Bradley Cooper and 'Jewface'

[Shimto]

His biopic of Leonard Bernstein, and the release of the trailer show BC wearing a prosthetic nose to play Bernstein.

Leonard Bernstein's family have issued a warm, supportive and beautiful statement supporting BC's commitment to the role and rejecting the criticism.

I was really surprised to see the prosthetic. I understand the cries of Jewface. I think BC is an intelligent, talented actor and producer. My initial reaction was 'what was he thinking?' while also finding the family's statement so heartfelt.

Sorry if there's another thread - my quick search didn't find one. I guess my AIBU is whether BC was right or wrong here - I've been pondering it today.

@Ariadnel you have hit the nail on the head here, totally agree with you. The truth is there is no difference between Jewface and Blackface. As usual casual racism towards Jewish people exists and people just cannot accept that’s exactly what they are doing.

This is Leonard Bernstein: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/leonard-bernstein-reaching-for-the-note/489/

He had a massive nose. It was nothing at all like Bradley Cooper’s nose.

Also the nazi era Jewish (and Romany) stereotype wasn’t a big nose (most people from certain parts of eastern europe) it was a HOOKED nose. Which was itself an Arab stereotype and inaccurate for those white Jews who lived in Western Europe. Jewish stereotyping was aimed at ‘finding’ what people perceived as non-whites - and this wasn’t specific to the Nazis. All European countries believed that stereotype and were massively anti-semetic at the time - this is probably why other countries didn’t really intervene when the Nazis wiped out the Romany and non-white Jewish populations & only intervened when they started in on white Jews.

I remember when I was 16 a lady I spoke to was a dark skinned Jewish holocaust survivor. She was, in her words, reluctantly rescued from a death camp by British troops and while all the other children her age where taken to the UK she was left behind in France. She was also denied Israeli citizenship because the government officials didn’t believe she was Jewish (they thought she was a gypsy). Heartbreaking.

He had a massive nose. It was nothing at all like Bradley Cooper’s nose.

People's noses get bigger as they get older, though. In pictures of him when he was younger, it doesn't look so significantly bigger than Bradley's that a prosthetic would be necessary.

Antisemitism is a real problem.
Picking out stereotypical features to depict a particular race in a derogatory manner is not acceptable.
However, an actor using makeup /clothes /accent /prosthetics to look more similar to and accurately depict a real person is totally different and imo totally acceptable. If it’s acceptable for the others mentioned upthread (Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill etc) then why is it not ok for this? Just because Bernstein is Jewish? Surely that’s antsemiric?

What's the difference between blackface and Jewface? Why is one outrageous and the other fine?

Or womanface (drag) - that's definitely not "fine".

IT's moronic and misplaced pseudo-outrage for the sake of it.

If there was a Jewish actor good enough to play the part, they were free to audition for it.

I suppose if they got the part but were two inches shorter than Bernstein, there would be cries of height-washing.

Imagine if they found an actor that in every physical way matched Bernstein, would the composers union cry foul that the actor could't have actually written any of the music.

The entire point of acting, is to be able portray somebody you are not.

I agree. I think if you use costume to degrade and mock a group, like the Black and White minstrels portraying Black people as a whole, or drag portraying and mockingly becoming stereotypes of women, then that is a problem. But prosthetics to look like a particular person is just acting.
I think the issue about authenticity ( only gay people playing gay characters, Black people playing Black characters etc) is in part about representation and availability of work, and that is entirely the fault of studio bosses and casting agents. If studio bosses and casting agents who just chose the best person for the job, rather than looked at their race or sexuality or there was more of a variety of parts written for Black and Asian people there wouldn't be as much of a need for the discussions around this. Why does Richard Maddens sexuality in real life for example mean he will never be Bond? He is playing a fictional straight man. He's played straight all his career very effectively.

What a crap prosthetic!

IT's moronic and misplaced pseudo-outrage for the sake of it.

Yup. And well done the Bernstein family for trying to close it down.

This.

There have been a few things such as this coming out recently. A calling out of imo trivial things and calling them anti-Semitic when they blatantly aren't.

This type of thing really undermines the cause in people's minds and I do wonder if it's deliberate.

Am really glad that the family have come out and tried to shut this down.

If a Jewish man who had a small nose wore a prosthetic to play a Jewish man with a big nose, would that be a problem?

I think it’s disingenuous to say “actors wear prosthetics to try to look more like the person they are playing all the time” - because this prosthetic doesn’t make BC look more like Bernstein. It’s the wrong shape and is comically outsized. It looks like a joke.

Have you read the rest of the posts here? Overwhelmingly, the majority of those of us that are Jewish are not offended by this.

