Heroes and Villains

I have this theory about film actors.

I think that a film actor must extend his range and strengthen his ability by playing villains. Unless he's willing to do that he runs the risk of never fulfilling his potential as an actor.

It's why I tend to respect somebody like Bruce Willis over Tom Hanks. Hanks is probably the better actor but Willis has no fear of roles. He's been a villain in The Jackal. He's played a man in a pink bunny suit in North. And he's been a complex hero in Twelve Monkeys. The closest Hanks has been to a villain is the role he had in Road to Perdition, but the perspective of the film was that Hanks was forced to do bad things because of his situation.

A good example of a superb actor that truly showed what he could do as a villain is Alan Rickman and Heath Ledger. Rickman was the villain in Die Hard, the maybe villain in the Harry Potter films and the supporting "hero" role in Galaxy Quest. The late Heath Ledger played one of the heroes in The Brothers Grimm and, of course, the superbly villainous Joker in The Dark Knight.

Playing both hero and villain shows an actor has both courage and the chops.

I think pundits have a similar bar to clear.

The equivalent role to play when you're a pundit is to ask hard questions. To attack a hard problem with clear thinking and courageous proposals. There is no courage without risk. For an actor, the risk of playing a villain is alienating your audience and injurying your career. The risk for a pundit is the same.

This is where conservative columnists such as George Will and William F. Buckley differ from people like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter. It takes courage to speak truth to power but power can reside in different places. For actors, the power resides in studios and audiences. For pundits, it lies in the same place: the publisher and the audience.

You can tell the courage of a pundit when they go against the grain and point out something positive about the other side or something negative about their own. You can measure their chops by sophistication of their thinking and the clarity of their position.

People like Buchanan, Coulter and Limbaugh have little courage. They have an audience that likes a certain message and they deliver: over and over and over. You can predict a Coulter column by a couple of words in the headline. You can predict a Limbaugh show before he opens his mouth. They are not in the business of thought or criticsm. They are, by Limbaugh's admission, in the business of entertainment. They are in the business of reassurance of their audience. They tell their audience what their audience wants to hear and only what their audience wants to hear.

They lack the courage to do otherwise.

This is probably a good thing since they clearly don't have the chops.

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Links of Interest
Watchmen Movie Trailer
The Art of Dying
Dale Chihuly Exhibit
A Place for Science
A Truman Show of our Own
A Giant Freshwater Stingray
Leopard: 1, Crocodile: 0
She may look clean-- BUT!
Biological Pedicures
Mad Jack with Butter and Lemon
Tobacco treats cancer
Drug Resistant Bacteria