December 07, 2004
Hollywood and the murder of Theo Van Gogh
by Liza Sabater
There is nothing like Pat Sajak to raise my bullshit-o-meter.
There is an interesting thread going on in the comments at BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis | Wheel of Free Speech, in reference to the article, HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: A Hush Over Hollywood by Pat Sajak. I've already seen this article mentioned several times too many to let this one slide.
Y'all know Joy Garnett first blogged about it here and her site with NEWSgrist: Theo Van Gogh Shot, Killed, the same day of the election --and I thank her for it. Grock knows I read newsfeeds in ebbs and flows and BBC has fallen off my radar. That's why we blog --to do the news filtering so you don't have to.
What I find intensely fascinating about this case is how Mr. "Wanna Buy a Vowel" has become a tool of the right-wing with the flip of a letter:
Somewhere in the world, a filmmaker creates a short documentary that chronicles what he perceives as the excesses of anti-abortion activists. An anti-abortion zealot reacts to the film by killing the filmmaker in broad daylight and stabbing anti-abortion tracts onto his body. How does the Hollywood community react to this atrocity? Would there be angry protests? Candlelight vigils? Outraged letters and columns and articles? Awards named in honor of their fallen comrade? Demands for justice? Calls for protection of artistic freedom? It’s a pretty safe bet that there would be all of the above and much more. And all of the anger would be absolutely justified.
Unfuckingbelievable. The framing of this story is just right out of the right-wing's how-to book. Why? It should not be a coincidence that The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 is still pending approval. Bringing Jesus back into the rule of the land is the prime order of the wingnuts under their new "mandate". This has been in the agenda for years, and as I have seen it touted in homeschooling lists by dominionists, it is a matter of free speech. Hence the smokes and mirrors that I spoke about in c u l t u r e k i t c h e n: Declaration of Independence Banned at California School or Red-baiting Liberals on Thanksgiving Day.
I am not raving here out of thin air. My being a homeschooler has put me in contact with a lot of these ideological shenanigans. I really did not comprehend fully the pharisee nation's political machine until after November 2nd.
But let me get back to Pat Sajak's "article". Let's break this opening paragraph down:
Somewhere in the world, a filmmaker creates a short documentary that chronicles what he perceives as the excesses of anti-abortion activists. An anti-abortion zealot reacts to the film by killing the filmmaker in broad daylight and stabbing anti-abortion tracts onto his body.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as per the BBC story, Van Gogh's Submission is not a documentary. But that's OK. Van Gogh is not the focus of Sajak's article --and when it comes to the pharisee nation's profets, accuracy is not important when god is in the details.
The target of Sajak's attack is obviously Michael Moore and the so called liberal media. The BBC described Van Gogh in his obituary as the Michael Moore of the Netherlands. But you would be hard pressed to consider Submission a documentary. That's like calling The Vagina Monologues: The V-Day Edition a medical tract.
So Sajak, without mentioning Michael Moore, has succeeded in painting the picture of a fat, angry, scruffy looking, bleeding heart liberal. A description which, by the way, could easily be used to describe Van Gogh as well. Think of Michael Moore without the trucker hat.
Now, Van Gogh's short film is a metaphorical look at life when you are abused and living in a country under sharia rule; which is another way of saying Islamic Theocracy. It has nothing to do with abortion. But the word is right there, a the introduction of the article; framing the context of Van Gogh's murder as an absolute parallel to the political issues the dominionist have defined as solely the interest of liberal, heathen Democrats.
Now let's go for the best part:
How does the Hollywood community react to this atrocity? Would there be angry protests? Candlelight vigils? Outraged letters and columns and articles? Awards named in honor of their fallen comrade? Demands for justice? Calls for protection of artistic freedom? It’s a pretty safe bet that there would be all of the above and much more. And all of the anger would be absolutely justified.
Now, this is really special: the Hollywood community. As if they were a political party of some sort, Sajak has lumped in the likes of Charlton Heston, Jack Valenti, Patricia Heaton and Ben Stein and even Vincent Gallo with the likes of Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Whoopie Goldberg, Tim Robbins, etc.
This is the kind of thing that just irritates me to no end. Whether people in the "left" wing of Hollywood responds to this kind of crap, the truth is that the pharisee apostates already got national attention over this --so the damage is already done. BTW, hasn't anybody picked up how Sajak's article is almost verbatim reworked in right-wing blogs (like Powerline) and magazines (like The Spectator), all across the net? Can we talk about everybody on the right being "on topic"?
Which leads me to the meat of this post. I think that Jeff Jarvis, given his recent run around national TV outlets could start selling the idea of the positive impact of abundace (in the form of blogging, for example) to the Hollywood community. Because if it is true that a lot of these high profile people have the influence and the access, they also have a problem with their own personal branding.
Fame, the Hollywood kind of fame, comes from the selling of actors as rarities --their value as celebrities lies on the belief they are a rare, scarce breed of product. I mean, really, are we to believe there were no other actors that could have done the six movies Jude Law has appeared on this year? So the problem is not that the Hollywood left might not care. The problem is that, in the world of Hollywood, even though Pat Sajak has a name brand with national recognition, he is the kind of second-tier celebrity that can do with the extra publicity; while people like Sarandon or even Penn, might not come out to talk due to the fear of overexposure.
I mean, I cannot imagine someone like Penn blogging --even guest blogging. But there is a whole liberal constellation out in Hollywood that could probably find blogging to be positive. The same issue of 'scarcity = value' affects the art world. That's why you'd think there would be more artists, especially internet artists blogging but that is not the case. We all know how the P2P debacle basically is a battle between the abundance of access vs. the scarcity created by the record labels.
The fear of overexposure will not disappear until there is a real paradigm shift --when the value of cultural production is viewed as dependent upon the abundance of access and circulation, more so than products. And maybe then artists like Theo Van Gogh would not go unknown. Because, really, I had not heard of him before Joy posts --and I consider myself somewhat of a cultural snob. Maybe, when we start looking outside the borders more for the abundance of culture, tragedies like this one, won't go unrecognized.
Posted by Liza Sabater in Abortion, Art, Christian Fundamentalism, Conservatism, Culture War, Documentary, Dominionism, Entertainment, George Lakoff, Hollywood, Language, Linguistics, Propaganda, Religion, Reproductive Rights, Republicans, Rhetoric, Semiotics
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