Contempt Prior to Investigation

Several years ago I read a commentary about the film The Aristocrats by Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post.  Most actors and performers are aware that at the very least, people who don’t do what we do have an unrealistic impression of our lifestyles, our outlooks and our goals.

This was put into sharp focus when I read Mr. Hunter’s comments.

“This is actually a confession of their own failures to inhabit real life, and makes them all losers. What you see here isn’t so much sexual neurosis as career neurosis. You see the entertainer’s fear and loathing of that regular place most of us would call the world. He hates the square ideas that are the foundation of such a place: the family structure of parents nurturing kids in healthy, loving relationships: the economic underpinning known as a job, attended regularly, rain or shine, sickness or health, out of a sense of obligation.” He also makes comments about The Aristocrats’ tone being one of “smugness and hipper than thou.”

He concludes by saying the comic, if he succeeds, is consigned to a purgatory of his own making where he has ‘the right to fail with a better class of woman and of course, the emptiness of being unconnected to anything larger than the self”.

I was reminded of this mentality when reading Jon Robin Bates’ wonderful essay about the writer’s strike.  “The studios probably have already noted the less than sympathetic reaction from viewers. The studio folk are enjoying the spectacle of watching the writers dance around to sell the idea of unfair wages to an unimpressed populace.”

What all of this unmasks for me is the abject hatred of people in show business. To imply that actors or comics or writers aren’t subjected to the same rules of ethical and responsible behavior when it comes to “a job, attended regularly, rain or shine, sickness or health” is simple minded and naive. That they don’t take seriously the imperative of the family structure and parenting?  Why? Because they’re in a job, that from outward appearances looks fun?

This attitude epitomizes the mentality of tabloids.  The desire to tear down the lives and character of the famous, or creative whose crime is that they love their work.

There is a joy and camaraderie among performers and writers that surely exists in any other profession where people love their work. The down side he describes of “bitter rivalries, endless feuds, treachery and betrayal” is obviously not solely the domain of show business. Mr. Hunter makes many slight of hand efforts to manipulate the reader into believing that performers hate their audiences by suggesting that they audience has the power to reject and destroy. No shit.  So does every customer in every field.

The schism between the perceptions of what the journeyman actor, writer, director truly face on a daily basis is vast.  The twelve-hour day, a minimum for actors.  Countless rewrites for no pay.  Directors….well, they never sleep.  It’s also sickening to imagine how little the writers are asking for in all of this and the cynical obstruction of the studios.

Mr. Hunter’s review articulates a prejudice about our industry that is pervasive in our country.  Look up the definition of prejudice.