Good Does Not Mean Simple

Last week we talked about how Hollywood only shows one kind of racist: the neanderthal. Our general conclusion was that Hollywood lives in terror of being misunderstood. Today's article relates to that, as you'll see. Today's article is about the way "good people" are portrayed by Hollywood. It irritates me.

Have you ever noticed how good people (other than the hero) get portrayed by modern Hollywood? You know who I'm talking about. These are the people the hero must defend, the people the villain slaps around, the people we will see in the happiness montage when the film ends... salt of the earth types. These people are typically older whites, with a rainbow of color mixed in behind them. Their leader is a man in his 50s who has gone gray. They keep their heads down and smile softly. They are childlike. They keep their hands clasped before them like they are praying. They move slowly... shuffling. They speak in short, simple sentences that are packed with gratitude, hope and helplessness. Yep. Awww.

Let me describe this another way: they are f**ing useless. They are neutered and passive. They are the definition of meek. They are so meek that I honestly find myself wanting to smack them around on principle. It's no wonder films are full of so many villains. These people are sheep, and as Eli Wallach says in The Magnificent Seven, "If God did not want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep." I hear ya, Eli, I hear ya.

Look, here's what bothers me. First, "good" does not mean "simpleton." It does not mean "meek." Those are not even synonyms for good. There are many simpletons who do evil things, just as people who are meek are typically passively aggressive... not good. Good is about doing the right things, caring about those around you, standing up to evil. Good is not about shuffling your feet or weeping that you need help from a hero. That's pathetic, not good. In fact, people who are good are typically a hell of a lot stronger and more confident than those who aren't because being good requires you to stand up for what is right, not succumb to what is easy. Being good is anything but being passive. In fact, I would argue that you can't be passive and be good. If you are passive, the best you can be is neutral.

It frustrates me that Hollywood is misrepresenting what it means to be good and selling it as such an unpleasant thing. It also frustrates me that the whole idea is rather fascist. Yeah, fascist. Superman saving good people from a power they struggle against but cannot defeat alone is cool... it makes him a superhero. Superman saving people who are too fricken timid stand up for themselves is a tale about how useless the public is and how they need superior men to lead them. That's a creepy, fascist message.

You know where I think this comes from? Did you ever seen Willem Defoe play Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ. He started this. He presented Christ as a meek simpleton... and everybody ran with this. Since that movie, so many people really have come to think of Christ as a man who never raised his voice, never complained, and never spoke back to anyone. And since Christ is considered the model for good, that has become the model they use when they want to show these "good people". Grrr. For the record, that wasn't Jesus. How do I know? Because I've read the Bible. Christ was passionate, with a gift for oratory. He was aggressive. He called a spade a spade. He attacked the money changers in the temple. He stood his ground against the Romans. Those aren't things these meek, pathetic creatures Hollywood is selling as "Christlike" could ever do.

Hollywood isn't good at portraying subtlety anymore. So when they portray villains, they make them cartoon villains so everyone knows what they mean. And when they portray the "good people" the hero needs to help, they go in the other direction. They try to make them Christlike so no one could possibly think they are anything but good (as an aside, making them useless also makes the superhero seem stronger by comparison). But they are using the wrong model. They aren't making them good or Christlike. No. They are making them useless. They are making them the kind of people who deserve the blame when evil prevails because they don't stand up to. That's not "good." "Good" is people who are confident in their convictions and stand up for them. They don't allow evil to control them or others around them. Meek is people who are too afraid to speak their minds.

You know what else is interesting? I've been watching a lot of Gene Autry films lately. It's fascinating to me that in the supposed age of "black and white simpleton thinking" (i.e. not the modern sophisticated world), things were much more nuanced. The public in Autry's films weren't helpless. They weren't pathetic. To the contrary, they were a little hot-headed actually. They had had enough and they were looking to set things right on their own. It took Gene to come into the picture and to calm everything down to make sure everyone acted correctly. When I look at old Superman shows, again, the public was doing their best to solve the problem. They didn't have the firepower to defeat the bad guys, but they were trying. No one stood by helplessly wishing to be saved. That's a twisted stereotype modern Hollywood inflicts on the past in a sneering way, but it's really modern Hollywood that it applies to.

I think this tells us something worth noting about Hollywood. Hollywood today doesn't seem to get the difference between good and meek, and they see the public as meek, helpless, and unwilling to help themselves. I find this frustrating because it flies in the face of reality. The American people are action oriented. They stand up for what they believe. They help those in need. They try to stop evil where they see it, and are constantly working to make the world better. Why does none of that appear on film anymore?