Every now and then life bestows upon us an absolutely stunning irony. Of course, it is generally the case that Hollywood opposes the war in Iraq, whereas the religious right has generally been in favor of it. What makes this odd is that the following. On the one hand, the Iraq Muslim population of Iran and the Middle East in general has to be against just about everything that Hollywood is for. On the other hand, when it comes to basic moral values, the religious right and the Muslim population of the Middle East have much in common.
This is certainly true in the area of sexual morality. While the religious right is hardly in favor of the burka, it is certainly for modesty on the part of women. By contrast, if there is anything that Hollywood seems to be against, it is female modesty: the more sexually provocative the better. Again, homosexuality is considered a sin by the Muslim religion. But for Hollywood, being gay is just about fashionable. I understand that ever since the success of Brokeback Mountain, leading male actors have been looking for gay roles to play. The religious right, obviously, condemns homosexuality, and wanted nothing more than to see the film fail at the box office.
Non-marital sex and affairs are what Hollywood is all about. I mean nothing like a sexual trysts to pump up a star’s declining ratings. Needless to say, the Muslim Middle East flatly rejects this behavior as morally bankrupt, as does the religious right.
More generally, Hollywood eschews sexism, whereas the Muslim Middle East comes dangerously close to embodying it. The religious right is not quite as far along as the Muslim Middle East. Still, many suppose that the man is the head of the household. This line of thought can be given various non-sexist interpretations. One might be that women and men are equal but have different roles owing to differences in gender. Hollywood, needless to say, is not having any of that.
So it is ironic beyond words that Hollywood opposes the Iraqi war and the religious rights supports it. After all, we are not talking about mild discord, on the one hand, and passing agreement, on the other. Hollywood despises the very values that the Muslim Middle East represents; for Hollywood makes a mockery of the religious right for embracing those very same values. The religious right, by contrast, shares many of the fundamental moral values embraced by the Muslim Middle East.
So why isn’t Hollywood for the war and the religious right opposed to the war? Wouldn’t that be the logical line-up? Let us start with the religious right.
Many Christians see the Muslim Middle East in the throes of a Muslim crusade, where this entails the diminution of the role of Christ. There seems to be little that is conciliatory about Islam.
Christians get to have Jesus in their heart; and this allows for a person to disagree and still claim that he is a Christian. Jews by birth don’t have to believe much of anything and they can still claim to be Jewish. The same holds for converts. Indeed, the only kind of Jew that Israel rejects as matter of principle is she or he who claims to be a Jew for Jesus.
Islam is a compliance-heavy religion. And many on the religious right have felt threatened by its non-compromising vision of who is the one true prophet. Whereas Christianity has managed to think of Jews as their Elder Brother, Islam seems threatening to the religious right precisely it offers nothing that is conciliatory to Christians.
Officially, Christianity claims to have superseded Judaism and Islam claims to have superseded Christianity. Christianity artfully insists upon this; whereas Islam seems to insist upon it with a vengeance. And that makes it a threat to Christianity. So we have an explanation for why the religious right has generally favored the war.
This leaves us, then, with Hollywood. Why on earth has it been so adamantly opposed to the war? Surely, the answer cannot possibly be that it sees values in the Muslim Middle East with which it resonates. Nor can the issue for Hollywood be the European one. I suggest that the real reasons for Europe’s opposition to the war was its fear of violent uprisings on the part of its large Muslim Arabic population. Threats of violence have a way of persuading people. And large parts of the Muslim Arabic world have turned being violent into a form of art.
Perhaps Hollywood simply thinks that all wars are wrong. Well, there is no real evidence of that. Nor can it really be that Hollywood thinks that murdering innocent people is just fine so long as it is Muslim Arabs killing Muslim Arabs. That surely is a despicable moral view. There is no end to the vicious ways in which Arab Muslim leaders in the Middle East have treated their very own citizens.
Then there is the issue of slavery. We know that to this day parts of the Muslim Arabic world engages in slavery, where many of the slaves are blacks. Opposing slavery ! ! ! How much more politically correct can one get. Where is Hollywood?
I do not necessarily have to agree with where a person stands in order to be able to make sense of why the person stands there. I hold a very simple view, namely that hostility towards Bush is so great—he so profoundly despised—that many people opposed the word in Iraq for no other reason than that Bush was leading it.
Hollywood is as self-centered and as rapacious as it is possible to be. There is no reason to think that a higher moral calling explains its steadfast opposition to the war. For it is its own higher calling—though certainly not a higher moral calling.
I can think of some very good reasons why we should not have gone to war with Iraq. Some of them, to be sure, come with hindsight. The problem is that I have heard none of those good reasons come from Hollywood. Yet, no group of people ought to have been more prepared with good reasons for opposing the war than Hollywood precisely because it is diametrically opposed to just about everything that the Muslim Arabic world stands for. Insofar as one group of human beings can be considered the natural enemy of another, the Muslim Arabic world is Hollywood’s natural enemy.
Unfortunately, Hollywood is so besotted with its own power that it has never seen fit to make sense of its own stand. Equally unfortunate is the truth that most people are too busy graveling—for access to the kind of power that the folks of Hollywood have—to be concerned with the simply reality that Hollywood has essentially opposed going to war with those who regard it as representative of the very height of immorality. Hollywood has opposed going to war with people who despise it as much as it despises Bush. This is one of the great ironies of the moment.
