By Aidan White
A row in the United States over the casting of non-Jewish actors to play Jewish characters – so-called “Jewface” – spilled over into a heated debate in Britain last month involving leading actors and national treasures.
Last year the Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman raised objections over the casting of comedian Kathryn Hahn to play the very Jewish comic Joan Rivers in a new television series.
She called it Jewface, a play on “blackface,” the racist practice of white people performing as offensive caricatures of black people, infamously a feature of the Black and White Minstrel Show which ran on the BBC for 20 years until 1978.
The concern is that when non-Jewish actors play Jewish characters it may be dangerous and demeaning and embody anti-Semitic stereotypes. A classic example is the Alec Guinness’ portrayal of Fagin in the film Oliver Twist. This 1948 film reflected how Charles Dickens described “the Jew” — greasy hair, an exaggerated nose and devious.
In Britain the issue blazed into life when actor and comedian Maureen Lipman complained about her fellow Dame, the distinguished but non-Jewish, Helen Mirren being cast in the role of the former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
She argued that ‘the Jewishness of the character is so integral’ that it is unacceptable for a gentile to play the part, even someone of Mirren’s versatility and experience.
She told the US magazine Variety: “My opinion, and that’s what it is, a mere opinion, is that if the character’s race, creed or gender drives or defines the portrayal then the correct …ethnicity should be a priority.”
Her comments prompted an immediate response from within and outside the entertainment industry with many Jewish leaders eager to have their say.
One, the Rabbi Jonathan Romain, the high-profile director of Maidenhead Synagogue in Berkshire, spoke out against Dame Maureen’s intervention. ‘You don’t have to be Jewish to play a Jew, or orphaned to be an orphan,’ he tweeted.
However, the comedian and writer David Baddiel thought that Lipman had a point.
Writing in The Guardian he said: “Casting a non-minority actor to mimic that identity feels, to the progressive eye, like impersonation, and impersonation may carry with it an element of mockery.”
And he gave an example of good casting practice with only gay actors playing gay parts in the recent Channel 4 series It’s A Sin, noting that programme maker Russell T Davies had said: “They are not there to ‘act gay’ because ‘acting gay’ is a bunch of codes for a performance. You wouldn’t cast someone able-bodied and put them in a wheelchair … authenticity is leading us to joyous places.”
Baddiel noted the complex nature of the debate: “I believe two things at once – that in an ideal world, non-Jews should be allowed to play Jews, but the fact this allowance already exists, and has up to this point received very little pushback is, in the modern casting context, a discrepancy, and one that needs to be deconstructed, because it says a lot about how people see Jews.”
All of this is a warning to everyone in the media and entertainment business that a “one opinion fits all” mentality is not going to work in dealing with current concerns over cultural appropriation, gender identity, ethnicity and use of language.
In today’s world of woke and cancel culture, journalists in particular, need to tread carefully. One wrong word, taken out of context, can be career ending as New York Times journalist Donald McNeil found out last year.
He used the “N –word” (can we say “an unacceptable racist term”?) in a discussion about racial slurs and it cost him his job and sparked a row among the paper’s journalists. It further highlights how news media must be careful about how they define acceptable behaviour in use of language in the era of Black Lives Matter.
The problem with culture wars and rows over ethnicity, gender identity and our understanding of history is that these issues are loved by unscrupulous politicians, adored by academics and researchers who like to analyse them, but are generally misunderstood and confusing to everyone else. Most people just don’t understand what they’re all about.
Journalism should provide clarity in the fog of bias and confusing terminology whether it’s about cultural appropriation, racial bias and white privilege, or micro-aggression and gender identity. Above all, reporters and editors need to take care over political mischief-making that reduces serious debate to jibes about “woke” and “non-woke”.
Actors will resolve the tricky question of so-called Jewface, but the debate illustrates why journalists should always avoid a rush to judgment over who is on the side of the angels or what behaviour is “left” or “right” of the political spectrum.
Good journalism recognises the importance of diversity in everyday life, but also encourages diversity of thought. That’s why we are obliged to give space to different opinions even when they are robust and we might personally disagree with them.
The debates in the newsroom at the New York Times, for example, highlight how a failure to set speech in context can lead to unfair treatment. Even worse, it can set arbitrary limits on free expression and reinforce social divisions.
Photo Credits: Photo Kozyr / Shutterstock
