Mel Gibson has a new movie coming out this week, “Apocalypto.” When the world last took notice of Gibson a few months ago, he was drunkenly accusing Jews of starting all the wars in the world. Gibson’s outrageous outburst allowed his critics from “The Passion of the Christ” days to take an annoying victory lap while the rest of us contented ourselves with wondering exactly how many beers it takes to turn a normal person into an anti-Semite.
Me, I didn’t go into “I’m mortified” overdrive because of Gibson’s outburst, and lord knows it wasn’t because I have particularly thick skin. It’s just that I worry a lot more about what people will do than what they feel in the privacy of their own hearts. Thus, the guy talking Jihad at the radical mosque down the road causes me a lot more concern than the guy harboring bigoted thoughts but who lacks a plan to put them into action. I know some people think that Gibson’s movie “The Passion” was a vehicle for him to express his anti-Semitism, but I didn’t see the movie that way when I saw it at the multiplex and still don’t. And again, I’m not exactly the hardest to offend Jew on the block.
With the debut of “Apocalypto,” Hollywood finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. Word is the movie is pretty smashing; while some critics and viewers will be turned off by the trademark Gibson violence that lards the flick, it’s nevertheless being widely hailed as an audacious creative triumph. Were it made by an auteur who hadn’t spewed an anti-Semitic monologue over the summer, it would be a surefire Oscar contender.
THIS IS WHERE THINGS GET RICH. According to this New York Times article, the Hollywood community will have to decide just how much weight they should give to Gibson’s off-screen antics when assessing his artistic output. Says the Hollywood power-player Ari Emmanuel, “People in the entertainment community, whether Jew or gentile, need to demonstrate that they understand how much is at stake in this by professionally shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him.”
The fact that Hollywood-types feel free to stand as the judge of other people’s character is a delightful irony. On the whole, the entertainment community has never been known for its rock-ribbed pious ways. I have a feeling that if we sampled our entertainers and their support network, few of them would have verbal outbursts ranking in their top ten of recent moral shortcomings. The fact that some members of the Academy deem it their right to judge an artist’s moral worth would be a dangerously slippery slope if the members of the Academy were at all serious about the endeavor.
Of course, they’re not and they never would be. In the Times story, Times’ reporter Sharon Waxman lumps Gibson in with Leni Riefenstahl as morally deficient filmmakers. The distinction between Riefenstahl, who used her considerable talent to significantly aid history’s most murderous regime, and Gibson, who used vile racist language but who has never harmed anyone, seems lost to Waxman. The moral obtuseness of this comparison, which I have little doubt that many of Gibson’s critics would find quite apt, is appalling.
Also interesting is that in cataloguing artists lacking the moral right stuff, Waxman didn’t mention my favorite moral leper of an artist, Woody Allen. Of course, Allen’s never had an anti-Semitic outburst which is perhaps the only hanging offense in the Hollywood values structure. He did, however, leave his wife for his wife’s then 20 year-old daughter. In some value systems, that would be worse than any imaginable verbal harangue. A couple of years after Allen’s personal depredations became public, the Academy larded his badly overrated “Bullets Over Broadway” with multiple Oscar nominations.
From Gwyneth Paltrow to the Dixie Chicks to every guest who appears alongside Bill Maher in his weekly idiot-fests, it’s apparent that our entertainers feel their insights regarding matters of import simply must be heard. With Hollywood types playing an increasingly prominent role in our political dialogue, it’s good to have a handle on the moral structure that the community brings to the table. It’s little surprise that “sensitivity” reigns supreme. It’s even less surprising that words speak louder than actions.
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