Milk or Kool-Aid?

I find myself really drawn to these kinds of exposes where we get to see behind the secularist hagiography.

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0521df.html

Some things I did not know: Milk staged a "gay-bashing" event during his campaign to elicit sympathy; Milk lied about his time in the service, claiming he was dishonorably discharged (and thus a victim of homophobia), when in fact he was still closeted when he was discharged honorably; Milk outed gay people against their will for political gain; Milk called his political opponents Nazis and suggested they wanted to put all the gays in the gas chamber; Milk's "conservative Catholic homophobe" killer had given money to an effort to defend gay rights, had hired a gay campaign manager, and had voted for a "Pride Center" for gays; and the most surprising thing, Milk had been a huge supporter of Rev Jim Jones and the Guyana expedition, had received political assistance from Jim Jones, had written newspaper articles defending Jones' Peoples Temple, and had even written a letter to President Carter defending Jones from charges that he had kidnapped a six-year-old boy from his biological parents and absconded him to Guyana (where the boy eventually was murdered, of course).

I did not see the movie, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that not all of these facts made it into the final cut.

mainly because I never see movies during the school year. I'm not surprised that there's more to the story that didn't make it into the movie, or that there's some hagiography going on. Do you remember that movie with Charlize theron, the one where she wants to be a steel worker, I think, and faces terrible discrimination? It was interesting to watch the movie, where of course she's belittled at every turn, and then watch the "making of" feature on the DVD--where it becomes abundantly clear from interviews, including interviews with the woman portrayed herself, that things were not nearly that bad. Did she face discrimination? Absolutely. But the "men are all demons" approach of the movie is clearly false. Life, apparently, is more complicated than Hollywood would have it

Theron playing the serial killer, also a movie I didn't see. LOL But if memory serves, it was supposed to be one of the more sympathetic portraits of a serial killer.

I've actually never been a stickler for accuracy in historical films. I figure, Shakespeare took loads of poetic license with Richard III, so who cares if Oliver Stone takes loads of poetic license with W or with Nixon.

But I find secularist hagiography interesting on another level. Secularists are usually our culture's demythologizers. They never met a traditional, mainstream hero they didn't want to expose as a fraud or a villain. Colombus? Genocidal terrorist. Jefferson? Slave-raping white supremacist. And on and on. You begin to think that the demythologizing instinct is rapacious and unyielding. It will show you the clay feet of ANY great person, and then make you believe that the clay feet are really all that matter.

But this kind of thing moves in reverse. It takes someone with not exactly a heroic profile, and deletes events, ignores others, adds some elements that aren't true, and basically mythologizes him. When the demythologizers start mythologizing, something strange is going on.

I hadn't thought of that at all, but you're absolutely right. And now I'm trying to think of analogies to what's going on with Milk (Wow they got lucky with his name, didn't they? I kept wondering why I kept reading it as MLK--and now I'm realizing it's the presentation in some of the ads I saw! ).

The Charlize Theron-as-serial-killer movie was Monster--it's about Eileen Weirnos (sp?) and while I didn't see it, an essay about Weirnos symbolizes an important moment for me. I once raised my hand to point out that I was uncomfortable with the hagiography (though I didn't use the word) going on in the ssay, and got interesting reactions. Some students suddenly said, "hey, wait, you're right, she killed how many men in so-called self-defense?" My professor was less than pleased--it was an interesting moment, one that taught me a great deal in the long run.

such as that prostitution empowered women. But then you see the awful side of prostitution in something like Monster, and you don't say "look how empowered she is being raped by a john." Now she kills a few johns, and the hagiography kicks in. There's no re-evaluation of the original opinion. No one says, "hey, while we're painting Wournos as a victim, maybe we should rethink that whole positive stance we took on prostitution." Because of course prostitution is transgressive and treating a killer as a hero is transgressive, and being transgressive isn't about being consistent. It can't be.