Guest Post by The Zman
Are actors and actresses stupid?
Are performers dumber than normal people?
Like most people, I just assume this is so, because actors tend to say stupid things when not following a script. The actress Meryl Streep took to the stage at some awards show to say Donald Trump gave her the sads. I’ve watched it a few times trying to figure out what it is she was trying to communicate. Streep is a great actress so it was well choreographed, but it contained nothing more than some hyperventilating about imagined bogeymen. My take away from watching it is that Mx. Streep is not spending her free time working math puzzles.
Even more obvious examples were on display at the Waddle in Washington this past weekend. Ashley Judd went on a deranged rant that suggested she needs to be in a nervous hospital again. Madonna of all people was carrying on about respecting women and committing acts of treason. Madonna, like all other performers, degrades herself for a living. Other than being a cautionary tale, she should stay out of any discussion about respecting women. Yet, this was lost on her and her fellow performers.
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That brings us back to the original question. Is Madonna stupid? Judd apparently has had a lot of mental problems, but Madonna and Streep have no history of mental illness. Short of handing out IQ tests, there’s no way to know if performers are unusually stupid, but perhaps there are other cognitive traits that performers have in abundance that present as a low IQ when displayed outside the narrow realm of the stage. Quants are super smart, but lack social skills, so they are often assumed to be retarded.
The first thing that springs to mind is that you need a near total absence of self-respect to be a performer. It is, at best, a degrading way to make a living. Anyone who has stood in front of a crowd to give a speech knows it is not as easy as it looks. Imagine standing in front of cameras, pretending to be someone else, while a crowd of people watch you play make believe. Often times, the job requires the performer to make a fool of themselves or do degrading things for the amusement of the crowd. Most people will not do it.
Even if you put limits on how much you will degrade yourself in public in order to be a performer, it is a humiliating road to success. Even the greatest thespians started out as complete hacks, often being laughed at and yelled at for being dreadful on stage. Movie and TV people get their start in terrible shows or making commercials for things like hemorrhoid cream. Then there is the casting couch, which is a feature of the business for both sexes. Male actors spend their youth biting a pillow or something else.
There’s something else that is universal to being a performer and that is a near total inability to judge risk. About one tenth of one percent of people who go into show business end up with a productive career as a performer. Most struggle for years and drop out or go into some other part of the business. New York and Los Angeles restaurants are famously staffed with the next big stars of stage and screen. Going into show business is about as logical as spending your life savings on lottery tickets.
This is probably why performers have money woes and tax problems. Just google actors and tax problems and you get half a million hits. People who are terrible with risk assessment are probably never going to be very good with their money, no matter how much they make. Nicholas Cage has probably earned half a billion dollars in his career and he is broke. People with any sense of risk assessment will not waste their life chasing a dream that is unlikely to materialize, but that’s what it takes to be a star.
Of course, the big key for any performer is their ability to draw attention to themselves over the others, who are also good at getting attention. The world is full of pretty blondes, who know their way around a penis. In order to gain the attention the star makers, you better be really good at standing out in a crowd of beautiful people with the same dream as you. This is why famous performers often have some weird tick or skill. Samuel L. Jackson got famous because he is a living satire of the militant black man.
There’s something else. Performers are much more likely to make it when young than old and young is defined as teens and 20’s. It’s why so many of the top starts are people who literally grew up in the business. Their parents were in the business in some capacity. This means that the typical star is someone who has had little exposure to the world outside acting. Even those who left home and went to Hollywood to become stars as young adults have had little experience with the normal world.
Most Americans have never been to Africa so they only know about the place from books and television. As a result, Americans talking about Africa sound like morons to people who have lived in Africa. This is the problem for performers. They talk about America as if it is a foreign country to them. That’s because it often is a foreign country. How much does Meryl Streep know about America at this stage of her life? She has been cooped up in a museum for decades. Death row inmates have a better feel for America than actors.
That brings us back to where we started. Are performers stupid? The safest answer is yes, they are very stupid. Being stupid makes it easy to not notice the long odds of being a performer. Being stupid lets these people avoid thinking about the moral dilemmas that are inevitable in the business. Those who are not stupid are so divorced from reality that they can no longer apply their intelligence to the normal world as it has become a foreign place for them. This means that most of the stars are both stupid and ignorant, which is why they so often sound like drooling idiots when speaking off-the-cuff.
I’d say a very large percentage are average IQ, without a lot of talent. Just in the right place at the right time. Without this self awareness, they think they have been successful because of their intellect. Most of them lack any logical / critical thought – act like children. I have no idea why the public pays any attention to them.
Most should have been waiters and waitresses.
Then there are the ones like Madonna. The personification of vulgarity. She should be in B level porn movies, blowing niggers.
