“I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Or maybe it should be, “I’m not a writer, but I post on Plugged In’s blog.”
I’m curious today about whether it matters or not who it is who plays somebody or other in the movies or on TV. And I have to admit, it’s a vexing question. Most of the time Plugged In takes a neutral stance of such issues. We didn’t comment on the fact that a gay activist Chad Allen played revered Christian missionary Nate Saint in the movie End of the Spear. Or that Anthony Hopkins played C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands not two years after fleshing out serial killer Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Or that Ellen DeGeneres voiced that lovable blue fish Dory in Finding Nemo.
What would be the point, right? A movie’s a movie. It’s about the characters, not the people playing the characters. It’s the content, the morals, the message, not the cogs turning behind the scenes. And that all makes a lot of sense.
But a whole bunch of people aren’t buying the logic lately, not when it comes to the casting of Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan in The Butler, the upcoming telling of the true-life story of Eugene Allen, a man who served as head butler for eight U.S. presidents.
According to The Washington Times, “Vietnam veterans and veterans in general are not amused. Navy veteran Larry Reyes has started a Facebook petition to boycott the movie.”
Why? If it’s not already on the tip of your brain, it’s because Fonda became well known during the Vietnam War era for, again, in the words of the Times, “consorting with the enemy.” Critics dubbed her “Hanoi Jane” after she posed for a picture, smiling, with our adversaries across the border in North Vietnam.
And people don’t want her history (her beliefs) tangled up with Mrs. Reagan’s.
But …
According to the Hollywood Reporter, all the Republican presidents in The Butler are being played by Liberal actors, such as John Cusack for Richard Nixon; Robin Williams for Dwight Eisenhower, and Alan Rickman for Ronald Reagan. Given the political climate in Hollywood and elsewhere, this is not surprising.
That from the Times. And Fonda’s response to the flap? The Hollywood Reporter says she said, “Get a life.”
So should we? Should I? Should any of us concern ourselves with the who just as much as the what?
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