Content warning: This article contains discussion of antisemitic imagery and references to the Holocaust.
The tradition of using external features to represent a character’s internal state or personality is a staple of visual and literary art that dates back long before the invention of the camera. It has its roots in the practice of physiognomy, a pseudoscience based on the idea that a person’s character can be read through their facial features. Film historian Tom Gunning outlines the origins of physiognomy in his essay, “In Your Face: Physiognomy, Photography, and the Gnostic Mission of Early Film,” writing that:
“Physiognomy has its roots in texts from antiquity attributed to Aristotle and Pythagoras which trace the relation between physical appearance and character… It founds its most influential formulation in the work of Giovanni Battista della Porta at the end of the sixteenth century in which… the human face took on meaning by a series of metaphors which joined man’s physical appearance to the powers which rule his soul and destiny via emblematic animals… At the beginning of the modern age (and under the direct influence of Descartes), physiognomy became reinterpreted as a guide to visual representation in the arts, detouring from a means of knowing man’s destiny to a system of aesthetic signification… Physiognomy became a popular social science in nineteenth century Paris, where it provided a visual means to order the diverse and anonymous masses that surrounded the urban dweller. These typologies of observation greatly affected the novels of Balázs and the caricatures of Daumier and Grandville.”
Physiognomic design principles dictate that beauty signifies goodness and ugliness represents evil, but “beautiful” and “ugly” are not objective descriptors. What is considered beautiful varies wildly based on the standards of any given society, period, or culture. Beauty standards are by nature exclusionary and specifically look down on features associated with marginalized groups; this is where Charles Dickens comes in.
Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist
Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy’s Progress was published in serial format between 1837 and 1839. His treatise on the hypocrisies of British Christians’ uncharitable treatment of the poor was an immediate success and has since received dozens of stage and screen adaptations. Although the theme of kindness amidst social injustice has helped to keep the novel alive throughout the last 180 years, Dickens was still a man of the Victorian era. For all the good he tried to do, his novels still reproduced the social and cultural attitudes of his day.
One of the most memorable elements of the novel is the character of Fagin, a Jewish criminal who presides over a gang of young boys he has recruited to steal from people on the streets of London. If this description rings some alarm bells, don’t worry — it only gets worse from here. Dickens refers to Fagin as “The Jew” more than his actual name. He schemes against his associates and hoards money for himself.
Since Dickens was a believer in the “science” of physiognomy, he emphasizes these character flaws through descriptions of Fagin’s physical appearance. As in most antisemitic media, George Cruikshank’s illustrations depict him as having a large, hooked nose. His introduction uses Satan-like imagery, depicting him crouching over a fire and toasting sausages with a pitchfork. In one scene, Bill Sikes (a burglar connected to Fagin’s gang who becomes the primary villain at the story’s climax) remarks that Fagin swallows coins to keep them to himself. According to scholar of Victorian literature Susan Meyer, “Here Dickens commingles the idea of the Jew as obscenely money loving and the idea of the Jew as filthy: presumably Fagin searches through his excrement to retrieve these coins.” Fagin’s wickedness being intrinsically connected to his Jewishness makes him a completely new type of antagonist compared to the ones in earlier chapters — one too evil to make light of.
In contrast to the Christian villains like Mr. Bumble, the beadle of the Parish workhouse, Dickens does not depict Fagin humorously. To quote Susan Meyer again, “There is plenty of comedy, and comedy pointedly involved in social criticism, throughout the section of the novel treating Fagin’s gang. But although comedy circles around Fagin, Fagin himself is not a comic subject. This absence of comedy creates a coolness at the center of the warmth surrounding Fagin.” This approach to Fagin as evil beyond redemption extends to the novel’s conclusion.
Fagin’s fate ends up juxtaposed with Nancy’s. Nancy was recruited by Fagin as a child and helps him and his gang throughout most of the novel. As the story progresses, she develops an affection for Oliver, protecting him from Bill and bringing him back to his family. Bill sees this as a betrayal, and he murders her. Nancy represents the possibility of hope and redemption for those who have committed evil deeds. By contrast, Fagin refuses redemption and is sentenced to death. In the novel’s logic, moral penance is directly attached to Christianity and thus unavailable to the Jew.
David Lean’s Oliver Twist
When David Lean set out to make his film adaptation of Dickens’s novel in 1948, only three years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, it didn’t occur to him to change anything about the character who Milton Kerker once described as “the Jew who is not a mere vicarious atavism of Satan, but the grotesque Jew, the crafty Jew in whose heart Satan is actually lodged.” If there were ever a time in which gentile filmmakers should have taken the longstanding criticism of Jewish communities to heart, it was after a fascist government had systematically exterminated six million.
