Saturday 14 January 2017

An analysis of Meryl Streep's 2017 Golden Globe speech. What exactly is your problem with it?

I've had to critically analyse Meryl Streep's speech because I keep hearing from conservatives how inappropriate it was of her to give.  So if your a conservative and had a problem with the speech, which I hope you actually read or listened to, then please tell me where you actually have a problem. I really want to know how anyone, even conservatives, can criticize this speech.  So if you have a problem with it tell me what you didn't like that she said and in your own words why you don't like what she said.

Now for the analysis.
  • "Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please sit down. Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all."

There should be nothing controversial with that but if there is please let me know.
  • "You'll have to forgive me. I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year. So I have to read."

OK you can say she's being dramatic.  Weird that an actor would be like that but is this a problem for you?
  • "Thank you, Hollywood foreign press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said. You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press."
 Is this an inaccurate statement?  I'd personally not say they are the "most vilified" but I'd agree that they are among them.  Certainly lately it has gotten worse but foreigners for a long time have been vilified.  Even when the Irish, Italians, Polish, Jews, and many other ethnic groups had migrations to America it has been looked at by many "real Americans", that often ignore that they descended from foreigners, as a bad thing.  The press is currently under attack, and this isn't in itself a bad thing if and when they don't do their job.  But we see an attack by the incoming President to turn the USA into a place like Turkey where freedom of the press is a pipe dream.
  • "Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places.

    I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola [Davis] was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, and grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in -- no, in Ireland, I do believe. And she's here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania."

She simply points out that Hollywood is a mixture of Americans from all walks of life along with foreigners with all sorts of backgrounds.  Something our country is supposed to be about.  Everyone being equal regardless of where they come from. 
  • "Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick 'em all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts."
While you might like football and mixed martial arts is this what you would want your entertainment to be limited to? Is sports all you care about?  Do you think most American's would share that view?  Do you actually classify MMA as an "art" instead of a "sport"?  Do you not like the pun she used?
  • "They gave me three seconds to say this."
Did you get upset because she took 5 minutes and 28 seconds of your life away?  Did you actually listen to the speech in the first place?
  • "An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work."
Do you not think that actors introduce the audience to a viewpoint they might not have ever thought about.  Is this a bad thing?  Should we only be exposed to characters that hold our own world view?
  • "There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job."
Do you think that Trump wasn't performing?  Do you think the message, of division, hate, and even violence, he put forward for anyone that had differing views then his supporters is a good thing? Do you not think that it was an effective performance?  Trump did win the electoral vote after all. 
  • "It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth."
Have you not seen the increased visibility of racists and bigots?  Do you know that scenes like this are on the rise?  Do you think this is a good thing?

  • "It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life."

Do you think it was and is OK for Trump to mock people based on their appearance?  Do you give him a pass on this?  Is it wrong for any of us to point out that he acts like this?  Is it wrong for any of us to say that it made us sad?
  • "And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing."

Do you understand that Trump is in a position of a role model and what he does, and condones, legitimizes those ideas and actions in those that follow him?  Just like when he said he'd pay legal fees for anyone that assaulted people that didn't support Trump at his rallies.  Is this type of action OK?  Do you support Trump's behavior of humiliating people based on superficial traits like appearance, gender, religion, ethnicity instead of their actual intellectual position on an argument?
  • "Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."

Do you disagree?  Do you think we should disrespect others based on superficial features?  Do you think we should incite violence?  Do you think it is OK for the powerful to bully the weak?

  • "This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution."
Do you think it is not the duty of the press to hold the government accountable, accurately report events, inform the public and protect their sources identities?  Do you think that Freedom of the Press, part of the 1st Amendment, is an important freedom or not?

  • "So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists. Because we're going to need them going forward. And they'll need us to safeguard the truth."
Is it OK for her to ask the press to stand united behind the 1st Amendment or not?  If not then why? What is your reasoning?  Do you believe that Freedom of the Press is not needed?


  • "One more thing. Once when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor. Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight."
Should she not be humble by her position?  Should she instead feel a sense of entitlement because of her position and think she should be treated differently?

  • "As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art. Thank you."
And finally do you not like the original Starwars?  Seriously Do you have a problem with that line?

If you've made it this far and came into this thinking Meryl Streep's speech was bad please let me know if you've changed your mind and why or if not what you still have a problem with.  If you still have one or more problems why does that/those problem(s) detract from the rest of the speech.