Mel Gibson (the dumbest man alive) and related issues

It’s a curious thing about prejudice that even well-intentioned responses thereto can implicitly reiterate the very terms of that which they seek to critique. It’s almost as if racism, sexism, and every other repugnant –ism on offer in our deeply troubled world have the magical ability to expose what lies just beneath the surface of the status quo of hypocritical tolerance, ie, slightly more subtle prejudice.

Without even gesturing toward Derridean deconstruction as I just did, we can understand this problem with reference to a particular language game we all engage in so frequently: the delightfully superficial and evasive maneuvering involved in political correctness. No matter how much we wiggle, no matter how much obfuscation we employ, however, there’s no way to tame this beast, it seems. As in Sartre’s perhaps well-meaning but highly problematic essay Anti-Semite and Jew (formerly, Sur la question juive), contemporary discussions of anti-semitism can unwittingly reinscribe anti-semitism in ways potentially more insidious than outright bigotry.

What inspired this rant, you ask? An article in the LA times by Patrick Goldstein about our favorite no-longer-brave-hearted but surely still passion-filled bigot, Mel Gibson. I read this seemingly innocuous article entitled “The Shame is that so few say ‘Shame’” (2 August 2006) without objection until Mr. Goldstein seemed to want to differentiate the way that Hollywood is run from the way other large business enterprises are run by reference, seemingly, to the religious backgrounds of its studio heads. The particularly troubling excerpts read as follows [brackets for editorializing]:

"Not to let Gibson off the hook, since he is the real bad guy here, but the silence of Hollywood Jews has been responsible for many of the most shameful chapters in industry history." [does this not sound a bit like Mr. Gibson’s comments of Friday last?]

"When Hitler was killing Jews in Europe during the Holocaust, Hollywood studio chiefs were largely mum, rarely giving money to Jewish refugees or — God forbid — making movies about the subject until long after all 6 million Jews were dead."

"Hollywood Jews have always been insecure about their religion, often with good reason, which is why for years Jewish actors changed their names to more WASPy monikers. Emmanuel Goldenberg became Edward G. Robinson. Muni Weisenfreund became Paul Muni. David Kaminsky became Danny Kaye."

"The timidity we see today from studio chiefs runs deep in Hollywood's DNA. You don't rock the boat. When a star puts his foot in a big, steaming pile of dung, you swallow your pride, graciously accept the apology — Mel has made two already — and quietly move on."

In Mr. Goldstein’s view, other industries have done a better job of regulating the bigotry of their employees:

"This is how Hollywood works. The only morality in this town that really means anything is the bottom line. When the president of Harvard said women made lousy scientists, his colleagues jumped all over him. When Atlanta Braves relief pitcher John Rocker made a series of nasty ethnic slurs about various minorities, he was roundly criticized and dumped from the team."

This seems to me to be a classic case of false analogy. The president of Harvard University isn’t the Mel Gibson of the academic world, and the effective criticisms of Larry Summers came from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at that university, not the heads of other universities. Academia writ large didn’t ban together to render Larry Summers unemployable. Instead Mr. Summers stepped down when it became clear that his continuing tenure was threatening the university in various ways, not the least of which being financially. In the case of John Rocker, he was not a pitching superstar whose prowess was catapulting the Braves to baseball’s equivalent of the Oscars, the World Series. In both of these cases, it seems to me, decisions as to censure or termination were made not on principle, but rather on the only type of reasoning at which we moderns seem to be particularly good: Weberian means-ends instrumental rationality.

A better baseball analogy would refer to what’s happened, or rather hasn’t happened, to Ozzie Guillen in the wake of his many epithets directed at the LGBT community. The White Sox wouldn’t want to fire or even suspend a World-Series-winning manager, now would they? As for academia, Larry Summers has recently been given a shiny new professorship at Harvard as consolation for his miserable existence. By this abysmal standard, surely Mel deserves at least a few more movie deals.

