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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”.
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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.
If the dude had a big nose, then I wouldn’t see the problem, but he didn’t.
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.
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?
So much of Hollywood is run by Jews and so many Jews have portrayed gentiles, it’s ironic they would object to gentiles playing Jews. The nose thing is a bit of a grey area, but Oppenheimers family seem ok with it for the sake of resemblance.
Seriously, “Jewish erasure”? Come the fuck on.
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.
idk what the big deal is, it looks pretty real to me.
Would it be ok if a Jew was wearing a prosthetic nose?
For the sake of the argument: would it be ok if a black actor portrays a white actor doing blackface?
No of course I’m not serious.
Zoe Saldana portrayed Nina Simone in the movie Nina. She darkened her skin and wore a prosthetic nose for the role and some people found that controversial.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/06/entertainment/zoe-saldana-nina-simone-apology-scli-intl/index.html
would it be ok if a black actor portrays a white actor doing blackface?
man if done correctly that could be a scream
Is it just a black dude without any makeup, pretending to be a white dude with blackface makeup? Cuz that sounds like it could have been a great Chappelle show skit.
Or would it be like White Chicks?
Remember Chappelle as a white news anchor? That’d be dope when a black guy in makeup like that puts on shoe polish.
Remember when Eddie Murphy did it on SNL as a filmed sketch where he lived a day in NYC as a white man
Now that I think of it I’d like to see Jamie Foxx doing this. Maybe not movie length but it could be a nice sketch.
haha he’d be perfect
I’m thinking he could replace Robert Downey Jr for Tropic Thunder 2.
Holy shit, Tropic Thunder 2 needs to exist
This time it’s about the making of a biopic about Kirk Lazarus, RDJ’s character. In an ill-advised meta attempt to avoid the negative press of blackface that plagued Lazarus after playing Lincoln Osiris, a black actor is cast as Lazarus for the portion of the film about the filming of the original movie, but when the actor playing the “white” Lazarus spirals out of control, the “black” Lazarus is forced to take on the full role in order to keep the production from collapsing.
I can see the oscar nominations already.
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”.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I consider this a controversy, but in general I really wish filmmakers would knock it the fuck off with unnecessary prosthetica in their biopics. It is ALWAYS distracting and counterproductive to the goal of immersing the viewer in the story of the person being depicted.
Instead of becoming invested in the emotional life of Virginia Woolf or Lucille Ball, all I can think about is how fucking weird Nicole Kidman looks.
