Archived version: https://archive.ph/hroNJ
Bradley Cooper is facing criticism for performing in “Jewface” after the release of the trailer for his biopic of Leonard Bernstein, which revealed the facial prosthetics he employed for the role.
Bernstein, the son of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants to the US, was a hugely talented conductor and composer, best known for writing the music for West Side Story as well as composing three symphonies and becoming music director of the New York Philharmonic. Cooper, who directs, co-writes and stars in Maestro, is not Jewish, and can be seen in the trailer with a noticeably prominent fake nose opposite Carey Mulligan, who plays Bernstein’s wife Felicia Montealegre.
British actor and activist Tracy-Ann Obermann criticised Cooper on social media, writing: “If [Cooper] needs to wear a prosthetic nose then that is, to me and many others, the equivalent of Black-Face or Yellow-Face … if Bradley Cooper can’t [play the role] through the power or acting alone then don’t cast him – get a Jewish Actor.”
Obermann added, referencing Cooper’s performance on stage in 2014 as John Merrick in The Elephant Man: “Bradley Cooper managed to play the ELEPHANT MAN without a single prosthetic then he should be able to manage to play a Jewish man without one.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg called the prosthetics “problematic” when photos from the set emerged in May, and subsequently described the film as “ethnic cosplay”.
In a statement posted on social media, Bernstein’s children Jamie, Alexander, and Nina defended Cooper, saying: “It breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations or misunderstandings of [Cooper’s] efforts … Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well.”
The controversy follows objections to the casting of Cillian Murphy as nuclear physicist J Robert Oppenheimer – again, a non-Jewish actor playing a notable Jewish figure – in the biopic directed by Christopher Nolan, with David Baddiel describing such casting as “complacent” and “doubl[ing] down” on “Jewish erasure”. Baddiel also criticised the casting of Helen Mirren as Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, writing in the Guardian that “over a period of extreme intensification of the progressive conversation about representation and inclusion and microaggression and what is and isn’t offensive to minorities, one minority – Jews – has been routinely neglected”.
Sure, but that gets at the “Jewish erasure” piece mentioned by the article. You take a gentile white guy like Cooper, you put a subtle prosthetic on him to make him look more like the Jewish guy he’s portraying, and now what you’re doing is minimizing the physical characteristics that set Jewish people apart. What has the cultural effect of minimizing the Jewish identity, and folding it into the broader “white” mass identity. White Americans used to consider Irish and German folks as separate identities, and treated them much in the same way they treated other nonwhite folks.
Deemphasizing the differences between us is all well and good, except when the identity that is being minimized is still being oppressed today. Unfortunately, antisemitism is still alive and well in Amerikkka, which is why this is a problem.
Wait, so the way I’m reading this is that people are both upset by the stereotype, but also upset that the studio is not casting a stereotype?
That doesn’t make sense to me.
The way I’m reading that comment is that big noses are a Jewish stereotype, and since the studio decided to cast a white gentile and just stick a prosthetic nose on him, they’re leaning into that stereotype. They should’ve cast someone who was Jewish and also looked like the guy (as a whole… not only his nose).
But then would it not be a problem to cast a Jewish person based on their stereotypical appearance?
The whole point of acting is, well, that’s it’s acting. It’s all pretend. The photos from the movie show a Bradley Cooper that very much looks like Leonard Bernstein, which I thought was a good thing.
I think you’re misunderstanding the meaning of stereotype. A stereotype is a simplification, a reduction of a person to a basic property or idea. Stereotypes often have their origin in reality, but they do not describe the whole individual. That’s why casting a generic white guy and sticking a prosthetic nose on his face to make him Jewish is strengthening a stereotype, while casting a Jewish person is not (even if this person happens to have a big nose themselves)
I think it’s a problem of white male dominance in Hollywood. They are creating a biopic on a Jewish person. The main actor should be Jewish. Full stop.
Representation matters.
He looks nothing like Leonard Bernstein. The nose, the cheek bones, the ears, and the chin are all entirely different.