Before production had even begun, both the Hollywood Production Code Administration and the film’s makeup artist Stuart Freeborn warned Lean against too closely replicating Dickens and Cruikshank’s Fagin. But Lean pressed on, faithfully replicating the novel’s antisemitic physiognomy. And so Alec Guinness sports a long, scraggly beard, prosthetic hooked nose, unkempt bushy eyebrows, and all the filth and grime in the United Kingdom. This not only brings life to a caricature that borders on Nazi propaganda but also obscures Guinness’ actual face. His expressions become harder to read, his demeanor more aloof and closed off. This Fagin is almost completely removed from any trace of humanity.
By comparison, Robert Newton’s Bill has no real menace. He always seems unsure of himself, closer to a bumbling fool than the cold-blooded killer he would become in later adaptations. This makes Guinness’s Fagin the more memorable villain despite his performance itself not being particularly impactful. All the weight of Fagin’s characterization is put on the unmistakably “Jewish” features that are meant to unsettle the audience.
Lionel Bart’s Oliver!
Lionel Bart’s 1960 stage musical has a very Disney’s Peter Pan (1953) comedic tone. A few religious references are still present but mostly dulled in favor of a light and jaunty adventure in the vein of The Wizard of Oz (1939). Carol Reed’s 1968 film adaptation tries to integrate the darker tone of the novel with the songs from the musical. Many of the comedic and maudlin elements of the stage show remain, but the art direction and cinematography emphasize the streets of London as a seedy underworld more than the stage version. This shift in tone takes Fagin from the only character removed from comedy in the novel to the primary source of comic relief.
This change in Fagin’s character also comes with a change in appearance; still covered in dirt and grime, but finally played by a Jewish actor without exaggerated prosthetics. Ron Moody’s Fagin has a genuine warmth that makes him enjoyable to watch. The only part of Alec Guinness’s portrayal that comes close to this is one physical comedy bit reminiscent of Wednesday Addams being forced to smile in Addams Family Values (1993).
Fagin’s Act II number, “Reviewing the Situation,” also established the character as one for whom, unlike in the novel, redemption is possible. In it, Fagin considers the benefits and drawbacks of leaving his life of crime behind. The song doesn’t reach any definitive answer, instead ending on a note of confusion: “Don’t want no one to rob for me, but who will find a job for me? There is no in between for me, but who will change the scene for me? I think I’d better think it out again!”
He reprises the song at the end of the musical, but the context differs between the stage show and the film. Both versions — unlike the novel and the Lean film — end with Fagin alive, but his ultimate decision changes. The stage musical has Fagin decide to become an honest man and then ends. The film keeps this sequence but doesn’t end there. After Fagin finishes his song, Dodger returns with a stolen wallet and they dance off into the sunset as partners-in-crime once again. The stage musical allows for the possibility of salvation for both the Jew (Fagin) and the Christian (Nancy); while the movie musical’s attempt to more faithfully capture the spirit of Dickens’ novel once again only allows for the salvation of the Christian.
Why does Fagin still matter?
Charles Dickens didn’t invent these tropes (for one, Shylock from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice predates Dickens by several centuries), but the enduring popularity of Oliver Twist has helped to keep them alive and influential on how later generations of artists visually signify villainy and untrustworthiness. This novel and its adaptations have survived in the popular consciousness in ways that earlier examples like The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta and The Prioress’s Tale have not.
It’s difficult and arguably impossible to untangle the legacy of Fagin from J. K. Rowling’s evil banking goblins in the Harry Potter series, beady-eyed slave trader Watto from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999), Nazi propaganda films like Der ewige Jude (1940), and many Disney villains. Why does Hades in Hercules (1997) use so much Yiddish slang? How did no one working on Tangled (2010) catch that the plot is concerningly similar to the myth of blood libel? And if they did, why did they choose to emphasize that by giving her a hooked nose and coarse, black curly hair? It makes her look more “evil” to WASP audiences, but why do features associated with Ashkenazi Jews even carry that connotation in the first place?
This is not to say that the creators behind these works are being malicious by invoking Jewish stereotypes — except Der ewige Jude — but that antisemitism is so pervasive in Western culture that even well-meaning people can absorb and reproduce it. Dickens meant Oliver Twist to be a condemnation of the injustices committed by English society against the poor; and that commentary is why this story is still around, why it gets adapted again and again. But these adaptations have to contend with the fact that one of its most iconic characters is a physiognomically evil Jewish man. Physiognomy may no longer be a common term, but the philosophy behind it is extremely resilient. That’s the dirt that can never fully be washed from Fagin. Not the literal filth so eloquently described by Dickens’ prose, but the lingering influence of a bigoted pseudoscience.
