Actor Bradley Cooper is dealing with installing reaction over his noticeable use a prosthetic nose in his representation of author and also conductor Leonard Bernstein in the upcoming motion picture “Maestro”
The biographical love, which Cooper co-wrote, generated and also guided, informs the tale of Bernstein, that notoriously co-created “West Side Story,” with a concentrate on the author’s 25-year marital relationship to Felicia Montealegre.
After Netflix went down the trailer for the movie on Tuesday, supporters and also social media sites customers fasted to see the modification in Cooper’s look, with some branding his noticeable use a prosthetic nose as antisemitic.
“Hollywood cast Bradley Cooper — a non Jew — to play Jewish legend Leonard Bernstein and stuck a disgusting exaggerated ‘Jew nose’ on him,” StopAnti semitism, a company focused on responding to antisemitism, stated in a message on X, the social media sites system previously referred to as Twitter.
Social media customers likewise evaluated in, with one writing: “Bradley Cooper is putting himself in an insanely large prosthetic nose to play a Jewish man in Maestro and we’re all just supposed to act like that’s cool and normal?”
“Just looked up a picture of the real Leonard Bernstein…. the big antisemitic prosthetic nose on Bradley Cooper was definitely not necessary…” an additional commenter created
“I saw Bradley cooper play the elephant man with no prosthetics on Broadway,” an additional social media sites individual stated “But then he plays a Jew and decides he needs a huge nose?”
“He’s the director too so don’t blame anyone else,” they included.
Several social media sites customers stated the movie was a clear situation of “Jewface,” a term utilized to define stereotyped or inauthentic representations of Jewish individuals, with some likewise wondering about why Cooper, that is not openly recognized to be Jewish, was playing a well-known Jewish individual to begin with.
“There was no need for Bradley Cooper to add an odd prosthetic nose on top of this to play Leonard Bernstein,” one social media sites individual created. “His own nose is longer! And I still would have preferred they at least give Jewish actors a chance to audition before automatically casting someone more famous,” they stated, including the hashtag “ #Jew Face”
Cooper and also Netflix did not quickly react to an ask for remark from NBC’s “TODAY” program.
Concerns around “Jewface” in Hollywood representations were highlighted in 2021 by comic Sarah Silverman, that stated the movie sector had a “long tradition of non-Jews playing Jews.”
“And not just playing people who happen to be Jewish but people whose Jewishness is their whole being,” she had actually stated, talking on “The Sarah Silverman Podcast.”
Silverman specified the term as being “when a non-Jew represents a Jew with the Jewishness front and also facility, commonly with make-up or altering of attributes, large phony nose, all the New York- y or Yiddish- y inflection.”
“In a time when the significance of depiction is viewed as so vital therefore front and also facility, why does ours regularly obtain breached, also today, in the thick of it?” she questioned at the time.
The Media Diversity Institute describes on its website how portrayals of Jewish people as having ” big, addicted” noses is an ” photo so deeply anchored in contemporary society, that a lot of do not recognize that it is really a deeply antisemitic stereotype.”
“It hasn’t constantly been by doing this. Before the 12th century, there is no proof of Jews being portrayed with big noses,” it states, asserting that the caricature of Jewish people ” returns to antisemitic and also Nazi publicity from the 1930s and also ever since has actually taken place to end up being an usual trope and also, whether purposefully or otherwise– presses antisemitic stereotypes to this particular day.”
Depictions of Jewish people in popular culture have been criticized, dating back to Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and “Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens.
Concerns around Cooper’s portrayal of Bernstein, who died in 1990, come at a time when antisemitic incidents in the U.S. have been at record highs, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In 2022, the ADL recorded 3,697 reports of antisemitic incidents throughout the U.S., which it said was the highest number on record since it began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979.
“Maestro” will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and is expected to have a limited theatrical release on Nov. 22 before hitting Netflix on Dec. 20, according to Netflix.
