Arnon Grunberg

Feelings

Debate

On Jewface – Haaretz:

“British actress Helen Mirren said questions over her casting to play Israel's first female prime minister, Golda Meir, are “utterly legitimate.” In an interview with the Daily Mail, Mirren said she had doubts before accepting the role, and she voiced them to director Guy Nativ: “I said, 'Look, Guy, I'm not Jewish, and if you want to think about that and decide to go in a different direction, no hard feelings. I will absolutely understand.'” In January, British actress Maureen Lipman expressed concerns over the selection of Mirren to play the part of Golda Meir and sparked a heated debate about the phenomenon of casting non-Jewish actors as Jews.”

(…)

“The casting of non-Jewish actress Kathryn Hahn as the Jewish comedian Joan Rivers in an upcoming series has sparked similar controversy, consequently leading to comedian Sarah Silverman's recent popularization of the term 'Jewface.' She noted that on more than one occasion the entry of the non-Jew into the shoes of the Jewish character meant a great deal of makeup, in an effort to highlight physical attributes that are considered Jewish, such as a prominent nose, and that it at times also comes with the stereotypical adoption of a New York-Yiddish pronunciation.”

Read the article here.

How do we establish if an actor is Jewish? Should an orthodox rabbi say: ‘This is kosher, people’? Or is a Jewish father enough?

Too many stereotypes are always uninteresting, but that’s often more an esthetic than a moral problem. I admit that esthetics and ethics are intertwined, but only to a certain degree.

We don’t need a white actor to play a black character, fair enough.

But can a protestant actor play a catholic character?

At a certain point the acting will stop, we will all play ourselves, but some of us make a fortune while doing so and others end up in an asylum.
For God’s sake, let Mirren play Golda Meir, and let an Israeli actor play Eichmann, let a redhaired Irish actor who happen to be also a drunk and a kleptomaniac play Dostoevsky.
Have some fun on the way to the grave.
Is it ethical to have an actor play a kleptomaniac, while the actor has never stolen a thing in his life?

In other words, let the killers finally be played by killers.

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