It is interesting that there is such a high overlap of political opinion between College Professors and Entertainers…the latter category not being known for their intellectual or scholarly tastes, on the average.
Significance, if any?
33 thoughts on “An Odd Couple, or a Match Made in Heaven?”
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Both groups have the Constitutional right to be stupid–and they exercise that right continually.
As a rule, Those who can’t do…..teach.
Most people realize that they are ignorant about things that are outside of their narrow areas of expertise. People who don’t realize it seem to be overrepresented among actors and academics. Perhaps it’s an occupational hazard for people who tend to be narcissistic and receive a great deal of favorable public attention, and for people who traffic in ideas and tend to be exceptionally clever in narrow areas.
people who tend to be narcissistic and receive a great deal of favorable public attention
I tend to think this is a recent phenomenon. My professor of English Literature told us how he took a long sea cruise on a freighter with only Spenser’s “The Fairie Queene” for reading material. he told us it was the only way he could get through it.
Of course, I was in college in the 1950s before the great inflation of academia.
I don’t think there’s much commonality, other than in each industry in the last few decades the issue has clearly been enhanced by very strict selection of who is let into the club, by those currently in. If you are a young actor or professor wannabe, you best not say that you’re conservative/religious/etc., or your chances of getting into the club are very, very slim. Just shut up and keep your head down and you might have a chance.
Prior to crazy lefties achieving critical mass in each area, I think the cause is quite different. I think that the majority of entertainers know that there is a vast army of people just as talented/attractive/etc., as they are, who didn’t make it, so I think they view themselves as lucky, and the winners in a cruel, random game (that’s distinct from athletes, who view themselves as those who worked the hardest to get where they are, as the winners in a harsh but meritocratic world).
As for professors, it’s clear that the left undertook a concerted effort to take over that world, starting with communists and really accelerating in the Vietnam era. Although, as I write this, I recall reading The Chronicle of Higher Education and being amazed at the overwhelming bitterness and anger of humanities grads and faculty, and I know that the ratio of applicants to faculty positions is insanely high, so perhaps it is somewhat similar to the entertainment world–if you write your dissertation on indigenous lesbian subtexts in Jane Austen and get a faculty job, you know there were 100 other equally idiotic applicants who were equally as, um, worthy as you, so you think the whole system is a cruel joke.
a concerted effort to take over that world, starting with communists and really accelerating in the Vietnam era.
The antiwar types stayed in graduate school. I think that was a serious factor. I agree on the actors recognition that they were extremely lucky and do not deserve what they have on the basis of hard work. I think that carries over to a belief, like Obama, that no one deserves what they have/ “you didn’t build that.” He has no idea, of course, of how to do anything.
The actresses of the studio era had put in lots of hard work and some of it was pretty degrading, but they knew they had earned what they had.
The male actors often had less understanding of how they got there and many were alcoholics as a sort of reaction to the unmasculine role of an actor.
“The actresses of the studio era had put in lots of hard work and some of it was pretty degrading, but they knew they had earned what they had.”
That is an interesting point with the studio era. When an actor or actress was still fairly new and up-and-coming the studios with work them hard if they were lucky and pay them next to nothing. James Garner’s book on the industry was an eye-opener. He was very resentful towards Jack Warner because while Maverick was a hit they would still pay him very little. When a star finally does get to be big with commencerate salaries they knew that they had earned it.
Now a few of them go from unknown to contracts worth tens of millions per movie in a short time.
The days of struggling actresses are over. Meryl Streep is a good example,
Like Sigourney Weaver, she comes from a wealthy family and many of her roles had a leftist theme.
Streep’s first feature film role came opposite Jane Fonda in the 1977 film Julia, in which she had a small role during a flashback sequence. Most of her scenes were edited out, but the brief time on screen horrified the actress: “I had a bad wig and they took the words from the scene I shot with Jane and put them in my mouth in a different scene. I thought, I’ve made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business”.[29] However, Streep cites Fonda as having a lasting influence on her as an actress, and has credited her as “open[ing] probably more doors than I probably even know about”.
“Julia,” of course was a hagiography of a communist writer.
Barbara Stanwyck would never understand Meryl Streep.
Orphaned at the age of four and partially raised in foster homes, by 1944 Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress four times, for Stella Dallas (1937), Ball of Fire (1941), Double Indemnity (1944) and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). For her television work, she won three Emmy Awards, for The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1961), The Big Valley (1966) and The Thorn Birds (1983).
