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Comment by rsstack | Hacker News Reader

A Jewish comedian made a joke about how jews (only in the US*) were offended that Ferengi in Star Trek were based on them - "why would we assume these ugly greedy people are _us_?"

*Outside the US, it looks like the Ferengi are mocking American capitalist culture.

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Sidestepping your original premise - how do the Ferengi even make sense in Star Trek? Its supposed to be a post-scarcity society, at least on an individual level - and an imperialist one on a civilization-scale, the latter being a step back even from how the modern world works.

Not everything is post-scarcity, mostly food and clothes. Land, fuel, weapons, art, fame, and labor are still limited resources in the Star Trek world. Also, not everywhere is post-scarcity, as we see many "poor" or restricted societies. The post-scarcity bit is mostly about a social safety net for individuals in the Federation.

Even within the Federation, colonies can collapse and fail, experience famine, plague, etc. Tasha Yar came from one such colony that had regressed into violent anarchy.

The Federation is a post-scarcity utopia until the writers want something interesting to write about. Then the Federation gives some colonies to the Cardassians and you get the Maquis.

> The Federation is a post-scarcity utopia until the writers want something interesting to write about.

Similar to Iain Banks' Culture novels. The Culture is so utopian that there is no interesting conflict, so all of the action is driven by contact with less developed civilizations.

(You talk about the Federation itself, but IIRC Star Trek also often deals with external forces - in any case, "everything is great" isn't interesting for long)

The Ferengi don't exist as part of the Federation. Their culture isn't built on egalitarianism, so not everyone gets access.

Ferengi is not part of the Federation AFAIK

genetic imperative for latinum

I never knew about this complaint either, the connection never occured to me at the time as the capitalist cristicism seemed par for the course for a post-scarcity Federation. I don't understand this knee-jerk self -owning behavior. It's like that bizarre tweet by the Israeli government about the photo of an IDF soldier destroying a Christian ornament. The gov. official insisted that the physical features of the soldier contained so many antisemitic tropes that it had to be AI. Thus, the guy was inadvertantly described as the ugliest person on the planet in excruciating detail by his own government.

Wish you’d been more specific, “a Jewish comedian” sounds like the setup for a joke.

I tried to Google his joke, but couldn't find it quickly enough. It might have been part of a longer special.

Is it true that the Ferengi were based on Jews? I suspected so, but then I also considered they may have been influenced by the Chinese.

> Armin Shimerman addressed the issue when asked at a question-and-answer session at a Star Trek convention. He stated that:

> In America, people ask "Do the Ferengi represent Jews?" In England, they ask "Do the Ferengi represent the Irish?" In Australia, they ask if the Ferengi represent the Chinese ... The Ferengi represent the outcast ... it's the person who lives among us that we don't fully understand.[30]

Given that DS9 showrunner and co-creator Michael Piller was in fact Jewish, I highly doubt that the Ferengi are some sort of stealth Nazi propaganda. They're either a mockery of the "happy merchant" stereotype beloved of anti-Semites, or (more likely) just a critique of greed and capitalism itself.

What's funny is that Leonard Nimoy (Jewish) based his portrayal of Spock on the idea that the Vulcans were the space Jews. This idea kind of comes to a head in the 2009 movie, in which a guy named after a Roman emperor destroys Vulcan, causing a Vulcan diaspora...

No, it's cultural-other pareidolia

Mixed with a little synesthesia. It’s only natural.

... Depends on where we are looking at in the real-world episode production timeframe.

TNG did still resort to 'caricatures as a default', If we are to be a tiny bit bold and look closer at DS9 and how, if you look at a lot of the other stuff outside 'Far Beyond The Stars'.

What you find is that DS9 is very much about people facing pressure from their culture or background and over time learning there's a better way to do things. So many major and minor characters change over the course and part of it is seeing how hard it is and what it takes for each of them to change. I do think they 'over-used' the Ferengi for this but I get they were trying to target a general level of audience.

IMO it really was a hopeful attempt to recognize cultural versus racial problems. You can't just do a single speech and never visit the hat planet again; you are next to one of the hat planets and instead get a deeper look into their world.

.....

DS9 did over-emphasize the Ferengi change arcs, and while the end fits with other 'themes' (i.e. Bell Riots) it like most other hat changes didn't have huge implications till after what we the viewer would see.

But also I kinda get that whole thing. At the end of the day the Ferengi (whether originally intended or not) became something meant to symbolize extreme laissez-faire capitalism with perhaps a pinch of twisted reversal of other cultures/religions[1] because yeah I'm gonna blame that bit on whoever was in charge or TNG at the time (Was it Rick Berman?)

[0] - To be clear I mean for the sake of this topic; those episodes themselves with the original ending to DS9 frankly capture a lot of the 'hope' that was trying to be conveyed in the face of all the strife...

[1] - The most easy way to lampshade 'required clothing' is to instead do 'required non-clothing'

The Ferengis do have a lot of superficial similarities to Jewish caricatures.

When being defensive about the genocide, some people invoke against the protesters, e.g. "Where were you when the atrocities in Sudan were happening?", admitting that the genocide being committed is as bad as the Sudan conflict...

No?

I think that is a bad example. I haven't heard of Jewish people being offended by Ferengi, but anti-Semitic depictions are very often exactly "ugly, greedy people" (just look at any Nazi propaganda). Once it becomes a common thread it works less as a defense.

I imagine "small hands" would similarly work poorly as a defense against a defamation suit from Trump: he doesn't have to claim he has small hands, only that he is often depicted as having them.

In the case of the Ferengi, "ugly greedy people with big noses," specifically greedy for an in-universe gold analogue, short, always cheating people; the analogues with common anti-semitic stereotypes are certainly there.

Then again Armin Shimmerman, who played Quark and is Jewish himself, has said that people in different countries see different stereotypes in the Ferengi - such as the Chinese or the Irish - so it probably depends on one's own own cultural indoctrination.

I think a better case could be made for the Klingons being racist caricatures, since in TOS their look was intentionally based on Asiatic and Mongol people in order to make them seem more frightening and villainous.

> I think a better case could be made for the Klingons being racist caricatures, since in TOS their look was intentionally based on Asiatic and Mongol people in order to make them seem more frightening and villainous.

In my head-canon TOS Klingons are Russia and Romulans are China.

Reasons for this;

- Star Trek 6 (The whole thing is an allegory for the end of the cold war, right down to Praxis being a stand-in for Chernobyl)

- That fight scene in 'The Trouble with Tribbles' that strikes me as 'feels like a rehashed tale about a barfight between Allied and Soviet soldiers in pre-split post WW2 Germany'

- Romulans being more 'secluded' and more about political and legal intrigue than violence (If we consider Klingon direct violence a stand-in for USSR/Russian 'maybe put in house arrest before we assasinate' vs China's 'throw the rigid legal book at them')

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