“Sorry for your loss?”: Defending the Stone
So yeah…I’m back! After a prolonged Writers’ Strikesque hiatus, I’m back on the blogroll, pissed off and feeling the shame of being surplus summer labor. So excuse the stone-cold tone of this post…
Thursday, the glamorous red-carpet of the Cannes Film Festival was stained with controversy about Sharon Stone’s comment about red-China’s recent earthquake, “”Then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice, that the bad things happen to you?”
Hearing that, I COULDN’T HELP BUT WONDER (in my Carrie Bradshaw state induced by the Sex and the City movie fervor)…what if this crude, 50-year-old, full-frontal bearing, somewhat washed-up celebrity was right?
Following her comment, a major Chinese movie chain, UME Cineplex, banned all her films–which (given her recent films), isn’t much of a loss for the Chinese moviegoing demographic. Stone actually has three new movies coming out, one (The Year of Getting to Know Us) of which has been trashed on IMDB. Damage control from Christian Dior (of which Stone has been featured in their Chinese campaign) included the removal of her image from their ads. Feeling the pain of brutal Chinese boycott, Stone apologized and pledged to support the relief efforts. But clearly, the damage has been done.
China has long been an abuser of basic human rights (with its tanks and Tienenmen Squares and whatnot), so Stone’s “what goes around, comes around” theory isn’t entirely baseless. Sure, as a big Hollywood star, she should have given that comment a second thought before saying it aloud and during such a crucial public relations period for her career…as she should have given Basic Instinct 2 a second thought before signing on. But I’m no Hollywood star, and I completely agree with her. With the arrests, beatings, and killings of Buddhist monks (including the overly aggressive seizures of temples) in mind, maybe they had it coming. As a Buddhist, I’m shocked at this brutality yet am also obligated to forgive; but as a cynical American, I’m going to point the accusatory finger and yell “KARMA!”
Just last week, I was at the Asian supermarket and there were these people asking for earthquake relief donations. For some reason, when I saw them, I just didn’t feel as much sympathy as I thought I would. I mean, with the victims of the tsunami and the recent cyclone in Myanmar, there was the chance that I could’ve reached into my wallet and contributed (even though the aid would never reach the right people in Myanmar). But with these people, there was no chance of that happening…my response was more of an “I’m sorry for your loss, but that’s the way the fortune cookie crumbles” (and yes, I just made an incredibly tasteless pun).
True, it’s a terrible tragedy, especially all those schoolchildren trapped in the rubble. True, we (as humans) should have general compassion…for everyone (including ruthless semi-capitalist but nonetheless communist hosts of 2008 Olympics). But call me a heartless prick for defending Sharon Stone, but maybe the earthquake was a sign from a higher power to the Chinese government to change its ways.
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