I’ve read Noah Berlatsky’s review of the new film Golda (CNN: “Opinion: The Golda Meir movie starring Helen Mirren fails the test of history”). Although written from a Leftist perspective, it manages to make a few points worthy of consideration and discussion. But — I’m sorry –this is flat nonsense, and almost the stuff of self-caricature:
Mirren is not Jewish, and she wears heavy makeup to look like the unglamorous, chain-smoking politician.
Accordingly, the movie is inevitably fodder for an ongoing discussion about whether non-Jewish performers should play Jewish roles.
There have been thoughtful arguments pro and con, but the focus on who should be cast can sometimes drown out questions about what that casting is doing.
Indeed. I’m pretty sure that I never thought that Mel Gibson or Kenneth Branagh or Sir Laurence Olivier was actually a melancholy late-medieval Dane named Hamlet, and I don’t see that it matters. Harrison Ford isn’t actually Han Solo, either, and James Earl Jones isn’t really Darth Vader. Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t Abraham Lincoln, and he never was. F. Murray Abraham is neither Italian nor, specifically, Antonio Salieri. Sir Ben Kingsley isn’t really Gandhi. Vivien Leigh wasn’t Scarlett O’Hara, who wasn’t Blanche DuBois. Thor isn’t Australian. Odin isn’t Welsh. Wonder Woman isn’t Israeli. Elizabeth Taylor never actually ruled Egypt. Actors pretend to be people that they’re not. That’s what acting is.
And — I’m sorry –this next paragraph is flat idiocy, and almost the stuff of self-caricature:
In “Golda,” casting Mirren — a White, internationally renowned, British actress — is a metaphor for the way the film blurs Israeli identity with a generalized White, Western identity. By doing so, it attaches Israel’s moment of crisis to a tradition of triumphalist American military films that validates the virtue of the US, of Israel and of whiteness.
Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal review of Golda, written by Kyle Smith, is vastly to be preferred, because it’s not merely a vehicle for ideological posturing: “‘Golda’ Review: Helen Mirren as a Woman at War: The Oscar winner plays Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister, during the days in 1973 when she led her country through the life-and-death struggle of the Yom Kippur War”
A couple of nights ago, we watched a 2016 film called Mr. Church, starring Eddie Murphy in the title role. An unusual and somewhat sad but affecting story of people who are, in some ways, quite ordinary — although Mr. Church himself is something of a mystery, and remains so — it certainly isn’t the kind of raucous and too often rather vulgar comedy that I had associated, years ago, with Eddie Murphy. (I seem to have read, quite a while back, that he had come to regret his participation in such comedy and that he had vowed to make a break from it. Of course, I may be hallucinating.)
It interests me to note that Mr. Church, like Golda, was evidently “racialized” by some commentators and critics, despite the fact that the racial difference between Eddie Murphy’s character and his “adopted” family plays, at the very most, a negligible role in the dialogue and really no roll at all in the plot. Some people simply cannot resist the toxic current fashion of making absolutely everything about “race.” I found this article from The Hollywood Reporter worthwhile: “‘Mr. Church’ Screenwriter on Eddie Murphy Movie’s Long Journey to Big Screen, “Magical Negro” Criticism: Susan McMartin, who wrote the screenplay based on her real-life friendship with the cook who became her best friend and father figure, talks about the differences between fact and fiction.”
It reminds me just a little bit of a German-born medieval art historian who taught at the University of California at Los Angeles decades back. At the invitation of a friend, I attended her seminar on medieval stained glass one day. He was astonished at her approach, and wanted me to witness it for myself. She wasn’t merely a Marxist of the fashionable academic kind; she was an old-style Communist who came across as a fossil remnant of the nineteen teens or twenties. And, sure enough, every window in every cathedral, no matter what its ostensible subject was, became, in her telling, merely yet more illustration of the struggle of the revolutionary proletariat against the petty bourgeoisie. At first, it was interesting because ingenious. After the fourth or fifth window, though, it became unspeakably tedious. I never went back. Once I got the hang of the technique, which I did pretty quickly, I figured that I could easily do it myself. I never did.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)
This is a really important finding: “Opinion: Worried about income inequality? Move to Utah: An analysis of recent census data confirms Utah has the lowest inequality score of any state in the nation”
Plainly, since it appears to be one of the many evils visited upon humanity by theism, this comes to us from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™. And so, chillingly, do these abominations:
“The pathway: Meet the Africans pioneering a unique approach to higher ed” (A really inspiring effort that, I suspect, could probably use some additional donations and more volunteers.)
And this may also be something from the Hitchens File™; I hypothesize that it may have fallen out. In any event, whether it’s actually related to the dominant religious faith in Utah or not, it may really pain some critics of the Church: “A Simple Law Is Doing the Impossible. It’s Making the Online Porn Industry Retreat: Pornhub has pulled out of multiple states rather than comply with age-verification laws.” Poor darlings.
Posted from Newport Beach, California
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