book industry emerged as a rare sanctuary. As Jaffee explains, "The thing that changed it all for us was the birth of the comic book industry. A large number of comic books were published by Jews, and of course, there was no discrimination there."

Will Elder's brother Irving explained how humor served as a survival tool: "Life was so serious they were forbidden to do so many things, the only way they could release their inner feelings was to laugh about it. In other words, if they were in front of a prince and they made a fool of themselves, the prince laughed and he didn't kill them."

If you would like to fund the completion of the documentary, this is the place to do it.