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From April 26, 2000 |
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This Column is Rated ISR ("INDIGNANT & SELF-RIGHTEOUS") Gerald Nachman |
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Why are so many top stars keeping quiet about film violence?
By
GERALD NACHMAN
of TheColumnists.com
ONE OF THE FEW topics
that even the most liberal and usually vociferous Hollywood actors
are suspiciously silent on right now is the hot issue of violence
in films and television. Most of them are hot for gun control,
just not in their Paramount, Universal or Warner Bros. backyard.
The same stars who are only too happy to sound off on other topics
that don't affect them--say, abortion and school prayer--are
rarely, if ever, heard speaking out on blood and gore in movies.
I have no idea what their politics may be, but it's odd that
we never hear from stars like Samuel L. Jackson, Lorraine Bracco,
Joe Pesci, Michael Keaton, Quentin Tarentino, Jennifer Jason
Leigh, Bruce Willis, et al., on how they justify movies and TV
series in which the characters they play are casually involved
in torture, mutilation and murder--all in a day's work and all,
of course, in the name of art.
Interestingly, while movie
and TV stars may readily be heard on talk shows discussing gun
control in the abstract, they never publicly take a stand on
moviemakers who grind out pulp screen fiction with little thought
about its damaging effect on not just kids but on society generally.
They are as silent on criticism of their fellow producers and
directors (i.e., their bosses) as Jack Valenti, the movies' hired
PR gun, who, on the matter of gun control in movies, is well
to the right of Charlton Heston.
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My hunch is that there's an unspoken blacklist against actors who take on the industry party line, which maintains that Violence Is All Part of Life, Violence Reflects Society, and You Can Find Violence in Shakespeare and the Bible. Those are the three favorite mantras of producers and directors and studio heads who defend Hollywood's right to make grotesque movie upon movie, each one ratcheting up the level of screen horror to new hideousness.
Actors tend to hang back whenever the issue comes up, as it rarely does in interviews, in which reporters either don't ever think (or are too polite) to bring it up. It might be considered poor form for interviewers to ask actors who regularly turn up in gangster films if it ever bothers them, just a tad, to take part in the desensitizing of the country. There may be one or two stars who have dared to blast the level of movie violence, but if so I couldn't name them.
IF PEOPLE like Warren Beatty, proud holder of an Irving Thalberg Award for--well, whatever vague good deeds the award is given for--would actually take a stand against movie and TV violence, it might actually help tone it down a little. Even more unlikely, if actors with clout, like Jack Nicholson or Sharon Stone, refused loudly and publicly to star in, or even to go see, violent films, it could make a helpful point.
I suspect the stars are afraid to do it, because--while they would have plenty of public support from audiences on both the right and the left--they don't want to alienate the Hollywood establishment that largely lives off violent movies. And in the case of most stars below the untouchable level of a Nicholson or a Streisand, it could put their careers in jeopardy.
Even some of Hollywood's few moral leaders, such as Meryl Streep, who was so vocal on pesticides, is surprisingly mute on this much more touchy issue; where's Karen Silkwood when you need her? It's easy to be against toxic sprays in Hollywood, but the sort of toxic violence that is so casually sprayed over every "action" or "adventure" film being made doesn't seem to get much talked about in Hollywood.
Tim Robbins and close friend Susan Sarandon, so vocal on so many major issues of the day, have likewise decided to stay mum on this matter. World trade and NAFTA somehow engage their activism, maybe because it can only harm their careers in Budapest and Mexico City.
The list of concerned Hollywood citizens is long and varied, but nobody that I'm aware of (tell me if I'm wrong) has stood up against movie and TV violence. Other issues are much more, let us say, cinematically correct. Leonardo DiCaprio, the Valley Girl's Valentino and ABC's up-and-coming Ted Koppel, is ever-so urgently concerned for the environment (talk about your cold-button issues).
The controversial Sting (Mr. Sting? Sir Sting?) has come out in favor of the rain forest (every movie, TV and rock star's favorite no-brainer cause). Kevin Costner was so stirred up about global warming and greenhouse gasses that he made a gaseous movie about it, "Waterworld." And Ted Danson founded something called the American Oceans Campaign (it appears he's extremely pro-ocean) and hosted a TV documentary called "Danger at the Beach" when it looked like his waterfront property at Martha's Vineyard was endangered. Woody Allen, who rarely raises his voice for a cause, made a three-minute documentary against a proposed new high rise that threatened to block his view of his beloved Manhattan.
Even card-carrying liberal Paul Newman, whose good works sell salad dressing, tomato sauce and cookies, has yet to be heard from on screen violence. Perhaps he feels that it might betray his profession to take on the producers and directors and actors who sign away their civic/ethical responsibility when they sign to make another movie steeped in gratuitous violence, as 90 percent of it is.
Actually, Newman and most of the others above wouldn't really make a big difference anyway now, because they're of another generation. What it really requires is younger actors to take a stance against movies that have given studios today their deservedly sleazy reputations, but it's hard to imagine Drew Barrymore or Keanu Reeves speaking out on anything except their next movie.
A FEW YEARS ago, Hollywood was quick to jump on the no-smoking and safe-sex bandwagon by inserting spoken and unspoken messages into sex and smoking scenes (often the same scene), considered as fashionable then as wearing an AIDS ribbon on every public occasion, so folks would know they definitely were not pro-AIDS.
It's a lot tougher, and gutsier, to cut out entire violent scenes because, the studios correctly reason, this is what sells most movies, and indeed often gets them made in the first place; violence is bankable, exploitable and exportable. One more condom or one less cigarette won't make any difference to a film's success, but remove all the blood and beheadings and--well, there goes your gruesome trailer and your opening weekend box office.
© 2000 by Gerald Nachman.
You can comment on this column or contact Gerald Nachman with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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