Mel Gibson, Dancing Queen!
Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife
I’ve never had much use for Mel Gibson. I’ve occasionally liked his movies (Gallipoli, Hamlet, and — cough! cough! — What Women Want), but in general, I’m not into action films, those buddy/cop things, historical epics featuring swords, spears and/or horses, or Biblical vanity pieces with gruesome crucifixion scenes. So I’ve never felt particularly compelled to dive too deeply into Gibson’s filmography.
In keeping with my general disinterest in Gibson, I haven’t been paying much attention to the recent controversy surrounding his battles with Oksana Grigorieva, his baby mama. As for his abusive, racist, sexist rant against her, what can I say? I don’t condone abuse, racism or sexism, but let he who is without sin cast the first stone. We’ve all said things in the heat of private passion — remember, his words were not intended for public consumption and ridicule — that we’ve regretted later and that would shame us under a rock, perhaps permanently, were they broadcast on the 6 o’clock tabloid news.
Okay, now that we’ve gotten all that unpleasantness out of the way, here’s some more: Mel Gibson’s abusive rant set to a dance beat. A YouTube user decided to have a little fun at Gibson’s expense and created “I Wan’t You, Okay?” The dance mix is not exactly David Guetta (way too chintzy ’80s), and it probably won’t be infecting anyone with its groove (thus requiring a disorderly evacuation of the dancefloor), but it’s got a passable techno beat, and for the first time in years, at least something involving Gibson is moving me. If his film career really is over, maybe he’s still got a future as a D-list dance diva. Then he can spend eternity entertaining the gay men whom, in the past, he has disregarded so flagrantly and unapologetically.
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Mel has bad brains.
Mel has lost it completely. Perhaps now he will disappear and never be heard from again.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mel Gibson is just another racist that in the past was allowed to say how he really feels and got away with it. He is just like a lot of white people who feel that because of their race that anything that comes out of their mouth and any outragerous thing they do is acceptable.
Sine he make his money by acting and directing, he should be force to get a real job because no amount of saying he is sorry is going to cut it in my book. In the past when white people screw up, they always use the sorry card knowning that they don’t mean it.
Hello bettyej,
No, I think you are wrong, at least in part. Mr. Gibson has for many years had the good sense not to share with anyone in public his views on just about anything. His interviews with the press and TV were always publicity events associated with particular projects. You rarely saw anything about “up close and personal” with Mr. Gibson where he would be letting the public into his personal life. I don’t recall him every campaigning for anyone or anything that was not entertainment related – to him.
It was only in the last few years that this has changed. A few years back the LA Times ran a story about Mr. Gibson’s church, an extremely conservative, fundamentalist Catholic / Sedevacantist church (you can google that) in Malibu. The story was done with Mr. Gibson cooperation, which was quite rare prior to this. This was about the same time Mr. Gibson became a director with his very strange and different movies “Apocalypto” and “The Passion”. Mr. Gibson first ran afoul of the law not too long after this. His other of his non-entertainment related activities started showing up in the press on a regular basis. This business with Oksana Grigorieva is but the most recent.
I believe that Mr. Gibson had been very much aware how unpopular his views might be among the general movie going public and he had for a long time taken special efforts for them not to be well known. For reasons I know nothing of, over the last decade or so, Mr. Gibson has opened himself and his world view to the general public – perhaps with no conscious intent on his part.
So I do not think that “Mel Gibson is just another racist that in the past was allowed to say how he really feels and got away with it”. I think he was a very special racist who had previously made great efforts not to let people know what he really thought and so he did not need to get away with it. Something seems to have slipped.
(AAA, “Year of Living Dangerously” is a masterpiece and Mr. Gibson was very good it it, although Linda Hunt completely stole the show – a rare case where the Academy got it right.)
In response to another comment. See in context »Everybody is entitle to their own opinion. I will stick by every word I wrote about Mel and the others that are like him.