Is this anti-semitism?

Otto Preminger was another Jewish refugee who ended up playing a nazi in Stalag 17.xpost

Anton Walbrook was another famous example, he got the fuck out of Austria quickfast because he was a half Jewish and gay actor, double peril!

Anton Diffring - who made a very convincing Nazi I must say - was also half Jewish and gay.

I can’t 100% remember but I don’t think Jack Benny plays a nazi in TBONTB - he just disguises himself as one (for heroic reasons)

you may be right, it's a while since I saw it

Although of course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmzPnpn63nA

Of course the Jewish elephant in the room, and relevant to the discussion, is the long running trend of Jewish actors changing their names. Granted, lots of actors use stage names, but Jewish actors seem to do it to disguise, or at least neutralize, their Jewishness, which really underscores the ongoing power plays and dynamics (and antisemitism) at work when it comes to being perceived as Jewish. Jewish actor Jason Alexander isn't just playing an Italian character that is coded Jewish, the actor born Jay Greenspan is essentially also playing himself as Jason Alexander, an actor coded not (or less) Jewish.

Right - similarly my grandfather had to change his name during the war, from something indescribably Polish to “Wilson” (don’t get caught behind enemy lines with a Jewish name, was the idea). But the name change stuck and was considered good for business in the 40s and 50s and then it just stuck forever. Recently I tried to “re-Jew” our family names by naming my daughter after some of the Polish family (and my French middle name comes from a second cousin who was killed in the camps young). Ironically despite the re-Jewing we’re barely Jewish in a devotional sense.

Yes, and how such deliberate coding was satirized through Donna Chang (nee Changstein) in "the Chinese Woman" in Seinfeld and by Swedish lawyer Berg in Curb.

Getting back to Maestro, that Mark Harris piece from Slate that Alfred quoted from mentions that Bradley Cooper can’t speak for himself because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. If the Bernstein children say they are happy, then I guess I'm happy for them? I'm reminded of the old show-biz adage "No such thing as bad publicity." I'll reserve judgment unless I watch the film, which I would only be spite-watching, since there are a lot of better films I still need to see.

I also hadn't realized that Sarah Silverman is in the cast. Or that Tracy-Ann Oberman who gave that quote about Elephant Man plays "Auntie" Val from Friday Night Dinner. This thread has been full of surprises. Is nothing as it seems?!

Wait why have we decided this movie is bad apart from the nose thing?

Sorry, "better" was a poor choice of words. Good catch. What I meant is I have little attention span for movies lately. Also I no longer have Netflix and won't be renewing during the strike.

So if I did move Maestro to the head of the queue it would be out of curiosity over this. But there's no reason you would have known that from my post. My bad.

Wait why have we decided this movie is bad apart from the nose thing?

Because it's a biopic directed by its star and those are traditionally dismal?

yeah, I remember finding out Elaine was supposedly not Jewish. Come on, man.

― hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice f (President Keyes), Friday, August 18, 2023 10:00 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

just want to say that i don't think it's necessarily a widespread perception that Elaine is a jew or very nearly so. but i'm a gentile from the midwest

Tracy-Ann Oberman is one of the celebrity toxifiers of the UK "discussion" about antisemitism

Appreciate the context.

Awful woman.

just want to say that i don't think it's necessarily a widespread perception that Elaine is a jew or very nearly so.

Now, see, I don't know how widespread it is, but for sure her *appearance* conforms to Jewish stereotypes. Toss in the context (the show, the setting) and it does get the heart of how much of Judaism often remains the sum of how Jews are perceived/portrayed.

One of my favorite twists on this is that Rachel Sennott, star of "Shiva Baby," is not Jewish, and neither (I assume?) is her married love interest, Danny Deferrari, but Deferrari's conspicuously blonde non-Jew wife *is* played by a Jewish actor, Dianna Agron.

_Wait why have we decided this movie is bad apart from the nose thing?_

Because it's a biopic directed by its star and those are traditionally dismal?

Lol, Spacey

Forgotten but not gone

Has anyone here ever met anyone who is actually offended by the prosthetic nose in the Bernstein pic? Because I wasn't even aware there was a Bernstein biopic until I saw clickbait about how I shouldn't be offended because Bernstein's kids said it was ok, and I don't think I would have even given it a second thought otherwise. I don't care much for Bradley Cooper and biopics are always terrible but I can't imagine it would have occurred to me to find it "antisemitic" that he tried to make himself look more like the real life individual I assume he is favorably portraying.

