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Actors vs. Trump

Actors vs. Trump

Last updated on: January 11, 2017 at 5:43 am by Gene Veith

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Actors vs. Trump 2017-01-10T12:46:51-05:00 Gene Veith

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Meryl Streep took the occasion of her lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes to give a blistering speech against president-elect Donald Trump. See Mollie Hemingway’s critique of her speech.

Now actors have the same right as all other citizens to criticize their public officials. This, along with other recent “public service” spots featuring actors and their political causes, does raise another issue: acting outside of one’s vocation.
Actors have the vocation of effectively speaking lines written by someone else. (It has always bothered me that actors get all of the attention in Hollywood, while those who write the scripts that they recite remain largely unknown by the public.) They generally have no particular expertise in other areas, yet they regularly testify at Congressional hearings on a wide range of non-acting topics.

Do actors have all that much influence? They seem to think they should. The Trump election has certainly bothered those in the entertainment industry more than usual, to the point that few celebrities are willing to attend the inauguration festivities. I wonder if they assume that they, by virtue of being artists, should lead the culture, but Trump and his supporters show that they are not leading after all.

Actors do have the vocation of citizenship, so they are entitled to make political judgments and criticisms as do we all, and they have a platform that most citizens don’t. But, as Mollie Hemingway says, it’s strange to hear these incredibly privileged, honored, and adored actors claiming the role of victim.

From Jake Coyle, Overrated or not, Streep’s speech has galvanizing effect | Associated Press /News OK:

Speaking in a hoarse voice that quivered with emotion, Meryl Streep silenced a boisterous Golden Globes crowd and sparked a clamor heard around the country, all the way to Trump Tower.

Streep’s impassioned speech against Donald Trump while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at Sunday’s awards has been heard like a battle cry in a left-leaning Hollywood that has been trying to reconcile itself to a Trump presidency it overwhelmingly didn’t vote for. Her speech has also further intensified the divide between Hollywood and Trump supporters, who call Streep another example of media elite on a soapbox.

Though Trump is yet to take office, the arts and the President-elect are increasingly on a collision course. Trump has criticized the cast of “Hamilton,” which voiced its concerns about inclusion to Vice President-elect Mike Pence when he went to see the show on Broadway. Seeing political parallels in its story of underdog rebellion, some Trump supporters called for a boycott of the “Star Wars” film “Rogue One.” And now, following Streep’s remarks, he on Monday called the most decorated actress in Hollywood “overrated,” even though he in 2015 called her one of his favorites actresses and “a fine person, too.”

With such institutions as “Star Wars” and Streep in the crosshairs, the culture wars have gone nuclear. Battle lines and boycotts are being formed ahead of the Jan. 20 Inauguration, at which some entertainers have refused to perform. Some conservatives have already vowed on social media not to watch the Feb. 26th Academy Awards, which promises to be rife with political protest.

How the growing discord will affect the tenor in the arts for the next four years remains to be seen. But what was clear Monday in the wake of Streep’s galvanizing speech is that the clash is just getting started.

[Keep reading. . .]

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