Can we please not make a scandal out of this….?
Update: according to CNN: “It is an awful and disgusting lie,” Smith said in a statement Monday provided by his publicist. “It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation. Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet,” read the statement.
What I want to know, now, is what he actually did say. I suppose we’ll never know.
Scottish press, who quoted him saying, “Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘let me do the most evil thing I can do today. I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good’. Stuff like that just needs reprogramming. I wake up every day full of hope, positive that every day is going to be better than yesterday. And I’m looking to infect people with my positivity. I think I can start an epidemic.”
I’ve gotten a dozen emails about this, and I’ve seen it reported in an assortment of blogs, and what I want to say is: STOP!
I mean I’m not going to record a youTube of me crying hysterically to leave him alone or anything, but seriously, folks, what he said was kinda stupid, but it was also out of any context. I, myself, have been quoted in the media saying what appear to be totally inane things, which when they asked me the question wasn’t actually a stupid response to the question they asked; the reporterjust didn’t see fit to either include the question or the context or even the full statement that I made, leaving me sounding like I was from Mars.
What Smith said, from what little context given, was clearly not malicious. It wasn’t anti-Semitic. I’m pretty sure that what happened was the reporter asked him about something relatively innocuous and the quoted response was part of some longer statement. Even in the article, it’s clear that there’s something being left out. I mean from this whole long article whose focus was about Will Smith’s incredible drive to succeed by working his a** off, this completely unrelated comment is introduced by one line: “Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good.”
All the guy is saying is that he thinks that people don’t do evil because they want to do evil, but because they think that what they’re doing isn’t evil. I think there are some exceptions to this, but here, I’ll back the guy: I think what he says is true. Most people don’t do evil because they’re evil, they do evil because they’re too wrapped up in something else -whether that’s money or a political outlook, or something else entirely- to see that what they’re doing is evil.
I’ll even add to that: Smith is making the counterclaim to evil being inexplicable. Evil being inexplicable is too easy. If evil can’t be explained, then we ourselves have no obligation to do anything about it, because hey, who knows what the hell motivates people like that? But if evil comes about because of overzealous pursuit of something which in itself might not be evil, then whoa! it’s possible that we ourselves might be doing something evil because it’s not just crazy people outside the ken of human thinking who are evil. Furthermore, we then have some responsibility for producing the people who believe that whatever it is is so important that you can do anything to achieve it or pursue it. And y’know what? I think that that’s true.
Yes, there are sociopaths. But that’s the least of it. His point wasn’t really about Hitler anyway, he just chose an unfortunate example to his point.
SO, before this goes anywhere, let’s just drop it. Smith: this is to you. What you said was kinda dumb. Hitler was evil, but I don’t think you’re a bad guy. I wish you luck in conquering the world through more lightweight movies. You all seem like nice people in your family. Keep working hard, guy.
Weird. First I’d heard of it.
Hear,hear. Leave the poor guy alone – the point that what motivates people to do evil is in most cases a twisted definition of good rather than a desire to do evil is well made, and actually has some interesting implications.
this is post-modernism at its worst.
Yeah, first time I’ve heard of it too. And I watch A LOT of TV. So, maybe this post is an overreaction.
not to make a detour: but, julie can you please explain yourself? how does this have anything to do with postmodernism? do you mean, because it is professing some sort of moral relativism? well, that has nothing to do with what you are decrying, as it comes out of 19th century philosophy and 20th century pragmatism. some would argue it even stems from machiavelli.
i happen to live postmodern thought a lot, and i just get annoyed when people who have no idea what it even is badmouth it or don’t take it seriously. we live in a postmodern world. suck it up.
regardless, the point smith made is a quite astute one, even though it was in a silly context. yes, hitler got up in the morgen and thought he was doing the right thing. it’s correct. he didn’t wake up and go, “boy! i sure am evil, aren’t i?”
it’s actually quite a complex point, he made. 1) everyone acts according to their own logics. we all act in a way that we think is right. 2) the judgment of who is or is not evil has almost nothing to do with one’s intentions or self-image.
i just looked at the ynet “article” on this, and the people there are driving me nuts! jews there are responding in hateful and even racist ways (bringing up the horror of slavery, etc). we, as a people, need to develop a holier reaction to how people treat the horrors of the holocaust. it saddens me so much.
It’s not even remotely post-modernism. Socrates also advanced the proposition that people had the natural inclination to do good and only committed injustice out of ignorance of the good. Essentially it means that evil is not a thing in itself, it is just a lack of goodness.
It has been a common principle of much of Western moral philosophy for many many centuries, though I doubt there are many in the world of professional philosophers who hold the position anymore — if anything, serious (as opposed to the version that has found itself into middle-brow culture) post-modern moral philosophy tends to acknowledge that evil is a reality.
Anyway, it’s pretty clear from the context provided that Smith had no intention to trivialize Naziism or the Shoah. He was just trying to talk about how all humans should follow their better natures and quite unintentionally pressed some buttons. The appropriate response is to acknowledge his good intentions and politely explain to him why the comments might have been taken the wrong way.
From the quote given, he wasn’t saying “Hitler did good things as well as evil things”; he wasn’t saying “The things Hitler did that we call evil were good for other people” he was saying “Hitler was so morally deranged that he could do evil and believe it to be good.”
Will Smith’s fault in this case was being terribly optimistic about humanity.
The retraction’s fine, but I agree this was kinda dumb, but not that big a deal. Yeah, let’s not go over the top here, people. Even if he had said that, it makes sense in the context of his new movie, well, at least if they had made it like the book (which they didn’t, i hear). The whole point of I Am Legend, the book, is to blur perspectives on who the monster is. In the eyes of the infected people who have taken over almost all the earth, the last human standing is a legendary, terrible monster who kills them. His character becomes “a monster” but isn’t thinking about being a monster, is instead thinking about how to find a cure.
I am pretty sure this is republican propaganda in an attempt to split support between blacks and jews in the democratic party…
The Jewish Defense League is calling on Barack Obama to repudiate Smith’s comments, and wants theaters to pull Smith’s new flick “I Am Legend” from their screens.