CAN WE TALK A BOUT?

INNOCENT FAUX PAS OR THOUGHTLESS INSENSITIVITY? BRADLEY COOPER’S NOSE IN MAESTRO

Has the formerly squeakyclean Cooper blotted his copybook with his make-up choice in Maestro?

They don’t come more unproblematic or more likeable than Bradley Cooper. Having made a seamless transition from respected actor to capable director, Cooper looked to have an unblemished record in an industry where a simple tweet or bad take could get you cancelled almost instantly. Well, until now, that is.

Cooper is the director of Maestro, a new biopic charting the life and career of iconic Jewish-American composer Leonard Bernstein. The controversy, one would think, would stem from the actor’s decision to cast himself, a non-Jew, in the principal role. In reality, it’s actually worse than that: Cooper donned a prosthetic nose to portray Bernstein, setting Jewish Twitter ablaze with accusations of anti-Semitism and insensitivity.

Do I think Cooper is anti-Semitic? Of course not. The issue here is simple: how did a production of such scale get to the point of being publicised as a potential award-season frontrunner, without someone questioning whether a fake nose was really an acceptable prosthetic for a non-Jewish actor playing a Jew?

‘COOPER DONNED A PROSTHETIC NOSE TO PLAY BERNSTEIN, SETTING JEWISH TWITTER ABLAZE’

For centuries, images that propagated anti-Jewish propaganda represented Jewish people with big noses, thus othering them and making them figures of distrust and suspicion. While I don’t believe the fake nose here is anything but mere ignorance, I do find myself asking if the filmmakers would have been more sensitive to stereotypes had Lenny been anything else but a Jew.

Last year, director James Gray came under fire for casting a non-Jew to play his Jewish grandfather in Armageddon Time, a semi-biographical film about his upbringing in New York. In a conversation I had with him for The Jewish Chronicle, Gray was outraged by the controversy. ‘What I’m looking for is a greater truth and someone able to capture duty and emotionality and compassion, and not an ethnographically correct statement.’

I’m on Gray’s side. OK, so the composer’s three children responded to the outrage with a statement saying, ‘Bradley chose to use make-up to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that,’ but I don’t believe that a Jewish director would have allowed their lead actor to don a fake nose. Hopefully Hollywood can learn from it, and ensure that sensitivity coordinators are present at any stage of any given production.