Hedy Lamarr, who was a thousand times more gorgeous than any actress today and a million times more intelligent, had Hollywood nailed-“All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.”
They both need people in seats watching them, a captive crowd.
The match was made in heaven. Or at least, in Lucifer’s “heaven”. After all, that is where the couple permanently reside…
Equally isolated from the real world.
For starters, they live in cultural and geographic bubbles, they don’t do anything that can be objectively evaluated and therefore lose touch with the world in which most people have to struggle, the nature of their occupations selects for people who are prone to follow fads (speaking more to social sciences, humanities, business, and law profs, than, say particle physicists whose work is constrained by reality), and they are surrounded by sycophants (no one ever tells them, “No, that’s stupid,” everyone tells them they are great, fah-bu-lous, geniuses.
I am quite sure those are all factors, but the list is incomplete.
“Jonathan Says:
January 13th, 2017 at 1:23 pm
Most people realize that they are ignorant about things that are outside of their narrow areas of expertise. People who don’t realize it seem to be overrepresented among actors and academics. Perhaps it’s an occupational hazard for people who tend to be narcissistic and receive a great deal of favorable public attention, and for people who traffic in ideas and tend to be exceptionally clever in narrow areas.”
—–
In any circumstance of influence, the most dangerous are as you have described, The Unconsciously Incompetent. This is particularly true when they are driven by ‘The strength of their convictions’.
There is a distinct difference between professors and scholars. Professors profess. Scholars study. Professors profess to skulls full of mush. In order to keep those skulls attentive and rank high in rankings they become…entertainers.
No one in either profession has to actually MAKE anything. They trade in ideas and other intangible, unquantifiable, objective things that are tough to measure. They can spout utopian nonsense and never have to actually deal with the consequences. The further away from the physical consequences of human nature interfacing with leftist garbage, the more left the culture.
Both groups inhabit worlds largely padded from brutal economic reality. Both groups are coddled. Both groups have inflated egos derived from audiences that paid to see and hear them for one reason or another. Both groups imagine themselves experts on matters outside their field. Both groups are largely Democrat.
“They trade in ideas and other intangible, unquantifiable, objective things that are tough to measure.”
Revenue from a film is pretty tangible, though.
In both communities, it’s cool to be a commie. The entertainment industry is highly unionized, hence the hatred for capitalist systems, with accede is having a similar mindset. Also typical is that few in either community actually have any real experience living in a system with equal distribution of misery and mediocrity. Both shoul spend time in Venezuela…..
In both communities, it’s cool to be a commie. The entertainment industry is highly unionized, hence the hatred for capitalist systems, with accedemia having a similar mindset. Also typical is that few in either community actually have any real experience living in a system with equal distribution of misery and mediocrity. Both shoul spend time in Venezuela…..
Both actors and professors talk at their respective audience.
No real accountability for their respective work products, and a hazy-at-best sense of where their respective livings come from?
Most all of what I’ve read above is true. Additionally, and possibly most importantly, both groups have a great pulpit in which to propagandize and influence.
I’ve commented before that I begin to suspect that McCarthyism was a good, not a bad, thing. I haven’t suspected as much until laterly in life. The suspicion may not have occurred to me earlier because the very people informing me throughout the years were largely from those two groups (educators and entertainers) which spun the story.
Stretch the definition of “entertainer” to include news-readers, if you like, …
“Both groups have the Constitutional right to be stupid–and they exercise that right continually.”
OK. The darling of the right, that ‘wonderful actor’ Ronald Reagan, sure fit that bill.
Most of these comments overlook the fact that this overwhelming political tilt is a recent phenomenon. All the facts about actors and professors were true 50 years ago, yet those worlds weren’t so wildly out of step with mainstream political/philosophical thought. The tilt it due to a concerted effort on the part of the left for 5-6 decades that finally achieved critical mass about 2-3 decades ago. Now they don’t let you in if you’re guilty of wrongthink.
One thing that *has* changed is that academia has far more power…as gatekeeper to careers and as a power behind the throne in politics…than it did 50 years ago.
Also, Hollywood is far more dependent on the non-US market than it was 50 years ago.
Not sure how significant these factors are, but they are worth noting.
