re: #95 Freeze Peach

Note that in her extremely sympathetic review she also thinks that Bell doesn’t present the Jewish defenders of black in ST in the best light. It is thus easy to understand how Bell’s detractors would moreso find the description bad.

While they are not, of course, the wholly devalued group who become the object of the Space Traders’ exchange, Jews live on a precarious edge, which serves at least to contextualize their earlier, somewhat unappealing concern about their own status.

It’s almost like Bell chose not to turn Jews into a simplistic caricature, neither of context free self sacrifice nor of completely craven self interest, but instead chose to represent them as a complex people whose motivations could not be reduced into a single blanket stereotype.

Again, I think the root of the problem is an antipathy towards ambiguity. The attempt to contextualize the Jewish response in anything resembling complex, somewhat realistic terms is only problematic if one thinks that portraying Jews as normal people partially concerned by an understandable thing like their own status is demeaning.