Jodie
Foster went to the Golden Globes not long ago and told America, again, that she
has no intention of opening her private life to the public. GLBT activists
fumed. My view is….grow up, kids.
Who
has more reasons than Foster, to protect her privacy? Foster has been under the
media microscope for four decades, before she was even in school. She faced
extraordinary scrutiny for playing a teenage prostitute in “Taxi Driver”, and
even more when a psychotic used her as an excuse for trying to kill the
President, an incident which caused such an avalanche of attention that her
only way out was to refuse all comment on the case, permanently. She’s been
dealing with stalkers for thirty years, including one maniac who seriously
intended to shoot her dead. "It was very clear to me at a young age that I
had to fight for my life and that if I didn't, my life would get gobbled up and
taken away from me.”
Also,
coming out of the closet in 1980s America, raddled with fear of AIDS and
massive waves of hate from religious conservatives, would be dangerous, and
potentially a career-killer. Being an actress in Hollywood isn’t like being an
actor: a huge proportion of an actress’s roles, still, involve being a man’s
love interest, which would have been problematic for one of the few open
lesbians at the time. And by the way, the jihad against gays hasn’t stopped:
the wave of homophobia in 2004 was so powerful it helped turn the presidential
election.
The
GLBT movement has been hollering for decades – “society should get out of our
bedrooms, let us live our lives, respect our privacy!” But some of the same
people refuse to respect the privacy of other gays and lesbians, which in less
generous times would be called hypocrisy. Some GLBT activists, while also
demanding respect for their own privacy, have been aggressive in exposing
people still in the closet, either to “win one for the cause” or for the gossip
value (some rightwing extremists indulge in it too, out of sadism). Barney
Frank argued that it’s okay to out someone whose work hurts the GLBT movement,
but I don’t buy that, either: invading the privacy of people just because they
want to invade your privacy is childish, and undermines the entire argument.
And the trick here is that they only seem to target famous gay people, so they
can glom onto their fame like parasites, which is one step above the paparazzi.
It’s almost as though a request for privacy is a challenge.
GLBT
activists also complain that Foster should be using her prominence to lead the
GLBT cause. Blacks aimed the same complaints against Sidney Poitier and Sammy
Davis, and anti-apartheid activists took the same shot at track star Zola Budd
– they had the notion that people can be drafted into leading great political
causes whether they like it or not. Actors do regularly choose social causes to
support, but this is always voluntary, as it should be. Foster is a woman who
is not only acting, directing and producing, but also raising two children by
herself; she also has a parent with dementia. It should be up to her, not
frustrated gay bloggers, to decide whether she’s going to be the Frederick
Douglass of the GLBT movement. If you want someone to lead your revolution,
lead it yourself. Sure, it’s harder to do without Foster’s gigantic megaphone,
but revolution is never easy. And Foster’s megaphone is hers, not yours.
And
for those who are still waiting for Foster to apologize for Silence of the
Lambs….Buffalo Bill wasn’t gay. He was a psychopathic killer with a poodle,
someone who thought he was a transsexual but wasn’t. He was a non-trans trans.
Sounds like some movie goers are succumbing to, you know, stereotypes. And
Foster didn’t write or direct the movie.