I doubt I would have noticed anything amiss. I may not have even noticed the movie existed. At the same time I feel that Jews, like a lot of minorities, are so used to shrugging off micro-aggressions that I honestly doubt many are even making a stink about it. But arguing and discussing *after* someone has broached the subject? What self-respecting Jew would avoid a debate?

Lol otm

What movie? We're talking about the trailer!

Not sure where you are going with this but I think it's reasonable to ask at this point about the idea of it based on what people have seen of the official trailer that's currently out. A movie has obviously been made, and there are issues to be discussed other than cinematic merit.

Oh sorry, were you doing a bit? Lol I must be exasperating here

The idea of this movie seems inherently not promising, but it will be interesting to see how deep they go into Bernstein’s politics, especially the Black Panthers parties at his house.

Has anyone here ever met anyone who is actually offended by the prosthetic nose in the Bernstein pic?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/18/opinions/bradley-cooper-leonard-bernstein-maestro-perry/index.html

otherwise I assume complaints are coming from Twitter/X, home of useless complaints about everything

Oh sorry, were you doing a bit? Lol I must be exasperating here

― felicity,

lol I wasn't clear either -- my fault.

Puddy, on the other hand, almost surely was not coded Jewish.

Cooper directing and starring in this is generally kind of a surprise - not what I expected from the guy who brought us American Sniper

(which, incidentally, is a fucking weird movie)

A really good friend of mine was born in Croatia. He moved here 40 years ago, when he was around 8 or so, but still of course has plenty of family back there, knows the language, and returns pretty often. Some months ago we were having dinner together, and I think I mentioned something about Croatia (I forget what) and his response was something similar, only about about Israel. And I was like, dude, what does Israel have to do with anything? I'm not from Israel and have no family there, but you *are* from Croatia, they're totally different. There was no malicious intent or animosity or anything so we just moved on to whatever else we were goofing on.

Fast forward a few months and we were heading somewhere together. He had just gotten back from visiting Croatia, and was super energized about reconnecting with his family there. And then he made an innocent comparison, saying something like it was probably akin to how I feel whenever I go back to Israel. And I was like, dude, I've been to Israel once, 35 years ago, and not since. I have no family there, I have no connection there, I'm not Israeli, I don't care about Israel. And then we move on.

Anyway. He's a great guy, he's not anti-semitic, but explicitly connecting Jewishness with Israel is ... kinda cousin to that, isn't it? Is this what people mean when they talk about micro-aggressions?

I mean, seeing as how the main Jewish political organizations in the US are intimately tied to Israel, I see how there could be some confusion from someone who doesn’t know many Jewish people. But yeah, feels weirdly pass-agg!

I would say so. Croatia according to my friend who’s Jewish and has spent a lot of the time in the area has largely unreconstructed antisemitic beliefs that are commonly held (though where isn’t that true of) and ofc a fairly grotesque history during WW2. There’s also a neo-fascist movement atm, but where isn’t there.

*Croatians

He's got family there, but he's Croatian by birth, not nationality. He's American, raised and educated in America, so he's not particularly old country himself, and I don't think his old country roots have anything to do with it. He knows plenty of Jews, went to an Ivy League school, works in banking (lol). That's kind of what I find so odd about it. Or maybe I'm just over inflating what the average person thinks or knows about Judaism, however innocently.

elements in the israeli state of course are eager to convince everyone to be antisemitic in precisely this way so i try to cut people who've accidentally bought into it a little personal slack

still, not listening to you or remembering what you say is a bad sign, especially when what keeps overruling you in his head seems to be the idea that everybody has a mystical genetic relationship to some soil somewhere and you can look up where in a chart-- this idea is bad for the jews and for other living things-- but it is believed so ambiently across such a wide political spectrum that he is prob just an addled liberal trying to be enthusiastic about his friend's identity. think you're on solid ground pushing back sharper next time esp if you guys are close, the way you would about anything you kept saying and he kept not listening to.

there was a billboard down the road from my house for some Jewish roots group, that said something like "we don't care which half of you is Jewish!" and had some URL.. fine, I noticed it but didn't really think about it

The next billboard, from the same org, said something like "anti-Israel = anti=semitism" - which I know is pointed squarely at Bay Area liberals... I get so sick of that false equivalency, it seems to be growing

I just wanted to say that the only people I saw even talking about the Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose were non-Jewish liberals who reshape Occupy Democrats on Facebook

I haven't managed to comment on the nose yet, but not because it doesn't bother me. Rather, it does bother me, but in a variety of ways too complicate for me to articulate easily, and just the thought of trying to do so is stressful so I avoid it.

