Comments on: Mel Gibson, Evil, and Art

By: Anthony

Anthony — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:16:10 +0000

So. Mel Gibson makes some statements which show that it’s fairly likely he supports an ideology which has genocidal implications. A major movie funder pulls funding for one of his projects, and there are calls for the industry to deny him further work, something which may be likely to occur, at least to some extent.
How is that unlike the Hollywood Blacklist?

By: Susan Abe

Susan Abe — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 02:39:59 +0000

fightforjustice:
Most people can distinguish between “unflattering things about Israel” and anti-Semitic comments. It’s not so much a double standard as sufficient perspective to see the difference.

By: mr.ed

mr.ed — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 19:00:28 +0000

The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

By: fightforjustice

fightforjustice — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:06:40 +0000

When Marlon Brando made anti-semetic comments late in his career, it didn’t elicit the same threats of boycotts that Gibson is getting. Michael Moore has said some very unflattering things about Israel, yet Moore has escaped ostracism by the Hollywood establishment. Why the double standard? Is it that Brando and Moore are ultra-liberals, while Gibson is conservative?

By: kathleen

kathleen — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 14:00:53 +0000

Is it typical for charges lodged in DUI arrests to not include the fact that the driver was also speeding? I believe it was something like 85 in a 45 zone if memory serves, which should also qualify as reckless, I would think. And, would other DUI drivers be given a pass on the resisting arrest part of it?
I find it very troublesome when “special” people are let off on lesser charges than regular citizens would be given, and the MG case would seem to illustrate this practice. I think this is of far greater import than his drunken rantings.
I don’t really care if he’s an anti-Semite since I already thought he was a jerk anyway. “Art”??? More like porn, at least in the case of “Passion of the Christ” – who but a jerk would focus so fanatically on someone’s untimely death at the hands of other jerks, but ignore the PASSION of Christ’s words and life? And really: why would anyone want to view several hours of bloody beatings/torture, regardless of the presumed plot? Something I will never understand.

By: Swift Loris

Swift Loris — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 04:27:01 +0000

0.12 BAC is what I’ve seen too (the limit being 0.08, so it isn’t that much over). On the other hand, the *behavior* seems pretty extreme for that level of intoxication; among other things, he tried to get back in his car and leave the scene after he was stopped and had to be restrained, cuffed, and thrown in the patrol car.
My own theory: He’s been trying to overcome the influence his anti-Semitic father had on him in his own life, but has never been able to bring himself to openly oppose his father’s views–presumably just one symptom of a deeply conflicted relationship. This drunken episode was his psyche’s way of bringing his problems with his father irrevocably out in the open where he wouldn’t be able to avoid dealing with them head-on.
I also suspect his “Passion of the Christ” had a similar subconscious motivation, to force himself to deal with the conflict, but he was able to fudge it, so the strategem didn’t work.

By: Michael O'Hare

Michael O'Hare — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 04:19:45 +0000

Thanks, John M. I misread or misremembered the BAC number. I corrected the post.

By: John M

John M — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 03:10:57 +0000

.28? Do you have a link on that? Every news account I have seen lists the BAC as .12 percent, which is too drunk do drive, but isn’t, in my uneducated estimate, “falling down drunk.” Obviously, that does make a difference. If he was .28, I could imagine that he was simply spouting nonsense. At .12, it seems more likely that he simply had lowered inhibitions.

By: phil

phil — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 20:41:50 +0000

CM: feel free to write your own essays on those topics if you feel they’re more important. It’s a free country (mostly).

By: Laertes

Laertes — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 19:57:38 +0000

CM: MG isn’t just some idiot yapping mostly to himself at a bar somewhere. So far this incident has already done some good in that a holocaust denier has apparently lost the opportunity to make a big-budget movie about the holocaust. That’s a win for the Forces Of Good by any standard. One can only speculate about how much respectability he’d have been able to give the deniers, but it’s a lot less now.
He’ll have a much harder time inciting pogroms when everyone can see the swastika on him arm. I shine a light on it every chance I get. In my circle, his anti-semitism came up once before, when I read about his holocaust denial on Dave Neiwert. Few of them were convinced by that, but with that as context, this closed the deal. Now they all see it nice and clear.

By: CM

CM — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 19:04:06 +0000

Who cares? I forget, but is MG a leader of a country? A senator? A representative? Why is his opinion held in such regard? Call me crazy, but I think that there are more important things to discuss than some ranting drunk actor and the slurry of insults he slung, like I don’t know maybe the war in Iraq, Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, global warming, children w/o health insurance, homelessness, the current administration, social programs, New Orleans reconstruction….Do I need to go on. Stop giving him more time than he deserves.

