The worst of our basic instincts
Movie star Liam Neeson may come to regret going off script. For most actors, the promotional interview is as much a performance as their work in the film they are hyping. They praise their co-stars and director, talk about the happy family on set, and have a charming anecdote or two ready.
But when Neeson talked about his new film, revenge thriller Cold Pursuit, he dug deeper and told a story from his past. Nearly 40 years earlier, he said, a woman close to him was raped and she believed the rapist was black. Determined to get revenge, Neeson hung around outside pubs at night hoping ‘‘a black bastard’’ would come out and confront him, so Neeson could feel justified in killing him. He felt ‘‘a primal urge to lash out’’ that shocked him.
It is a horrific story. The context mitigates it to a degree. Neeson is Irish and these thoughts occurred when it was common for Catholics and Protestants to avenge killings and bombings with further killings and bombings.
Obviously Neeson never killed anybody. We don’t know if the rapist was ever caught or how Neeson’s friend felt about what he thought about doing.
There are at least two ways of looking at his confession. The first is to acknowledge the risk, or even bravery, of saying the unsayable. Most white men will, if they are honest with themselves, admit to having entertained racist thoughts at some time in their life, even if they were not homicidal ones. That means we should recognise and applaud Neeson’s honesty.
The second way, which seems more prevalent, judging by the wider media and online reaction, says no-one ever stops being a racist. There is no possibility of change or evolution and no-one can seek forgiveness. This line of thinking leads to condemnatory opinion pieces, social media mobs and the cancellation of the New York red carpet premiere of Neeson’s film. Some commentators are even saying his career is over.
We should be better people than that. We are too quick to judge and too slow to forgive. Both the Neeson story and those of US politicians caught wearing ‘‘blackface’’ in school photos decades earlier show attitudes to racism have changed dramatically and for the better in recent years but also, paradoxically, that new forms of media make it harder than ever to leave things in the past.
Social media also leads to absurd overreactions and misjudgments. We saw this when images appeared of Catholic schoolboys either confronting or being confronted by Nathan Phillips in Washington, DC. In a classic example of the line about a lie travelling halfway around the world before the truth can put its boots on, the pictures seemed to show privileged white teenagers smirking at and demeaning an older Native American man. It was an explosive image but the truth was more complicated. Social media is causing political polarisations, leaving little room for nuance or a middle ground.
In this stark view of the world, Neeson is a racist, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is a racist, the boys from Covington Catholic High School are racists, and once they’re declared racists, the rest of us no longer have to try to understand what they thought, why, or whether we even share a basic humanity with them.