On Monday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles discusses Avengers: Infinity War actress Scarlett Johansson’s comments about taking politically correct roles in movies and the fallout from the interview. Video and partial transcript below:
Scarlett Johansson is in hot water because she suggested that actors can pretend to be other people, and this is now politically incorrect. Actors, the people who pretend to be other people, they can’t do that anymore.
She said, “You know, as an actor, I should be allowed to play any person or any tree or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job”. She said this quote to As If magazine, and this is obviously true. That is the definition of an actor. Then, she was immediately bullied by the gender ideologue left — particularly by one gender-confused man with a very large Twitter account whose name is Charlotte Clymer, formerly known as Charles Clymer. He wrote this, “Scarlett Johansson is a cisgender white woman with a powerful platform and no [shortage] of work opportunities. Trans people should play trans people. Period. It is incredibly disappointing that she has learned nothing and clearly does not care about the experiences of trans people. I will not be seeing any films that involve Scarlett Johansson moving forward.”
This is ironic because although this man Charlotte Clymer wants to portray himself as a woman, he’s not. He’s a man. So, in this case, you have a white man telling a woman from an immigrant family, Scarlett Johansson, what she can and cannot do. Under any other circumstance, the Left would be outraged about this but because Charlotte Clymer pretends to be a woman all of the sudden, he’s in the right and Scarlett Johansson has to apologize for being an actress. This is why it’s important to be precise about pronouns. Because if I just refer to Charlotte Clymer and I refer to him as a “she,” you’ll have this idea that it’s just two women arguing about social justice. So maybe I say OK — well, maybe she has a point. When you use the correct pronouns, you realize it’s just a dude who’s imposing his will on a woman who’s an actress. That’s a very different image.
What did Scarlett Johansson do? She apologized. It was this totally perfunctory apology. She goes, “I recognize that, in reality, there is a widespread discrepancy among my industry that favors Caucasian, cisgendered actors and that not every actor has been given the same opportunities that I have been privileged to. I continue to support, and always have, diversity in every industry and we’ll continue to fight for projects where everyone is included. Beep boop, beep boop.” Did I say the current daily politically correct slogan? I know it’ll change tomorrow, but did I get it right today? Please, please don’t ruin my career. She may as well have said that last part.
I’ll give you just a little bit of insider information. In a previous life, I was an actor — classically trained actor — worked professionally as an actor. One thing I learned; Actors pretend to be other people. It’s not real and what actors do is they create characters. They develop characters from the inner life. Then, they behave truthfully in imaginary circumstances. I’ll give you an example. One time I played Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. Hamlet is the prince of Denmark. I’m not really the prince of Denmark. I’m not even Danish. But I played Hamlet.
Now I guess this is very anti-Danish. It’s taking away opportunities from the many Danish royals who would like to be able to do off-off-Broadway productions of Hamlet. But I did it anyway, because that’s what actors tend to do. It’s not real.
This is the broader lesson from today. It’s not real. The acting isn’t real. The plays aren’t real. People are always playing people who they are not. If you only cast people who are the roles that they are playing, it’s no longer acting — it’s just reality. But this isn’t reality. This is make-believe. The same thing is true in our politics. Politics has always had a theatrical component. It is why actors tend to be politicians and politicians have to be actors. It’s because there is a lot of make-believe that goes on.
Twitter is not real. Twitter is not the real world. The tweets are not going to change your life. It’s ok. Take a break. When you pull out of this crazy insane hyper-political pop culture, the world is looking pretty good. The sun is shining; the birds are chirping. There is wonderful music to listen to, literature to read. Family and friends to enjoy. Things are going really, really well. The economy is going gangbusters. We have relative peace abroad. It’s ok, guys. Take a breath. Everybody calm down. Forget the tweets. Forget the transphobic, Danish-phobic acting. It’s ok. We have problems. We’ll tackle those problems. We won’t tackle those problems in the make-believe we’ll do it right here in reality.
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