Madonna is old, so is Elton John and Cher. Old actors, like old folks, eventually turn to politics. Everybody takes a turn at speaking their mind. Some might have a good idea, some have no idea but they crave the limelight again. That’s hard to let go. Even if they have to be outrageous, so long as they get the attention.
Once Madonna sold her nude pics, she had nothing else to tease us with, so she turned to shocking the audience with lesbian displays. Like a horror novelist, once he loses his mojo and couldn’t scare a fly, he turns to gross scenes.
El Coyote, I think you’re on to something there. Didn’t some wag once say that politics is Hollywood for ugly people? To the performing monkey class, aging is ugly. Hence politics.
They are NOT stupid. They have absorbed an ideology and there is nothing you can say to them that will change their mind, especially whenever the topic is political, which it is in this case.
Yeah, they are stupid. Just because they have a microphone in front of them doesn’t mean they have anything relevant to say.
As usual, Zman hit a number of nails on the head.
I always figured actors were idiots because getting a theater/fine arts degree is not going to give you any valuable life skills. But I never considered the risk issue. No one who has a grasp of basic Algebra would go into acting when the probability of success is so low. That explains why so many actors appear in these stupid-ass YouTube videos against Trump.
An interesting study would be the levels and types of education received by liberal vs. conservative/Libertarian actors. I suspect people like John Voight and Vince Vaughn read a few economic textbooks during their college days.
Has-been actors, singers, producers, etc, who are struggling to stay in the limelight have discovered that doing so is easy; join a “protest.” The subject of the protest is unimportant. The outcome of the protest is irrelevant. The more outrageous the “celebrities” comments, the better; more airtime, and more press. Afterwards, these people will appear on a few talk shows, make a few speeches, and make some money. Then they’ll retreat back to their well-fortified compounds and await the next “protest.” Kinda like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, they’ll profit from a “baiting industry.”
Meanwhile, some poor bastard will actually take to heart what the geriatric singer said, and will actually try to blow up a certain government building… and will be killed in the process… And the geriatric singer; she just won’t give a damn…
Good article. I agree they are rather stupid but I have to question the same of those people that watch and contribute money to them.
A hundred years ago acting was considered a low calling just slightly above prostitution. Actors and actresses were held in contempt. Seems folks were a bit wiser then.
I would say prostitutes are more honest about what they are really subjecting themselves to than actors and entertainers. By the time an entertainer realizes just who deeply they truly whored themselves out they already have too much baggage to escape without voluntarily enduring a complete and total destruction of their respect in the public eye and ability to work.
The smart ones simply stop working in the field and enter another business and don’t make a show of themselves. Those are probably also the ones who got spooked by some of the requests and realized they didn’t want to continue. See the teen pop stars of the 80’s that didn’t become Madonna.
Rasmussen reports that Trump’s popularity is up to 57% and the people believing we are headed in the right direction is hitting a four year high.
I imagine these Hollywood celebrities statements and the leftist demonstrations have a good deal to do with these positive numbers, encouraging people to think more highly of him.
Probably not what they intended, though.
Greetings,
Having worked with a large number of “entertainers”, I can tell you that they are the most self absorbed ignorant people you will ever meet in your entire life. Again, they are not necessarily low I.Q. but just ignorant.
For one, like an Olympic athlete, entertainers have to start on their journey as pre teens and put every spare moment possible into their careers. After all, getting noticed in this sea of mediocre talent depends more on luck and tenacity than anything else. Most entertainers have very little formal education.
Entertainers also believe that since the public has rewarded their talent – banging on a drum for example, that the public must also want to hear their views on global warming. It is made worse by the fact that many of them are surrounded by a human bubble of ass-kissers that will agree with any dumb thing that comes out of their mouths.
Many entertainers that I’ve met have this fake spiritualism/religion whereas they believe that the Universe has personally rewarded them because they “understand” how it all works. In other words, they have their lofty position because they are thinking correctly and the lowly masses are thinking incorrectly whatever that means.
Being an entertainer is very much like being a wealthy tourist in a place you know nothing about. That is probably the best way I can describe it.
I’ve had dogs with far more common sense.
I think you’ve hit it. They aren’t necessarily stupid, although some surely are. I have no doubt most of them fall within the normal range of IQ. The reason they seem that way to us is that they have spent so much time in a bubble they literally have no idea how people who don’t live on the coast think. It also makes them supremely arrogant, which makes them do stupid things. During this campaign, it should have been plainly obvious that those youtube videos and speeches were having the opposite of the desired effect, and yet they keep doing them, to this day. Sure, there are a few million people who hang on their every word, but those people are loony tunes too. They already think all the same crazy, stupid shit. They were already voting for clinton, they already hate Trump. Apparently these fawning masses have lulled them into thinking their star power gives them the ability to influence those who exist outside their bubble. As you say, self abosrbed.
