How could that be?

Look at her.

She’s stunning.

I, of course, had the blunt interests of a boy who knew nothing about women or sex– although I was very interested in both– and I simply accepted Hollywood’s casual objectification of these mysteries. I didn’t know somebody was attractive unless Hollywood signalled to me that they were, something they usually did by a display of nudity. And so the promise of Jessica Lange, Kim Basinger or Jamie Lee Curtis taking off their top in some accessible, high velocity movie was simply too much for me to resist.

Streep, who even at a young age seemed to be playing adults rather than sex toys for naive adolescents, was cast in the sort of films that my parents might be interested in, in “prestige” films, and even though she was of the same general age as all the other celebrities I lusted after, she was stood apart from them, a European cousin, or something.

As an adult I came to love Meryl Streep. Not so much for her acting, which was always somehow obscured for me by her reputation for “acting,” but for her presence. Talented, charismatic and beautiful, she’s also fantastically articulate and charming, and like everybody else I was super keen to hear her speak at the Golden Globes.

Her speech was widely celebrated.

Meryl Streep, Hollywood’s single-combat hero, called to our better angels, and as we sat there listening it was as if the Stature of Liberty herself was speaking. Expecting to love every word of it, I was surprised to discover that I did not.

Although she might have been joking when she referred to the roomful of beautiful, insanely wealthy and adored people sitting before her as, “The most vilified segment of American society,” it made me roll my eyes . Whether she intended it with any irony or not is unclear, but the thrust of her argument was that Hollywood, full of outsiders and foreigners, was representative of some sort of scrappy refugee success story rather than a consumerist ideal of near-unattainable privilege. She continued, saying that if Trump had his way, all America would have left would be football and mixed martial arts– and as she said this, her voice rising in certainty, finger wagging, she admonished, “Which are not the arts!”

The home crowd cheered.

I don’t know.

I had thought I was the home crowd, too, but was I supposed to believe that actors were rescuing America from the things that the people who lived there liked? That football and MMA were unworthy to watch unless they were recreated in movie format starring celebrities?

Something like that?

I wasn’t sure.

Her audience was rapt, hanging on every word. And they were all so beautiful and dewy, so earnest and self-congratulatory in expression, so not of this earth that I imagined them separating from the rest of the world and rising up, up, up in some magical balloon that they knew the rest of us, so smitten, would never be able to let go of.

Her condemnation of Trump’s nascent war on journalism struck me as wanting, too, because there is likely no industry that succeeds so brilliantly at manipulating the press as does Hollywood. The Hollywood Foreign Press, who are responsible for the Golden Globes, are little more than a marketing wing for the industry, trading off favourable stories for glamorous access.

When we see our celebrities on the red carpet refusing to be objectified by not revealing who made their outfit and thus striking a blow for equal rights, we have to keep in mind that they’re still accepting money to advertise that dress.

Hollywood is about money.

Period.

If art or diversity or empathy is a byproduct of this pursuit, all the better, but if Meryl Streep were being honest with herself and the rest of us, she might acknowledge that she, like Trump, depends on a compliant media to promote her work and spin her narratives.

And so it goes.

Everything touches everything else.

It’s not like Streep was saying anything crazy, though. She was trying to do good, but her blind spots were, well, Hollywood in scope. Her words were tangled in contradictions, a stinging disregard for those who might not agree with her, and an imperious detachment from the pedestrian, discount store lives the rest of us struggle to lead, and that actually demoralized me.

Politicians and actors, I have found out, have all too much in common.

*************************************************

From @realDonaldTrump:

Ron Glass died! Black guy on Barney Miller. Very fussy and wordy. Maybe gay. Easy to overlook. Just 71. Still in the prime of his life. Sad.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Florence Henderson died! America’s original MILF. Did I? Wouldn’t be classy to tell, but as Flo is dead– yes, many, many times. Once with Marcia, too.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Leonard Cohen died! Think it was a nut allergy. Might have to ban nuts. We’re losing too many of the good ones to them.#WarOnNuts!

From @realDonaldTrump:

I am in perfect health. No nut allergy. Can eat nuts by the handful. Shame about Crooked Hillary’s health. So very sick. Tired all the time. Crooked Hillary next to die?

From @realDonaldTrump:

Jose Fernandez died! Great, great pitcher for Miami. Un hombre sincero. Had box seats for his last start. Great service. Stunning waitresses. They love me in Florida.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Sharon Jones died! Pancreatic cancer. Nasty. I stand with the black people, who love me, love me so much, during this sad, sad time. I will fix your broken inner cities!!

From @realDonaldTrump:

Pat Harrington Jr. died! The janitor guy on One Day at a Time. Decent show. Maybe not the best. Preferred Three’s Company. Chrissy? She was a 9, for sure. Body and face.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Actress Suzanne Somers played Chrissy. Blonde and jiggly. I won’t lie to you, I had sex with her many times. So many times you wouldn’t believe.

