If you have a spare half hour, you might consider reading a long essay by Bill Whittle entitled CELEBRITY (on Eject! Eject! Eject!) about silly Hollywood stars mouthing off about politics and not being challenged by the media but just being allowed to say it and get clean away with it. Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the whore throughout history, as I seem to recall a pre-WW2 British Prime Minister once saying about the media themselves, of his time.
Example: Viggo Mortensen. He played a good guy in Lord of the Rings, but is now, it seems, batting for the bad guys, arguing for “peace”, that is to say for the rights of despots not to be knocked off their perches, and the duty of the victims of despots to just go on suffering indefinitely. Apparently Mortensen recently said that many more people died in Afghanistan as a result of the US bombing there than the (just under) 3,000 who died in 9/11 attack on New York, when the true Afghanistan number is generally reckoned now to be about 500. As Whittle says, this person should most emphatically be allowed to say such things, but only in a world where the Viggo Mortensens of it are used to being worshipped, regardless of what they say, do such things get said by them so loudly.
There are many interesting responses one might have to this long essay of Whittle’s, but one of the more interesting things about it for me is that it is indeed long, around twenty or so scrollings-down of my computer screen. But since Whittle was nailing down a whole cart-load of thoughts that many others were three-quarters of the way to nailing down for themselves, many people, including me, found it great reading, and just kept reading and reading until they finished it. When I started work on this posting there were already 68 comments, and now as I’m giving this its final polish there are 73, so I definitely am not the only one to have read this thing.
What I think this demonstrates is that blogging is not a particular way of writing; it is just a technology to enable writing. How you do the writing is up to you. Samizdata has half a dozen postings or so per day, of Samizdata type length. That’s us. Whittle has pieces of very variable length, from Samizdata-short to massive, every day or two, with absolutely none of those rat-tat-tat fusillades of very short postings that Instapundit specialises in. That’s him, and that’s Instapundit. Blogging doesn’t have to be done any particular way, except that, I would say, it helps a lot if you can find a way of doing it that suits you, and you then stick to it. Sustainability is all. But I guess if you’re good enough you can even break that rule. I seem to recall writing here about this before. Yes. Do I now contradict myself? Somewhat.
One final thought. Those 68 rising to 73 comments included some interesting speculations about the possibility that saying things which are way to the left of regular public opinion might actually harm an actor’s career by making the regular public stay away from his/her movies, with, in particular, Alec Baldwin’s recently faltering movie progress being put under the spotlight. So, I wonder what will now happen to Viggo Mortensen’s career. Will all those working stiffs on aircraft carriers whom Whittle writes about so vividly and respectfully, and their millions of land-locked ideological brethren, want to see Mortensen pretending to be someone like them (or like they’d like to be), when he has now so plainly declared that actually he isn’t one of them in any way except physiology (or physiological aspiration)? I genuinely don’t know, and will be genuinely interested to see.
It’s Alec Bladwin, Brian.
Viggo pisses me off not just because he’s a dumbass, but because now, when I see Aragorn, I see a dumbass, and that screws up my LOTR experience. Peter Jackson is not a leftist peacenik jerkwad (for evidence, see Meet The Feebles and notice the part where the walrus rips off the journalist fly’s wing and exclaims “I always knew there was a left-wing bias in the media”), nor does Elijah Wood seem to be. But Viggo has to come in and screw it up. Thanks, oh-so-peaceful artist dude!
Thanks. But it’s Alec Baldwin, Alfred.
I’ve corrected my “Eric” in the original, but couldn’t resist leaving your “correction” as is. Ah, the joy of bolging.
Yes, the whole business of the “reality” of an actor’s personality versus the kinds of people he portrays on the screen is an interesting one.
Several years back an actress called Judy Davis, a very progressive type of person who was usually in progressive type films, suddenly showed up as a terrorist bitch from hell in a deeply anti-left film called Who Dares Wins, and (I suspect) her progressive pals never forgave her and pretty much aborted her promising film career right there.
That was a case of an actor being too right wing in what she did in “reality” – i.e. she accepted a part in a definitely right wing film – to chime in with the expectations of her particular natural audience.
Viggo’s problem is not so much what he thinks and says off screen, as that there is this huge mis-match between that an his on-screen persona. Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, et al, go on doing fine, because what they say off screen doesn’t piss off their particular screen audience nearly enough to matter, although comments would be welcome on that too.
Damn. That was stupid of me. I even previewed.
Tim Robbins and Sarandon’s careers are pretty much “B-level” by now, so what they do isn’t that important anyway. I mean, who actually watched “The Banger Sisters”? And what has Tim done lately?
The VERY worst thing you can EVER say to an actor who ultimately DESIRES approval and acceptance from the audience, is that they were NOT BELIEVABLE. This sentiment is being expressed in spades all around, which is immensely gratifying. While I did not see the segment, and have only heard about it through online media and friends, I would be hesitant to even say that Jackson and Wood themselves are of a different opinion from Mortenson. They HAD to have known he was going to wear that shirt, they HAD to have known he was going to say those things. Their entire purpose for being on that show was to dispel the notion that LOTR had anything at all to do with current events.
Suffice it to say, like so many of us, I will never see the actor who plays Aragorn as anyone but a foul nasty illogical uneducated selfserving MORON.
All the dumb bunnies quoted in that article have no idea they’re being used by far left wing groups like ANSWER. ANSWER and the rest of the far left don’t care a fig about Saddam Hussein. They’re not for peace or trying to stop killing.
They want to destroy capitalism, western civilization and especially the United States. That’s it. They’ll exploit any situation to gain their ends. These actors are fools. They think they’re great thinkers and philosophers to take this brave stand.
I agree about Viggo. He’s adorable and great in the TLOR and I guess he will be the king in the next episode. I hope by then Saddam will be dust and the protestors will go back into their drug induced comas, so I can enjoy the last episode without being reminded of them.
Yeah, what erp said. drug-induced comas, lol. And your comments re ANSWER and such groups using stupid famous people are right on. The thing about actors is that it’s a way to achieve success and become rich and famous without requiring any particular intelligence or judgement. Image without substance. Therein lies the heart of the problem, and I think people with common sense are aware of that.
Man, I almost wish I could unread this article until after the LOTR trilogy is concluded.
The missus and I loved LOTR, seeing it on tape at home.
We were planning to pay to see The Two Towers at the local cinema. But, after Viggo’s outburst, we’ll just delete that plan.
Director Peter Jackson’s superb moviemaking doesn’t deserve a boycott of his films caused by intemperate statements made by his actors filled with their insight on world matters.
Viggo, memorize your lines , and don’t bump into the furniture!
Could you please tell me if Arnold Schwarzenager is a Republican? (I’m sorry that I don’t have any comments for your above listed articles.) Thank you!
Could you please tell me if Arnold Schwarzenager is a Republican? (I’m sorry that I don’t have any comments for your above listed articles.) Thank you!
Has Arnold is a Republican
Yes Arnold is a Republican