Actor Bradley Cooper is going through mounting backlash over his obvious use of a prosthetic nostril in his depiction of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein within the upcoming film “Maestro.”
The biographical romance, which Cooper co-wrote, produced and directed, tells the story of Bernstein, who famously co-created “West Facet Story,” with a give attention to the composer’s 25-year marriage to Felicia Montealegre.
After Netflix dropped the trailer for the movie on Tuesday, advocates and social media customers had been fast to note the change in Cooper’s look, with some branding his obvious use of a prosthetic nostril as antisemitic.
“Hollywood solid Bradley Cooper — a non Jew — to play Jewish legend Leonard Bernstein and caught a disgusting exaggerated ‘Jew nostril’ on him,” StopAntisemitism, a company geared toward countering antisemitism, mentioned in a post on X, the social media platform previously referred to as Twitter.
Social media customers additionally weighed in, with one writing: “Bradley Cooper is placing himself in an insanely massive prosthetic nostril to play a Jewish man in Maestro and we’re all simply purported to act like that’s cool and regular?”
“Simply seemed up an image of the true Leonard Bernstein…. the massive antisemitic prosthetic nostril on Bradley Cooper was undoubtedly not mandatory…” one other commenter wrote.
“I noticed Bradley cooper play the elephant man with no prosthetics on Broadway,” one other social media consumer said. “However then he performs a Jew and decides he wants an enormous nostril?”
“He’s the director too so don’t blame anybody else,” they added.
A number of social media customers mentioned the movie was a transparent case of “Jewface,” a time period used to characterize stereotypical or inauthentic portrayals of Jewish individuals, with some additionally questioning why Cooper, who is just not publicly recognized to be Jewish, was enjoying a well-known Jewish individual within the first place.
“There was no want for Bradley Cooper so as to add an odd prosthetic nostril on prime of this to play Leonard Bernstein,” one social media consumer wrote. “His personal nostril is longer! And I nonetheless would have most well-liked they at the very least give Jewish actors an opportunity to audition earlier than robotically casting somebody extra well-known,” they mentioned, including the hashtag “#JewFace.”
Cooper and Netflix didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from NBC’s “TODAY” present.
Issues round “Jewface” in Hollywood portrayals had been highlighted in 2021 by comic Sarah Silverman, who mentioned the movie trade had a “lengthy custom of non-Jews enjoying Jews.”
“And never simply enjoying individuals who occur to be Jewish however individuals whose Jewishness is their entire being,” she had mentioned, talking on “The Sarah Silverman Podcast.”
Silverman outlined the time period as being “when a non-Jew portrays a Jew with the Jewishness entrance and heart, usually with make-up or altering of options, huge pretend nostril, all of the New York-y or Yiddish-y inflection.”
“In a time when the significance of illustration is seen as so important and so entrance and heart, why does ours consistently get breached, even right now, within the thick of it?” she questioned on the time.
The Media Variety Institute describes on its website how portrayals of Jewish individuals as having “massive, hooked” noses is an “picture so deeply imbedded in trendy tradition, that the majority don’t acknowledge that it’s truly a deeply antisemitic stereotype.”
“It hasn’t at all times been this fashion. Earlier than the twelfth century, there is no such thing as a proof of Jews being depicted with massive noses,” it states, asserting that the caricature of Jewish individuals “goes again to antisemitic and Nazi propaganda from the Nineteen Thirties and since then has gone on to turn out to be a typical trope and, whether or not deliberately or not—pushes antisemitic stereotypes to today.”
Issues round Cooper’s portrayal of Bernstein, who died in 1990, come at a time when antisemitic incidents within the U.S. have been at report highs, in keeping with the Anti-Defamation League.
In 2022, the ADL recorded 3,697 reviews of antisemitic incidents all through the U.S., which it mentioned was the best quantity on report because it started monitoring antisemitic incidents in 1979.
Maestro, which can have its world premiere on the Venice Movie Pageant in September, is anticipated to have a restricted theatrical launch on Nov. 22 earlier than hitting Netflix on Dec. 20, in keeping with Netflix.
