Corporations are Persons

A few nights ago, after an arduous day of preparing my application materials for The Next Food Network Star (I'm serious), I decided to watch the Video Music Awards for the first time in about three years. The first time I've watched it live in I don't know how long. It seemed like a good lineup of performers this year (Beyonce and Jay-Z at the least), and I figured if it was too boring or too mind-numbingly stupid I could easily switch stations or turn off the TV. But Good Lord, what a show to see live. I was able to see Kanye West’s insane freakout in all of its unedited, unadulterated glory, complete with jerky camera work and the sudden slam to a ten-minute long commercial break. I wonder sometimes why so many of the huge cultural moments of generations past still reverberate today, while our generation’s are mostly composed of celebrities making idiots out of themselves. But that’s neither here nor there. It’s also funny that I saw this, though, because two days before I actually got into a debate about Mel Gibson, a filmmaker whose artistic merit often gets ignored due to the mounting evidence that he is a spy for the Neo-Nazi's.

In addition, just over the weekend I was linked to an article about Megan Fox’s on-set antics during the Transformers movies (written by three anonymous crew members). Whatever you might think of Megan Fox, this is pretty scathing stuff: http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/transformers-crew-talk-back-to-megan-fox/

I’m not really going to address that article any further, as it’s pretty self explanatory, and I don’t consider Megan Fox nearly enough of an artist to relate her to my query. Which is: should the way celebrities/artists act in real life be of any consequence when it comes to how we appreciate their work?

I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, and it’s a surprisingly complex question. Let’s start with our two knights in armor, Kanye West and Mel Gibson. Despite their myriad of differences, these two men have a great deal in common. They are both widely respected, extremely influential statesmen in their respective fields. They have each garnered both prestigious awards and enormous mainstream popularity, the holy grail of the entertainment industry. There has also been fairly conclusive evidence that both of these men are, in a matter of speaking, raging assholes. Now, if you’re one to indgule in all that trendy Hollywood gossip, you would have reason to believe that everyone in that city who stands in front of a camera (and a good many who stand behind) are similarly dickish. But with these two, I think we’re dealing with the genuine article.

Kanye is a dipshit. That's always been known. South Park even did an episode about it (if you look at a list of their episode topics, it's a fairly comprehensive catalogue of eveything that has pervaded popular culture in the last ten years). His actions at the VMA's hit a new low, to my mind. That being said, I’ll still listen to whatever new music Kanye comes out with. I’m a big fan of the new Jay-Z album, and Kanye produced more than half the tracks on it and guests on two of my favorites. In some ways Kanye's insane antics actually make me want to listen to his music more. That night, after watching him storm the stage and stomp the shit out of a traumatized little girl, I immediately wanted to listen to some of his music, wanted to hear his voice in my ears and think more in depth about this truly bizarre man. Which, of course, is exactly what he wants. I'm playing right into his hand, who am I to judge him? Still, we’re dealing here with hip hop, a form in which the particular artist’s public persona is inextricably linked with their artistic content. I will say, with this particular stunt, Kanye has cemented himself in the wild, unpredictible “Kramer” role of hip hop’s royalty, with Jay-Z and Beyonce as Jerry and Elaine, and P.Diddy rounding things off as George (when I stated this thesis, Chris replied that there are lots of fat rappers that would make a better George. I concur, but I was trying my best to stick with Jerry/Jay-Z’s actual social circle).

Kanye’s bizarre personality has always been such an integral part of his success (his incredible producing talent and decently above-average rap skills composing the rest), and he has, in turn, reached such insane platitudes of success, that I feel like at this point he can do anything. Short of actually killing someone, the crazier Kanye acts, the more people will want to watch him. In fact, his celebrity often mirrors all of those faux-celebs, like Paris Hilton or one of the strangely named Kardashian sisters; they all act worse and worse, and in turn watch their popularity rise. The only difference is, Kanye is also an extremely talented artist, and thus is far more impenetrable to public opinion than any of those flash-in-the-pan heiresses. Kanye became a celebrity because of his music. Those girls filmed themselves having sex, and they're desperately milking the attention until the next younger, hotter, richer woman films herself having sex in even more compromising, submissive positions.

