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The Projectionist’s Booth
The desire for everlasting fame in the shape of a star embedded in concrete is what keeps people coming to Hollywood to become a star and be “somebody,” and the engine of the American entertainment runs on narcissism. We elevate our movie stars so high above the rest of us, it gets to the point where some of us believe their political opinions should be taken seriously, just because they’re really good at smiling and memorizing lines to be read later.
Narcissism is not without it’s drawbacks: If you’re being told you’re the center of the universe, you tend to believe that you’re an expert on everything the universe contains, such as climatology, vaccinology, and geology, as if playing a scientist on the silver screen suddenly made you a scientist, or something.
So if you’re the center of the universe (and everyone is telling you are) and if you’re smart enough to have opinions that should be taken seriously (because everyone is telling you they should be), it only stands to reason that the whole world is more or less under your control. Your foibles, like an overactive mouth and a lack of self-control, are the world’s foibles.
You should be in charge, and solve the world’s problems, which, surprisingly, look a lot like your problems.
Have an overactive imagination and a passion for violence? Why, the entire world, including the President, shares that problem, so he has to go! Have a autocratic streak that demands to be in charge? The only solution is then, of course, to urge a coup against the democratically elected leader of your country of birth! You’re smart, and you can run the world, everyone around you is telling you that, even though, of course, you actually have problems doing something as simple as handing out the right envelope to someone at the right time.
Yep, that screams “Competency!” to me, all right.
Meanwhile, the rest of us, who are learning to live within our limitations and do not suffer fools gladly, can only sit back and chuckle as Hollywood struggles to figure out why they have lost touch with the common man.
Published in Entertainment
Matt Damon!
Without putting too fine a point on it, there is quite a bit here that sounds to me like Donald Trump. All of the claims of being the one man who could fix it all, as a small example. I was not a great fan of W, but he had a degree of humility, as did Eisenhower, and Truman, and, yes, even Ronald Reagan possessed that quality. It is essential to realize that you don’t know it all and have the humility to rely on people with specific skills and knowledge in the areas being discussed and acted on.
What I hate worst about the current situation is that I have to defend a person for whom I have little or no respect or trust simply because those attacking him are so much worse.
I think it was the height of satire that the late Michael Crichton in his novel, State of Fear, had cannibals in the Solomon Islands (I believe) eat the know-it-all actor who portrayed the President of the United States – a not-so-veiled reference to Martin Sheen who portrayed POTUS in The West Wing.
Here’s how Mark Steyn describes the scene on a posting from his blog:
Perfection! I don’t know how you find this good stuff.
Saw this yesterday. Seems fitting.
Dear singers and actors:
We spend our hard earned money to hear your music and to watch you pretend to be characters in movies and on TV.
Your only job is to entertain us. To take us away from reality.
Your personal opinion means nothing to us.
You are significant and influential only in your own mind. And within the minds of your elitist peers.
You are a marionette to us. Nothing more.
SING. ACT. SHUT UP.
Regarding Chelsea Handler’s call for a military coup, I just don’t know how to respond. I guess we can just disregard anything she says in the future since she doesn’t share the American principle that you have to live with the consequences of elections, whether you like the winners or not. If we cannot at least agree on that, there’s little point having a political discussion.
When I read that book, I kept picturing Ted Danson in my head as the idiot actor who thought he knew what he was talking about.