Last night, while watching the latest three episodes of Lost online (welcome to Fall Break land), I came across a trailer to Mel Gibson’s upcoming Mayan end-of-civilization flick, Apocalypto. (Check out the trailer here.)
While watching, I couldn’t help but wonder: will Apocalypto be Kiwi Camara all over again? But on a national scale?
In 2002, Harvard Law student Kiwi Camara posted his property notes online to share with his classmates. In his notes, he used the word “nigs” to refer to the African-American defendants in a famous civil rights case, Shelley v. Kraemer.
This wasn’t a mistake: he prefaced his outline with a statement that his outlines “may contain racially offensive shorthand.” When classmates learned of his posting, Camara made several pretty lame attempts at apologies, including one statement that he would “make a much more conscious attempt than I have made" not to use racial slurs, but that he could not “guarantee it.” (Legal education makes people nice and precise like that.)
Fast-forward to late 2005. Kiwi Camara, HLS ’04, is now a fellow at Stanford and looking to enter academia. He submits an article to the Yale Law Journal under the name “K.A.D. Camara” and it is accepted for publication. Upon learning of Camara’s background and the Journal’s decision to publish him, many Yale Law students were outraged, and urged the Journal not to publish the piece. (It did.) Should an author’s racist or bigoted views affect how we consider his or her work independent of those views?
You can’t help but draw a comparison with Mel Gibson’s current predicament. Gibson, like Camara, (A) made blatantly bigoted comments (and it was way more than one word), (B) later denied he was a bigot (but, come on, no one believes him) and (C) is about to benefit greatly from work that has nothing to do with those bigoted views.
So, are you going to watch Apocalypto? Even though Mel’s an anti-Semite? Just as I was against publishing Camara’s piece, I don't think I'll watch Apocalypto. I believe that it is appropriate to sanction Gibson for his anti-Semitic views, to send a message that his conduct and beliefs are reprehensible. Some may say that it is arbitrary to sanction someone in this way. Really? In my view, punishment in our society has never been rationally associated with the prohibited conduct--putting someone in jail doesn't really speak to the crime they committed (i.e. a forgerer could be in the same cell as a violent criminal). So I’m perfectly comfortable denying Mel his profits because of the ridiculous things he says.
Only thing is that the movie might rock pretty hard. So… I might be inclined to get my hands on a bootleg copy. Or sneak into a movie theatre.
Thoughts?
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3 comments:
I'm going to see Apocalypto. I wouldn't see any films if I boycotted every Hollywood personality with moral failings.
Besides, if Apocalypto flops, the message sent to Hollywood WON'T be that the public doesn't tolerate Gibson's drunken rantings -- it will be that the public has no interest in subtitled films that feature an entirely non-white cast. The result will be that Hollywood studios will continue to make safe, homogenized content and avoid funding the risky, daring projects.
I actually tend to agree with "anonymous"...at least to an extent. I think if people feel strongly enough about Gibson's comments, and think that not seeing it will somehow change his anti-semitism (or even just make them feel better), then absolutely, don't see the movie. But two suggestions / pleas: a) if your goal in not seeing the movie is to "sanction" Gibson's behavior, it seems silly to just not see the movie without some other concerted effort (i.e., a community-level boycott, or at least writing to Gibson to say you didn't see the movie for that reason); and b) please don't try to make other people feel bad about seeing it (the Llama is clearly not guilty of such guilt...despite his Peruvian descent, he appears to have escaped the overwhelming Latin/Catholic urge to guilt trip).
Just to be the contrarian, I would say that overt racism is a little worse than the moral failings demonstrated by ... say ... cheating on Elizabeth Hurley with an ugly prostitute. And I'm a little worried about the idea that we're balancing minorities by saying that people should go to Apocalypto because it has a non-White cast. I don't think that anyone's going to make judgments about the race of the cast regardless of how it does (and The Passion certainly demonstrated that subtitles don't necessary hurt at the box office). Risky and daring, sure, but so was The Birth of a Nation (very distinguishable, I know).
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