A line in this New York Times article about Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” states:
With some early reviews lauding the audacity and innovation of Mel Gibson?s bloody Mayan epic, ?Apocalypto,? Hollywood?s tight-knit community of Oscar voters may find itself facing a difficult dilemma in the coming weeks: Will they consider the film for an Academy Award?
Since Mr. Gibson?s drunken tirade against Jews last summer, many people in Hollywood swore ? both publicly and privately ? that they would not work with him again or see his movies.
But that was before the critics began to weigh in on ?Apocalypto,? a two-hour tale about a peaceful village of hunter-gatherers who are attacked and enslaved by the bloodthirsty overlords of their Meso-American civilization.
This is not to excuse Gibson’s drunken, anti-Jew tirade. (Who does he think he is, anyway? A congresswoman? An academic superstar?) This is only to point out that I don’t remember any “dilemma” in Hollywood about whether to honor the work of another director, who was accused of plying a 13-year-old girl with alcohol and drugs before sodomizing her among other things (he accepted a plea bargain and admitted guilt for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor). Nor have they shown any reticence to honor the work of the actor in whose house the child exploitation took place. Indeed, Roman Polanski and Jack Nicholson have enjoyed their many honors from their Hollywood peers.
Setting aside the question of how much an artist’s personal life should overshadow his work, I think the sexual exploitation of a minor is far more offensive ? by several orders of magnitude ? than offensive drunk talk. But that’s just me and my crazy “sticks & stones” principle talking.