From @realDonaldTrump:

One time we did it in the linen closet of a 5 star restaurant. She was a great piece of real estate, that lady. Outstanding. #WomenLoveMe.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Muhammad Ali died! Great showman. Brought lots of people and money into the casinos. Huge amounts. He got so shaky in the end, though. Sad.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Former Miss New Jersey Cara McCollum has died! Saw her naked more than once in the change room at the pageant. Body a solid 9. Face? Maybe a 7 on a good day. We mourn her passing.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Prince has died! He was never my thing. Straight or gay? Hard to tell. Always changing his brand. Very confusing for the consumer. Made him a bad businessman. #BuyTrumpBrandWater

From @realDonaldTrump:

David Bowie died! Had a glass eye. Was married to a Somalian supermodel. Guy was way out there. Tried to get him on Celebrity Apprentice but there were scheduling problems.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Gene Wilder died! Alzheimer’s Disease. Couldn’t remember a thing in the end. I am in perfect health. My mind is like a platinum trap. Ivy League educated. So, so very smart. #HighestPresidentialIQOfAllTime

From @realDonaldTrump:

Chyna has died! Drug overdose. I have never taken any drugs in my life. Unlike Crooked Hillary who is on HUGE amounts of meds. She’s all weak and shaky like Ali was before his death. Don’t think she has long.

From @realDonaldTrump:

Chyna was a great lady wrestler. Really tall. Kind of homely, but still able to turn a profit in porn. Gotta admire that.

Always thought Ivanka could dominate the industry if she chose.

I felt a kind of relief that he’d died of an overdose rather than some more pedestrian, accessible reason, as if that was at least one fate I’d be spared, but even that’s a false security. None of us know when or how we’re going to shuffle off this mortal coil, and I think it’s that anxiety that always draws us to the news of death. We whistle past the graveyard, and the multitudes of people who posted links on their social media feeds were in some way remembering that they were alive as much as they were that Hoffman was gone. It was a little bit weird, but I understood it, I think.

Being a celebrity is to submit to a process of self-annihilation. Symbols upon which all our projections are focused, they become radiant entities, briefly gathering strength from the absorption of our collective energy before inevitably immolating as if in ritual sacrifice.

Hoffman, familiarly imperfect in appearance, seemed more like us than other stars, who with their perfect bodies and dream eyes all seem a different species entirely, and it became easy to appropriate Hoffman in death just as it was in life, allowing him, in spite of our felt kinship with him, to remain an avatar, his end meaning whatever each one of us as needed it to mean.

The home-viewing options, although imperfect, are vast, and nothing could be easier than staying at home and watching Netflix at 8:00 or whatever other time might make my life simpler. Of course, Netflix is actually pretty lame, but in my life convenience now trumps quality, so instead of watching a movie I actually want to see like 12 Years a Slave, I end up binge-watching a TV show like New Girl. Such is the world that we, or at least, I, live in.

At any rate, Rachelle and I reached deep and mustered together enough will to go and see American Hustle at the theatre. This movie, directed by the successful but widely-despised-by-actors, David O. Russell, has been receiving all sorts of praise and is already a favourite to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

I liked the movie fine but was far from swept away. It’s a professionally crafted Hollywood film that features some big actors doing big acting in appealing wardrobe. Everybody is good, especially Amy Adams’ cleavage and Christian Bale’s hairpiece, but it’s one of those movies that actually looks better than it is.

The truth, I think, is that the movie was kind of incoherent, like a series of improvisations by talented actors that had later been stitched together by a director. It was as if Russell wasn’t thinking about how character and story fit together, but how each, individual scene would come across on it’s own. All the primary components of a film were showcased, without a film actually being composed from them, if that makes any sense.

Still, it was a pleasing enough experience, and in that regard it reminded me of Argo. Watching it, you felt like you were getting your money’s worth, that middlebrow Hollywood was functioning exactly as middlebrow Hollywood was supposed to function. The idea in Hollywood is to give the audience what they’re looking for, not to startle or elevate them, and movies like Argo and American Hustle are perfect examples of this—well made products where performance, the visible effort of performance, will always trump content. Regardless, the movie didn’t ask too much of us, and it didn’t give us too much either, but it was attractive and distracting, and on a cold, winter’s evening, well, that’s exactly what we want.

**************************************************************************

Me: Holy Mother of God, you are just stunning! You are insanely beautiful! Jesus!!

Marion: Thank you, that’s very sweet of you to say.

Me: Your voice is chocolate, French chocolate.

Marion: I see.

Me: I think I need my inhaler. Sorry. Jesus, this is embarrassing.

Marion: It’s all right.

Me: It’s just that you’re so beautiful. You’re luminous, like a cloud made of gold and light.

Marion: I’m just an actress who has agreed to talk to you about my new movie Rust and Bone that just opened in the United States.

Me: Yes, yes.

Marion: It is a wonderful film, very complex and beautiful.

Me: You train whales in this film, don’t you? You’re a beautiful marine biologist! I bet you look even better with your hair wet. It probably changes the way it smells. If I were a killer whale I would do whatever you told me to do!

Marion: Yes, well, the film is about a whale trainer who suffers a terrible accident where she loses her legs. She is both a physical and emotional amputee, and must let love back into her life. It was a very challenging role for me to play, but as an actor all you want to do is discover more about the human soul.

Me: You have such beautiful legs it would be a shame to lose them, even if it was just in a movie! But yeah, I think I know what you’re saying about the human soul. I get it. You were in Batman, too, weren’t you? I always thought you’d make a great Catwoman. Have you ever thought about being Catwoman? You’re more beautiful than Halle Berry times Michelle Pfeiffer times Anne Hathaway times Halle Berry again, plus all the old TV ones.

Marion: I think that they did marvelous jobs playing that role and I don’t think I’d want to repeat work that had been done so well. I like to always do something new, to always challenge myself.

Me: My wife thinks that I’m a real challenge.

Marion: I am sure that she does.

Me: What movie do you think you were most beautiful in?

Marion: It’s been a pleasure Mister Murray, but I am afraid I’m on a very tight schedule and I have an another appointment to keep now.