Okay. New day. Clear (ish) head.
Let's pick this back up. First of all, Reaper, I apologize for calling your argument absurd. Clearly, many others have made the same observations. While I don't agree, it was wrong of me to call it absurd. I also, again, publicly apologize for being condescending. I honestly didn't intend to be, but I see how it came across that way. I'm sorry.
I wonder if the people who are seeing rampant, hateful anti-semitism in
An Education are predisposed or biased in some way. It's not surprising that most of the descent has come from the Jewish community. Of course it has. However, perhaps it is worth noting that most (if not all) of the major reviews for the film make little to no mention of this issue.
The New York Times, Variety, USA Today, Time-Out New York, The Telegraph etc, make little to no mention of this. Why? It seems like hyper sensitive sources like some of these would jump at the opportunity to pull the film apart for such an insensitive reason, if it were so blatant, obvious and/or intentional.
Is it that the broader (non Jewish) community is really oblivious to it's anti-semitism? Do they really just not realize what they're doing - how insensitive they are? Is it that unconscious and ingrained? Or is the Jewish community approaching this from a biased point of view? Are they blowing it out of proportion? Both?
I certainly don't know. I can only speak for myself, and my impression.