I thought the Ferenghi were supposed to represent human greed.
> The Original Series had come from hostility between the US and the USSR during the Cold War, Wright sought an equivalent relevant to the US of the era he was living in, the 1980s. There was meanwhile a palpable feeling that the nation's financial sector was essentially full of greedy barbarians, a notion Wright transplanted into the futuristic science-fiction setting of The Next Generation. (Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, p. 36) Rob Bowman offered, "The Ferengi sprung from the stereotype of agents and lawyers being cutthroat, greedy and wanting only money." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 35) Wright thus conceived the Ferengi as a species of profit-obsessed, ruthless aliens. He was especially fond of the contrast between them and the crew of the Enterprise-D, who had no desire or need for money. (Star Trek: The Next Generation 365, p. 36)
* https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi#Origins
Things got tweaked over time of course.
They're kind of like the Star Trek counterpart to Jar Jar Binks.
Ahmed Best, Jar Jar's voice and mo-cap actor person of color, finds the racial commentary about the character offensive and nearly committed suicide over the negativity and harassment.
In TNG they might be one dimensional like Jar Jar, but I think the Ferengi get a lot of nuanced characters in DS9 that blow Jar Jar Binks out of the water in depth. Rom's evolution is particularly great.
Correct. But there is a whole lotta similarity between the Ferengi and real life antisemetic caricatures, as is easily seen by any internet search for "antisemitic caricatures".
Thus I maintain that claiming that the characteristics exhibited by the Ferengi are an exaggeration of Jewish traits is itself racist.
It's also why I chose to link to the ADL in this description, rather than other meme sites. It provides the much needed context that the initial linked picture was done in the 1990s, by "A. Whytt Mann".
Naturally, the Ferenghis were made as a personification of the worst that capitalism has to offer. However, the caricature itself of the Ferenghi turned into something quite terrible indeed.
And as some have said here and claimed of me, this isn't my antisemitism showing. In fact, scholars have mirrored my own thoughts:
> In his 2007 critique of The Next Generation for the National Review, the commentator Jonah Goldberg described the Ferengi as "runaway capitalists with bullwhips who looked like a mix between Nazi caricatures of Jews and the original Nosferatu."[28] The scholar of religion Ross S. Kraemer wrote that "Ferengi religion seems almost a parody, perhaps of traditional Judaism."[25] He wrote that the 285 Rules of Acquisition bore similarities with the 613 Commandments of Judaism and that the Ferengi social restrictions on women mirrored Orthodox Judaism's restrictions on women studying the Torah.[25] Historian Paul Sturtevant wrote in 2018 that not only are the Ferengi "extremely legalistic" and "defined by their greed", echoing common stereotypes of Jews, but the major Ferengi characters on Deep Space Nine were all played by Jewish actors.[29]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi
And the 285 rules of acquisition vs 613 commandments ties back to the main article, since I like to keep tying back in.
That just seems to be way too many "coincidences" for me to be comfortable with.
Just because you have prejudices you apply to the work does not mean the creators did, which is where any factuality of racism or caricature could come to be.
Your prejudices and experiences aren't shared by everyone else, which means that they may create material that has zero negative features but for which You Perceive negative features due exclusively to Your Prejudices.