Posted on 01/11/2018 9:22:31 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
There's a great scene in the wonderful 1982 movie "My Favorite Year," which is set in 1954. Peter O'Toole plays a semi-washed-up actor named Alan Swann, famous for swashbuckling roles. For reasons too complicated to explain here, Swann tries to shimmy down the side of a building using a fire hose. He ends up dangling just below a cocktail party on a balcony. Two stockbrokers are chatting when one of them notices Swann swinging below them. "I think Alan Swann is beneath us!" he exclaims.
The second stockbroker replies: "Of course he's beneath us. He's an actor."
It may be hard for some people to get the joke these days, but for most of human history, actors were considered low-class. They were akin to carnies, grifters, hookers and other riffraff.
In ancient Rome, actors were often slaves. In feudal Japan, Kabuki actors were sometimes available to the theatergoers as prostitutes -- a practice not uncommon among theater troupes in the American Wild West. In 17th century England, France and America, theaters were widely considered dens of iniquity, turpitude and crapulence. Under Oliver Cromwell's Puritan dictatorship, the theaters were forced to close to improve moral hygiene. The Puritans of New England did likewise. A ban on theaters in Connecticut imposed in 1800 stayed on the books until 1952.
Partly out of a desire develop a wartime economy, partly out of disdain for the grubbiness of the stage, the first Continental Congress in 1774 proclaimed, "We will, in our several stations ... discountenance and discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, and all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shews [sic], plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments ..."
Needless to say, times have changed. And I suppose I have to say they've changed for the better. But that's a pretty low bar. I don't think acting is a dishonorable profession, and I'm steadfastly opposed to banning plays, musicals, movies and TV shows.
But in our collective effort to correct the social stigmas of the past, can anyone deny that we've overshot the mark?
Watch the TV series "Inside the Actors Studio" sometime. It's an almost religious spectacle of ecstatic obsequiousness and shameless sycophancy. Host James Lipton acts like some ancient Greek priest given an audience with Zeus, coming up just shy of washing the feet of actors with tears of orgiastic joy. I mean, I like Tom Hanks, too. But I'm not sure starring in "Turner & Hooch" (one of my favorite movies) bestows oracular moral authority.
Similarly, to watch the endless stream of award shows for Hollywood titans is to subject yourself to a narcissistic spectacle of collective self-worship. In 2006, George Clooney gave an (undeserved) Oscar acceptance speech in which he said, "We are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while, I think. It's probably a good thing." He went on to deliver a semi-fictional though no doubt sincere account of how actors are like a secular priesthood prodding America to do better.
The most recent Golden Globes ceremony has already been excoriated for being a veritable geyser of hypocritical effluvia, as the same crowd that not long ago bowed and scraped to serial harasser and accused rapist Harvey Weinstein, admitted child rapist Roman Polanski and that modern Caligula, Bill Clinton, congratulated itself for its own moral superiority.
The interesting question is: Why have movie stars and other celebrities become an aristocracy of secular demigods? It seems to me an objective fact that virtually any other group of professionals plucked at random from the Statistical Abstract of the United States -- nuclear engineers, plumbers, grocers, etc. -- are more likely to model decent moral behavior in their everyday lives. Indeed, it is a bizarre inconsistency in the cartoonishly liberal ideology of Hollywood that the only super-rich people in America reflexively assumed to be morally superior are people who pretend to be other people for a living.
I think part of the answer has to do with the receding of religion from public life. As a culture, we've elevated "authenticity" to a new form of moral authority. We look to our feelings for guidance. Actors, as a class, are feelings merchants. While they may indeed be "out of touch" with the rest of America from time to time, actors are adept at being in touch with their feelings. And for some unfathomably stupid reason, we now think that puts us beneath them.
It’s an idolatry problem. Some idols wear makeup.
That said, why can’t the theater also edify? Used differently? It’s a neutral medium; we get as much good or bad from it as we invest in it.
From golden calves to golden globes.
Not all acting is equally evil. Some classic ancient Greek playwrights tried to elevate their audiences.
It’s up to us whether we want to put food or trash on the tables we come to. Don’t blame vacuums for filling up from whatever is nearest to them.
I think the viewing public as well as the performers themselves live in a fantasy world wherein the actors have created an exalted view of themselves. And of course, the critics and public fawn over them,praising their profession as if it were the most important in the world.
And worse, the medium is so rarely used for better purposes.
Maybe the church should be (in this sense) “entertaining” more rather than less. For someone is going to be doing it. Why should Satan hog the limelight?
Jonah Goldberg is of interest to perhaps a few like-minded Trump-haters like Bill Kristol and George Will. Flake and Corker.
That cesspool is not a more guide!
I don’t own a TV and I’m not alone. Does he realize that the movie industry is crashing in terms of ticket sales and viewership of awards ceremonies isn’t that great either?
Same with ball players.
Real mean sell propane and propane accessories.
Meryl Streep is a moral authority. She tells us how wrong we are to support our President. And she calls Harvey Weinstein a god. And she jumps to her feet with joy and applauds Polanski, who drugged and raped a scared 13 year old child in three orifices. Because she is a moral authority and a feminist. And she can read lines and has a weird face and can make her voice sound different with lots of paid help.
Real men don't spend their mornings "in exile in Spain" (yeah right) posting dozens of articles to FR four minutes apart from each other, then patronizing the collective FR intelligentsia (who actually read articles not just headlines) with vapid two-sentence comments thereto. Just sayin'.
Harvey Weinstein supports stricter gun control. GEE, I wonder why? The poorly kept secret of the sex abuse and child molestation rampant in the sleazy world of show biz has finally come out.It’s perfectly clear why so many of the overpaid mannequins hire themselves out to throw their star power behind the gun grabbing organizations, doing those smarmy photo ops looking pretty in front of the step and repeat backdrops spewing their meaningless rhetoric about the racist NRA with blood on their hands and nobody needs to own firearms and blah blah blah
https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s
-PJ
Jonah, maybe you follow Hollyweird but I don’t. In fact there are a lot of actors that I have been boycotting for over 10 years and my list grows yearly. First on my list was Sean Penn, from there list has grown
I’m thrilled to see so many self-appointed “moral guides” fall from their pedestals for their perversions.
Nobody should seek moral guidance from people who take their clothes off for money...
It’s a great book. I’m still trying to square how a guy who could write a book like that could have such horrible instincts when it comes to Trump.
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