After Popularizing ‘Black Face’ And ‘White Face’, Jews Complain About Whites Doing ‘Jew Face’

(The Jewish Chronicle) White-passing Jewish actors have made a fortune off of playing White roles — even putting on “Nazi Face” and playing “evil Nazis” — and earlier playing Black characters in Black Face — but now they are complaining when White actors put on “Jew Face” and play Jewish characters — roles that they claim only Jews can properly play so as not to promote negative Jewish stereotypes:

…A public debate is raging over whether non-Jewish actors should play Jewish characters. Some people hold that only Jewish actors should play Jewish roles; others believe that casting should be made according to acting talent alone, regardless of an actor’s ethnicity or religion.

A middle ground believe more Jewish roles should go to Jewish actors. In recent years, the Jewish community has gained confidence to comment on perceived mistakes in casting.

The issue is key to David Baddiel’s Jews Don’t Count book and television projects, dramaturg Adam Lenson spearheaded criticisms of the Falsettos production in 2019, and Maureen Lipman has been vocal in her criticism of Helen Mirren’s casting as Golda Meir in the forthcoming biopic. American actor-comedian Sarah Silverman has openly discussed the need for positive roles for Jewish women.

The concerted efforts of the media to treat other protected minorities with sensitivity and respect through diversity and representation drives have led many people to feel that the caution around some groups is not similarly exercised in relation to Jews.

The creative arts need a fresh perspective on Jewish life. For this reason, I have launched Casting Jewish, a consultancy service for film, television and theatre productions. I encourage and advise on alternatives to stereotypes, aiming to increase the accuracy of Jewish representations and ultimately hoping to reduce prejudice and antisemitism…

…I do not advocate that only Jewish actors should play Jewish roles. Such an approach is reductive, insensitive to the acting profession, and could lead to the dangerous perception that Jewish actors should only play Jewish roles.

Some roles might be better suited to a Jewish performer, depending on the actor and the role. The success of a performance is subjective, as audiences will respond differently to a character depending on their experience as a viewer.

A comment by playwright Patrick Marber in the Jewish Chronicle in January 2022 resonated with me. He defended casting according to talent rather than ethnicity, with the qualification

“I don’t like it when someone plays a Jew and gets it wrong.” This is a key phrase to untangle. What does it mean to get it wrong?

To state the obvious, Jewishness is not necessarily perceptible — Jewish people do not look, sound, or behave a particular way. To suggest so is offensive.

Many of us have been told, “But you don’t look Jewish” an expression of prejudice likely inspired by stereotypical representations. A thorny issue for casting and acting is how to perform Jewishness: are there “markers” that can be emulated?

There is a double-edged sensitivity, as it is offensive to suggest that Jewishness is visible in someone’s appearance, but the idea that Jewish people can “pass” or move in society imperceptibly also carries negative connotations, that Jews are slippery or uncomplicatedly “white”.

It may be useful to others if we can easily be marked out (hence the yellow stars), but thankfully we now have a choice whether to show outward expressions of Jewish practice, such as through ritual or clothing.

Lipman explained her stance in the Guardian, arguing that when ethnicity drives the role, an actor of the same ethnicity embodies the character best.

This is especially tricky when a real person is represented, a case in point being On the Basis of Sex, the 2018 biopic of Ruth Bader Ginsburg starring British, non-Jewish Felicity Jones in the lead…

…Is there something irreplicable emoted by Jewish actors in Jewish roles?

Dustin Hoffman, when auditioning for the role of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, could not understand how to play a part initially offered to Robert Redford. Jewish director Mike Nichols told Hoffman that Benjamin was Jewish “on the inside”, and from there a career-defining performance emerged.

What can it mean to be Jewish on the inside, when there is nothing in a script to suggest a character is Jewish on the “outside”?

Although Hoffman later built a reputation as a versatile actor, as Benjamin he embodied a kind of Jewishness that met traditional American stereotypes of the 1960s familiar to audiences: he is short, dark, large-nosed, nervous, intellectual. Jewishness is often acted by playing into stereotypes and consolidating prejudice through repeating familiar tropes…

Stereotypical performances bear traces of previous depictions. Eddie Marsan is a non-Jewish actor often cast as Jewish characters (Sixty Six, Ridley Road, Back to Black) who reaffirm a stereotype that has been replicated on screen over decades…

…It created the shorthand by which screen and stage now speak, which does not reflect our complexity today. We have a nostalgic representational realm that replicates itself; a postmodern situation in which the copy has replaced the authentic.

Actors should avoid repeating negative stereotypes, but the language of representation requires signs and symbols which audiences recognise.

…Jewish characters are frequently written as lawyers or psychiatrists, perpetuating prejudice about class and privilege.

The real diversity of Jewish experience is not visible on screen and stage. Production teams should be consciously asking how they can make Jewish elements of script and performance accurate and sensitive.

Can we shift new representations away from repeating out-dated tropes and towards reflecting a diverse reality?

…Let’s work towards creating positive representations of today’s vibrant Jewish life.

Jews gaslight themselves into thinking that just because they can find a few examples of Jews who do not have stereotypical Jewish features that somehow there’s no such thing as a typical Jewish look — they are experts at arguing from the exception to the rule — with their mantra “Not All Jews!“

What this writer fails to either understand or acknowledge is that Jews have intentionally made the definition of a “Jew” as complicated and “fluid” as possible — and they have done this as a collective strategy to insulate themselves from all forms of collective criticism.

