Robert Downey Jr's Recent Praise for Mel Gibson Prompted Me to Rerun this Blog Post on the Controversial Actor's Non-Evil Side
I’ve always respected Mel Gibson as an actor but I have never liked him as a person. As a Jew I find his virulent anti-Semitism unfortunate but he’s an equal opportunity offender in that he also seems to hate homosexuals, African-Americans, and a number of other groups as well.
I hated The Passion of the Christ with a white-hot passion but what defines Gibson to me as a uniquely terrible human being was the infamous leaked call between Gibson and Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his daughter Lucia.
The man on that call was an absolute maniac, a violent, rage-poisoned exemplar of toxic masculinity who sounded like he wanted to beat the mother of his daughter to death with his fists with the whole world watching and cheering on.
Gibson’s career-imperiling words of racist rage were indefensible. That did not, however, keep Gibson from defending himself and his actions. With his film The Beaver flopping in theaters, Gibson told Deadline Hollywood, “I've never treated anyone badly or in a discriminatory way based on their gender, race, religion or sexuality—period. I don't blame some people for thinking that though, from the garbage they heard on those leaked tapes, which have been edited. You have to put it all in the proper context of being in an irrationally, heated discussion at the height of a breakdown, trying to get out of a really unhealthy relationship. It's one terribly awful moment in time, said to one person, in the span of one day and doesn't represent what I truly believe or how I've treated people my entire life.”
I can’t think of a context that would excuse a powerful, wealthy and out of control man telling the mother of one of his children that he hopes she is sexually assaulted by African-Americans, as Gibson did in the tape although he of course was less sensitive in his choice of language.
Gibson wasn’t the only person defending his words and actions. Jodie Foster and Whoopi Goldberg both came to Gibson’s defense. That might seem surprising considering that Goldberg is an African-American woman and Jodie Foster is a lesbian. To say that Gibson has not historically been a friend to African-Americans or homosexuals would be a wild understatement.
Surely no man who could make a movie like The Beaver could be ALL bad, right?
Yet at the darkest period in his career, when he faced genuine cancellation, a famous black actress and a noted lesbian both came to Gibson’s aid.
Gibson and Foster aren’t Gibson’s only defenders/apologists/buddies.
A while back Facebook decided to play me a video clip of Robert Downey Jr. either introducing Gibson or giving him an award of some sort.
I don’t know for sure but I strongly suspect that this de-contextualized clip might have been taped after the leaked phone call that nearly ended Gibson’s career.
In the clip Downey Jr. talks about Gibson not just as a cherished friend and collaborator but as a wise mentor and godsend who played a huge role in saving Downey Jr’s career and protecting his sobriety.
Downey Jr depicted Gibson as someone who had all manner of experience he personally learned from, much of it dark and traumatic.
To Downey Jr., Gibson wasn’t just not the monster on the leaked call; he was a great man and a kind man and someone he was profoundly thankful to have in his life.
That, needless to say, is not how I see him. That’s not how a lot of Jews see Gibson. But it’s how Downey Jr. sees Gibson.
That’s fascinating to me. We all contain multitudes. To me, the monster on that phone call is the true Gibson. To Gibson’s famous friends, that was an aberration and the real Gibson was a profoundly decent human being who treated them with kindness and compassion.
I still don’t like Gibson, but I appreciate that he has been a positive influence in the lives of others. True, those people tend to be rich and famous and powerful, like Gibson, but I am gracious enough to concede that Gibson might also show common people his fabled decent side.
Did you enjoy this article? Then consider becoming a patron here