Recently, the actor Kurt Russell spoke out about his fellow
actors and creative artists who are stridently vocal about their political
views. The veteran actor spoke about the
craft of acting and how political grandstanding of creative artists diminishes
what they create. It comes down to, in
this case, the actor’s role in society, and in the world of the arts and of
cultivating our understanding of the human condition in an authentic way.
He makes a good point about the effect of an actor’s words
off the soundstage, where in interviews and public comments, entertainment
artists make statements that interfere with their craft. Kurt Russell portrays characters, characters
from various political and social backgrounds.
All actors should have such freedom.
That is part of what attracted me to writing. I could explore characters very different
from my own basic identity and portray them in a believable way. Kurt Russell would be getting in the way of
the success of his performances as a professional if he say, became a vocal
liberal, or a strident conservative for that matter, in the public eye.
In the arts, success depends on believable portrayals. The artist concerned with creating the best,
most moving art he or she can, cannot afford to be seen through a narrow
political lens. Society, and American
society in particular, is the poorer artistically when creative people limit
their public image to left or right and all the stereotypes they entail. Better to focus on the act of creating.
I’ll give a case in point from my own life. A man I know is perhaps one of the most
talented fiction writers of his generation.
He has been widely published, and better still, he has written with
heart and gusto. But I find it hard to
buy or read one of his books lately. He
was a mentor of mine at the writers’ conference at Bread Loaf. He befriended me, embraced my prose, was
mirthful and wise and quick to dispense practical advice to his students. He was a very encouraging writer, and
man. I would frequent his Facebook site
to see the latest inspiration he would dispense. There were times when my very confidence in
my abilities depended in large part on his words.
With the election of 2016, and maybe before, he began to
write less encouragement to younger writers, and started writing political
screeds that were obnoxious at best, insulting at worst. If I didn’t agree with everything he said, like
some “ditto head” of the 1980s, he told me to unfriend him. He wanted nothing to do with anyone who
didn’t exactly believe all the many things that he believed politically. I was shocked, and hurt. He was my mentor, and I looked up to him as a
decent man in an industry known for its “me too” style of decadence. Worse, I was deeply hurt and felt
betrayed. As a result of his many
vitriolic Facebook posts, I have a very hard time appreciating his literary
work. I would rather have only known him
as a writer, not a political activist.
And the literary world is now filled with “ditto heads” of
the same stripe. Now the trend of the
industry runs decidedly stridently political and it is hard for me to find a
good contemporary literary novel to catch my attention. Standards of quality and literary
achievement are hard to find. I have to
go to Elizabeth Bowen’s novels of the 60s or St. Euxpery’s novellas about
flying. If anyone has a good book to
recommend, please let me know…
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