About face

 Let's talk about hypocrisy. Let's talk "double-standards" and let's talk about my favorite weasel response, "it's different."

And before I get started, I'm sure that my opinions are unpopular. That's how I know that they are right.

If you are a long time reader, you know that I put little faith in Hollywood and celebrity. The concepts make no sense to me. But I do respect actor as professionals, doing a job. So finding the right actor to do a particular job can't be easy and I understand that part of the job of an actor is to pretend. Great so far, right?

But what about when that pretending is aided by a good make-up department? Do I think that all the responsibility for becoming a character rests on the actor's shoulders? Is that fair? Would Chevy Chase's President Ford imitation be better served if he had donned a wig or fake glasses?

I read an article recently about Bradley Cooper. I like him as an actor and enjoy some of the roles he has played. He is filming a biopic of Leonard Bernstein, the composer who wrote such jingles as the songs in West Side Story and "I Hate Music: A cycle of Five Kid Songs for Soprano and Piano." To play the role, it has been reported that he has had an enlarged nose stuck on his face. This has brought up some questions. So let me break down the line of argument.

There are two kinds of characters which actors play, real people and fictional people. Mostly, the "real people" are interpretations of reality and the resulting portrayal is of a person based in someone's memory of reality but at least the person existed. Fictional people did not. If an actor wants to put on a nose in order to look like a particular real people, the argument goes, that makes sense. If he puts on a nose to look like a made up person, that might be wrong because, why does he need the nose. Bernstein was Jewish but he existed, so the nose is to portray Bernstein. But a fictional Jew needs no extra nose because that would be putting on Jewface, linked to a long tradition of using the stereotype of a larger nose to act as shorthand in presenting someone as recognizably Jewish. You can look online -- the stereotype is very, very old (mid 13th century, apparently).

Except for the hypocrisy.

1. Rostand created the character of Cyrano De Bergerac. Yes, he was inspired by a real swordsman but that person, at least according to Wikipedia, did not have a romance with Roxanne nor did he have an enlarged nose. To play Rostand's character is to play an imagined being so adding a nose should be wrong. But everyone does it (or uses some other shorthand for physical aberration, as casting Peter Dinklage in the role).

2. Cooper played Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man" in 2015. He did so without prosthetics. He would have been more recognizable as a misformed person had he, but he chose not to. So to play someone who existed, he decided NOT to add anything. So it isn't necessary to add on things in order to portray an historical figure.

So, so far we have a general rule that playing a person is different from playing a non-person. OK, what about the question of "must someone from a group play a member of that group?" That brings up the whole "must a Jew play a Jew" and the answer is "of course not".

But.

When playing a Jew, any actor must decide what in his performance must say "Jew." Is it the dialogue? The accent? The appearance? If it is any of these, and the actor is not playing a particular Jew upon whom to model, the actor is opting for something that is externally recognizable shorthand for "Jew." That thing requires looking into the author's vision of (and opinion of) Jewry and the audience's familiarity with tropes and cues to decipher a role as "Jew." So throw on the prayer shawl even if not in prayer? Have the role include some greedy actions or ethical blindness? Or play the righteous morality card and have the Jew be the ethical center. Either way, play the extreme to convince the masses because if you play a Jew as most Jews really are, the portrayal would be absent anything that makes the Jew any different from anyone else. You see, Jews are a sizable group with a range of physical and behavioral traits.

Where are we now with the argument? Ah, yes, playing a Jew requires that one adopt some sort of visible hint or marker of Jewish identity. But playing Bernstein isn't playing a Jew because there is no attempt to use that visible sign as a religious affiliation, just as a reference to the person. 

Except for the hypocrisy.

So here it comes -- the question of "blackface." Look, I know that there is a long history (though minstrel shows don't date back to the 13th century as far as I know. Wikipedia has the practice of wearing makeup to portray someone with darker skin as dating to the mid 15th century) and is associated with racist iconography. But so does the "Jewish nose"! Why would there be any problem with a white actor putting on blackface to portray a black character not because he is ridiculing the racial identity but because he is presenting the author's understanding of the character? Shakespeare invented the Jew Shylock, He invented the Moor Othello. Same author. Why is it OK to have a white, non-Jewish actor adopt Shakespeare's "look" of a Jew for one, but not the "look of a Moor" for another? Is either doing so in order to tap into a history of bias and racism? And, historically, both have been done, to varying levels of public censure or applause.

Everyone loves to say "but it's different." Except that once you break it down, it isn't. If an actor can assume anything external in order to be identified as a character, living or fictional, but without the intent to tie into any negative history of that practice, then it should be OK for all. And if it isn't, then it shouldn't be. Simple as that.

I'm not advocating blackface. I'm advocating consistency in applying rules and expectations and I am criticizing the case-by-case judgments that people make because they want to assuage the sensibilities of one group but not of another. If Cooper needs a nose to be convincing as Bernstein, but nothing to convince as Merrick, then there is something wrong. If Cooper can put on a nose to play Bernstein, and Richard Mulligan can stick a beard on to be Lincoln (great movie by the way) then I won't look at anyone putting on blackface and ask "where do we draw the line" -- instead I ask "why do we draw a line?" If an actor is tasked, as a professional, with the responsibility of playing a black person who actually existed, why wouldn't the application of cosmetics to darken the skin be as desirable as amore accurate, enlarged nose for a Jew from history? I have yet to find anyone who can give me an answer which accounts for actual history and which cannot be subverted by the many exceptions which are right under our...well, you know.