We all know by now that retweets do not equal endorsements. But it’s apparently time for a reminder that an actor’s performance does not equal an endorsement of the character he or she is playing either.
The New York Times reported earlier this week that Sam Rockwell’s Golden Globes victory for his performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri had fueled a “debate.” Of course, given that most of this “debate” occurred on Twitter, “debate” is too kind a word for the intellectual equivalent of 3-years-olds engaging a food fight. “Sam Rockwell just won an award playing a policeman who tortured a black person,” one person tweeted. “So yeah, time’s kinda up. But also kinda not.” (“Time’s up” was the slogan embraced by Hollywood stars at the award show to signify their opposition to racism and sexism.)
Rockwell’s performance was stellar, extraordinary even. He played a character who was indeed deeply, perhaps unforgivably, flawed—a racist, and a bullying, brutish, abusive police officer. Of course, in Three Billboards, everybody is flawed. Star Frances McDormand’s character’s ex-husband is an abuser and philanderer. Woody Harrelson’s police chief is incompetent and far too lenient with bad cops. Even the moral center of the movie—McDormand’s character—is bad news in many respects. She commits multiple assaults and nearly murders somebody by wantonly tossing a Molotov cocktail into a police station. It’s bizarre to say that Rockwell’s performance shouldn’t be celebrated simply because he depicted a bad person. Otherwise, we may be forced to defenestrate Charlie Chaplin, Anthony Hopkins, and Kevin Spacey, among others. (OK, the last one is a bad example.)
Three Billboards has stirred deep unease among many critics and moviegoers. (See this example from BuzzFeed, and this from the Guardian.) That’s because, I think, of its blatant unwillingness to make strong moral judgments, or to direct the narrative toward something happy, pat, or satisfying. Many moviegoers, it seems, would prefer that Rockwell’s character end up with an anvil or piano falling on his head. (I wonder if this craving for didacticism is related to the rise of comic book movies, where evil often ends up vanquished and the good guys win the day.) Instead, something far more interesting happens, and Rockwell (quite by accident, and to no productive end, ultimately) makes a sacrifice. The movie therefore suggests that a racist, bullying cop is also on occasion moved to do the right thing. That’s a complex idea—and also probably a relatively true one. Certainly more true than the other celebrated big race movie of last year, Get Out, in which literally every white character is evil.
The Three Billboards controversy is somewhat reminiscent of the recent contretemps over a New York Times article that profiled an otherwise banal Ohio man who had come to embrace Nazi ideology. The article was not a puff piece, as its critics charged: Rather, it was deeply unnerving insofar as its showed how polite, “normal” people can come to embrace hate. (Indeed, that in many respects is the story of Nazi Germany.) Three Billboards, similarly, simply depicts nasty people doing different things—some good, some bad—and doesn’t beat you over the head with moral judgment. Those wishing for fairy tales need not apply.
