Hollywood; Hubris, Arrogance, Ignorance

                                                     

From Websters:

Hubris:  Extreme Pride or Arrogance.  Hubris usually indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own intelligence and capability, especially with a public figure.

Most of us go to a theater, agree to suspend reality for two hours, see a good movie, then walk out of the theater to the real world.  Perhaps three out of ten in the audience are young, impressionable, or suffering from low I.Q.'s, and refuse to return to reality.  Those unfortunates live in the world of music and matinee idols and are so poorly grounded that they elevate their celebrity idols to "golden calf" stature.

In turn, those ephemeral screen and stage idols fall prey to the spell of their "worshippers."  Soon these Hollywood icons, sealed away from their own world's reality, pampered and protected behind security gates and security guards, begin to believe they really do have all the answers, own the only morals relevant to their world, and develop an hubris, an arrogance so massive as to presume they have the supreme knowledge that will heal the world's ills.

So detached from reality they become that their own personal failures; multiple divorces, drug and alcohol addictions, nervous breakdowns, poor career choices have no effect on their own estimation of their self worth.  No matter how massively they fail, they feel qualified to dictate how others should think and how they should live their lives.

And when these fragile icons are challenged they will lash out with the vilest language, the most hateful speech and the most hurtful displays against those who disagree with them.

It wasn't always so.  Our cinematic idols of fifty years ago were trained in their craft by the studios.  The ability to act or dance or project a personality truly mattered.  Many of them even had some standard of morality; some didn't take drugs, or drink themselves to death, or breed so frequently and casually that they didn't develop aids and die at 50.  Most importantly the studios chiefs served as a counterweight, a dual of two egos, which kept the star's ego somewhat in check.  Now, in the Hollywood of today, the star is free to ask for $20 million dollars per film and leave 80% of the movie's importance to the computer geeks and stuntmen who can gin up crash scenes and explosions and animations.

So now we are left with a Hollywood smack dab full of hubristic maniacs who, having played Caesar on the big screen, feel free to step outside Spagos and publicly declare how our government should be run.  We have these cinematic idiots who champion illegal immigration because it provides them a steady source for their heroin and cocaine and a labor pool to clean their pools, make their beds and mow their lawns.

In Hollywood's most recent "flame-out" we have a small army of cinematic action heroes, who made their millions portraying the most violent characters ever to don pancake makeup, condemning Americans who opt to own guns.  Jim Carrey's machine gun in The Mask, Stallone's arsenal of weapons, Pacino's The Godfather...none of this cinematic violence, they believe, could ever have influenced a movie fan to commit violence.  None of the casual death tolls from violent video games could ever affect an impressionable youth or half-brained movie goer.

So Stallone and Carrey says "turn in your guns"....doesn't everyone have a security detail guarding them 24 hours per day?  Doesn't every body live behind the security of gated communities?  

So we have Stallone, who made a fortune making one good Rocky movie and seven bad ones, living off the ill gotten gains of cinematic violence, telling you to surrender your guns.  

Sadly, these idiots go farther in directing how you shall live.  Despite Stallone's and Carrey's and the rest of the Hollywood contingent changing wives as casually as they change their clothes, who live under the cloud of lotus, who spread gossip about a competitor in order to win a favored role, who despise Jesus, even as they portray him on screen (for the right price) will tell those who "believe" are being silly and stupid.

To enhance their public stature these Hollywood icons will leave their $50 million dollar estate,  ride their chauffeur driven limousine down from Beverly Hills, down to a sound stage, and step forward and demand that you send their favorite charity a generous donation from your paycheck.

Or they will drive their gas-guzzling Maserati, or jump into their private jet and fly from Lake Como, Italy to Hollywood and tell you that you need to drive a Prius and give up your own SUV.

Perhaps the winner of the "sad sack of the week" is poor Jim Carrey.  Having failed in every personal relationship he ever had, he is now badly failing at the box office.  His last five years of film making has cost the producers big money as America has become tired of of the rubber face, the dumb slapstick and the worst case of over-acting known to man.

                                                 

So, in a desperate attempt to grab some publicity he releases a distasteful satire of American gun owners.  The little do-si-do, full of hate, but bereft of humor, and performed so badly that he must come out with a public "encore" saying his critics are just gun-worshipping "mother fuckers."

"Hubris" indeed.