How should t.v shows represent a community?
Last week I interviewed Gary Sinyor, the writer and director of a new
comedy series released on the Amazon Prime, “The Jewish Enquirer” and
we got into a fascinating conversation about the responsibility (or lack
thereof) of representing a faith-bound community and accessing it through
the genre of a comedy TV series.
Sinyor commented “if I’ve ever made any Jewish content, Jewish people
always moan and argue about whether something’s funny or not, it’s
within any community.”
This raises an interesting discourse about the different standards people
have towards positive representation in visual media, especially in the
comedy realm; one of comedy’s most notable features is to poke fun at and
expose the flaws in its main character. In this case, unsurprisingly, the
main character is Jewish.
What do you think, how should a comedy show represent minority
communities and is there a responsibility in its creators?
