Sooner or later, Hollywood offends us all
Ombudsman
By Paul McMasters
First Amendment Ombudsman
First Amendment Center
11.09.98
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| New Yorkers for a Just Middle East Peace protest against the movie 'The Siege' outside the United Artists Criterion theater in New York's Times Square. |
Ed Zwick, director of "The Siege," was distraught. "What is ironic, of course, is that the film is about stereotyping, and the inherent dangers in categorizing a culture as diverse as that of the Arabs," he said.
Yet it wasn't the surface message but the subliminal message that caused the protests, countered Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "The characters say one thing but the cinematic language conveys an entirely different message in its imagery, its music, the camera angles. And in the movie theater the language of the cinema trumps everything else."
Outside the movie theater or network studio, however, the language of protest trumps a lot, too.
Last week, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights extracted a promise from Fox executives that they would take greater care to avoid what the league said was a "clear and intentional pattern of Catholic bashing" on the popular "Ally McBeal" television series.
Also last week, the Magic Johnson theater chain refused to book the new movie, "Belly," an urban drama about two violent criminals (played by rappers Nas and DMX). "The content and marketing of 'Belly' has raised concerns about the film's overwhelmingly negative and violent depictions of African-Americans, as well as its potential to create disruptive situations for our theaters' patrons and employees," theater officials said in a statement.
Last month, United Paramount Network pulled the pilot episode of "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" after African-American groups protested that setting a comedy in the slavery era was insensitive. Despite that concession, the Brotherhood Crusade and the Beverly Hills-Hollywood chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People continued to call for the whole show to be pulled. The series was canceled after only a few shows.
Even TV news executives are being told to think twice. Two weeks ago, the Anti-Defamation League placed ads in both The New York Times and The Washington Post criticizing NBC's "Meet the Press" for Tim Russert's third interview with Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. "Is there no moral responsibility at NBC News any more?" asked ADL official Abraham Foxman in the ad.
That's just a sampling. The list is long of movies, television shows and theater productions that have come in for harsh criticism from an equally long list of groups organized to look out for the interests of specific communities.
As for the creators and producers of entertainment, it's difficult to know what may draw praise or protest. What is an outrage to a group one day may be a "teachable moment" the next.
It's also difficult to say what, if any, impact these attacks have on entertainment.
Movie, network and cable executives take careful note of such things in programming decisions, obviously. Three years ago, a Fox TV show, "Party of Five," produced a script that called for Julia (played by Neve Campbell) to have an abortion after her first sexual encounter resulted in pregnancy. Fearing attacks from anti-abortion groups, Fox executives ordered the script changed so that Julia had a miscarriage instead.
Fear of pressure groups delayed the release and distribution in the United States of Adrian Lyne's movie version of "Lolita," based on Vladimir Nabokov's novel, even though it was in many ways less explicit or suggestive than the first movie based on the book.
It may well be that the constant barrage of protests from so many different sectors of society is leading Hollywood to homogenize or temporize in order to avoid giving offense, providing programming that is often anemic and ineffectual instead.
There is a real danger that those producing our entertainment will decide there is a bottom-line advantage to offending as few sensibilities as possible. Then everyone loses, even those who might be offended, because the art which is supposed to mirror life may become life itself. Who would want to escape to that?
In his new book, Life The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, Neal Gabler writes that entertainment "is arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time — a force so overwhelming that it has metastasized into life." Gabler characterizes the 20th Century's most significant cultural transformation thus: "that life itself was gradually becoming a medium all its own, like television, radio, print and film, and that all of us were becoming at once performance artists in an audience for a grand, ongoing show. ... In short, life was becoming a movie."
And we're all being typecast. Because each opening night comes with a scripted protest with all of us playing our roles as part of the play outside the play.
Certainly, pressure groups have every right under the First Amendment and a duty to their constituents to make their views known. But there are some things they should keep in mind:
Too much pressure too frequently can lead producers of movie and television entertainment to produce nothing but pablum or to make their shows even more lurid to get the publicity that gets the ratings.
The First Amendment that protects the right to speak up is the same one that protects the right to offend someone sometime.
We all have an investment in art and entertainment that presents a different view of our reality, that challenges old notions and affirms others, and that, yes, presents an opportunity to make a point for those offended.
Finally, don't be too quick to buy into the idea that we are all spineless and mindless lumps of nothing waiting to be molded by whatever images and ideas wink at us from a luminous screen — that we sit huddled in darkened theaters and living rooms helpless to resist whatever stereotype we see.
That is the worst stereotyping of all.
Paul McMasters may be e-mailed at pmcmasters@freedomforum.org