My main issue with it comes down to this: when you are dealing with an ethnicity that has certain distinctive physical features, and you cast someone not of that ethnicity and then use makeup or prosthetics to imitate those features, it's not cool. Jews shouldn't be an exception to that rule, and I wonder why people can so easily make us an exception. I think part of it has to do with people's inability to grasp that "Jewish" can be both a religion and an ethnicity. People think "Oh, it's just a religion; anyone can be Jewish, so we can cast anyone." Well, sure, but if it's just a religion, then why is it a religion whose adherents are known for having big noses, and why do you feel the need to slap a big old fake nose on Bradley Cooper so he can play someone who believes in it?

And then there's the fact that this keeps happening, most noticeably in Mrs. Maisel, where you have a whole group of people who are supposed to be ethnically Jewish, played by actors who are not. And as someone whose entire Jewish identity comes from heritage, not religion, and who looks fairly typically Jewish, I don't like having someone who's supposed to look like me represented by a generic-looking pretty blonde woman with her hair dyed dark brown. I don't like the implication that Jews who look Jewish aren't pretty enough: the sense of "We want Jewish, but not too Jewish" that comes through in the casting of Rachel Brosnahan and now of Bradley Cooper. I don't like that being Jewish is being approached the way being ugly was in that Charlize Theron movie - gee, we'd love to cast a high-wattage movie star who looks the part, but we just aren't swimming in movie stars who look like this, so we'd better cast this pretty person and ugly them up for the role. And I don't like how much this is eroding people's already shaky awareness that ethnic Jews exist at all.

"And then there's the fact that this keeps happening"

people have made the argument that it isn't problematic for goys to play Jewish characters, but even if so that doesn't mean they have to do it every time.

Re Seinfeld coding there’s a gag about Elaine never having seen a foreskin but I tend to forget that’s just America in general. Also that weird bit in the ep where George is trying to convert to Latvian orthodox & the priest makes a huge deal about George pronouncing it “fadda”, it’s prob just a “what is a yoot” throwaway but the way it’s played is as an accidental tell, like his accent would disqualify him somehow

Sticking this here again, because I had honestly never thought about this stuff at all until Silverman posted this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3g3N-b2Hb4

I had forgotten that it was prompted by news that Kathryn Hahn (not Jewish) had been cast to play Joan Rivers (very Jewish) in a biopic (since tabled).

Silverman, as Felicity noted, is in Maestro, as Bernstein's sister Shirley.

My main issue with it comes down to this: when you are dealing with an ethnicity that has certain distinctive physical features, and you cast someone not of that ethnicity and then use makeup or prosthetics to imitate those features, it's not cool. Jews shouldn't be an exception to that rule, and I wonder why people can so easily make us an exception. I think part of it has to do with people's inability to grasp that "Jewish" can be both a religion and an ethnicity. People think "Oh, it's just a religion; anyone can be Jewish, so we can cast anyone." Well, sure, but if it's just a religion, then why is it a religion whose adherents are known for having big noses, and why do you feel the need to slap a big old fake nose on Bradley Cooper so he can play someone who believes in it?

The thing that separates the Cooper/Bernstein movie from the broader phenomenon you're discussing is that Cooper is not just the star of this movie — he also produced and directed it, and co-wrote the screenplay. It's his project, top to bottom.

Does he wear a fake bottom, too?

Thanks for all the recent posts. I think Lily Dale and Sarah Silverman have both touched on something that has been the source of a lot of unarticulated discomfort for me over the years. I never noticed that non-Jews often play female Jewish characters if something good happens to them, but I totally believe her.

When a supposed physical characteristic of Jewish people has been exaggerated with undeniably malicious intention in caricatures, political propaganda, pseudoscience, etc. over the years, even the supposed well-intentioned use of a false nose to play a Jewish person feels like an "eye rolly" moment of the type that Sarah Silverman describes here.

The whole Maestro nose thing just makes me anxious, like when Raja used a prosthetic nose to play Diana Vreeland on Snatch Game in Rupauls's Drag Race All Stars. It was distracting and unnecessary. And I still love Raja, btw.

I also think the nose thing is funny, just an insanely silly bad taste thing to do, so part of my Jewish identity is glad that it happened, because it’s a good story.

It's unreal in how off the mark it is, like a bit from Tropic Thunder.

From which . . . apparently Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie still think a Les Grossman spinoff movie is a good idea? And they credit Tropic Thunder with reviving Cruise's flagging career? So weird.

there are so many things around the tropic thunder movie that i do not understand. the meta-thunder