I saw a picture in the Arizona Republic the other day that kind of disturbed me. It was a picture of Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt signing autographs for a group of American soldiers in Turkey.
When you first look at the picture, there really doesn't seem to be anything wrong. It's just a clear example of those lovable Hollywood superstars from the movie "Ocean's Eleven" doing their patriotic duty to boost the morale of the soldiers fighting for our country. What could be wrong with that?
Nothing really, except that the picture is a testimony to the fact that the American society has its priorities all out of whack.
In the picture, you see a group of thirty or so American soldiers eagerly awaiting their chance to shake hands with the actors.
I'm sorry. The soldiers are eagerly awaiting the chance to shake hands with the actors? Does that strike anyone else as being a bit wrong?
These soldiers are fighting against terrorism for the citizens of our country. They face countless dangers every day, including the possibility of their own deaths. They've done everything to live up to their status as "heroes" short of having the word tattooed on their foreheads.
And yet our society reveres them less than it does actors who play casino thieves.
Our soldiers face enemies with real guns that fire real bullets almost every day. I'm willing to bet that the closest thing to real bullets that Julia Roberts has ever seen were the blanks fired at her in the movie "Conspiracy Theory".
So why is it that our society places actors on a higher pedestal than its true defenders of freedom and justice?
Perhaps its because our soldiers have the burden of actually having to face real danger, as opposed to the cheap thrills offered in your local movie theater.
Think about it. When a person goes to see a movie, no matter what happens in it, he or she has the comfort of knowing that the drama ends when the final credits roll. That person can go home and sleep peacefully, knowing that the people in the movie are just actors, that the blood was just some strange form of ketchup and that no animals were harmed during the making of the film.
I am willing to bet that if Hollywood produced real-time video footage of our soldiers fighting and dying for us, we all would start to get a little squeamish.
Hollywood has the comfort-inducing advantage of creating dangers out of smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately, our soldiers do not have the same luxury.
Fine, you might say. But what about movies that are based off of true events like the movies "Saving Private Ryan" or "A Beautiful Mind"?
Well, Stephen Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" reportedly caused many World War II veterans to have terrible flashbacks. Many people couldn't sit through the first twenty minutes of the movie because of how graphic and true to life it was. They just couldn't stomach the reality.
And if you thought the movie "A Beautiful Mind" was true to life, you may want to go and read the book by Sylvia Nasar.
In real life, John Forbes Nash was a bisexual who had an illegitimate child that he pretty much abandoned. Now, you might say that such issues were left out because they would confuse the plot. However, I think it is more likely they were left out because the issues were a little too edgy for a Ron Howard flick.
Hollywood does not sell the truth. It sells us what we want to see. It gives us a comfortable fantasy instead of a harsh reality. People don't like their truth black. They like it with a lot of sugar and cream.
Unfortunately, reality has that oh-so-pesky quality of being true. Our soldiers are real soldiers, not actors in camouflage. They spill real blood, not ketchup. And because they are fighting evil for the sake of our country, I think they deserve to be placed on a pedestal a thousand times higher than the one reserved for our celebrities.
During the telethon that Hollywood staged to support the victims of September 11, Tom Hanks gave a speech saying, "We are not heroes. We are just actors." He couldn't have been more right.
If our priorities were in the right place, that picture in the Republic would tell a different story. Julia, George, Matt and Brad would be the ones lining up to shake the hands of our soldiers, not the other way around.
Jonathan Winkler is a mathematics sophomore. Reach him at jonthan.winkler@asu.edu.
