Tilda Swinton in British Vogue last November, sporting a scarf designed by Bella Freud
The news: Hollywood Reporter on the biggest snubs of the Academy Award nominations this a.m.:
One of the biggest surprises of the morning, for many, was the fact that [Tilda] Swinton [in We Need to Talk About Kevin] was passed over in favor of [Girl with Dragon Tattoo Rooney] Mara despite scoring virtually every important precursor nom that an actress can: SAG, HFPA, BFCA, and BAFTA. My sense is that many people simply found Kevin to be too disturbing and without a clear point. I never quite bought that Swinton -- as great an actress as she is -- would be nominated for such a dark film after being ignored last year for an even better performance in a far more digestible film, I Am Love.
The back story:
A flick through the November issue of the British edition of Vogue revealed one accessory I did not expect to see. After pages of faux fur, sequinned clutches and designer feathered capes, I happened upon something rather more surprising: a full-page shot of actress Tilda Swinton sporting a knitted scarf emblazoned not with a designer logo but with the word “Palestine.”
--"The Electronic Intifada, Oct. 28, 2011, "Has a Hollywood actress made Palestinian solidarity Chic?"
It’s not just Washington you have to be subservient and dishonest to thrive in. Hollywood, too.
she will still thrive, just not conventionally.
Absolutely. I meant “conventionally thrive in.” We can all find our inroads if we’re a little bit brave and stand firm in our convictions. Then we have to find each other, because the media doesn’t cover such people :P
Not to mention, people like Tilda and Jimmy Carter have found paths to renown and influence without kowtowing to anyone. I wish more people were so brave!
you’re brave pamela. talented too.
Then we have to find each other, because the media doesn’t cover such people :P
we’re the new media!
Don’t forget Vanessa Redgrave–she’s been there all along! Wonder what Streep and Jolie think of Vanessa’s historic courage in sticking up for the Palestinians?
PS: Vogue Nov 2011: The note there emphasizes that the clothes, ‘throughout’ are her own…
Vanessa Redgrave 1978 Academy Awards
“Hoodlums” remark at 2:53
link to youtube.com
Hollywood is more sensitive for obvious reasons. I personally don’t watch very many films these days, especially TV shows. There are too many little jokes that equate Arabs with terrorists. Several episodes of Entourage made I/P references. Even small ones that go unnoticed by most. I can’t know for sure, but I am pretty confident that Hamas does not come up in daily conversation or that the majority of Americans even know what it is.
Last year I noticed multiple references to Somalian Muslim terrorists. I can’t remember them all off the top of my head, but I know the AMC show The Killing was one and the Ben Affleck film The Town was another. I half-expected something major to happen there. I really think people implant political messages subliminally. I seem to remember several 80s films referencing Lebanon, and in a negative way as if it was the most dangerous place on Earth. Kind of like they made Iraq out to be in the 90s.
Charon, I couldn’t agree more. I’m a movie buff and almost all depictions of Arab or Muslims in Hollywood movies or tv shows are negative. Uneducated cab drivers or terrorists. Once I noticed it and began paying attention I found it everywhere! There’s just far too many examples to be a coincidence. It’s quite disgusting
Have you seen the trailer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘The Dictator’?? It’s pretty bad, but to be fair (even though I tried not to) it did make me laugh in a couple places.
megadittos…what dupes we’ve been of this Hollywood disinfo.
You watch Reel Bad Arabs, and you say to yourself, we’ve been played.
link to youtube.com
From Chapter Two (Neil Simon, 1979):
James Caan’s character is asked: “How was London?”
He responds: “Full of Arabs.”
Nice.
Agreed, chauncey. And I still take the bait at times.
Even in TV shows you wouldn’t event consider like the big bang theory, there is always some small reference that goes over most people’s heads. Once you begin to see it, people will think you are nuts pointing it out, but in all honesty it’s everywhere (in movies and shows I mean)
HBO is horrible for it. Entourage, Sopranos, Sex in the City, Mildred Pierce, How to Make It in America, Hung, etc. They are absolutely the worst when it comes to the little jabs at Arabs and Muslims. THE WORST.
