Leave It to The Beaver

Forget Mad Max. Sayonara, William Wallace. Mel Gibson’s new role? A troubled executive who talks through a puppet.

The Beaver (the name of the movie and the species of the puppet) isn’t due out ’til next year, so I don’t know too much about it. But I do know my first two reactions were when I heard about it.

Reaction No. 1: “Wha’?”

Reaction No. 2: “‘Troubled,’ eh? Mel Gibson? Sounds like typecasting.”

This was not a very Christian response, perhaps, but my reaction left me a little shamefaced for another, slightly different reason.

See, I’ve always done my best to separate the art from the artist. Just because Miley Cyrus is growing ever more adult in her attire and lyrics doesn’t make her Disney show, Hannah Montana, any less than squeaky clean. Just because John Lennon claimed to be “bigger than Jesus” doesn’t lessen my appreciation for The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.” And I’ve sometimes rolled my eyes at my friends who couldn’t compartmentalize as efficiently as I could.

But sometimes I think life is partly about God ribbing us about our own inconsistencies, and my reaction to Gibson’s new project perhaps pointed out one of my own.

I’ve always kinda liked Gibson. I think he’s a good actor and a gifted director. But I wonder if I’ll ever be able to watch him in anything again without a few cells of my brain recalling his drunken, anti-Semitic rant to a police officer a few years back, and his vile squabbles with girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. Can I ever accept Gibson the actor again, now that I unfortunately know so much about Gibson the man? Will his projects always be sullied for me? Should they?

I guess I’d still like to think that Gibson, whatever his personal life is like, can still make a great and perhaps even inspirational movie (though perhaps The Beaver won’t be it). But maybe the whole deal is selfishly dependent, in my own mind at least, in the quality of the art. Maybe it’s easier for me to give The Beatles a pass because I like their music—which, perhaps, might seem a little like forgiving a football player for being a jerk just because he’s good, and he’s on my team. But then again, if we rejected stuff from folks who had moral failings, our bookshelves and entertainment libraries would be pretty bare: Arguably, we’d have to even punt most of the book of Psalms.