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”.
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.”
There’s plenty of anti-Semitism out there to feel outraged about. I see how it’s more fun to get upset about stupid inconsequential shit, but let’s not kid ourselves into believing that an actor wearing prosthetics to closer resemble the person he’s portraying is even making it to the list of concerns facing Jewish communities.
In other news, that actor seems to have a very tiny nose.
wow… his nose IS tiny. How did I never notice this before? it’s like freakishly small.
It’s pretty long though just not very thick sigh
If the dude had a big nose, then I wouldn’t see the problem, but he didn’t.
Damn, then why do this??
Except people don’t know him as a younger person … they know his appearence from when he was older. See, eg: Image search on duckduckgo for Leonard Bernstein.
So, if portraying a resemblance people recognise is an aim, and the film portrays an older Bernstein (I’m presuming it does) … you’re going to have the nose change size mid-movie? It could work, but in the context of a film which is short it could be even more jarring.
Even so … Cooper’s prosthetic nose does seem unnecessarily big/long … so there might be something to this (though I think we tend to get outraged about things that are easy to get outraged about rather than the things that matter more).
Let’s be honest here: most general movie-goers don’t know what Leonard Bernstain looked like, and most people who do probably wouldn’t care.
The photo posted by the OP appears to be BC playing LB when he was a young man, hence I chose a photo of him when he was a similar-looking age.
Regardless, the cliche about Jews having unusually large noses is just an urban myth, and the makers of this film could have easily avoided the furore by not bothering with the prosthetics. What were they actually trying to achieve - did they think the audience might not know who he was without the big nose…? I don’t know why film makers keep doing this - Nicole Kidman looked ridiculous with one as well. The only instance where it has been justified are the films based on the Cyrano de Bergerac story.
He definitely did when he was older. It was not nearly as large when he was younger.
Not sure if this is true but I heard that our noses and ears keep growing throughout our lifetimes.
No, that only happens when you keep poking a finger up there.
Thanks @TheBat, you inspired me to look it up. Turns out it’s not growth, it’s sagging over cartilege.
This is hilarious 😂
Yeah this is what I was thinking - if you look at the dude in profile, Bradley Cooper’s natural nose is bigger. So wtf is this all about?
I think there’s a big difference from “playing jewface” and simply using a minor bit of prosthetics and makeup to make an actor who already sorta resembles the real person they are portraying to look even more like that person. Are there any Jewish actors that look like Bernstein more than Cooper?
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Seriously, “Jewish erasure”? Come the fuck on.
From Baddiel who wrote the screenplay for The Infidel (2010) which starred Omid Djalili (Iranian British) playing a Jewish character…
Pot kettle?
I don’t think anyone has a problem with Jews playing gentiles or gentiles playing Jews. It’s that putting on a nose prosthetic is seen as trying to match a caricature that was used in antisemiric propaganda. The prosthetic appears to be more pronounced than the real nose he had, so it seems an odd choice. However, it seems earnest in seeking to portray him and the family are fine with it. I think it’s a mountain made out of a molehill, but I understand why the question is being asked.
That’s pretty bad. An actor playing a Jewish figure isn’t the bad part, but the name of the movie, and the nose, this is like a Bojack Horseman background gag.
Edit: lmao, Ignore my comment, still weird to do the nose thing though
you mentioned the name of the movie as an issue; to be clear, you didn’t take the article title to mean the movie is named “Jewface”, did you?
Oh my god
I’m an idiot, yeah, I totally did.
I read it the same way. Don’t feel bad.
Haha, that’s great.
Coincidentally, if they did a Bradley Cooper movie named “Jewface”, people would be angrier about the title than they are his appearance.
I appreciate your honesty!
Lmao me too
Lol
The movie isn’t called Jewface, it’s called Maestro. The post title is worded confusingly, though.
Thanks for the correction! I thought it was a pretty rough name for a movie, but I just assumed it was the title from a memoir about him!
LOL wtf ?
There’s an uproar about a prosthetic nose? Are people offended by everything nowadays?
#NOSEGATE
idk what the big deal is, it looks pretty real to me.
This is so dumb he’s literally trying to look more like the person he’s portraying it has nothing to do with being Jewish.
Do they think they’re gonna find a Jewish person who looks exactly like Bernstein? I’m all for appropriate casting and no race switching but please this is ridiculous.
One can easily imagine a myriad of hollow assholes opening their social media apps subconsciously going - “I’m bored with my meaningless self… let’s see what I can be outraged about today… oooh, Speedy Gonzalez! Offensive! OFFENSIVE!” - with a certain level of glee, as they get to fondle their misguided sense of purity, their superiority, they can pontificate today to “all those little Latino people” about how to think, because the hollow virtue-signaling, manufactured-anger asshole knows better than ALL of them. Failing completely to see the irony.
Meanwhile, we in Mexico scratch our heads - nobody we know has ever been even remotely offended by Speedy Gonzalez - puzzled about how confused and angry so many of these strange white people are, twisting themselves into knots all by themselves and trying to drag us into their vortex of hot air drama, obsessed with the wrong things yet again… three or four times a week, it seems.
I mean… God forbid these people ever direct those “laser-guided powers of observation and critical skills” inward, amirite? That would require them… making an effort! (shudder)
The prosthetic isn’t necessary at all but I don’t agree that only Jewish people should play Jewish characters…
I’d be more concerned about the prosthetic fucking up his voice. In the trailer it sounds like he’s pinching his nose while he talks.
@reddig33 @soyagi
Steve Martin found a way around that problem. You would think Cooper could, too.Or maybe it’s just that he’s trying to stop sounding like #RocketRaccoon .
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I think it’s very weird he decided he had to put a fake nose on to play a Jewish person… I mean that to me is getting into racial stereotype territory. It’s obviously not malicious and the article says the family were happy with it so that’s something but still… ‘Jewish Person = Big Nose’ doesn’t sound great.
What does interest me is that a lot of people are very much ‘trans people should play trans characters, disabled people should play disabled characters’ and it goes without saying that obviously blackface and Yellowface are out. But when there’s a case like this there’s less cohesion and it tends to end up being more defensive about people being oversensitive about the whole thing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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Nicole Kidman in THE HOURS (2002)
That was just as distracting, no matter how good the performance was. See also Kidman in The Ricardos.
Of course, Nicole Kidman’s appearance is distracting no matter what she does, so perhaps she’s not the best example.
