Bradley Cooper accused of “Jewface”

Cafe Society
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From the pix in this post, it seems to me that Cooper has a slight bump in the middle of his nose, where Bernstein’s is essentially perfectly straight. Which, ironically, reverses the stereotype of the hooked Jewish nose.

The prosthetic straightens out that bump, but in doing so enlarges the nose in a way that resembles Bernstein less than Cooper’s natural nose, IMHO.

I wonder if they were worried that people would object to Cooper’s natural bump as making him look stereotypically Jewish, and hoped to reduce such complaints with the prosthetic.

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I don’t think Jewish characters need be portrayed by Jewish actors, any more than a Catholic character need be portrayed by actors of that religion.

And I do not believe that any stereotype was consciously played into.

But it seems impossible to believe that having the nose caricatured as significantly larger than it was is not impacted at some level by the shorthand stereotype of Jews having big noses.

No harm but it was a bad decision poorly thought out.

Still this nose issue is not a battle I’d pick.

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Well, that’s settled, then. :laughing:

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Leonard Bernstein was not famous for his nose. I suppose it’s the thing for actors to do these days but I liked it better when they used acting instead of prosthetics.

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Fun fact: the Bernstein estate actually did release a tongue-in-cheek statement earlier this year confirming that Lydia Tár was one of Bernstein’s students.

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I have no issue with Cooper using a prosthesis to look less like himself. No one complains when actors make themselves up to look like Mark Twain.

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Yes

characters

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That particular nose doesn’t look a lot like Bernstein’s to me, so it maybe want a great choice. But it seems like a small detail. Is the movie good? Is the portrayal good?

Speaking as a Jew, I’m not going get my nose out of joint over this.

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Speaking as a Jew, I’m going to admit that, as it happens, I do have an unusually large organ.

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I thought large organs were a Catholic, not a Jewish thing?

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“Tonto Goldstein, but my friends call me Boudreaux.”

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Seconded, albeit, it is splendid.

I’ve been looking at Pics of Bernstein, trying to figure out if his nose is so distinctive, that you just can’t play him without the prosthetic nose.

I can see where an actor playing Ali or Woolf might think it necessary-- Ali used to wrinkle his nose in photos in a way that made his short, broad nose even shorter and broader, and Woolf did have a very distinctive nose.

If an actor had a remarkably small nose, he might regularly need prosthetic noses to play a number of characters, and Bernstein wouldn’t be the least of them, but his nose doesn’t seem unusual to me.

But then, I spend a lot of time with Jews…

In regard to casting a non-Jew-- Ingrid “Swede” Bergman won an Emmy for playing Golda Meir in 1982. That certainly speaks to Helen Mirren-- one of the greatest actresses of all-time playing her.

But in further regard to non-Jews playing Jews-- the furor over things like able-bodied actors in disabled roles, hearing actors in Deaf roles, white actors in brown-face (Lartinx) and so on, mostly have to do with a scarcity of good roles for the groupas themselves, and the members of the groups never being offered color-blind roles-- ie, a black actor never gets a lead role, unless there is some particular reason the character MUST be black. Clarice Starling couldn’t just be black, with no one remarking on it.

But Jews have been playing non-Jews, from Spartacus, to Amy Farrah Fowler. Once upon a time names were a barrier to an acting career, but those were easily changed, and plenty of gentiles changed them too. And for every Amy Farrah Fowler, there has been a Rhoda Morgenstern, which is to say, a Jewish character who had no particular reason to be Jewish. But she was, it came up from time to time, and there is one episode where Mary confronts an anti-Semite and defends Rhoda, but it’s not what the show is about (other than, it’s in character for Mary).

Notably, Rhoda is played by a gentile, who has no problem with people assuming she is Jewish.

So gentiles playing Jews, and vice-versa-- I see no problem. And as I believe a good Jew should, I will continue to stand up for color-blind, gender-blind casting, and better roles written specifically for African-American, Latinx, and disabled people.

I’m still not sure about the nose.

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Yeah. And i agree both that Jewish roles come up, and that Jews get cast for “generic” roles often enough that i am not disturbed by non-jews getting all the good “Jewish” roles.

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That’s my reaction as well. Cooper isn’t playing Jimmy Durante, for Pete’s sake. I don’t think playing the role without a prosthetic would have led to a widespread reaction of “Whoa! Where’s that nose we all expected?”

That said, I’d characterize it as an unnecessary accoutrement and not as some culturally offensive thing. Of course, I’m not Jewish, so grain of salt and all that…

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The “Whoa, where’s the nose!” sums it up.

Bernstein just isn’t known for his looks. I would say it’s debatable whether people generally have any idea what he looked like-- it’s kinda like when Tom Hanks played Walt Disney. Massively famous guy, but does anyone have a picture in their head of him? I did happen to recall that he had a moustache in a pic I saw, but those can come and go, so if Hanks had played the role without one, wouldn’t have bothered me in the slightest.

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“How do you do? I’m Bucky Leibowitz.”

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He certainly is to anyone old enough. He had a PBS TV series and was extremely well known for West Side Story, among other things.

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For at least several generations of kids, their first exposure to classical music came through:

  1. Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts”;
  2. Schroeder in “Peanuts”: and
  3. The Looney Tunes.
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The same is true of Walt Disney, for that matter. Those of us of a certain age know exactly what Disney looked like. He was on TV regularly.