The Handler, like Celesto, is a wonderful example of a villain who claims to be neutral. She is one of the leaders of an organization that keeps the timeline how it's "supposed to be" - although she never communicates who decides what the Supposed-To-Be Timeline is. She overworks and underpays her assassins (according to Hazel and Cha-Cha) and is happy to take the apocalypse for granted - she can just time travel wherever she wants, after all. She pressures Five into a contract instead of just taking him home, and when she brings him back to work for them, sexually harasses him and otherwise makes him uncomfortable.
Some of the most villainous stuff, in my opinion, is subtext. The Handler uses Yiddish terms on occasion, and the Commission lives in the year 1955. However, the Handler's actress isn't Jewish, and she shows no other indications of being Jewish (no Star of David, references to holidays, etc.) Plenty of Jewish folks at this time would have hidden being Jewish of course, but then there's the question of the Commission itself. It seems odd that a Jewish woman would a) sign up to work for a world-controlling organization, considering the state of anti-semitic conspiracies or b) be so totally at peace with wiping out the human race. However, this all makes much more sense if you take her Yiddish words as cultural appropriation (oppressors taking on the language and culture of the oppressed as something 'catchy' or 'trendy') and know that in the comics, the Commission are explicitly white supremacists. This is also supported by the fact that despite the relative recence of it, there's no attempt to prevent the Holocaust, and the show directly debunks the idea that they can only fix things after their point in time by mentioning the Hindenburg disaster. Of course, the butterfly effect applies - but if she *were* Jewish, you would think it'd come up at least in passing.
In short, the Handler is a white-supremacist woman who uses Yiddish as 'aesthetic' slang, and sees the death of humanity (most of whom are not Aryan) as an acceptable or even desirable loss.
(P.S. I feel like I should note due to how possibly OTT I went here: one, I myself am Jewish, and two, I actually REALLY LIKE the Handler. Villains fun! but also, Am I Wrong.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
momijizukamori![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
The Handler (Umbrella Academy (TV)) Roast
Date: 2020-02-13 12:24 am (UTC)Some of the most villainous stuff, in my opinion, is subtext. The Handler uses Yiddish terms on occasion, and the Commission lives in the year 1955. However, the Handler's actress isn't Jewish, and she shows no other indications of being Jewish (no Star of David, references to holidays, etc.) Plenty of Jewish folks at this time would have hidden being Jewish of course, but then there's the question of the Commission itself. It seems odd that a Jewish woman would a) sign up to work for a world-controlling organization, considering the state of anti-semitic conspiracies or b) be so totally at peace with wiping out the human race. However, this all makes much more sense if you take her Yiddish words as cultural appropriation (oppressors taking on the language and culture of the oppressed as something 'catchy' or 'trendy') and know that in the comics, the Commission are explicitly white supremacists. This is also supported by the fact that despite the relative recence of it, there's no attempt to prevent the Holocaust, and the show directly debunks the idea that they can only fix things after their point in time by mentioning the Hindenburg disaster. Of course, the butterfly effect applies - but if she *were* Jewish, you would think it'd come up at least in passing.
In short, the Handler is a white-supremacist woman who uses Yiddish as 'aesthetic' slang, and sees the death of humanity (most of whom are not Aryan) as an acceptable or even desirable loss.
(P.S. I feel like I should note due to how possibly OTT I went here: one, I myself am Jewish, and two, I actually REALLY LIKE the Handler. Villains fun! but also, Am I Wrong.)