Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Courage in Hollywood
The idea that it is brave to stand up for gays in Hollywood, to stand up against Joe McCarthy in Hollywood (fifty years after his death), to say that rich white people are bad, that oil companies are evil -- this is nonsense. All of these are mainstream ideas in Hollywood, always have been, always will be. For the people who made movies denouncing Big Oil, worshiping gays, mocking the rich to think of themselves as brave -- this is pathetic, childish narcissism.
The brave guy in Hollywood will be the one who says that this is a fabulously great country where we treat gays, blacks, and everyone else as equal. The courageous writer in Hollywood will be the one who says the oil companies do their best in a very hostile world to bring us energy cheaply and efficiently and with a minimum of corruption. The producer who really has guts will be the one who says that Wall Street, despite its flaws, has done the best job of democratizing wealth ever in the history of mankind.
No doubt the men and women who came to the Oscars in gowns that cost more than an Army Sergeant makes in a year, in limousines with champagne in the back seat, think they are working class heroes to attack America -- which has made it all possible for them. They are not. They would be heroes if they said that Moslem extremists are the worst threat to human decency since Hitler and Stalin. But someone might yell at them or even attack them with a knife if they said that, so they never will.
Courage, more often than not, involves stepping out of one's prescribed role.
CWCID: LGF.
9 Comments:
By 
, at
Wed Mar 08, 12:46:00 AM:
have posted a comment about the averted Indo-Pak war of 2001...
By 
cakreiz, at
Wed Mar 08, 09:15:00 AM:
Like an Oscar tribute to filmmaker Theo van Gogh, perhaps? A clarion call to artists to defy oppression. What a concept. It won't happen until Hollywood rids itself of its reflexive anti-Americanism.
By cakreiz, at
Wed Mar 08, 09:19:00 AM:
Sorry to cite another blog, TH, but Bull Moose wrote recently that from his experience "schmoozing with Democrats around the country, they are far more concerned about Christian fundamentalists than Islamic fundamentalists - or they see them through the lens of moral equivalence." How is it that Hollywood is so cognizant of the Christian threat and so blind to the Islamic one? It defies reason.
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Mar 08, 10:16:00 AM:
Stein's is the best comment I've read about the Oscars.
We should not generalize unfairly to all actors by the way. Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood are examples of Hollywood stars who understand the great good fortune they have to practice their craft here in the US.
There are a particularly vain and, frankly, ignorant bunch who know little of history and think of muslims as disenfranchised people of color. They hear and see no evil when it comes to the root immorality, bloodthirsty, murderous tyranny embedded in Wahabi, Salafist theocratic islam.
They're just utterly stupid. Nobody listened to them in class, ever, because their peers with intelligence understood them to be stupid. But they were good looking, and poised on stage, and this led them to be the ultimate in highly compensated charlatans -- actors. Think of it -- how many brilliant thespians did you know in school? And of those, how many were actually sufficiently physically attractive to succeed in Hollywood. The intersection of smart, great looking and actor ain't that large a group folks.
Much of this has to do with the host, I think. Johnny Carson set a tone which was serious and respectful, funny in a nuanced and sophisticated way. Chris Rock and Jon Stewart are incapable of that mature leadership of the event. They don't themselves have the standing in that crowd to pay homage to the sacrifices of our troops while at the same time cracking wise about wiretapping of phones.
There would have been ample opportunity to needle the crowd about the likelihood that they might have their calls eavesdropped by the NSA given their propensity for overseas phone calls to Al Qaeda swtichboards. Both sides of the debate might have appreciated that humor.
I miss Johnny.
By Pax Federatica, at
Wed Mar 08, 12:08:00 PM:
cakreiz wrote: Sorry to cite another blog, TH, but Bull Moose wrote recently that from his experience "schmoozing with Democrats around the country, they are far more concerned about Christian fundamentalists than Islamic fundamentalists - or they see them through the lens of moral equivalence." How is it that Hollywood is so cognizant of the Christian threat and so blind to the Islamic one? It defies reason.
It's probably for the same reason why so many American feminists turn a blind eye toward the mistreatment of women in strict Muslim societies, or at least for the same excuse that they tend to give, and why American environmentalists tend to spend more time bashing America than, say, China over the same type of pollution.
Namely, why should they bother trying to get other countries to change their ways, when (1) they fully expect such efforts to go for naught, and (2) other countries' practices aren't for them to judge and are really none of their business anyway? No, they're focused on activism here at home, because here they know they have at least have a decent chance of finding enough sympathetic politicians and judges to actually succed.
By Catchy Pseudonym, at
Wed Mar 08, 02:12:00 PM:
I completely agree with him about Hollywood. I loved seeing the faces of the people while Jon Stewart cracked jokes. I coldn't tell if they didn't get the jokes, or were offended. George Clooney needs a bitch slapping.
But I wonder if Stein just wants a different kind of fiction, because that's basically what he wrote.
"Oil companies do their best in a very hostile world to bring us energy cheaply and efficiently and with a minimum of corruption" - False
"fabulously great country" - True
"where we treat gays, blacks, and everyone else as equal" - False
Plus how interesting would a movie be if it was about how great all the rich white people are.
By cakreiz, at
Wed Mar 08, 02:23:00 PM:
Joshua, I don't buy the pragmatism argument. For some insight, go to Yale feminist Della Sentilles, who is honest about the reason that she overlooks Islamic intolerance [for women, in this case]:
"As a white American feminist, I do not feel comfortable making statements of judgments about other cultures, especially statements that suggest one culture is more sexist and repressive than another [...] American feminism is often linked to and manipulated by the state in order to further its own imperialist ends."
By Cassandra, at
Wed Mar 08, 06:47:00 PM:
I have to laugh every time I see musicians and artists bloviating about politics. I love a good joke, but some of these people are just rabid.
When I was 15, my parents took me to this high-speed DC firm that tests aptitudes. I tested extremely high in all the artistic ones: music, aesthetics, etc. At the time I desperately saw myself as an actress or a rock star (I had an electric guitar - you may stop laughing now - and wanted to be a musician).
They told me that if I failed to use my music aptitudes I'd be miserable, but if I became a musician I'd be even more miserable.
I asked why.
They said it was because I tested extremely high in inductive reasoning and verbal aptitude. Artists as a general class express themselves in non-logical and non-verbal ways, and they would drive me completely bananas if I had to hang around them 24/7, I was told.
Of course different people have different aptitude patterns. Most have only 3 or 4 dominant aptitudes but this is not always the case. But when I hear Hollywoood types coming out with these touchy-feely opinons that make no sense, I'm always reminded of that counseling session, and I think, "We don't go to the theater to watch you reason...".
There are some actors who are incredibly logical and seem to use both sides of their brains, but most seem very right-brained whereas I almost always test out evenly balanced.
By Cardinalpark, at
Wed Mar 08, 08:11:00 PM:
Cass- don't know what you're real name is, but i've been reading a book to my 11 year odk called the 6th Grade Nickname Game by Gordon Korman. the Cassandra character is you as a young girl...
