Come to think of it, I’ve actually come across this whole “liberal guilt” thing before, in relation to one of my favorite 2005 movies, The Interpreter. In case you don’t recall, this film starred Nicole Kidman as a U.N. interpreter who comes across a sinister plot involving her home, the fictional African country of Matobo.
It comes very close to getting a fresh rating at www.rottentomatoes.com, earning the approval of fifty-nine percent of critics (sixty percent is required to get a fresh tomato instead of a rotten one). Of the remaining thirty-one percent, it isn’t unusual to find variations of the liberal guilt theme. Film Freak Central’s Walter Chaw writes in his review, “it defends the virtue of the notoriously impotent U.N. on the one hand, it has its white heroes cast as savior knights riding in from the United States to save the day on the other.” (http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/interpreter.htm)
Along with The Interpreter, The Constant Gardener also received a tongue lashing, this time by Slant Magazine’s Ed Gonzaley, who wrote “Though not as preposterously enraged as The Interpreter, [The Constant Gardener] still chooses to fan the flames of liberal guilt from a safe distance.” (http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?id=1686)
Say What?
My question is: What the heck is liberal guilt?
Does liberal guilt mean that liberals are feeling guilty for some past or current wrong, such as racism? Or is it guilt for standing by and doing nothing while a wrong occurs? Or maybe there hasn’t been any wrong committed and liberals are feeling unnecessarily guilty?
And what does liberal guilt say about conservatives? That they are heartless fiends who care nothing for social justice? That while liberals worry about racism and the like, conservatives are remorseless card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan?
Let’s ask a few more questions. If Hollywood, being “liberal,” is making movies out of guilt and liberal guilt is bad, does this mean that Hollywood should be condemned for trying to put out movies that do more than entertain, but actually impart a social message? Must movies have a social message that meets with everyone’s approval? Or is it enough that it sparks a discussion? Or should movies simply be entertainment and nothing more?
I’m getting the distinct impression that bandying about the words “liberal guilt” is just a case of showy rhetorical posturing. Regardless, the way the whole issue orbits around race is revealing.
Consider that even Roger Ebert, who enjoyed The Interpreter, wrote in his review: “I don’t want to get Ppolitically correct, I know there are many white Africans, and I admire Kidman’s performance. But I couldn’t help wondering why her character had to be white. I imagined someone like Angela Bassett in the role, and wondered how that would have played,” (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050422/REVIEWS/50412002/1023)
Ebert doesn’t explicitly mention liberal guilt. But the way he questions why The Interpreter’s protagonist is white instead of black, he joins the company of other critics who see the film (along with The Constant Gardener) through the lens of a rather dubious assumption.
Dissecting Liberal Guilt
To recap: Criticizing films like The Interpreter or The Constant Gardener on the basis of liberal guilt is to essentially call into question the filmmakers’ intentions.
It is to say that the film was made to alleviate a guilty liberal (not conservative, though) conscience, and that casting a white protagonist in a movie ostensibly about black people is just a way for white people to feel as if they’re making a difference. It’s like a white person saying, “See, we’ve changed. We’re no longer the racist white oppressors. We’re the white liberators.” And thus, guilt for past or current wrongs is washed away — whitewashed, one might say.
What causes bristling is the questionable implication that black people are unable to help themselves; they need a white person to come the rescue. (An implication, incidentally, made possible when an individual character is treated as symbolic of a whole group.)
Now for the dubious hidden assumption underlying the use of liberal guilt as a critique. Paradoxically, the accusation itself of liberal guilt is an embodiment of what liberals are supposed to feel guilty about because it begins with the assumption that white people cannot be sincere in their motives and actions towards other races.
If, as Roger Ebert suggested, Angela Bassett had been cast instead of Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter, the issue of liberal guilt would not have been raised. The film would have been critically evaluated politically neutral issues such as whether the story is consistent, the characters well developed and the film technically excellent. But, no. Instead, we get guilty liberals attacking liberal guilt by reinforcing the very view that liberals feel guilty about, namely, their perception that white people are racists even when they’re not racists. And this is an improvement over "liberal guilt" how?
My Last Word on Crash
In regards to Crash, dragging up this new canard turns out to also be misguided. Crash isn’t a bad movie because it tackles the issue of racism. After all, we are far from having achieved a color-blind society. Crash is a bad movie because it tackles racism in a naïve, simplistic and manipulative way, and it has poor character development and an unrealistic plot to boot. The Academy’s fault in voting for Crash as Best Picture has less to do with liberal guilt than a fear of acknowledging that gays are people, too, that they are not more or less moral than heterosexuals, that their love is just as much Love as any other. Society knows that discriminating against other people on the basis of race is wrong; it’s just now learning that it is equally wrong to discriminate against gays. No, it wasn’t guilt that guided the Academy’s choice, but a plain old fear of progress.
As for the words “liberal guilt” themselves, wielded as a criticism, they are useless. They do nothing to improve the quality of our discussions in the endlessly controversial politics of identity.