New Standards for Crud--in All Seriousness Here

E.L. Doctorow is one of my favorite authors, because The Book of Daniel showed me that it is possible to make Walt Disney World deeply, deeply frightening; Joss Whedon is one of my favorite filmmakers, because Firefly showed me that it is possible to make electric shock torture funny. In other words, good entertainers are capable of doing pretty much anything.

On the other hand, that's not necessarily a good thing. A few years back, some friends and I formulated a comedy sketch based around the mantra "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should." I'm convinced it was no coincidence that we picked that particular saying to spoof; it's a notion that pops up among entertainers, and people who deal with them, pretty often. Sure, we can do pretty much anything, especially with the aid of modern technology, but at what point do we reach limits of integrity?

The problem with this question is that it usually has to do with relative viewpoints. Fans of South Park will remember the stint between the show's creators and Isaac Hayes, who played Chef, which resulted in Hayes's resignation. Hayes, a Scientologist, criticized the creators for being in poor taste with the show's satire on Scientology, to which the creators rebutted that Hayes had never voiced any problem with their satirizing other religions, until his own faith was brought into the equation.

This also goes for works that are, as we say, "products of their time." What comes to mind for me is Shakespeare's overbearingly evil portrayal of Richard III; the play is a historical catastrophe, but one must remember that it was commissioned by the Tudor throne, and that Richard was a Plantagenet. In other words, portraying him as anything other than a psychotic madman could well have landed Shakespeare's head on a chopping block.

What troubles me is the way that narratives like Shakespeare's Richard III are used to excuse modern ones that make a more-or-less equal mess of things. As someone who rubbernecks at car crashes, I've often been tempted to look at Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, in my mind a failure both financially and narratively. I will say that Marie Antoinette is one damn pretty movie, which I gather was its goal: 2 hours of pastries, dresses, parties, shoes, jewelry, and so on. Which is pretty shallow, but I don't particularly have a problem with that.

What got me was, "Why is Marie Antoinette an American teenager who's played by Kirsten Dunst?" I've been dating a historian for the better part of two years, so I've checked my facts on this one, and most of that movie is either incorrect or grossly distorted. When I watch it over, it looks more like a movie about Sofia Coppola's life bundled together with a laundry list of things that happened to the ill-fated Queen of France 200 years ago. The problem isn't that it's not true; most movies aren't. The problem is that it plays with truth and messes with the lives of real people. Isn't that... you know... wrong?

You can go back and forth on that one. I have a feeling that Columbia Pictures's CFO would say "yes," in view of the fact that the film lost about $30 million; I also have a feeling this would be an easier call to make if Marie Antoinette were a good movie. But let's look at the next step forward:

In post-production now is The Other Boleyn Girl, an adaptation of a novel by the same name. Unlike Marie Antoinette, The Other Boleyn Girl isn't just wrong; it's really, really, really wrong. I've done my research on this one too, and if the movie is anything like the book, then its historical distortion is pretty much on par with Shakespeare's Richard III. The difference is, Shakespeare had an excuse.

Now, I know that neither of these movies is going to do real harm to anybody, aside from promoting grand misconceptions about real people. I know that both of them are fictional portrayals, and they're not going to influence my conception of hard facts in any way. But I still believe that what the filmmakers are doing here is, on principle, against ethics; it's one of those things that just should not be done. It's disrespectful toward its subjects, its audience, and its makers, to what I think is an unacceptable degree.

The reason I think this is because, unlike the other cases it tends to bring up, The Other Boleyn Girl is not a product of its time. We know it's wrong, and so will anyone else who spends 5 minutes with a history book. Richard III might still be an important play, and The Birth of a Nation might still be a milestone in film history despite how hopelessly wrong they both are, but for dog's sake, we're past that. Context does not excuse these things anymore; we know better.

But despite that, few people in the industry seem to give the issue a great deal of thought. As new minds going in, I encourage all of us to think a little more about these things; remember that times are changing, and learn to distinguish what kinds of integrity depend on your point of view and which are more objective.