Exactly, these d’bags are treated like athletes and never told no.
Guess what, I’m hear to tell you no, your views are not the views of anyone with a lick of common sense.
“Devote yourselves to the art of deception ,the art of disguising yourselves ,of masking yourselves ,spying on others and perceiving their innermost thoughts”Adam Weishapt . I was reading about this guy last night.The so call Father of the Illuminati.One evil son of a bitch.
Born a Jew who surrounded himself with Cabalist Jews including Meyer Amschel Rothschild.His methods involve alot of acting just to deceive non Jews.Mabe this is the reason actors behave like idiots.It is a form of deception.
Most serious actors either have a BFA degree or have studied at an established drama school in New York, London or Los Angeles. The foundation of all acting technique is to learn to shut off your inhibitions, to learn to be “in the moment” without self-censoring your words or limiting your actions. This is what they’re told is required to create “real” moments that arise spontaneously out of their souls, are alive on screen and believable to the audience. The mantra in nearly every acting school is “Acting is reacting”. In other words, acting is not having any planned or rehearsed (therefore more realistic) response to stimuli.
The problem is that this “reactive” way of being gets incorporated in to how they live their daily lives and ultimately, how they view the world. It becomes part of their personality. Can you imagine living in the world when you’ve been programmed to not have a thoughtful response to stimuli, but to reflexively react to everything?
They end up being completely unable to think through anything logically and simply react to stimuli in the real world, usually saying or doing idiotic things or reacting with exaggerated amounts of anger or passion as compared to a normal person. This hair-trigger reactionary personality type causes them to wear their hearts on their sleeves and become hyper emotional at the drop of a hat. A phrase constantly used in acting school is to “get out of your head” and into your heart. The goal is to stop thinking and start “being”.
Because they live “in the moment” and never contemplate future or past, they cannot conceive of the consequences of either their actions or their absurd ideas about politics or anything else. As such, this is a very big reason why virtually none of them can have a long-term relationship. They’re always “in the moment” with their co-stars, being led by their emotions instead of their intellect, and sleeping around…leading to their constant divorces and break-ups.
Very nice. Lemme add one more aspect.
When I lived in Chicago (actually, Palatine) I had a very very close friend whose daughter went to prestigious Northwestern for …. acting.
I never cared much for her. One really never knew when she was acting, and when she was being real. That part of her being seemed to occupy the same space simultaneously.
Image choosing a career where your success depends on being liked. Not every one likes good actors. Really. Not everyone hates bad actors. Really. Good or bad at your trade is irrelevant. Being liked is everything. This necessitates that their entire life, their entire cause for being, is all about them. . Live like that for a few years and you just become One Fucked Up Individual.
Stupid? Sure. At a bare minimum …. no common sense, no street smarts, no understanding of how the real world works, only their fake world.
It’s not just Streep. Ever watch Johnny Carson, Leno, etc? Of course, you have. Outside of the banter, small talk, and bullshit … when it occasionally came to serious topics, I was always amazed how friggen tongue-tied, nonsensical, and flat out illogical these “stars” were … without a script in front of them. Hmmmm … yeah, I’m going with stupid.
Ashley Judd is a fucken retard because she’s a rabid Kentsucky basketball fan. That shit will fuck you up.
I know a few actors/actresses from my comedy days and have found that they are not a whole lot different from any other professional class- some smart, some not so bright. Tom Arnold couldn’t dress without assistance and Jim Carrey is about as bright a guy as I have ever known. We have one close friend who is easily recognizable to anyone in America because of her film roles and she comes up every Summer to spend some down time with our family. She’s intelligent, has a solid marriage, is a great parent and very down to earth. She’s further to the right than I am but you can bet she keeps that a secret when she’s out in La La Land.
The problem is that they live in a bubble and their success is dependent upon pleasing the right people. A monolithic population they are not.
I saw an ad for some award show upcoming. They are neverending.
All are not idiots, but all are living in a world where narcissistic personalities are dominant.
These thespians who use hate speech against Trump and his supporters must not be very smart. If they don’t stop it, the studios will soon realize their misguided speech is turning off half the audience. I mean, how many here are looking forward to rushing out to see the latest Meryl Streep movie, or buy the latest Madonna compilation. I would say “greatest hits” but when you take away the audio processing, she’s not much.
As my Mom would say, “they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face”.
Let’s face it, these libtard actors, singers, etc, are not at the top of their game. In fact they are mostly past it. Saw the same thing during Vietnam. These folks are the witless, desperate to be recognized.
Im an actor! I´m bad without text! (With, too!)