Public penance
FORTY years ago this story wouldn’t even have rated being buried on the bottom of page 38 in the Hamilton Spectator.
Even 20 years ago I doubt it would have warranted more than a small paragraph.
Fast forward to 2018 and it's a world wide headline grabber.
Wednesday’s Australian banner shouts out “Liam Neeson defends ‘primal urge to lash out’ at black man.” A casual glance around the world media will give you everything you either did or didn’t want to hear. “Liam Neeson: I’m not racist,” “Liam Neeson shares story about looking for a black person to kill” and “The New York red carpet opening of Liam Neeson’s latest film has been cancelled amid racism row”.
Liam Neeson has made a good living from portraying the man who gets even and exacts revenge for naughty deeds by the baddies and rescues young maidens from fates worse than death. His revelations this week reveal that perhaps when Oscar Wilde penned in 1889 that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life”, dear old Oscar got it wrong and in Liam’s case his “art reflects his life”.
The story goes like this and was revealed when doing a promotion for his latest film: “We were doing a press junket and the topic of the film is revenge, it’s a dark comedy too, but its base is revenge. And the lady journalist was asking me ‘How do you tap into that?’ and I remembered an incident, nearly 40 years ago, where a very dear friend of mine was brutally raped and I was out of the country, and when I came back she told me about this. I asked her ‘Did you know the person?’, it was a man... no. ‘His race?’ She said he was a black man. I thought ‘OK ...’ And after that there were some nights I went out deliberately into black areas armed with a cosh, looking to be set upon so that I could unleash physical violence. I did it four, maybe four or five, times until I caught myself and it really shocked me, this primal urge. It shocked me and it hurt me.”
Neeson’s reasoning for bringing up this story was in his own words, “To talk, to open up, to talk about these things. We all pretend we are all politically correct, I mean, in this country, it’s the same in my own, sometimes you scratch the surface and discover this racism and bigotry, and it’s there.”
He rounds it all off with: “Violence breeds violence, bigotry breeds bigotry.” A man reformed. A man who can now see the error of his previous and youthful ways. Possibly a man who was horrified at his own thoughts and actions some 40 years ago but now knows better. As with the MeToo movement, the reaction has been swift and bitingly polarised thanks to social media. The red carpet opening of his new film was immediately cancelled. Neeson was roundly castigated for his admitted racism and racial profiling. Just like the victims of the MeToo campaigns, censored without thought or any consideration of natural justice. Kevin Spacey, guilty until proven innocent, as have been Geoffrey Rush and Craig McLachlan. Mel Gibson in 2006 when being arrested for driving under the influence, spat forth with a torrent of antiSemitic bile. The police report said “Gibson blurted out a barrage of anti-Semitic remarks about ‘f---ing Jews’. Gibson yelled out: ‘The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’ Gibson then asked: “Are you a Jew?’” And worse that cannot even be printed.
Fast forward to 2016 and after a period of exile Gibson is welcomed back on to the red carpet, nominated for the Best Director award. But of course in 2006 he didn’t suffer the indignity and injustice of being tried on social media, unlike the others mentioned above.
Will Neeson survive this 40year-old indiscretion? Yes, I think so and I can almost guarantee that his latest movie will break all box office records. In this postMeToo era, the celebrity scandal archetype has become as predictable as the characters that Liam portrays.
A famous person is accused of unacceptable behaviour and Hollywood unites to cast them into the wilderness. However in this case the actor himself, without being outed, tells the story and depending where you are coming from there is also a moral to it.
Now we wait to see if the MeToo wave of social anger outranks the racial wave of social anger. I suspect it will, racism is still rife and barely beneath the surface even today. Over to you, anonymous warriors of the net.