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For the past several years, I have avoided the commercial news media. This election season was simply too hard to resist. Sitting on airplanes, one watches a lot of MSNBC.
Strange then, that for the two weeks or so since we elected Barack Obama president, the news cycle has been dominated by Sarah Palin. In a farewell tour that has already eclipsed KISS and rivaled Cher in length and scope, Palin has, as Rachel Maddow noted, given at least one exclusive interview a day.
How valiantly Ms. Palin has tried to appear graceful. This from a woman who several weeks ago was leading chants of “Kill him!” and “Terrorist!”
And then there was the issue of perfection.
Barack Obama, Sarah Palin maintained, was simply unfit for the presidency because he believes America is imperfect. Ms. Palin made this astonishing assertion at the sort of distasteful rally, tinged with racism and cloaked in fear-mongering, that we came to expect from her ticket.
The truth is that no candidate, Democrat or Republican, Mr. Obama included, could successfully run for office without declaring, resolutely and unequivocally, that our country is indeed “the greatest in the world.” How anybody, least of all Ms. Palin, who has spent precious little time outside the fifty states and most of her time residing in the most remote of them all, could possibly know such a thing is curious indeed.
A Scandinavian acquaintance once said of his homeland, “we are a small island of limited influence, and we are proud of what we have accomplished.” Modesty can be charming; on a national scale, more still. Sarah Palin, with her cynical, condescending faux-populism, is anything but. How fitting that this great, imperfect nation (and several of Ms. Palin’s “real American” states) chose to elect somebody else.
But this long good-bye, I fear, is no final curtain call.
* * *
Hundreds of thousands of people in three hundred cities across the country marched this past weekend in a coordinated protest of the revocation of civil rights in California, Arkansas, Arizona, and Florida. Meanwhile, the other side expressed genuine surprise in our failure to welcome with open arms the coming of the Religious Reich.
Technology made such a choreographed show of force possible, and I spent much of the protest receiving text message and Facebook-via-blackberry updates from other locales: partner and sister marching on the Capitol Mall, good friends holding signs as far away as London, and literally seventy-five percent of my colleagues here in the Los Angeles independent film community spread out across the city marching and chanting. For the first time I can remember, the subway from Hollywood was jammed shoulder-to-shoulder. Even in the smoke-choked, ninety-degree air of downtown Los Angeles, the throngs were a welcome sight. After all, visibility matters.
Certainly, the No On 8 campaign was ineffective, the television ads were insufficiently hard-hitting, and the outreach to minority communities was limited. But the post-election fall-out has revealed a terrible truth: many, many voters went to the polls with startlingly bad information. The other side is certainly culpable for perpetuating the lies necessary to win. But the fact remains, far too many Californians have no idea what a same-sex family look like or why a same-sex couple would want (or need) to get married. It is easy to vote against abstract rights (especially when so few people have more than a superficial understanding of the Constitution) but more difficult to deliberately harm one’s neighbors, coworkers, and children. Yet fifty-two percent of California voters did exactly that. Now is the time to educate those voters.
What can filmmakers, writers, and artists do? We can do what we always do: tell our stories. In doing so, we can spread much–needed information. If we want to bolster same-sex families, we might start by portraying same-sex families in films, on television, in novels, and throughout the media (we have our first black president in large part because of Martin Luther King but also in small part because of Morgan Freeman). We might document and explain our collective anger as well as the tangible, horrible consequences of such an irrational and mean-spirited taking of rights.
Most of all, we must keep this issue (and the many people affected by it) visible. It is far, far from over. “The moral arc of the universe is long,” King once said, “but it bends toward justice.”
* * *
We might also acknowledge some unpleasant truths about the other side. Nearly eighty-five percent of weekly churchgoers voted in favor of Proposition 8. Much of the forty million dollars required to destroy marriage equality in California was raised by the Mormon Church (a “faith” premised on institutionalized bigotry toward blacks, excised only by a miraculous “revelation” a few months before the federal government passed the Civil Rights Act) and Catholic archdiocese. To suggest that Catholicism has made child rape an art form is a gross understatement. Predictably, both religions sought to repair their damaged images by attacking a minority group even less historically popular. Previously, George W. Bush relied twice on the devout to get elected, and as Kevin Phillips has pointed out, Evangelical Christianity (most notably the Left Behind series of paperback books) became a crucial selling point for the Iraq war.
And yet, as creative artists, we have been very reluctant to criticize the burgeoning (and terrifying) role religious faith has assumed in public life – this in a country where separation of church and state is a founding principle. Skeptics, secularists, and atheists (as many as twenty percent of Americans have no religious beliefs) rarely appear noticeably on-screen or in popular culture. As it stands, legally-recognized bonds of devotion between certain American citizens can be disparaged in the name of “religious tolerance.” But challenging dubious core beliefs many people hold on the basis of inadequate (and over overwhelming countervailing) evidence is tantamount to political and artistic suicide.
It is time we re-framed the debate. This assault on reason has gone too far. Now is the time for an Enlightenment of our own.
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Matthew Mishory is a filmmaker and writer based in Los Angeles. His current project, PORTLAND, is being produced through his Iconoclastic Features shingle, and stars Jonathan Caouette, Erin Daniels, and David Carradine.
MOCA Contemporaries paves the way as a strong dynamic group of young Fine Art associates and supporters that are participating in the development and refinement in aesthetic savo that is the future of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). Their mission “As leaders of the MOCA Contemporaries we have the unique ability to cultivate a strong, tight-knit community of younger MOCA supporters who are committed to contemporary art, and we have the responsibility to provide this group with the opportunities they need to develop an enduring relationship with MOCA.” November 2nd was the first in a series of Contemporaries Cornerstone events that gives the members exclusive access to internationally renowned contemporary art collections. This evening’s event took place at the home of MOCA Trustee Dallas Price-Van Breda. This was a rare opportunity to see one of the most inclusive and eclectic collections by one of MOCA’s important contributors. Highlights were the James Turrell installation and two separate gallery pavilions housing some of today’s most important contemporary artists, including Raymond Pettibon, Takashi Murakami, and David Hockney. For further information about the MOCA Contemporaries and joining please visit www.moca.org/contemporaries/ .
Courtesy Photos Leora Lutz.
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