HBO is premium TV, it’s meant for upper middle class to upper class households who subscribe to the New York Times. Their vision of the extreme left is Bill Maher. Its firmly Hollywood establishment. (there was a documentary love letter to Israel and how wonderful they are to refugees on last month). If you want to see a change in tone from Hollywood, you’re not going to get it from HBO, at least when it comes to Israel/Palestine.
Really, the only things that I really enjoy is Breaking Bad and the Walking Dead, neither of which deal with anything foreign policy related. Anything else is recorded for mindless entertainment.
I guess the odd thing slips through the net though… I’ve just been watching Mad Men and in the episode where they’re trying to brand Israel as a tourist destination the ad man says “maybe they should stop blowing up hotels!”. After the Israelis leave of course – maybe he’s meant to be Anti-Semitic though…
i made the mistake of watching ‘borat’ before i knew anything about cohen. the trailer got more laughs from me and my son than the movie. both of us were just shaking our heads when we shut it off 3/4 of the way through. ‘did we just pay $5 for that’, he asked. ‘the dictator’ looks about the same. the track and field bit was admittedly very funny, but regurgitating the same racist gags over and over for 90 minutes would likely wear thin. i’ll never find out. (my favorite cohen story is about him getting punched out in NYC after he accosted someone on the street while in character. now that’s funny.)
“maybe they should stop blowing up hotels!”.
i don’t remember that line, and i’m a big fan of ‘mad men’, the only series i watch. my opinion of ‘mad men’ is that zionism is treated as one of the very few valid expressions of politics. the counterculture and even white support of the civil rights movement is systematically belittled. (i tried ‘breaking bad’ but found it to be racist shite, establishing a plot line that permits the white hero to commit murder and mayhem while dealing meth, all the while wringing his hands, wrestling with his conscience, while ‘colored’ criminals are treated with contempt. eff him.)
and, yes, bravo to tilda. great actress, with a conscience as well. i just watched ‘i sono l’amore’ (‘i am love’) and she was great. great.
It’s not only HBO that has so many shows that continually toss in snide belittling remarks about Arabs, the cable cartoon “satire” shows do it too ; I don’t know any comedy show that does not do so also. And they all, OTOH, swim in the soup of wonderful Jewishness (albeit they often softly target Jewish nerdism)–ditto for more establishment repeat shows like Friends, Mad About You, and Sex & The City, etc. The cop dramas do it too. If your radar is up, you will see the sammo sammo, over and over again. I’m sure it escapes most Americans. But they keep trying, the writers and producers of all those shows.
Tilda is a fiercely independent thinker and supporter of original, creative and humane causes. This can only enhance her reputation. She is the last person to crave ‘recognition’ from corporate America. She has plenty already. I count it as a good career move.
The scarf in question can be purchased from the Hoping Foundation:
link to hopingfoundation.org
Phil, I don’t think it had much to do with the Palestinian scarf photo, she got nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for a Golden Globe too.
Although, I wish she never signed that petition which called for release of that child rapist, Roman Polanski
What complete and utter bullshit. When you have proof that your theory that “the Jews” did it, let me know. Jean Luc-Goddard got a lifetime achievement award last year. He’s not very Zionist.
Swinton won an Academy Award in 2007 for Michael Clayton and has absolutely no trouble getting work in Hollywood.
This is another of your antisemitic posts, Phil.
Vanessa Redgrave & Mel Gibson just two names that spring to mind right now. Of course there are more.
As examples of why Phil is wrong, I assume. Redgrave’s Palestinian controversy happened in 1977. Since then, she’s been nominated for two Academy Awards and has had no trouble getting work.
And I don’t know why you would bring Mel Gibson, who has defended his father the Holocaust denier, has said some nasty things about Jews, and hasn’t made an Oscarworthy movie since Braveheart (Best Picture), into this discussion.
Mel Gibson?? Mel Gibson make a flat-out anti-semitic statement. (Whether it was because he is truly anti-semitic or merely a drunk who was pissed off that some Jewish organization and people thought his Jesus movie was anti-semitic, is another question…) If he suffered professionally for it, then you can’t blame that on anyone but him.
His trouble had nothing to do with Palestine and the Palestinians.