As Rabbi Ethan Tucker said,

“Part of what has made Judaism brilliant throughout the centuries has been its full-on embrace of being simultaneously both an ethnicity and a religion — and neither.”

–“Who is a Jew?”, ELI Talks
Either or — both and neither — catch me if you can — if Jews can’t agree on what a Jew is, no wonder they struggle to even define the meaningless term “antisemitism.”

In truth, the vast majority of Jews are not religious — most are atheists — and yet few would doubt their “Jewishness” — and it is this perceived “ethnicity” that carries much more weight than does their participation in “religious” Judaism.

The Jews themselves broke any legitimate connection between ethnicity and religion when they began race mixing and then arbitrarily changed Israelite identity from the father to the mother to obscure this fact — and then allowing Khazar Turkic-Mongols to convert — which created the Ashkenazim.

Jewish identity is far more confusing than Father’s Day in an American ghetto.

The last hundred years of assimilation has brought unprecedented levels of inter-marriage with mostly White “gentiles” — which has watered down that once stereotypical Jewish “look” — a 2019 poll showed that because of this inter-marriage, Jews are becoming “whiter” — despite the fact that the U.S. is becoming more racial diverse — i.e., non-White.

It used to be much easier to identify a Jew just by looking at them — the difference between Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford couldn’t be greater — both in looks and temperament.

A more appropriate Jewish actor for the role of Benjamin Braddock would have been the white-passing Paul Newman — but the 42 year-old Newman was far too old at that time to play a college graduate.

The book The Graduate — upon which the film is based — is set in a thoroughly upper middle class White WASPish world — which explains Robert Redford as the first choice to play stoic Benjamin Braddock.

But the producers, director, and screenwriter were all Jewish — so they had the Jewish neurotic Dustin Hoffman put on “White Face” to play Braddock — in one of the most preposterous and daring casting choices in Hollywood history — yet the film was a huge success, especially among young, disaffected baby boomers who imagined themselves rebelling against the hypocritical Eisenhower conservatism of their parents.

In that sense, Dustin Hoffman’s success playing “White Face” — an obvious Jew playing an obvious WASP — was a watershed moment for Hollywood — they trained American movie audiences to ignore physical Jewishness — while giving Jews even greater confidence that they could successfully “pass” and be accepted as White.

And the 1960s also gave rise to movies about Jews — a subject that the Jewish studio heads had intentionally avoided — with rare exceptions such as 1959’s The Diary Of Anne Frank which starred the non-Jewish actress Millie Perkins who looked more like Audrey Hepburn than Anne Frank — doing so allowed White audiences to more easily identify with — and have sympathy for — the very Jewish looking Anne Frank.

No doubt the same consideration was behind the recent casting of the “gentile” Felicity Jones as the unattractive and stereotypically Jewish Ruth Bader Ginsburg — who makes the Wicked Witch of the East — played by the “gentile” Margaret Hamilton — in The Wizard of Oz look like a glamour queen.

Jews have bristled about this casting decision as an example of “Jew Face” — “gentiles” playing Jews — but American movie audiences don’t want to see an unattractive Jewess — like Emily Rossum — play such a role — and casting an “attractive” Jewish actress like Natalie Portman would be the equivalent of casting Felicity Jones — because audiences have far less sympathy for ugly leading “heroines” — Jewish or not.

Of course, Barbara Streisand was really the first overtly Jewish actress who played Jews successfully, first in Funny Girl and then in What’s Up Doc? — both comedies — but then she starred in the 1973 blockbuster melodrama The Way We Were — about the highly unlikely romance between the handsome WASP Robert Redford and the quirky, frumpy, unattractive Jewish communist, Barbara Streisand.

What most people don’t know is that the screenplay treatment for The Way We Were was written by producer Arthur Laurents — a Jewish homosexual — who was obsessed with gentile “golden boys” — and Streisand’s character is based on himself — while Redford’s character is based on his real life “gentile” gay partner.

Perhaps this is why The Way We Were has aged so poorly and becomes less convincing and more cringe-worthy with each passing year — because it is based on a Jewish homosexual fantasy — but in the real world, the Robert Redfords of the world would never be attracted to the Barbara Streisands of the world — except in the envious fantasies of the most Jewish of Jews.

Jewish producer Zvi Howard Roseman — a friend of Laurents — explained this Jewish sexual obsession with handsome, unattainable WASPs:

“The Jew is the dynamic one, and when you fall in love with a vapid shegetz [a male shiksa], it’s because he’s the one you want to be, the beautiful one. That’s what attracts some Jews to Gentiles, the vapidity. There’s no drama.”

So there you have it — straight from the horse’s mouth — Jewish producers and directors continue to cast attractive and accomplished “gentile” actors even in roles meant for Jews — using “Jew Face” — because Jews envy and want to possess what they can’t have — White beauty.

And aside from narcissistic Jewish navel gazers, most Jews would rather see an attractive “gentile” on the big screen portraying a Jew than one of their own — after all, Hollywood has always been based on Jewish fantasies that they can be “just like us” — and desired by us.

In fact, Jews have a long history of also doing “Nazi Face” — Jewish actors playing “Nazis” is completely acceptable and “convincing” — but White actors cannot be trusted to play a Jew with the proper “nuance” and “complexity” to satisfy Jews who can’t even define what a Jew is.

Source: https://christiansfortruth.com/after-popularizing-black-face-and-white-face-jews-complain-about-gentiles-doing-jew-face/