By: Nobody

Nobody — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:09:26 +0000

Locutor writes:
“So how is [Vanessa Redgrave] ‘obviously’ an anti-semite???”
Exactly.
To expand the question a bit, how do “Mengelberg, Krauss, and von Karajan” qualify for approbrium as “playing footsie” with Nazis when their choice was either to flee their country or stay? Either way they would likely have pursued their art. But because they stayed, they “played footsie”?
And what of a genuine certified USDA inspected prime anti-semite who actively left his country and sought out a country from which to propagate his own anti-semitic views? Ezra Pound made anti-semitic propaganda broadcasts from Italy throughout WWII. Yet he still ranks among the greatest poets of the 20th century.
This, even though after WWII he became focus of an artistic following specifically attracted by his anti-semitic views. I once heard Hugh Kenner observe that many of Pound’s visitors at St. Elizabeth’s were not so interested in poetics as “waiting for marching orders”.

By: Ken D.

Ken D. — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 15:36:23 +0000

Much the same battle is being fought in even more homely precinct of pop culture. The National Football League is seeking to ban a popular rock and roll riff oftened blared at games because its auteur is a convicted child molester; see this from Sports Law Blog: http://sports-law.blogspot.com/2006/06/gary-glitter-proof-law-and-morality-of.html

By: MARIAM RUSELL

MARIAM RUSELL — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:56:34 +0000

COULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHERE PROFESSOR CHOMSKY TAKES OFF INTO LOONEYLAND. I HAVE READ AND CHECKED HIS FACTS ON MANY OCCASIONS AND HAVE ALWAYS FOUND HIM TO BE ACCURATE…..AS HE SAYS, EVERY FACT HE USES IS PUBLIC RECORD….MAYBE NOT EASY TO FIND BUT PUBLIC RECORD NEVERTHELESS.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:39:06 +0000

A thoughtful and interesting essay. Thank you.

By: phil

phil — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:28:25 +0000

Why is Mel’s case different?
Maybe it’s because he’s a no-talent hack and his “art” is utter crap?

By: Locutor

Locutor — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:26:16 +0000

Where is Regrave’s “obvious anti-semitism”? I must have missed it.
I looked up her Oscar acceptance speech, and here’s what I found (it could be an inaccurate transcript):
“I think Jane Fonda and I have done the best work of our lives, and I think this was in part due to our director, Fred Zinnemann. I also think it is in part because we believed in what we were expressing: two out of millions who gave their lives and were prepared to sacrifice everything in the fight against fascist racist Nazi Germany.”
“You should be very proud that in the last few weeks you stood firm and you refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record against fascism and oppression. I salute that record and I salute all of you for having stood firm and dealt the final blow against that period when Nixon and McCarthy launched a worldwide witch hunt against those who tried to express in their lives and their work the truths that they believed in.” And with resolute she concluded: “I salute you and I thank you, and I pledge to you that I’ll continue to fight against antiSemitism and fascism.”
Sounds like she specifically and directly repudiates anti semitism.
So how is she “obviously” an anti-semite???

By: Pudentilla

Pudentilla — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 12:44:50 +0000

Interesting, but…you don’t seem to focus on the commercial aspect of MG’s career. If we are to treat him as an artist, we also have to acknowledge that he is a businessman and that his art is only made possible by his activity as a businessman. Thus, under your analysis, I must judge the art that MG makes on its own terms, but must the folks who underwrite his movies? Can’t the Hollywood types decide, “art, schmart… he’s bad for business?”

By: Hal

Hal — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 09:34:47 +0000

If you have some repugnant personal views and you’re also an artist or writer, it helps to sublimate the repugnant views, to play away from them.
As an example, I think George Orwell was a great essayist. If you look at his diaries, you’ll also see that he partook of the standard English anti-Semitism of his time. He has an entry about how Jews took up too much space on Underground platforms in London during the Blitz, when people were sleeping down there.
But in his published work, he steered clear of this sort of stuff, which is very important to do.
Mel Gibson chose to make The Passion and hopes to do a miniseries about the Holocaust. Yikes. He should be running in the opposite direction.

By: wcw

wcw — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 07:24:59 +0000

If you get too worked up about the artist, you lose out on all the brilliant works made over the centuries by assholes. Take James Brown, the human being — please. But leave us his music.

By: fishbane

fishbane — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:42:13 +0000

I tend to agree, even though it makes me uncomfortable.
Art _should_ be taken on merit, not on personality, in my view; as far as it goes, that that’s impossible is part of a critic’s job – exceptions are always made (compare the Blue Period with the bicycle construct, and tell me the latter would be as famous if not for the former).
That said, when a work seems to align with opinions the author has expressed in completely different contexts (unless getting busted was performance art), one can approach starting to look at the piece while taking the author’s views in to account.
For instance, I think this is much more on the “obvious” side than, say, Hesse.