Hello, all. I’d like to devote this post to speaking to Hollywood directly. Since it’s my blog, the post is for everyone, but I want to address the folks who make the big calls on things out there.
First, though: Fair play requires I disclose that I don’t live in California and don’t know what life is like for people who have to rely on Hollywood for their monthly rent; it likewise requires that I acknowledge that Hollywood isn’t a monolith, and that the establishment in that business, like in other businesses, is composed of a group of different folks doing a bunch of different jobs.
Second, here is the broader context of my entreaty to Hollywood:
Israel’s latest attack on Gaza — the sixth in 15 years, but far and away the most bloody and deliberately inhumane — has divided Hollywood in a way that maybe nothing ever has before. The issues erupting over Israel’s response to the October 7th attack by Hamas make the recent writer and actor strikes look like simple, easily-resolved playground squabbles during recess.
That negative energy has started coming to a head in some industry-rattling ways. Admired screen legend Susan Sarandon, whose activism is well established and who has never been censured for it by her industry before, was just dropped by her talent agency for saying things sympathetic to the experience of Muslim Americans at a recent pro-Palestinian protest.
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Sarandon was with UTA, but over at Creative Artists Agency, prominent agent Maha Dakhil resigned her board seat and stepped back from her role as head of the motion picture department after she was dogpiled for sharing a social media post that criticized Israel’s mass murder in Gaza. Even deleting the post and apologizing wasn’t enough to save her from losing prized client Aaron Sorkin to CAA rival WME.
Then, earlier today, one of the two women responsible for revitalizing the Scream series got dropped from her own franchise for calling out the inhumanity we’re all watching in real time: “Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp,” Barrera said. “Cornering everyone together, with nowhere to go, no electricity, no water. People have learnt nothing from our histories. And just like our histories, people are still silently watching it all happen.”
Melissa Barrera used her own platform to call it like she sees it — like the overwhelming majority of the world sees it at this point — and for that, she was promptly fired from her job.
Dear Hollywood,
These expressions of speech by actresses, writers, and others in the business are protected unequivocally by the United States Constitution. These people have a legal right to say everything they’re saying, without fear of arrest, censure, or reprisal by any government entity. But of course, Hollywood is an industry, not a government entity, and therefore it has traditionally cleaved to the view that it needn’t concern itself with what’s right or wrong when it comes to censuring the speech of those whose livelihoods rely on it for income.
Hollywood, I want you to know that we get it. We absolutely do. You have your bread, and you’re accustomed to thinking that it’s buttered on just the one side. We also understand that no one likes to be told how to run their operation, or whose interests to prioritize in the process.
The thing is, the gobsmacking truth on this particular issue, at this particular moment in history, is that for once, your calculus on this topic is no longer adding up. You guys and your forbears have been kicking the can down the road so long, you forgot that eventually the road ends.
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From a humanist point of view, Hollywood’s always been on the wrong side of history when it comes to unqualified support of Israel and its ongoing treatment of the Palestinians and their property. Israel is maintaining the world’s longest-running illegal military occupation, of a captive civilian population which has neither the capacity nor the intention of posing an existential threat to it. That part isn’t controversial, anymore, and doesn’t need revisited here: The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak, and when it does, truth is always on the side of the oppressed.
What has changed is the public perception that Hollywood’s on the wrong side of history on Palestine. The propaganda curtain began to rip with books like The Israel Lobby and President Carter’s excellent Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and now that the internet has made information spread beyond the reach of practical control, that curtain looks more like a giant wall of Swiss cheese. And folks, the optics are made even worse by the increasing levels of hypocrisy in which you must engage just to have any hope of justifying it with the public.
Surely, you can see that by now.
That public, your audience, is heavily against the status quo on this, especially with the growing market in China, whose people overwhelmingly side with Palestinians on the fundamentals (illegal occupation, apartheid, settlements, etc). Check the sheer numbers on the recent pro-Palestinian protests worldwide. So long as Hollywood’s side is the side of Israel, uncritically, the industry will remain on the wrong side of history because that is the choice it has made, on purpose, against the public view and good. And trying to dismiss each and every one of those umpteen millions of voices with conflationist and ultimately dangerous accusations of antisemitism… it’s not working, anymore. And folks, that will never again work on the topic of Palestine. You must see that by now, too. That outdated tool is one for the reforge.
We have officially crossed the Rubicon on Palestine, my friends. Hollywood can keep grinding away at that mill if it wants; certainly, you’ve got plenty of grist for it. Or… Hollywood can collectively choose to change its gestalt. It is both possible and reasonable for one to support justice and peace for Palestinians without siding against Israel entirely and forever.
This conflict clearly does not require any additional extremism injected into it, and Hollywood could do untold good by leading the way on turning down the temperature in work spaces and fostering a more honest dialogue environment online and in other public discussion spaces.
Call it siding with humanity. You’ll find there really is a path you can wend through that approach, especially now that collective bargaining has appeased a significant portion of the labor force you’ll need. It’s time to try being fair-handed with both the Palestinians and your own workers’ rights to free speech. Even if that approach comes with some short-term losses, you can trust that it will be worth it in the long run.