Fakers and celebrities

Curt Mudgeon

October 2008

We were rather relieved to know last week that Ms Jolie—or is it Mrs Pitt?—would be pleased with the election of Mr Obama because it would be “nice to her family.”  I keep wondering why any newspaper scribe would deem Ms Jolie’s opinion of the presidential candidates so important, and why a host of idiots are so interested in tabloid rubbish.  Besides appearing in movies, what makes Ms Jolie so fascinating?   Well, it may be her baggage of mind-altering drugs, ambiguous sexuality, strange looks, affairs imitating soap operas, and the “deranged” epithet awarded to her by her father.  On the positive side, there are high-visibility charity contributions, but this is not the stuff in which tabloid scribes are interested.  I do not hold any special grudge against Ms Jolie.   All I know about her is from an NNDB blurb that I consulted after reading the news item of her presidential preference.  I do not think I ever saw one of her movies, since I stopped patronising cinemas quite some time ago, being averse to the deafening “surround” sound, dumb screenplays, boring special effects, and chaotic editing.  Ms Jolie seems to be another Hollywood hyped, idolised, shallow personality who makes the news because she is eccentric and overpaid.  I often wonder when the press started bestowing on movie people so much political gravitas as to solicit their opinions on how and by whom our country should be run.  Maybe it is not just the press:  you may remember that in 1985 the Democrats staged Congressional hearings on the Reagan administration’s farm policies, where Jessica Lange, Jane Fonda, and Sissy Spacek presented expert testimonies—the Republicans had the good sense of not attending.  In 1989, Meryl Streep testified before Congress that Alar was one of the most carcinogenic chemicals around.  This was a false accusation that cost a lot of money to apple growers, makers of apple juice and apple sauce, and the American public.  Apparently, any Hollywood dunce who can put together two simple sentences and recite them with enough pomposity is an instant political expert whose opinions are of import to the unwashed, including congressional Democrats. 

What is the job of a movie actor anyway?  It is best described by one simple word: “lying.”  A good actor is someone who is trained to make you believe that he is someone else.  That does not require any extraordinary intelligence.   In essence, an actor is a confidence man who is carefully cued, take by take, on how he should behave.  To achieve better persuasion, the technique of the job has evolved from the old-fashioned pretending to the modern being, which characterises “method acting.”  Method acting, which is purported to be the acme of the craft, consists of routinely finding deep within oneself emotions once truly felt that can match the demands of a rôle.  That is no healthy way to live, and, as a result, the emotional balance of a method actor can become so fragile that he may just fall apart in utterly normal circumstances: do you remember Donald Sutherland suddenly crying and losing control when asked his opinion of President Bush in a BBC interview?   This is why many actors spend tons of money on shrinks because they end up so emotionally screwed up that they do not even know who they normally should be and how they should behave.   That may be also why so many of them turn to drugs, because going to shrinks does not do them any good.  Of course, not all actors are method actors, and most of those who are not seem OK.

Few actors have a real knowledge of what life is for regular folks.  They may have waited tables for a couple of years, but once they break into the business, it is all fat city.  One does not have to be especially smart or talented:  it is enough to be in the business.  Having parents or friends already in the business helps.  In a few weeks of “work,” a mediocre actor can make more money than, say, a good scientist in a year.  After a few movies, he could be set for life.  That is the nature of the business.  As one actor put it in an interview (was it Harrison Ford?), acting “sure beats working.”  Making that much money so easily has different effects on show-business people.  Some just live well, protect their privacy, and pursue worthwhile hobbies or pet projects.  Others think that there is something illegitimate or morally wrong about their wealth because they do not think that they really deserve it.  To feel better, they espouse leftist political causes, want the government to confiscate other people’s money to create more welfare programs, campaign for Democrats at election time, and like to make political statements about social justice. Yet others think that they really deserve to live like kings or queens, because they are kings or queens in their own minds.  This is why they feel that their political opinions are really important.  And then, amidst the tinsel kings and queens are those who believe they are born geniuses even though they are unable to put together an intelligent sentence with proper spelling and grammar—Ms Streisand, brainless hag and gimmicky singer, is one of them.  They deem it their duty to enlighten the rest of the world now and then with their recommendations for saving the planet or on some other heavy subject. 

Paradoxically, almost all actors who think of themselves as political oracles do not go into politics, because working only a few months a year and being overpaid for it is not something easy to forsake, and many of them would be unable to do anything other than acting.  Not being too smart, they also would be afraid of making complete fools of themselves in public debates.  Only the brainier ones who think they have something to contribute to the country do it, and there have been surprisingly few of them.  George Murphy served one term in the US Senate in the 1960s after a distinguished career as a stage and movie actor and dancer, a stint as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and various executive positions in production companies.  Ronald Reagan, a friend of George Murphy’s, understood economics and had a deep appreciation of the American exception.  A thinker with executive talent, Reagan proved to be an effective president of the Screen Actors guild, a successful governor of California, and a leader who spectacularly pulled America out of the doldrums of the inane Carter presidency.  Fred Thompson served eight good years in the US Senate, after working as a lawyer, a movie and television actor, and a lobbyist.   Arnold Schwarzenegger, a fairly clever businessman, has been a failure as governor of California probably because he does not have a leader’s indispensable characteristic, that is, a firm set of core values.  So, in the end, the list of show people who made a successful move into politics is indeed remarkably short.

Show-business celebrities being what they are, why so much adulation? The answer is in the contemporary idea of celebrity.   A few centuries ago, actors and other performers enjoyed no celebrity status.  They were at the bottom of the social scale.  Most of them were members of itinerant troupes.  They were suspected of loose morals, unhealthy ways, including homosexuality, and could not be given a Christian burial.  Only those patronised by kings and nobility had a better station.  Celebrities then were well-born people or people of what was then considered visible achievement:  nobility, writers, businessmen, builders, explorers, and statesmen.   That kind of celebrity was confined to a relatively small social sphere.  Because of opportunities in popular entertainment created by the growth of a middle class, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw substantial progress in the popularity and status of show people, which paved the way for the cinema.  As that form of entertainment could reach an enormous public, earnings and status enjoyed a commensurate boost.  Cinema and television have been able to create a special affinity between actors and a large public, an affinity made almost intimate by the wide availability of movies and shows.  Such conditions have had a strange effect on some people by blurring the line between reality and fiction.  It is not unusual for an actor to be seen as the character he plays in movies, regardless of his true circumstances—although John Wayne did everything he could to stay safely out of World War II for career reasons, he was venerated by a certain public as a great American patriot.  All this is the stuff of celebrity, an emotional interest in actors or performers on the part of a certain public, which goes beyond the appreciation of the craft and overflows into the personal.  In spite of a drop in the circulation of tabloids due to the development of the Internet and the mainstream press giving more space to scandals and gossips around the “beautiful people,” the National Enquirer’s is still at 2.7 million.

It would indeed be a perfect world where politicians would stick to government  and movie people to movies.  This is pretty much the way it used to be.  In the old days of the studios, the policy was for anyone in the industry not to offend people.  Nowadays, getting attention by offending a lot of people seems to be the rule, rather than the exception.  That is because a large fraction of the public does not give a hoot about civility or decency, and has come to confuse creativity with crassness.  It will keep getting worse until the movie industry collapses.  Should that be any concern of mine?  Certainly not.  The TCM channel and Netflix have enough good stuff for me to watch until the end of my days.