…by Jonas E. Alexis
Actress Mila Kunis has spilled the beans last month and joined a chorus of other actresses by saying that Hollywood producers wanted her to be a slut in order to get to the top.[1] Like Sinéad O’Connor and DMX, Kunis has realized that the entertainment industry doesn’t give a flip about her as a human being. In fact, they could care less about her existence.
Producers, Kunis said, are just interested in making money, and they will do whatever it takes to get that money. What if making money means that Kunis has to become a prostitute? Well, that is a very small price to pay.
What if Kunis has to compromise her own principle? Producers would respond by saying that losing one’s principle is worth it. If people can compromise their own principle, say Hollywood producers, then they will succeed in the industry. If they cannot, then the producers will show them where the exit door is. In other words, the industry is built on Mammon.
Remember how the industry took Miley Cyrus and transformed her into a complete pimp?[2] And if you think that this is not the goal of the industry, listen to the admission of singer and actress Nicole Sherzinger:
“To be honest with you, I sometimes wish I were more slutty. I’d probably be a lot more successful if I were.”[3]
How did Sherzinger know that she would “probably be a lot more successful”? Well, look at how Madonna and others prostrate before the Powers That Be. They obviously made it big, but they forget that money can never be substituted for true love, joy, peace, wisdom, patience, sacrifice, and endurance in the midst of hardship. That is why many of those people quickly become miserable. Sometimes they even take their own life.
Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was a classic example. Throughout his entire life Cobain tried to find meaning through drugs and pleasure. Charles R. Cross, one of Cobain’s biographers, noted,
“Heroin became, in many ways, the hobby he’d never had as a child: He methodically organized his ‘works’ box the way a small boy might shuffle his baseball card collection. In this sacred box he stored his syringe, a cooker to melt the drugs, and spoons and cotton balls used in preparing the heroin for injecting. A seamy underworld of dealers and daily deliveries became commonplace.”[4]
Nearly all his associates knew that Cobain was on the path of death. One observer noted, “With him, it was this train wreck that was going down and everyone knew it, and everyone just wanted to get out of the way.”[5] Another biographer noted that Cobain had an “aggressive personality who struggled with demons that drove and tormented him.”[6]
Yet Cobain did not find the salvation which he had sought through drugs and through an existentially meaningless life. At the end of the day, he was miserable. He confessed in his journal:
“Isn’t there somebody out there? Somebody, anybody, please help me. I want to be accepted. I have to be accepted. I’ll wear any kind of clothes you want! I’m so tired of crying and dreaming, I’m soo soo alone. Isn’t there anyone out there? Please help me. HELP ME!”[7]
Did the industry really care about Cobain’s pain? Did they reach out to him? No. Cobain then began to contemplate suicide and became “a changed man and in a frenzy that showed no signs of abating. The drugs, combined with what many around him described as a lifelong undiagnosed depression, shrouded him in madness. Even heroin had betrayed him; he reported it wasn’t as effective as a painkiller anymore. ”[8] His famous note which was found throughout his journals and even his album was, “I hate myself and I want to die.” Cross writes,
“Kurt’s normal carelessness was replaced by a death wish that frightened even the most seasoned, cynical junkies. The last few months of his drug use, he had wantonly shared needles with other users, ignoring public health warnings about HIV and hepatitis.”[9]
After years of battling with drugs, alcohol and depression, the rock star blew his head off with a shotgun in 1994. Yet before he committed suicide, Kurt cited Shakespeare’s most famous character: ‘Dr. Baker says that, like Hamlet, I have to choose between life and death. I’m choosing death.”[10]
Did Kurt make a conscious decision to follow an essentially purposeless lifestyle? Yes. Is the industry an accomplice in his death? Yes. How? Perhaps we should summon DMX again:
“The industry don’t give a fu$k about you! But the industry can’t make a dime without you…The industry wants new artists to sell their souls to survive.”
If new artists have “to sell their souls to survive,” then they have to compromise their principles, and if they have to do that, then they more than likely will violate the moral law and order, and when that happens, chaos ensues. This is actually what the industry is promoting, and Mila Kunis seems to realize that this isn’t a good thing. She said:
“A cliché to be sure, but also what a producer threatened when I refused to pose semi-naked on the cover of a men’s magazine to promote our film.
