Posted on 09/24/2015 12:57:07 PM PDT by Kaslin
ON THE JEWISH calendar, Wednesday is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It marks the culmination of the Days of Awe, the solemn period of introspection that began 10 days ago on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Like many Jews, I have been thinking about the themes of this season — repentance and forgiveness, wrongdoing and reconciliation.
I have also been thinking about Johnny Depp.
More precisely, I've been thinking about some things Depp said at the Boston premiere of "Black Mass," the new film in which he plays the gangster James "Whitey" Bulger. Speaking to reporters before the screening at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline — on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah, coincidentally — Depp was at pains to emphasize the human qualities of the serial killer he portrays in the film.
"There's a kind heart in there," he said. "There's a cold heart in there. There's a man who loves. There's a man who cries. There's a lot to the man."
Bulger was convicted in 2013 of involvement in at least 11 murders and numerous other crimes; he is now in federal prison serving two life sentences. But Depp said his priority as an actor "was to understand him first and foremost as a human being." He described Bulger as "a man of honor" toward those he loved, and rejected the notion that he was innately wicked. "Everybody, especially the families of his victims, could say: 'He's just an evil person.' I don't believe that exists," Depp said. "People have their humanity.... There's a side of James Bulger who is not just that man who was in that business."
Depp's comments understandably offended many, especially those whose loved ones suffered from Bulger's brutality. To be sure, the Hollywood star was talking about his technique as an actor and his approach to the role of a notorious monster. Perhaps some of his remarks should have been saved for an acting class rather than the red carpet. Perhaps some — like how he was "kind of glad" that Bulger had evaded capture for so many years — shouldn't have been said at all.
Nevertheless, Depp is right: Bulger must not be seen as wholly evil, devoid of any grain of goodness. That is a crucial moral point, regardless of acting style and character preparation. "Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins," declares Ecclesiastes. The opposite is equally true: No one is absolutely evil, incapable of behaving with kindness or decency. Not Whitey Bulger. Not Charles Manson. Not Jeffrey Dahmer. Not the worst murderer or rapist or torturer.
Not even Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot.
To insist that even the most depraved criminals are human beings is not to downplay their depravity or to minimize their evil deeds. On the contrary: It is to affirm their responsibility for the damage they wreak and the pain they inflict. It is to underscore that they are morally responsible agents endowed by God with free will. They decide how to use that freedom. And they, like all of us, are answerable for their decisions.
Men and women are not cancer cells or rattlesnakes or tidal waves, killing and destroying willy-nilly. We are not robots, programmed genetically to be good or bad, honest or crooked, kind or cruel. We choose. And our choices have consequences.
Bulger wasn't hard-wired to lie or steal and murder. Every time he did so, he chose to do so. For proof, look no farther than all the times he could have lied or stolen or murdered, but elected not to.
"We must believe in free will; we have no choice,"exclaimed the novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer. In that seeming paradox lies the essence of our humanity. It isn't DNA or economics or the stars that determines character. We determine it. Without freedom, there could be no saints or sinners, only automatons.
Bulger was no automaton. None of us is. We are born neither righteous nor monstrous, but free to be either one. Among all the Earth's creatures, only we have the power to act differently tomorrow than we acted yesterday. That is why we can always aspire to be better, and repent when we have been worse.
Depp is an idiot liberal. Just mho.
Jacoby is pathetic. Bulger loved to kill. He loved strangling women. Let him move into your house Jeff....see how that works out for you.
And Himmler was kind to children and animals.
So what? Doesn’t excuse or negate the pain they deliberately caused.
Bulger did indeed have a choice - he could have been like millions of other men and chosen to commit NO murders, NO crimes. But he didn’t decline, did he? He deliberately chose to NOT follow the rules.
And there’s Hollywood, always ready to make a sympathetic movie about some creep who deliberately chooses to cause misery - no movies about the ordinary good people who lead honest, crime-free lives. Way to go again, Hollywood, keep glamorizing criminals.
And that is why prison used to be known as a penitentiary, where men who did wrong went to reflect on the price of their evil deeds. This is what bleeding hearts don’t understand: that society has an obligation to mete out this measure. Like Judge Smails said in Caddyshack... “I’ve had to send boys younger than you to the electric chair... didn’t want to do it; I felt I owed it to them.” It’s funny because of the basis in truth - to absolve the perpetrator by blaming external factors simultaneously denies the nature of man as a divine creation with free will.
“It made my heart ache, you know, to see all these beautiful black men in the joint. The warriors should be out there helping the masses. I felt that way, I was real naive. Six weeks I was up there and I talked to the brothers. I talked to ‘em, and ... THANK GOD WE GOT PENITENTIARIES!” - Richard Pryor
Bulger was like all sociopaths, he used whatever technique necessary to get his way. When charm was required, he used charm; when violence, he used violence. And one gets the impression that he particularly enjoyed violence.
That doesn’t mean that he was unredeemable, because we always have to believe that people can be converted and live; but he was fundamentally someone who, both because of his choosing and because of a fundamental disposition, abandoned the moral universe and lived solely for himself and his own priorities and preferences - and would have been very hard to reach for conversion.
Johnny Depp did a great job at playing him, btw. The FBI agent (who had somehow been charmed and conned by Bulger into basically abandoning his own moral and even legal compass and adopting Bulger’s defense as the goal of his life) was also extremely well portrayed.
Some people seem to be hard wired to LIE!
There is no hard wiring. Stupid concept. Stems from a materialistic understanding of the human organism.
Liberals have long made an effort to "see" the "good" inherent in everyone, and are often shocked to discover that no, some people really are bad.
Conservatives generally assume that humans are inherently evil and will do evil things unless you teach them better, and then keep an eye on them just to be sure.
One philosophy is much more adept at dealing with the real world than is the other.
Someone needs to let the gays and pedophiles know...
When there is trauma during the early years of a child's development, due to parental failures,the child can have unresolved pain for years that leads to ambivalence toward his caretakers that can later be easily transferred to others in later life. This leads to oscillations between love and hate, dominance and submission, and good and bad behavior toward others.
I’m puzzled that people are disagreeing with Jacoby’s conclusions. If Mr. Bulger were “hard-wired,” then he had no personal agency in has actions, and he bears no personal guilt.
I just checked to verify that Richard Pryor really said that, and that it wasn't one of his jokes or roles from a movie. Nowadays people put stuff on the internet all the time that isn't really true.
Most of the hits come right back to Free Republic, but I think I did find the original source for that quote.
Yeah, apparently Richard Pryor really said that. More commentary at the link.
I asked one, "Why did you kill everybody in the House?" He says, "They was home."
Yes.
Oddly enough, Bulger isn’t happy with Depp’s attempts to humanize him:
http://www.justjared.com/2015/09/19/whitey-bulger-is-not-happy-with-johnny-depp-black-mass/
very good point there...
I will absolutely see this.
However, on a personal level and this man, I don’t care how nice he was or whether or not he lived by a code, or cried.. big freaking deal.
He was no hero.. He was an evil pr*ck to do what he did and that truly is black and white to me.
Hero? that’s a soldier.. And I love cops, because they take down these evil bast*rds.
.....and God made a liberal..... thought about that video the other day.
“Depp is an idiot liberal”
Repeat 4 times, rinse and repeat.
I came to L.A. from Boston
Whitey is PURE evil and a sociopath. If he did anything good, it was a cover to fool the people.
Good article!
Johnny Depp said derp derp derp. Hollywood’s so chock full of spoiled rotten fools.
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