Oddly enough, Kanye’s music itself is pretty damn unthreatening. He rhymes about blood diamonds in Africa and how much he loves his mother. Any attempts at real gangster "hardness" are always treated with a degree of irony. Makes you wonder, if he didn’t have such a crazy “real life” persona, would he even be as popular?

Movie stars, however, have rather different social obligations than bizarre, egomaniacal hip hop stars. I can think of several examples of massive celebrities who have had their careers legitimately hampered by the overriding belief that they are assholes/weirdos/nutcases/etc.

Mel Gibson is, I think it’s safe to say, a huge dick. Lots of really talented people are, lots of extremely powerful people are, and he happens to be both. But as with Kanye, if Mel makes a movie that I really like, then, frankly, I don’t give a shit. I remember when Apocalypto came out, Gibson’s big, gaping bomb after the twin phenomenons The Passion of The Christ and his drunken rant to a police officer on the PCH. Very few people saw Apocalypto, but I did, and I thought it was awesome. There was so much buzz about how the movie was unneccessarily violent, and that is insane. There is nothing thematically controversial about the movie; it was a pretty straightforward chase movie, except all the chases were on feet through the jungle. The whole thing was just one long, unbelievable action sequence, and I couldn’t believe how much negative press it was getting. It’s an action movie! That's it!

You see, the movie was released at a time when the public opinion of Mel Gibson was at such a resounding low, that people (mass media included) were just looking for a way to attack him. And, when confronted with this movie, the best they could come up with was that it’s “too violent.” Also that the dialogue is in Ancient Mayan, and that's, y'know, sort of weird. Are you kidding me? There was nothing, I mean nothing, in the movie that was remotely worse than what you’d see in oh, say, Braveheart? Or Gladiator? Both exceptionally violent action movies, both critical darlings and huge hits and eventual oscar winners.

No, I don’t like Mel Gibson as a person, I don’t like the things he says, but it’s not like he’s a massive corporation that’s actively exploiting or harming the Jewish people. He’s just one guy with a loud mouth and a big wallet. If we start to judge the entertainers of our time by their personal conduct, then who knows how much great art we could miss out on? T.S. Eliot, one of the greatest poets of all time (many would say the greatest, period, end of story), was an open Nazi sympathizer. John Cheever lived a double life, lying to and humiliating anyone who tried to get close to him. There are countless accounts of Hemingway being a drunken assbag. But who cares?? You read their writing, and you just don’t care, because it makes no difference now, and because quite probably these men needed all that darkness inside of them in order to create the beautiful work that they did. I'm not saying that Mel Gibson is on the same level as Hemingway, but he's made a lot of movies, some of them really good. And if he was a perfectly nice, normal guy with no anger festering inside of him, then who knows if we would have gotten the chance to see any of them?

But then there’s the issue of when a person’s toxic beliefs begins to show up in their art. And when this art becomes enormously, insanely popular, then the ol' pot really starts to boil. This was the case with The Passion of the Christ, which might be either be a brilliant, visceral, uncompromising recreation of Jesus’ final days or a thinly veiled creed against Jews masquerading as a pious drama. I personally never saw the movie, because no matter what it always sounded to me like a piece of high-class torture porn, so I won’t comment too in-depth. It just seems to me: he created something that spoke to a huge number of people in a really profound way. Nobody mentions that when they talk about that movie. Shouldn't that count for something?

Rather, let’s go back to the world of hip hop and look at another one of the most controversial rappers of all time, Eminem. Now, let me say off the bat, I love Eminem. He is without a doubt one of my favorite recording artists. I loved The Marhsall Mathers LP, his insanely successful, insanely controversial breakthrough album that won a bunch of grammys and provoked massive, organized protests. I love his most recent album, Relapse, which is deeply dark and demented and clearly the product of several years in a drug-addled seclusion (which did happen, and which is chronicled in wry, painful detail in several of that album's tracks). I love them all, because no matter what he’s rapping about, Eminem’s skills are mind-blowing. When it comes to intricate, complex rhymes and visual storytelling, he’s among the very top tier of the hip hop world. Yet, he is also one of the most technically impressive rappers, his flow is simultaneously precise and unpredictible, melodic and razor sharp.

