I m watching the Oscars live as I write. I m not quite sure why. My body clock is a bit on the slow side, I think. The past few days have been the kind that only people living and working on their own have; a slow easing from the moorings of social hours, slipping out of the harbour of shared reference points in time called normal office hours. I ve been working like a dog, though, he adds defensively. But I digress.
Earlier, I was watching a documentary on missionaries from Brazil and other countries coming to Britain and Ireland to spread the Word of their particular God; through doorstepping or via satellite TV. And as I watch the Oscars, it s hard not to see the similarities. We are being converted. The ethics of Hollywood are global now; its gods are our gods. At one stage, the whole pantheon of celluloid divinity was on display; dozens of previous winners of acting Oscars took to a podium to receive their due homage, the camera panning from one face to another, with images of the screen performance that elevated them to celluloid divinity and of their acceptance speech superimposed at the bottom of the screen, to remind us who they really were.
Some were unrecognisable; little old ladies with taut skin were revealed to have been beautiful stars of the silver screen in the 1930s and 40s; bland middle-aged men with forgettable faces turned out to have been angst-ridden passionate teenagers with too much make-up in 1950s musicals.
The biggest cheer from the auditorium was reserved for Shirley Temple; the force of the response transformed the face of the steely-eyed matron with Big Hair back to that of a little girl, with that same dimpled smile, devouring the attention.
global norm
It s hard to pin down exactly what is so pernicious about the domination of Hollywood in our psyches. The Oscars ceremony is so carefully crafted that it appears to be simply a celebration of talent. The many fluffs and gaffes that the teleprompt readers made while presenting the awards reminded us all that it was a live event; that these were fallible human beings after all. Even classy Susan Sarandon didn t get it right; Oscar-winner Helen Hunt made such a mess of it that she half-jokingly said she d have to start again, and did. Dutifully we edited out the blunder, mentally rewound, and watched as she successfully got through her script the second time.
In Hollywood, real life is edited out. By real life, I mean the spots and the farts and the doubts and the mistakes and the way most people just fumble their way through life without the benefit of a well-written script with a built-in guarantee that it will turn out alright in the end. This should not come as a surprise, dear reader; I m saying nothing new. In watching the way that the Hollywood way of viewing life increasingly becomes the global norm, I am struck by how there is no anti-Hollywood . These days even independent films are funded by the big producers. It s a cultural hegemony, one against which it is difficult to fight.
oirish whimsy
I had an example recently of what it s like to protest against the American capacity for self-delusion, and their erstwhile blindness to the rest of the world, to differing viewpoints, to cultures which stubbornly refuse to be painted in glib homogeneity, and resist any inference that American values are those of humanity in its entirity.
It started innocuously enough. I received an e-mail from a woman in the Southern United States, telling me of her revamped website. I often receive unsolicited mail; a hell of a lot of junk, and a lot of stuff like hers, because I run a special-interest website. (No, not a sex site, dear reader; it s on astrology, if you must know). She decided to couch this particular promotional piece in Oirish whimsy; to celebrate St. Patrick s Day, when America goes green for a day.
No harm in that, one should be charitable enough to say; it s no different to Olde English tomfoolery, or any other species of sentimental stereotyping.
It starts typically enough: Tis happy I am to tell ye that we ve painted the place green in honor of himself, St. Patrick. Twould thrill us all, don t cha know if you and yours would be so kind to drop by and visit with us . . .
It just makes you itch to type in that URL, doesn t it?
She went on, however, to request: And to those of ye who wear the orange and prefer that we not share the glad tidings with ye when they re about, just tell us kindly not to write ye, and we ll take ye off the list.
I certainly was not kind in my response. I shot off a reply asking to not receive anything more from her, saying that if she wasn t aware that people had been killed in the past few weeks for wearing the orange or the green then she should be ashamed of herself.
It wasn t the most tactful thing I d written in a long time; I m usually wary of condensing my vitriol into bytes, for they have a habit of lingering and being thrown back in your face when you least expect it. The conversational style of the Internet fools you into forgetting that every word can stay permanently stored in people s hard drives for years. (Or get published in black and white in music magazines.)
no joking matter
I got in return the most abuse I ve received in a long time. Though I apologised for my bluntness in later correspondence (we exchanged messages daily for a week, creating more heat than light), she was having none of it. After initially apologising, she diluted it by saying it was just a joke , which I obviously didn t get. I got on my high horse and explained how it was no joking matter. The heat got turned up.
The last message I got from her contained the following spirited call to the barricades for all Americans against those who would do them down: I did not insult you, Ireland or anyone else. It was not my intention, which I think you know. And I m tired of defending what needs no defense. You have to bend over backwards and touch your toes with your nose to find an insult in my announcement. It just is not there except in the mind of a paranoid! Now go take some prozac and calm down and get the hell off my back about this crap. I stand by my assertion that you are a total horse s ass and that you are menopausal and have any number of loose screws. I also think your elevator doesn t go to the top and that you are 3 bricks short of a load! But most importantly, sir, you are no gentleman!
I can hear the magnolias quiver from here. I tried everything I could to explain my perspective. Perhaps I was a little overanxious, because I m five years away from Ireland this month, and maybe she hit a sore spot, my own insecurity about my Irishness. But I tried everything in my power to get my point across; and I kept on hitting a blank wall. St. Patrick s Day is a friendly, happy day; there s nothing sinister in joking about wearing the orange, it means nothing, and why should Americans have to take heed of criticism of their culture from outsiders?
Most Americans are not like her, of course. But she represents for me the shadow side of the American way of life, the Hollywood dream. If fantasy and sentimental notions of friendliness and freedom are the ideal, then raising the brutal reality of sectarian killing, and the reasons for it, are incomprehensible, inconvenient, or insulting. America never means to offend, therefore she never offends. Those who claim she does are paranoid and in need of help.
As the director of Titanic proclaims himself King of the World, to tumultuous acclaim, there s no room for doubt. n