David at first I was going to disagree with your assertion that academia today is the gatekeeper to careers. Ask any of these millennial’s with six-figure college loans and degrees in liberal arts. But then I realized you probably meant careers in academia. To be sure if you’re not from the left you have a tough road to hoe. That is if they learn you’re a conservative.
Bill, despite all the degreed-but-unemployed people, there is a widespread perception in American society that you can’t succeed career-wise unless you have a degree..and increasingly, a graduate degree. (What matters being mainly the piece of paper, not anything learned in getting it.) True this is now being challenged as people observe what is happening, but it has been the dominant narrative for quite a while.
Penny writes:
“Both groups have the Constitutional right to be stupid–and they exercise that right continually.”
OK. The darling of the right, that ‘wonderful actor’ Ronald Reagan, sure fit that bill.
This puts PenGun in interesting company.
It was Clark Clifford,successor to McNamara as Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense who labelled Reagan as an ‘amiable dunce’.
Of course, we all know that this is what really chaps Penny’s ass:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtYdjbpBk6A
I’m not sure why you think I was pleased with the break up of Germany.
I was pleased by the reunification of Germany and I guess it may be difficult, for you to understand someone with his head screwed on straight.
I am not right wing or left wing and I think those heavily invested in either side are just dumb.
That is some fine cognitive dissonance right there.
This speech, given on June 12, 1987, is
less about German Reunification than it is about ending Soviet tyranny. The collapse began when Hungary opened the border fence with Austria in May,1989.
This allowed large numbers of East Germans to flee to West Germany and Europe via Hungary and Austria. The gate was opened on 9 November, 1989. The immediate goal for these people was to flee the Soviet Union, not to re-unite with West Germany. The 2 Germanys were re-united in 1990, while the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991.
That latter event is Reagan’s great crime.
Call yourself whatever you want. You are a statist. As was Stalin.
Call yourself whatever you want. You are a statist. As was Stalin.
I am probably the only person here who would like a one world government. I really think that would solve most of humanity’s problems.
Now how that makes me a statist (sic) escapes me.
There is much truth to these comments, but I think communism was planted in both academia and the movies much earlier. A sprinkling of blatantly propaganda movies came from ’39 on, but it is a subtext (occasionally rather than always) earlier. What could be more hagiographic than Mission to Moscow (other than Julia). Curtiz, whose movies we often enjoy and were quite popular directed Mission; I remember when Julia came out the ads for “what becomes a legend most” with Hellman wrapped in fur (I think those were the ads, it was long ago). These were certainly given much respect.
It was a stream earlier; and Reagan always said he knew how to deal with the communists, he’d dealt with the unions in Hollywood. (Which makes On the Waterfront resonate.) And the faculty that gave me a great gift in teaching works as they were, in terms of words on the page and great ideas, leaned left in a softer way. But they were routed by or seduced by the ideas of the late sixties and seventies. They’d had colleagues, however, who were already there. The thirties subsidized art & scholarship – and politics affected the plays, books, and art that came from WPA. While often useful (the auditorium that housed our local library and was used for school events until 1962 was one of those projects – and it helped our village keep its center) and at least one of my older teachers had worked on the State Guides project, those projects were subsidized and assigned by a state department that was leftist.
Lit crit was generally a matter of close reading when I was a young student but it was not unusual to pick up a book that leaned left; I remember a work bent on finding Henry James a bad (unethical) writer because (at least it did use some close reading) of his persistent use of money metaphors and his wealthy English country house settings, which meant he didn’t understand workers. It seemed to me that meant (and now it seems even more disturbing) the fact that James was often arguing with such sensible analogies there is no free lunch, there are tradeoffs in choices we make, our mistaken ethical choices cost others as well as ourselves; he also doubted utopian ideas and generally the best “help” for others was sympathy – the best choice is not “helping” another but leaving them, sympathetically free. These are core Americana but anathema to the left. I suspect the writer’s gut response to the imagery – as mine to the critic as I threw his book across the room – shows us gut responses on cultural divides today.
Yes, both are in bubbles – and both seem determined to stay in them. Next to other’s, their lives are pleasant and would be fulfilling if they had the sense God gave them. But drama queens got to drama queen, inventing narrative after narrative of victimization. So Meryl Streep stands in her expensive gown, moves her audience, and they all feel sympathy – but isn’t their sympathy, as it was with Polanski, inspired by their fatuous idea of sympathizing with the artist, the artist they think themselves to be, rather than real people?