That being said, Eminem does not rap about nice things. Remember when I said Kanye has a rap about how much he loves his mom? Eminem has several about his mother as well, yet they are more likely to be violent, murderous fantasies, often laced with bits of Freudian incest and a healthy dose of rape (another one of Em’s favorite topics). There are lots of ways to explain Eminem’s brutal subject matter: his own life, as he’s apt to let us know, has not been a picnic, those pesky mother issues compounded with gang violence, paranoia, and an extremely tumultuous relationship with his ex-wife Kim. Not only that, but if you look at Eminem’s discography from a critical perspective, you can see what he’s doing. Eminem’s personality, what he’s really like, is shrouded in mystery. Even after all these years in the spotlight, nobody really has any idea who Marshall Mathers is. And that's no accident: throughout all of his albums, the singular theme of Eminem's storytelling has always been a shifting, endlessly mutable conception of self. It’s no accident that he has three different names that he goes by in near-equal amounts: Slim Shady (the hyperviolent, sadistic Id), Marhsall Mathers (his birth name, and often the gentle Superego), with the two converging in his central alias, Eminem. In nearly every song he writes, Eminem is playing with this fragile concept of identity, freely intercutting his own life experience with crazed fantasy. What’s real? What’s imaginary? It’s always so hard to tell, and that’s half the fun.

In case you can’t tell, I think that Eminem can write about any damn thing he wants, in no small part because I think he’s a genius and it would be criminal to curtail his artistic output in any way. But, unfortunately, the issue isn’t that simple. The big problem that people had with The Marshall Mathers LP (and the impetus behind so much of the organized protest against him) is because the album was super popular amongst middle and high school kids. Suburban kids. White kids. I was in middle school when the album came out, and while I wasn’t into hip hop at all back then, I remember that a lot of people I knew loved Eminem. He reached audiences that most rappers don’t touch (in no small part due to the color of his skin), and as a result, his words can have repercussions that most don’t. A lot of Eminem’s audience (at least back then when he was at the height of his popularity) is very young, and not nearly sophisticated enough to see the layers of reality that he’s playing with in each song. They just hear Eminem, this really cool, really famous music star, talking about how he wants to rape women and kill faggots and, hey now, maybe that’s a good way to think!

Like I said, it’s a complex issue. And there are countless other examples like this. Someone who, in my mind, is a greater talent than Mel Gibson, and has had his career even more compromised by his personal hinjinks, is Mr. Tom Cruise (a.k.a. the biggest movie star in the world turned the biggest crazy hyperactive weirdo scientologist in the world, who also happens to act in and produce movies). This one really saddens me. I think Tom Cruise is a terrific actor. Anyone who doesn’t think so, I would instruct immediately to watch Magnolia (which is a fantastic movie in every respect, but also features an incredible performance by Cruise in a supporting role). But even beyond that, he’s at least good in every movie he does, and often he’s great (Jerry Maguire is my Dad’s favorite movie, and I agree it’s no slouch). Still, it’s at the point now that whenever you mention Tom Cruise in any conversation, someone immediately starts ranting about how crazy he is. About how they can’t respect him as an actor, they can't really see anything else about him, because gosh, he’s just so darned CRAZY.

This always gives me a headache. Here’s a twist: most actors are crazy. The good ones are really crazy. And Tom Cruise, from what I’ve seen, isn’t even a bad guy. He doesn’t seem like a jerk. He’s just a kook. Who gives a shit? Why must his religious beliefs and the way he acts on talk shows be the first thing people talk about when they talk about Tom Cruise? Why is that his relegated place in the parthenon of pop culture? I don’t know. But I like Tom Cruise, and I hope he comes out with a big, successful, quality movie so people on all the Entertainment shows can rant and rave about his incredible comeback, when the only thing he’s really come back from is their misplaced scorn.

Jesus Christ this was a long entry. And rather dry too. Those of you who reads blogs to get juicy gossip into other people's lives are probably slitting your wrists right about now. I would actually love to know if anyone read this whole thing. Congratulations if you did. Maybe you should try reading a book now.