Soviet propagandists used technology to take the politically
inexpedient out of photos. Hollywood propagandists now demand that
the politically favored be put into them.
Clint Eastwood, not adopting the proper mindset of political
correctness, failed to picture blacks in his recent World War II
movies playing a prominent role at Iwo Jima, for which he has been
rebuked by fellow director Spike Lee.
“Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more
than four hours total, and there was not one Negro actor on the
screen,” Lee said to the press last month at a Cannes film festival
press conference. “In his version of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did
not exist.”
Eastwood then compounded his sin by assuming that historical
accuracy is an acceptable defense. “Has he ever studied history?
[African-American soldiers] didn’t raise the flag,” Eastwood said.
“If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, they’d
say, ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’”
Lee countered Eastwood’s alleged racism with a dollop of ageism.
“He sounds like an angry old man out there,” said the angry
middle-aged director.
MEANWHILE, ANOTHER insufficiently enlightened aging and angry
Hollywood star found herself in a French court for racial hate
speech. On Tuesday, Brigitte Bardot was convicted of a charge of
provoking discrimination, fined $23,325 and told to pay $1,555 in
damages to an anti-racism group.
She had written that the influx of Muslims was damaging French
culture and not even the left-wing origin of her criticism — as an
animal-rights activist, she dislikes the Muslim feast of Aid
el-Kebir which involves “slaughtering sheep,” reports Associated
Press — could spare her from punishment for incorrect thinking and
speaking.
Voltaire claimed he’d fight to the death for free speech. His
intellectual children fine people for it.
But there is one aging star in which Hollywood and French
society can take pride: Roman Polanski. With HBO’s documentary
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired this week, his
rehabilitation continues apace.
Hollywood finds it odd that people still hold his illegal sexual
congress with a13-year-old against him. It is not like he engaged
in hate speech.
The upshot of the documentary is that this honored figure in
France — he fled to Paris in 1977 — was hounded out of America by
an irresponsible press corps and judiciary. True, the judge in the
case, Laurence Rittenband, was baldly unprofessional, making Judge
Ito look almost circumspect.
But what’s most striking about the affair, even in this
documentary’s pro-Polanski telling, was the 1970s-style indulgence
of his conduct. For acts that today would land someone in jail for
over 40 years, he got a little more than
40 days, during which time he was in protective custody and
scribbling out notes for an upcoming movie.
In fact, Rittenband was prepared to give him a probation
sentence until Polanski showed him up in the press by partying
during a gap in the trial at an Oktoberfest event in Germany.
THE DOCUMENTARY HAS almost a whimsical quality to it, with dashes
of moral equivalence sprinkled throughout.
Los Angeles, for all its famous transience, seems changeless in
it: correspondents still on the air appear in the footage with
longer sideburns, playing the same silly roles in a celebrity
circus that would reassemble in the O.J. trial and innumerable
others. Even the detective made famous by the O.J. trial, Phil
Vannater, appears in the documentary, having served on the Polanski
case.
It falls to Vannater to note stolidly to the sympathetic
documentarians that Polanski did after all have sex with a
13-year-old (and was charged with five other serious offenses which
were dropped). Perhaps it helped Polanski that he looked like he
was 13 too.
The only real lesson gleaned from the documentary is that in
Hollywood talent and charisma are the most powerful forms of
protection and absolution, and that the only sins it treats as
unforgivable (the footage of stars jumping to their feet at the
Oscars to applaud Polanski in absentia when he won best director
for The Pianist contrasts nicely with their sullen sitting
during Elia Kazan’s award) are ideological ones.
