Braveheart Burn

I recently picked up a copy of the Mel Gibson film Conspiracy Theory. Oddly enough, his character doesn’t mention any Jewish conspiracies at all. It’s a shame he couldn’t be more like the borderline lunatic he played in the movie. But why did I buy any film of his at all? Aren’t we all supposed to now be anti-Mel? If I buy his films am I not supporting his anti-Semitic attitudes? (Oh, and in a neat sleight of mind, we mostly ignore his D.U.I., possibly because so many people have been in the same position - never mind that being a bigot and a drunk driver are two hobbies that equally reflect disregard for human life.)

I bought the film because I like it. I’m selfish that way. But I’ll admit I’m less excited about Mel these days. And his indiscretions have forced me to examine my movie star preferences, and I’ve had to face a fact I don’t advertise too much – many of my favorite male movie stars are fairly conservative politically. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner – Republicans all. But the films! The Terminator, Blade Runner, The Man Who Would Be King, Pulp Fiction, Bull Durham – I’d be much poorer in spirit without these films, among many others. But does my fondness for these actors mean that I’m actually much more conservative than I see myself as? (Certainly their action films are about the one man who stands against the many – hell, I live that conflict at least five times before breakfast, so of course I identify with it, even though as a left-leaning person I’m supposed to be all about the collective.)

I can still draw on favorite actors who are noticeably liberal (Robert Redford, George Clooney, Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Nick Nolte… oops, there’s that D.U.I. demon again). So I must be okay, right?

It’s not new territory for those in the arts. For example, many poets had to wrestle with Ezra Pound’s mind-boggling decision to do radio broadcasts in support of Mussolini during World War II. Add to this his unsettling tendency to slander Jews and your impression of The Cantos is bound to be affected. I find it hard to read Pound as a result. (Okay, I find The Cantos hard to understand period, much less read.) On the other hand, my impression of e.e. cummings’ poetry is the same as it was before I found out about his anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, on the music front, I fully support The Dixie Chicks in their politics, but I’ll probably never buy one of their albums because they’re still just too country for me. Political affinity alone can’t make me like someone’s art. And then there’s Frank Sinatra – a man whose thuggish soul just grunts out in his songs. Why don’t more people hear it like I do? I can never appreciate his singing because the life of the man walks all over the songs as if they were cigarette butts or ex-wives. (Ooops! I just thought of that Frank Sinatra hat scene in Mel’s What Women Want. Things are really not looking good for our boy.)

In his book What Good Are the Arts? (just recently in paperback), John Carey talks about how defenders of the arts want to believe that lives are improved by a person’s proximity to art. Carey goes on to show that not only are noted appreciators of art (Hitler) not changed for the better, but artists themselves – those people up to their necks in the stuff – are not consistently better people than those who stay away from the arts. This point should be obvious to anyone who has ever known an artist. Or who has even stood near an artist.

And the artists whose work we like despite their huge personal flaws are no different than the friends we like despite their continuing refusal to be more like us.

Those of us who work in the arts harbour dreams of making it big, but we don’t realize what that might mean to our ‘legacy.’ Decades from now, readers of my poetry will shudder at the thought of all the dead animal flesh I consumed (just in one evening) and at the number of critics I buried in my backyard because they just couldn’t leave my private life out of their reviews. All I can say is that, at the time, these things seemed more acceptable. Blame it on current socio-cultural paradigms, is what I would tell them. I am/was a man of my times. And God help a future where writers can’t arbitrarily kill their critics. I wouldn’t want to live there. Just as I’m sure many people dread a future where drinking and driving was no longer culturally acceptable. “That bastard Mel,” we intone, even though we’ve had bigoted thoughts and driven drunk at least five times before breakfast. All of us have a sudden ego crash waiting for us out there, never mind if you’re signaling left or right.