“I was no longer willing to subject myself to a naïve compromise that I had previously been willing to. ‘I will never work in this town again?’ I was livid, I felt objectified, and for the first time in my career I said ‘no.’”
Kunis blames much of the problem on gender inequality, but that is obviously false. The issue goes much deeper. She adds:
“The older I got and the longer I worked in this industry, the more I realized that it’s bullshit! And, worse, that I was complicit in allowing it to happen.”
Kunis remembered a producer who actually objectified her:
“In this email chain, this producer chose to email the following: ‘And Mila is a mega star. One of biggest actors in Hollywood and soon to be Ashton’s wife and baby momma!!!'”
In other words, if Kunis becomes a “baby momma,” then she will no longer bring the almighty dollar to Hollywood producers, and that is enough for the industry to dump Kunis altogether. Kunis responded by saying that the producer
“reduced my value to nothing more than my relationship to a successful man and my ability to bear children. It ignored my (and my team’s) significant creative and logistical contributions. We withdrew our involvement in the project.”
Kunis ended up by saying:
“I’m done compromising; even more so, I’m done with being compromised. So from this point forward, when I am confronted with one of these comments, subtle or overt, I will address them head on; I will stop in the moment and do my best to educate.
“If this is happening to me, it is happening more aggressively to women everywhere. I am fortunate that I have reached a place that I can stop compromising and stand my ground, without fearing how I will put food on my table.”
I hope that Kunis means business here. We should all appreciate her candor and her willingness to do something meaningful. Kunis obviously is learning very quickly that the people in the industry don’t care. They want to kill, steal, and destroy. As writer and film director Clive Barker himself put it some years ago:
“Because I make horror movies I have to offend people. That’s my responsibility, to kill as many people as possible…And some of that truth may not be palatable to anybody. My responsibility is not to give a fu$k about that. My responsibility is not to care.”[11]
Barker himself admitted that he was influenced by none other than Aleister Crowley. Barker said:
“Yeats then led me to the Golden Dawn, and from the Golden Dawn to Aleister Crowley—and to a whole metaphysical system based on magic. Which I took terribly, terribly seriously. I was trying these experiments, putting things under my pillow in the belief they would influence my dreams in certain directions.”[12]
Kunis needs to understand that it is not a gender issue at all. The fundamental issue has always revolved around morality or practical reason. As human beings, it is our destiny to abide by the moral law. Failing to do so is a one-way ticket to spiritual and intellectual death.
Finally, if Kunis means business, then she needs to stop objectifying human beings and assaulting the family-friendly culture in movies like Bad Moms.
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[1] “Mila Kunis pens essay promising intolerance for gender bias,” Washington Post, November 3, 2016; “Mila Kunis slams sexism in Hollywood as she reveals she was objectified by producer,” New Zealand Herald, November 4, 2016; Ezinne Ukoha, “Mila Kunis Pens Essay on Hollywood Sexism, And How It Has Threatened Her Career,” Hollywood Reporter, November 2, 2016; “Mila Kunis felt ‘objectified’ after Hollywood producer asked her to pose semi-naked,” BBC, November 2, 2016; “Mila Kunis rails against Hollywood sexism: ‘insulted, sidelined, paid less,’” Guardian, November 3, 2016.
[2] See for example Hanna Flint and Georgia Hart, “Miley Cyrus encourages fans ‘to kiss members of the same sex’ and says she hopes they’re on drugs…as she wears Union Jack leotard during first London gig,” Daily Mail, May 6, 2014.
[3] Quoted in Nick Durden, “What’s new Pussycat? Nicole Sherzinger on being a global pop star and conquering an eating disorder,” Independent, March 10, 2013.
[4] Charles R. Cross, Heavier than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain (New York: Hyperion, 2001), 226.
[5] Ibid., 226-227.
[6] Christopher Sandford, Kurt Cobain (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2003), 71.
[7] Cross, Heavier than Heaven, 284.
[8] Ibid., 318.
[9] Ibid., 323.
[10] Ibid., 312.
[11] Quoted in David Ehrenstein, Open Secret: Gay Hollywood (New York: William Morrow, 1998), 265-266.
[12] Quoted in Douglas E. Winter, Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic (New York: HarperCollins,
2002), 58.
Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.
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