Hollywood machismo makes good box off ice
OBITUARIES about the death of Hollywood may be premature, but one thing seems certain from the outcry at Will Smith’s Oscar smack and it’s that its hellraising tradition is over. About time too. For even in La La Land, the needle has finally turned on displays of gratuitous violence and testosteronesoaked machismo thanks to MeToo and the cultural shift towards equality in sexual and race politics.
Yet, while unambiguous condemnation of Smith’s behaviour is one thing – the orgy of breastbeating it has unleashed is absurd and a hypocritical denial of a vital ingredient in the Hollywood magic of old.
Smith went off script when he leapt to his wife’s defence to deliver what must have been to him a satisfying smack to her tormentor.
But his behaviour was hardly unprecedented. Indeed, compared to the vicious assaults perpetrated by the Hollywood bad boys of Smith’s generation, slapping Rock seems almost like an act of chivalry.
Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe and Sean Penn would never have made the A-List if delivering a quick left hook wasn’t part of the job description. Their nasty tempers and aggressive streaks are legendary and were often encouraged by agents who were keenly aware of how a wild and destructive persona can help sell a film and be the engine of an actor’s mystique.
EVEN Brad Pitt, whose persona is more that of a debonair leading man, has not been without sin. His marriage to Angelina Jolie fell apart after an ugly eruption on a private jet which caused him to reportedly alight the aircraft to drive a fuel truck like a madman around the tarmac. Jolie said they would divorce for the ‘safety’ of the family.
From the day that charismatic stars such as Marlon Brando, Richard Harris and Jack Nicholson burst onto the big screen in all their angry, drink-fuelled and often misogynistic energy the line between their wild and uncontrollable passions and their on-screen persona was part of their box office appeal. Wonder at how much of their larger-thanlife personalities spilled into their performances kept a fascinated public at the cinemas.
Audiences flocked to see Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? to watch Burton and Taylor, Hollywood’s most iconic couple hurl obscenities and bash the living daylights out of each other, in what was billed as a faithful reenactment of their irresistible romantic chemistry.
It’s easy to explain that intermingling of real life and fantasy as part of Hollywood mythology. But why is it that now, in the golden age of television we still see its great male actors forever as the antiheros they play, from Tony Soprano to Don Draper, not to forget Logan Roy, the fearsome patriarch of Succession whose assaults on his sons make Will Smith’s look like a caress?
We must still have a sneaking regard for the tempestuous male maverick both on and off the screen.
Smith’s outburst has been blamed on everything from his traumatic upbringing by a mother who was repeatedly assaulted by his violent father to the unhinged jealousy engendered by his unconventional marriage. The real reason is probably more to do with Hollywood; namely his lifelong involvement in an industry that turns its biggest names into spoilt and entitled stars and where volcanic displays of murderous violence were an unapologetic landmark on the road to fame and fortune.