Point being, Hollywood isn’t sui generis in the religious orientation of its studio heads or in its mission statement. Big business isn’t big business without profit margins. As long as Mel brings in the accolades and the moviegoers with his passionate filmmaking, corporate Hollywood won’t shut its doors to his projects. The problem that Hollywood, and every other industry for that matter, faces in this regard is the problem of political economy. And I’m not trying to get too Marxian here, because indeed Marx’s Essay on the Jewish Question is one of the loci classici for anti-semitism in the history of Western philosophy. Perhaps I’m getting Weberian, then. In this fractured world of ours, don’t expect morality, in the conventional sense of the word, from the vocation of moneymaking. We have heard sincere and pointed criticism from many other sectors of Hollywood “society.” To expect it from studio heads or baseball franchise owners or universities when money’s on the line is like telling George W to forsake his buddies over at Halliburton because they’re unjustly reaping the benefits of war. W just isn’t that kind of animal.

As long as we look to corporate Hollywood for cultural stimulation, to Mel Gibson for our messiah, to big business execs for morality, and to corrupt presidents for guidance in a world gone mad we’re in deep, deep trouble. This certainly isn’t to say that we should just live and let live, that we should understand these individuals by referring to the immorality their positions require. It’s merely to say that we should engage in more incisive critique. Hollywood’s problems have indeed been brought into full relief by recent events, but these problems have nothing whatsoever to do with religion.

Mr. Goldstein surely did not have this critique in mind when he wrote his article, but the obtuseness of his language suggests that extra-Hollywood America represents a higher standard of morality to which Hollywood should aspire. I say that insofar as Hollywood is dictated by the same stricture that guides nearly every other aspect of our society, Hollywood is America. Unless corporate Hollywood is the only industry that seeks to make money above all else, it’s not just Hollywood that’s broken.

Why blog?

So I thought I would begin my first foray into the blog-o-sphere, if you will, by elucidating my rationale, or lack thereof, behind starting a blog, while also sharing my more general thoughts on the enterprise of blogging tout court. This last French phrase reveals something about the perspective I shall bring to bear on current events, movies, books, and such during my tenure as the “I that thinks” of the world wide web internet; ie, that of a self-loathing American taken with high-sounding, francophilic references, completely dissatisfied with the state of the world, and perhaps disgruntled even more so by my inability to do anything about said state (or so I tell myself). Let’s not get too self-reflexive or too left-liberal too quickly, however.

Why not first share how I arrived at this, my first entry? Well, to be perfectly honest, if I was not currently in the thick of the laziest summer I’ve experienced and/or perpetrated since at least the last World Cup, I am entirely certain that I would not be engaging in the tomfoolery, ballyhoo, skullduggery, or frivolous time-wasting involved in creating a piece of writing for a public forum that will undoubtedly be anything but public. My first question, then, is the why of blogging? What compels me or any other blogger of ill or no repute to engage with cyberspace in this terrifyingly impersonal manner? For me, there seems to be a latent arrogance suggesting to my better judgment that this entry and all of my entries will be both worth reading and widely read. I’m going to change the world with this drivel, line by painstakingly polished line:)

Better judgment responds with similar hyperbole: no one in their right mind would expend the energy necessary to do so little as click the mouse en route to your stream-of-consciousness meanderings, let along peruse (correct definition) what you’ve micturated therein. On the whole, then, my answer to the why of blogging refers to the why nots of other more productive activities. Why not write your papers? Because they’re terribly uninspiring. Why not do some dissertation research? Because my topic wasn’t the lightning bolt I thought it would be. Because the end product will share much with my blog in terms of undesirability for most readers. If only there were some sort of depository for all of the unread blogs of the world as there are university libraries that serve as crypts for unpublished dissertations. All one needs do to access those long-dead treatises on ‘Nose Blowing as Critique during the Crimean War’ or ‘The Defenestration of Prague: Divine Intervention or a Pile of Feces? Catholic and Protestant Perspectives’ is dare go where no other scholar has gone before, ie, level D of “The Reg” at UChicago. Sadly, I’m sure some over-eager and horribly maladjusted Chicago undergrad is reading about defenestration right now in some dark corner, perched on their chair like a gargoyle surveying the faux-gothic environs about them. While my blog allows for much easier access, it’s entirely likely that the few people who access it in future will also be somehow affiliated with that fine institution.

Perhaps my anxiety about blogging, then, merely serves as a microcosm for my anxiety about matters nearer and dearer to my heart. Perhaps if I can break through the barrier of my own psychosis and gloriously enter into the electronic ether I can appeal to those outside of rarified Hyde Park. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I can rifle out of this blog depository and strike at the heart of Americana. Either way, I now blog. Why, you ask? Pourquoi pas?