Subtext – Crazy Mel’s Tirade

I cannot resist blogging about this. I apologize for being a little off-topic.

We all know that Mel went crazy last Friday on the Pacific Coast Highway. He screamed at Deputy Mee, “Are you a Jew?” He also said, “F***ing Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” These statements are not only in the Deputy’s report but also corroborated by audiotape. So now the entire world is wondering, “was Mel’s drunken rant a revelation of true character and his true feelings about the Jews? Does this mean he has those same crazy ideas about the holocaust like his father?”

In other words, the world wants to know:

“What’s the subtext to Mel’s tirade?”

Consider the scene. Mel’s pulled over for speeding and reckless driving. This is a man who has been propelled into the heights of wealth and superstardom. After Passion he obtained obscene wealth overnight and suffered extreme media scrutiny and was forced to go into extreme isolation. Then the fanatics came at him from all over to find him and in some cases stalk him to the point where he had to up his private security and issue restraining orders. There was also extreme hatred and accusations of anti-Semiticism. Need we forget the vitriolic hatred flung at Spielberg for Munich? “Spielberg is no friend of Israel. Spielberg is no friend of truth,” wrote Jack Engelhard in ynet news.

It’s a rough world out there, and a passion project is not for the weak or the faint of heart.

So here’s Mel pulled over on the Pacific Coast Highway. He’s been pulled over for this kind of thing at least twice before, and they always let him go. He’s accustomed to being treated with kid gloves. However, on this day, Deputy Mee is taking this matter very seriously (as well he should). The realization settles in with Mel that he is actually going to arrest him and this scandal may very well ruin his career.

Then the tirade begins.

Mel may have anti-Semitic views, he may not. We don’t really know from this horrible moment because I would suggest to you (if I was analyzing this as a scene) that his tirade was really about his feeling that the Deputy was treating him “unfairly” to the point of suspecting that he's Jewish and bent on taking him in and humiliating him for making Passion. Everyone else let him go. Why is this man taking him in? His tirade is more about his own paranoia than anything else. He’s behaving like a cornered animal. He's trying to do everything he can to get out of this disaster that he got himself in to. His words were meant to antagonize the Deputy into doing something stupid so he could have an easy excuse to get out of trouble. When you try to rile someone into a fight, you say things you may not actually believe because the point is to incite a reaction. And you have to hand it to Deputy Mee. He kept his composure while dealing with a very volatile situation that could’ve gotten much uglier than it already was.

Everything Mel did last Friday was reprehensible and he deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. However, when a person reaches the height of superstardom like Mel has, this kind of behavior is actually not that surprising. I’m reminded of a comment made by Tina Brown (from Vanity Fair) about Princess Diana in the early days after she married Charles. She described how her ascension to superstardom will affect her as it affects everyone, that the first stage in her removal from life “is an adversarial mood toward the press. The second stage is ‘Graceland,’ when the real world melts away altogether.”

Make no mistake, Mel Gibson is IN Graceland.