Jewface? JEWFACE?!?
Bradley Cooper, internet villain du jour, and the implicit contention that This is why you shouldn’t let a gentile play a Jew, because they just slap on a big nose because that’s what they think Jews are. Never mind that, from the teaser, it’s apparent that the nose is just one of several cosmetic alterations that Cooper has deployed in the service of making himself look more like Bernstein (a goal that certain shots suggest he has come uncannily close to achieving). The most benign of the charges—that Cooper and the movie simply got the nose wrong—rests largely on a widely circulated side-by-side comparison that juxtaposes an early publicity still with a photo in which a very young Bernstein’s nose was minimized by angle and lighting; other pairings make the prosthetic look far more accurate and sensible. The sterner critique is: He shouldn’t be doing it. Not with a nose, and maybe not at all. It’s insensitive, it’s wrong, it’s treading on turf that isn’t his.
Gimme a break.
