"Reagans": All art has an agenda [View All]

[greatauntoftriplets]

This is a good article about CBS' idiotic decision to not show the mini-series (not that I planned to watch it, of course).

Reagans': All art has an agenda

By Chris Jones
Tribune arts reporter
Published November 9, 2003

At various points in his long movie career, the actor and conservative icon Charlton Heston impersonated Brigham Young, Sir Thomas More, President Andrew Jackson, John the Baptist, Moses and Josef Mengele.

As an actor of formidable creative talent, Heston was under no obligation to offer sympathetic or even truthful portrayals of those real people, any more than Mel Brooks should have offered a fair and balanced look at Adolf Hitler in "The Producers." The inclusion, interpretation -- and, yes, the manipulation -- of actual public figures in otherwise fictional creations has been both a fundamental artistic freedom and a vital wellspring of creativity since Aristophanes attacked his fellow playwright Euripides, some four centuries before Christ.

CBS' startling decision this week to pull the broadcast plug on the biographical drama (as distinct from biographical documentary) "The Reagans," following an extensive campaign by conservative activists alleging the movie was "inaccurate" and "unfair" to the former president, reflects a dazzling and immensely troubling lack of awareness of the sacred importance of this vital cultural freedom. Furthermore, such preemptive, content-driven attacks on works of art are on the rise in America.

Aside from the recent flap over Dan Brown's controversial novel, "The Da Vinci Code," Mel Gibson recently has been obliged to fight any number of agenda-laden activists (many from the other side of the political spectrum) for his right to interpret the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus Christ in the manner of his own artistic choosing, placing praise and blame where he, the artist, chose to place it.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/arts/chi-0311090308nov09,1,5806120.story?coll=chi-leisurearts-hed