Hollywood activism: Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes is part of a long line of actors and politics mixing at awards shows.
Actors, politics have often mixed in awards forums
Even before Meryl Streep took on Donald Trump at Sunday’s Golden Globes awards show, his presence hung over the proceedings like a dark cloud. He was referenced repeatedly, but his name was never spoken. Jokes about him got laughs, but rueful laughs with an eye on the calendar. In less than two weeks, he would become the most powerful man in the world. In the face of that, the jokes seemed a bit tentative at times.
Then Streep took the stage and ripped the Band-Aid off, as she accepted the Hollywood Foreign Press’ lifetime achievement award. She didn’t speak Trump’s name either, but she addressed the anxiety that to many in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton he represents. She spoke with complete simplicity, and with a lack of that pumped-up energy that actors often bring to politics, an energy that makes it so easy to dismiss them as idiots savants who live in their emotional centers. She referred to the moment in the presidential campaign when Trump mimicked a disabled reporter as the 2016 “performance” that stayed with her
more than any other. It dug “hooks” into her heart, she pronounced.
Trump’s inevitable Twitter response came in the early morning hours of Monday. “Meryl Streep, one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes.” In a pair of tweets that followed, he wrote, “For the 100th time, I never ‘mocked’ a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him ‘groveling’ when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!”
The presence of actors in the political process has been part of American life for decades, going back at least to John Gilbert stumping for Al Smith and probably before that: Lincoln’s assassin, after all, was an actor. And the use of awards shows as the actors’ bully pulpit is a familiar aspect of more recent American life. Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to the stage to reject an Oscar and speak about the unfair treatment of American Indians in Hollywood movies in 1973. In 1978, Vanessa Redgrave caused outrage when she used her Oscar acceptance speech to express her support for the Palestinians against the Israelis. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins talked about ... actually, it’s hard to remember what they talked about, because they were always talking about something. But it created a stir at the time.
Always, the next day would come the question: Should actors use their celebrity to inject themselves into the political discourse? And should they use the very public forum of awards shows to express these opinions? My usual answer is, Yes. Why not? They’re citizens. If they’re wrong, time will sort it out. If they’re right, they might do some good.
But Streep’s comments on Sunday were of a different order — more serious, not at all peripheral, and lacking any hint of posing or vanity. She wasn’t publicizing an issue that no one was thinking about, but saying out loud what perhaps millions were and are worried about. She had a constitutional right to do so, of course, but her speech was further justified because of its astute characterization of Trump’s imitation of the reporter as a form of “performance.”
Donald Trump used the public entertainment platform of reality television to build a following. He created a persona and achieved recognition as a television performer. His subsequent campaign was sustained by free cable, by the media’s inability to turn down the ratings that are generated by a good show. No one was or is bothering with facts. We are now in the hands of people who can manipulate our attention and get around the public’s thinking capacity. It’s as much a free-for-all as it has ever been since the republic was founded.
Trump had a clear field when he was the only experienced TV performer competing for attention. But on Sunday night, that changed. In the next months and years, we may very well see his well-honed command of the airwaves and social media give way to more seasoned performers — people such as Streep who persuade without the cheap tricks of melodrama or farce. After all, the most powerful art persuades by appealing to all our human centers, not just the emotional centers, but those of rationality, intuition and spirit.
Trump may claim that Streep is “overrated,” but his problem with her is probably the complete reverse of that. She is every bit as brilliant as people say, and being a performer of the highest distinction, she was able to burn him on Sunday in a way that Hillary Clinton couldn’t quite do despite six months of trying.
Ronald Reagan was a good actor — unfairly underrated — and his communicative gifts enabled him to achieve considerable success as president. He was called the “Teflon president,” but he accomplished what he did, in part, through the jar of jellybeans he kept on his desk and the likable public persona he created.
Donald Trump, in the end, is a reality TV guy, not a flexible performer. So up against a Marco Rubio, he could look like former MMA champ Ronda Rousey in her early fights — he had moves his opponents had never seen before. But Streep and her fellow actors know all his moves and others he doesn’t know.
If they can keep their heads, and not foam at the mouth, and not sound naive or lightweight — if they are, like Streep, calm and reasoned and come from a place of genuine concern — actors may prove themselves very useful citizens in the next few years.