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.

If the dude had a big nose, then I wouldn’t see the problem, but he didn’t.

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?

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

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.

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.

The prosthetic isn’t necessary at all but I don’t agree that only Jewish people should play Jewish characters…

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)

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.

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.

Nicole Kidman in THE HOURS (2002)

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.