There have been liberal movies stars for as long as there have been movie stars. The list of left-of-center Golden Age-era giants is a mile long. My admiration for an actor has ZERO to do with personal politics, but as Skip Press pointed out in his terrific piece last week, class is a big factor. Many of the greats didn’t share my beliefs, but few ever went out of their way to hurl insults at me and mine, either. Undoubtedly, someone could Google up a statement that contradicts me, but I would argue in return that human beings slip, even big-screen immortals. What can’t be argued is that once upon a time movie stars walked the earth who defined themselves, not with elitist, flame-throwing political rhetoric, but with dignity and class.
Sinatra and Ava for Democrat Adlai Stevenson
Where classic Hollywood mostly held their activism to advocating for their causes, too many of today’s classless breed defines their activism through the hurling of invective at the other side – at 50% of the customers. They do it up on the screen and they do it while hiding behind a Hollywood media-machine owned and operated by sycophants who mostly agree. There’s nothing wrong with passion, humor, disagreement and debate, that’s what Big Hollywood is all about, but ad hominem that dehumanizes is the tactic of a new generation eager to fit in with the A-list.
Today we have “Transformers” star Megan Fox, joining a growing club — spouting this hateful nonsense:
“Transformers” bombshell-cum-uninhibited philosophizer also contemplates — reluctantly — what she would say to Megatron to keep him from destroying the world. “I’d barter with him,” she muses to the July, issue Total Film UK, “and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?”
Any consequence is predictable. Worse case, if it looks like her display of ignorance might become a distraction in the coming “Transformers” hype-machine, Fox will apologize/explain on some venue like the “Tonight Show.” But the bottom line is that there will be no consequence within a community that finds that kind of talk about “those kinds of people” all okey-dokey.
Just for giggles, compare Megan Fox trashing mainstream Middle America with, oh, say, this…
“Well, I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much.”
Now, “Transformers” is going to make a ton of money no matter what Megan Fox says, but the fallout from this kind of star-behavior has already done irreparable damage. Today, the definition of what used to define a true movie star is all but dead.
People used to go to the movies to see stars, but with the possible exception of Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Adam Sandler (arguably there are a few others), those days are over. Most stars can’t even guarantee an opening weekend anymore.
The great (and very liberal) Paul Newman
George Clooney couldn’t open a supermarket without the word “Oceans” in the title; the combined firepower of Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. did “The Soloist” little good; “Duplicity” might have made more money without Julia Roberts, and Harrison Ford’s a flop away from competing with Steven Seagal in the direct-to-video bin. Walk the aisles at Blockbuster and marvel at the familiar faces starring in films no distributor would invest a theatrical release on.
The days of “names” putting butts in seats are over. Today, the star of the movie is the concept. No concept, no profit. Doesn’t matter who’s in it.
Not every actor’s behaved as poorly as the usual suspects, not all of them deserved to lose their firepower, but there have been too many like Megan Fox spoiling it for the rest. And so the movie star has managed to accomplish the one thing capable of causing their own extinction: they’ve deconstructed themselves.
The myth and aura has vanished, and without that all we’re left with is mortals, and way too many unpleasant ones…
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