Carol WaradyPeople are talking about the Leonard Bernstein biopic. Mostly it’s about the prosthetic nose Leonard Bernstein is wearing in it. I have a question which is not about the nose. Obviously only a Black person should play a black person. Same goes for an Asian or a Latino or a Native American. That does not however appear to apply to Jews. Is that double standard fair?
Scott 🇮🇱🇺🇦 WILL NOT COMPLY@carolw That's the question. The comedian Sarah Silverman has raised the same issue; she referred to the practice of hiring non-Jews to play #Jews as "#Jewface".
Myself, I think acting is acting, and you aren't the person you're portraying, so why do you have to be just like them? That goes for races, ethnicities, gender, etc. There are lines, but finding them isn't as simple as asking if the actor is of the same lineage as the character.
That said: there's the question in the case of Bernstein of whether the nose is there to make Cooper resemble the great composer/conductor, or if it was added merely to signal his Jewish ethnicity. The latter would be a pretty solid (and quite literal) example of "Jewface".