https://www.indiewire.com/2018/11/npr-fresh-air-cuts-ties-film-critic-david-edelstein-over-rape-joke-1202023576/
https://www.salon.com/2018/11/28/david-edelstein-the-butter-scene-in-last-tango-and-the-darkness-of-the-internet/
I generally have gotten to the point where I don't expect anyone who writes for Salon to be capable of nuance. O'Hehir's declaration that Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy is fascist simply did not convince me. Reference to Edelstein's withering pan of Wonder Woman that stopped only to bask in the author's admiration of Gal Gadot's physical form gets made in the Salon piece. That was just last year and a number of feminists and writers online noted that what Edelstein did was basically declare the superhero film was a piece of junk and, to the point, it seemed that Edelstein only had regard for the body of the actress he admitted got him horny. So the mere possibility that Edelstein was somehow undone by one bad joke doesn't seem to really make any sense. Within the realms of liberal journalism what happened recently might have been a straw that broke a camel's back or maybe it was just a bad PR situation but I've read enough of what Edelstein has written about films over the last twenty years that I can't quite see what happened as tragic or even perhaps an injustice. But I also can't really see that any calls for him to have been dealt with as particularly persuasive either.
It may be that some of the oddness of the moment may have to do with otherwise liberal journalists who in earlier years might have praised the "rawness" or "realness" of a Louis C. K. who are not at a loss to justify jokes that make light of various levels of sexual assault, which is to say, we're not seeing a kind of neo-puritanism so much as a recognition that many of the cultural heroes or priests of the art-religion of film and the meta-art religion of film criticism, seem like they shouldn't be able to just get away with saying or doing the kinds of things that were venerated in the 1970s as peak-art. Tolstoy's insistence that great artists should actually be great people does not die off altogether even eras as jaded and brutal as one in which South Park can run for 22 seasons.
But Edelstein managed to enjoy South Park right up to the point, as he put it, that he discovered that Parker and Stone are self-styled libertarians and not liberals like himself as he had imagined they must be. Once Edelstein made that years-delayed discovery (that more alert viewers worked out before the South Park movie was released) suddenly Edelstein couldn't enjoy Parker and Stone's gleeful eviscerations of liberal entertainers in Team America. Matt Damon, indeed.
What may make the Edelstein situation awkward may have something to do with the ghastly, stupid and unfunny joke but also to do with the extent to which idle jokes may reflect upon the nature of the moral compass of those taste-makers in the entertainment industries and the journalistic institutions from which institutionally vetted criticism gets written. Had Edelstein just been "some blogger" this sort of controversy could not have happened and he'd still be blogging.
Lessons? I don't know that there are lessons to be learned by way of Salon. Mostly a few lines from Proverbs 18 spring to mind.
via NKJV
Proverbs 18:2
A fool has no delight in understanding,
But in expressing his own heart
Proverbs 18:6
A fool’s lips enter into contention,
And his mouth calls for blows.
Proverbs 18:7
A fool’s mouth is his destruction,
And his lips are the snare of his soul.
The age of social media may be able to reveal who has been foolish simply by dint of the fact that fools who use social media can't resist revealing to the entire world how foolish they are, and most of the time it is through what they regard as in-the-moment brilliant displays of wit.
having chronicled the peak and dissolution of what used to be Mars Hill it might be useful to observe that a famous person can offend a whole lot of people that would be regarded as ideological adversaries and his or her star will continue to rise so long as amid all the controversies there's nothing to suggest that the celebrity or influential figure has said or done something to alienate the support base. Perhaps as Bill Clinton's personal vices were not considered sufficiently important enough to be obstacles to backing him implementing promised policies 45 has been given a similar "pardon" by his supporters--they may be aware of how vice-filled the occupant seems to be but the policy goals are worth it.
By contrast, Edelstein made the sort of joke that may have passed by in the past as something that could be tolerated but can't be in this era. I just don't get the sense that it's about any kind of puritanism as such.
Part of me wonders whether, had Hillary Clinton won the electoral vote, if these kinds of moments would have happened in that parallel universe. In an era in which a reality TV star has become president is it possible that the moment we're witnessing in the entertainment industry is the enforcement of codes of conduct that are simply what's expected of anyone with a high profile in the media industries who is in some way expected to act and write and speak in a way commensurate with those classes that are above the "floor" of reality TV? That's my guess over the last year or so since 45 became 45.
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