Are you Jewish? If you really feel this, then it’s a valid comment. If you’re not, then what are you trying to fight for?

im of Jewish descent. I have a big nose. My great uncles all have big noses. My grandad had a big nose. If someone was playing any one of my family and managed to portray the gait and mannerisms to perfection but needed a little “something” to pass for one of us to make it ultimately believable in a film, that’s fine by me.

I haven’t read through the comments here but as a Jew I feel compelled to respond. Antisemitism seems to be seen as a ‘socially acceptable form of racism’ - demonstrated by your reaction in your post. I’m sure people would have shunned him had done ‘black face’.

As an Ashkenazi Jew (Russian, Dutch and German ancestry) growing up in a European country I had people tease me for my curly hair and big nose (my Jewish features) and my ‘Jew accent’ (I had a slight tint to my accent as my grandad who raised me was from a Yiddish speaking family). My son had someone draw a swastika on his desk after he did a presentation on his Jewish heritage. When people find out me or my dc are Jewish they start debates with us over Israel/Palestine. My sons are 13 and 7 and we’ve never been to Israel.

People still find it ok to make ‘Jew jokes’ around money, noses etc. only the other day at work I heard someone say they were ‘such a Jew’ after saving money.

I wish we would treat antisemitism like other racism as that is what it is.

This is me commenting without reading the article which I will do now.

@Tiredalwaystired first off I am Jewish and second of all why do I have to be Jewish to be offended?? So a non Jewish person cannot be offended for Jewish people?? Or have I misunderstood what you have written??

Just to preface im saying this as a Jew. If they wanted to actor to look like Bernstein they should’ve chosen a Jew or a white person with a big nose. Can you imagine the uproar if a white man who ‘fitted all the briefs’ apart from being black for a character leading them to use makeup to makke him appear black.

Yeah, people are moving between these things as they are related.

Any production can have poor make-up or costume choices, and that's an artistic issue. It has nothing to do with antisemitism or any other ism.

You can also be different choices about weather casting is realistic or not. Both can work and be legitimate. Typically film tends more toward realism than theater, and things like historical dramas or biographies in film spend the most time trying to achieve immersive realism. But that's a generalization, other approaches are possible.

There are a lot of people now, including in this thread, who make all kinds of what are essentially moralistic arguments about where casting and make up needs to be realistic or not. And usually they are pretty contradictory. Something like - a member of a visible minority needs to be played by that minority, or at least another visible minority. You can't use make-up, etc, to make someone not from what is defined as a minority look more like that role. Members of a minority can however play any role, without changing their appearance to fit the role. And increasingly you see the demand that anyone with a special identification, (gay, Jewish, whatever,) needs to be played by a person from that same group, even if it's not something you can know by looking. Even Samuel Jackson's weird idea a few years ago that they should not hire black actors from the UK to play roles depicting black Americans.

Though it's hardly consistent, I don't remember hearing any calls that Freddy Mercury needed to be played by a Parsi actor.

A lot of it reminds me of iconoclasm. The whole possibility of acting, inhabiting and pretending to be another person for the purpose of presenting a narrative, is not really possible for some people. I've wondered if it is connected to the increasing tendency for literature to be very self-referential.

I'd agree with this in a general way, in a realistic type of production.

But on the other hand, there are racial differences, that is how we define race, after all. Even if we use ethnicity, there can be recognizable differences.

You can have a totally fictional Viking in a show, and you probably aren't going to cast someone who appears to be Asian, unless you can hide it with make up etc. (Which I think is fine if the actor wants to do that and is convincing.)

There are also types of theater which by their nature use stock characters, which are essentially a kind of stereotype. They describe general situations and patterns. Sketch comedy being a modern example a lot of the time. In many cases the actor may not resemble the role at all and certain symbols are used to show the audience who they are supposed to be.

DH always gets asked by Jewish people if he is Jewish. When he asks why they think that, they say the combo of his nose and his Germanic surname. Can’t have it both ways.

So, is your feeling that if an actor portrayed you, you would want someone with a small nose, straight hair, and RP pronunciation? In order to avoid seeming too Jewish? Or they just need to find an actor who happens to look and sound just like you naturally?

Or maybe we just shouldn't have biopics that represent real people?

He’s not wearing a prosthetic nose to depict a Jewish character, he’s wearing it to depict certain features in a real person. This is nothing more than antisemitic stereotyping on the part of the people complaining.

But all black people are black, not all Jews have big noses, it’s a stereotype 🤷‍♀️

I agree with this. My Jewish nose is a fairly integral part of who I am because it…stands out, no pun intended, but I just think of it as a part of me, an interesting feature passed down from my mother and grandfather etc, not something Jewish-specific. You certainly couldn’t make a (tremendously boring though it would be) movie about me and have someone with a button nose play it. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Lol 😂😂😂😂😂