In 2018, Adam F. Goldberg, the writer and creator of the TV Sitcom: The Goldbergs, co-wrote the episode: Spaceballs. The episode is based on an incident that happened to Adam on Twitter where people confused his critique of the Spaceballs’ movie president for the real president, at that time Donald Trump. Adam uses his TV counterpart to vent that he does not care about politics, he just cares about movies and having fun and he wished others could see that.
I wish more creators, directors, producers, actors, and other Hollywood elites would feel the same way as Mr. Goldberg. Everyone nowadays is obsessed with politics, with some celebrities going as far to go on Instagram and tell their followers for whom they should vote. Most celebrities just incessantly remind people to vote in general, but even that is something that breaches boundaries.
To be clear, I don’t care who these celebrities endorse or vote for in their personal lives. What I do care about is how most people think that because celebrities are famous, they somehow are responsible for saving “the poor average Americans”. Celebrities don’t seem to be aware that their primary role is to be an entertainer and to help people escape the dredges of reality.
If all they do is talk on Twitter about which politicians they like or hate and what they support or don’t support, that is all I’m going to think about when I see them in movies or TV shows. I’ll give two examples from both liberal and conservative sides. When I watch Disney’s Hercules, I think about conservative actor James Woods (the voice actor for Hades) and his politics-filled Twitter feed. It is the same for liberal actor Chris Evans. Whenever I watch any Captain America movie, I can’t help but think of all the political content Evans churns out. In both instances, I’m putting on a movie so I can be taken out of reality for a few hours and relax… and now here I am, having constant reminders of all the real-life problems I deal with every other hour of the day.
What makes this more annoying is that often, celebrities will spout off about their convictions online, but they don’t seem to support those same ideals when they accept roles. Some celebrities support gun control in real life, yet play super(spies/soldiers/heroes) who use guns and kill people in their movies. I don’t agree with the recent saying popularized by TikTok: “I was an employee, you’d do it too for a check.” If you really, truly believe in something, you don’t compromise for money- even if it is millions of dollars. If you do, you’re a phony.
To this day, I have a great amount of respect for liberal actor Natalie Portman and conservative actor Candace Cameron-Burr for not accepting roles that don’t align in some way with their beliefs. I also respect other actors like Scarlett Johansson and Kurt Russell for not having any social media. I understand in a lot of ways Scarlett does it to protect herself, but it’s also nice that she doesn’t try to shove any agendas down the public’s throat because she feels the need “to save us”. The best part about Scarlett Johansson is that, while I assume she’s liberal, maybe she’s not. Same with Kurt Russell, but with being conservative. And that’s how it should be. I don’t want to know. I want to watch your movie and have fun.
Contrary to recent popular belief, politics do not have to penetrate every part of our lives and not everything needs to be politicized. Some things are just things and some books are just books and some movies are just movies.