De Niro opens new front in anti-Trump culture wars – Even some liberals don’t know what to think
NEW YORK: Late last week, Robert De Niro walked onto a Tony Awards rehearsal stage at Radio City Music Hall and, with the military efficiency common to such proceedings, read quickly off the teleprompter.
The ‘ Taxi Driver’ star was scheduled to introduce a performance by Bruce Springsteen at the live show. So he recited the short bit of boilerplate about The Boss, then quickly ceded the stage to another presenter. None of the crew of several dozen in the room thought anything of it.
On Sunday night, De Niro took the same stage. He stood in the same spot, and read the same script — then went wildly and laceratingly off it. Amid roars of approval from many of the 6,000 who’d gathered, bowtied and bejewelled, for the annual Broadway rite, the actor spit out “Expletive- Trump,” using an expletive. Then, in case, anyone missed it, he circled back. “It’s no longer down with Trump,” he said, “but Expletive- Trump.” He shook both fists in the air. The crowd came to its feet and roared louder.
No US viewer watching at home heard DeNiro’s remarks — an employee of CBS, which had the telecast on a seven- second delay, bleeped them out. But no viewer needed to. Within minutes the moment had gotten out on social media.
And just like that, both a Broadway extravaganza and a beloved American actor had become a lighting-rod referendum on Trumpism. ( Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham: “Another ‘celebutainment’ gift to the GOP & @ realDonaldTrump. # MeettheFockers. Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti: “I’ve always enjoyed fellow Paisan Robert De Niro’s work.”)
As a cultural industry that has long been informed by, and intent on sending messages about, the dispossessed, Broadway has been at the vanguard of the movement to fend off Trump’s more isolationist policies. But it has sometimes taken different roads in getting there, as much preaching unity in the face of divisiveness as using the tools of division itself.
As it happened, De Niro’s speech evoked another political Broadway moment that quickly went viral. Less than two weeks after Donald Trump and Mike Pence won the 2016 election, one star of the smash historical musical ‘Hamilton’, aware Pence was in the audience, addressed him directly, actor Brandon Victor Dixon making a plea for inclusion.
The level of vitriol on Sunday was, at first glance, a sign of how much the discourse has devolved. “There’s nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen, there’s nothing to boo here. We’re all here sharing a story of love. We have a message for you sir,” was how Dixon addressed Pence in November 2016 — a far cry from De Niro’s obscenity-laced protest cry on Sunday night.
But it’s also worth pointing out that for much of Sunday evening Broadway actually took a more Dixonian tack itself, cloaking pleas of tolerance in the garb of stage inclusion.
Acting winners Ari’el Stachel and Tony Shalhoub, from the best musical-winning cross- cultural Israeli-Arab story ‘ The Band’s Visit’, spoke about their Middle Eastern parentage and the value of immigrants as they accepted their Tonys. “I want to connect this moment to a moment that occurred nearly a century ago, in 1920, when my father arrived on a boat from Lebanon and first set foot here on Ellis Island. He was then just a boy of 8,” Shalhoub said. “So tonight I celebrate him and all of those whose family journeyed before him and with him and after him.”
Andrew Garfield, landing a Tony for playing the landmark gay character Prior Walter in the revival of the Pulitzer winner ‘Angels in America’, said “Let’s just bake a cake for everyone who wants a cake to be baked,” referring to the recent Supreme Court decision in favour of the Colorado baker who cited religious freedom in turning down a request to cater a gay wedding.
In fact, the most viral moment at the Tonys-well, until the De Niro speech- occurred was when teenage survivors of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting sang Seasons of Love, from ‘ Rent’. “How do you measure a year in a life?/ How about love? Let’s celebrate, remember a year/ In the life of friends.”
Unlike De Niro, that moment was planned by Tonys producers. Several students at the school had reached out to thank Tonys organisers for a benefit some Broadway veterans had done at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and said they’d like to express that gratitude at the Tonys. The producers said they’d do them one better and invited them to sing on the show.
The producers even kept the number out of a dress rehearsal Sunday morning so word wouldn’t get out and minimize the impact. When it unfolded Sunday night, the performance landed with a thousand Twitter tears.
The two Tony Awards instances offered a case study in how America’s cultural industry has approached Trump — with knives and with hugs. Parkland teens went with a call to understanding. De Niro - a creature far more of Hollywood than Broadway, it’s worth noting- chose a call to action.
Sunday night was filled with ironies. That Springsteen was taking the stage to sing an ode to the working- class people of his native Freehold, New Jersey, only highlighted how garbled these messages had gotten- the people De Niro was potentially alienating were being celebrated by the artist he was introducing.
It was also an evening rife with confusion. At the parties around the city that followed the ceremony and stretched late into the night, the Trump moment was on many Broadway veterans’ minds. They just couldn’t figure out what to make of it or whether what he did was a good thing.
“I used to think it was good for people to call Trump out,” Kenneth Lonergan - liberal playwright behind the best revival of a play nominee “Lobby Hero” and Oscar-winning screenwriter of ‘Manchester By The Sea’ - told the Post at one gathering. “I’m just self- defeatist about it. I guess a lot of people like Robert De Niro,” Lonergan said. “But is he really going to change anyone’s mind? It just becomes more fodder for the right.”— WP-Bloomberg