Let’s not get too carried away here with Mel Gibson. His issue with Jews is more of the classic Antisemitism, not about Israel.
I did really like the Beaver though. Suffering from depression and the effects it has on the people around you, it really moved me.
I kind of wish he would do the movie on the Maccabees. Antisemitism aside, he really pulls out all the stops when it comes to historical epics, and he doesn’t whitewash the violence. He’s the only director I know who could shoot it with the characters speaking in Aramaic and not romanticizing the story. Less about the oil lasting for eight days, more historical guerilla warfare against the Assyrians.
Curious, does all this classic antisemitism spring from the head of corrupt non Jewish people as a sign of their frailty,or is it a reaction to factual accounts of reality?
Does anti Americanism spring from the head of ignorant people,or is it a reaction to reality?
Actions always speak louder than words to those with no filter lens over their eyes which make reality hurtful and an affront to their sensibilities.
hophmi, tell that to Vanessa Redgrave.
Re New comments policy: why do we still have hophmi here, after having called Phil an anti-semite?
Is that not a serious violation of both policy and ethiquette, not to mention truth?
I realize it’s a teachable moment, but…..
Of course, “The Dictator” will receive glowing reviews from these same “serious” people….
Ugh, that shit bothers me so much. If there was an equally famous Arab talent who could pull it off, maybe. But he’s a British Orthodox Jew. Some of his fake Kazych language was Hebrew. It comes off as supremely condiscending, regardless of his political views.
Secondly, the Egyptians already made this movie. it was called El Diktator. It was absolutely terrible. Funny for the first 15 minutes, but the rest was painfully bad. I don’t remember why my friend and I didn’t leave during intermission.
RE: “after being ignored last year for an even better performance in a far more digestible film, I Am Love.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: An excellent film! Very “digestible”, especially so for connoisseurs.
I Am Love (Io Sono L’Amore), 2009, R, 120 minutes
Oscar winner Tilda Swinton shows off her multilingual skills in director Luca Guadagnino’s atmospheric melodrama in which family dissension, unbidden desire and other tensions bubble to the surface during the patriarch’s birthday party. When the seemingly picture-perfect Recchi clan gathers at the family villa to celebrate the great old man, the veneer of civility quickly falls away in this Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Language Film.
Language: Italian (English subtitles)
Netflix Availability: Streaming, DVD and Blu-ray
NETFLIX LISTING – link to movies.netflix.com
TRAILER (VIDEO, 02:08) – link to imdb.com
Perhaps the British edition of November’s Vogue that was available on US news stands should have given a clue to this snub. Initially, I could not find the November British Vogue at my local bookstore that carries everything. Weeks later, I found the November edition with the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo on the cover. Swinton’s feature with the Palestine scarf was hidden on page 200 and something.
Her career kind of rests on being an outlier. Her adrogynous looks and her less commercial roles, I don’t think Hollywood studio heads are going to be that concerned about it. She’s just being “edgy” and “controversial”, she’s not Rachel Ray in a scarf that slighly resembled a keffiyeh. Besides, the picture is in British Vogue, while they have their own Zionist forces, Palestinian solidarity is not such an anomaly there. She’s shaking the boat, but not too hard.
Weinstein releasing Miral had a much greater impact than this will.
If she makes a statement at an awards show, or wears the scarf in the US, maybe, until then it’s edgy fashion.
or how about this for a career move? liam neeson’s conversion to islam:
link to thesun.co.uk
nothing ‘edgy’ or ‘unconventional’ about neeson’s recent offerings. ‘taken’ is a piece of of xenophobic, revenge porn.
I agree about ‘Taken’. Mind you, statements like ‘I may convert’ may or may not mean much.
I failed to be edgy yesterday. I was on a train sitting next to a student with a stripy college scarf – he suggested a swap. I said I’d rather keep making my political point, with the key in the design suggesting ‘Free the captive nation’. Though no more was said and we left the train at that point my wife suggested that this political sloganising on a sleepy train sounded odd rather than edgy.
I still can’t wait for the movie with him and the wolves.
i don’t want to spoil it for you, mle, but in the final scene neeson is torn limb-from-limb by she-wolves while the soundtrack blares ‘do you really want to hurt me?’ by the culture club. briliantly done.