Consider This from NPR - BONUS: Tom Hanks, Fox News, And A Debate About Whiteness In Hollywood

Episode Date: June 20, 2021

This all started with a guest essay by Tom Hanks for The New York Times called "You Should Learn the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre," in which Hanks made the case for a more widespread teaching of American history involving Black Americans, especially of events like the Tulsa Race Massacre. He wrote: "History was mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out. Until relatively recently, the entertainment industry, which helps shape what is history and what is forgotten, did the same. That includes projects of mine."NPR TV and film critic Eric Deggans appreciated those words, but wrote in a column of his own that Hanks could do more from his powerful perch in Hollywood. Eric speaks to host Audie Cornish about the reaction to his column, and how Hollywood reckons with its own power. (And no, he is not trying to cancel Tom Hanks.) In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

So just so there's no confusion, no one is trying to cancel Tom Hanks. Seriously. I checked. So people are going around saying you're trying to cancel Tom Hanks. That's NPR's TV critic, Eric Deggans. So let's open with that. Is that what's going on here? Absolutely not. I love Tom. I'm a huge Tom Hanks fan. That is not happening. What is happening starts with a look at some of Tom Hanks' biggest movies. Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much, my wife is even going to recognize me whenever it is I get back to her. In Saving Private Ryan, he's a U.S. Army captain. You have Bridges of Spies, where I think he plays a negotiator during the Cold War.

We need to have the conversation our governments can't. He's an astronaut in Apollo 13. Houston, we have a problem. He's a newspaper editor in The Post. Who decides to publish the Pentagon Papers. The way they lied, those days have to be over. And of course, he's Forrest Gump. Where he plays this kind of innocent, but again, very virtuous, loyal, courageous person

who moves through all these incredible moments in history and affects them in ways that nobody realized. That day on, I was going somewhere. I was running. These are beloved American movies. And one thing they have in common is that they tell stories of moments in our history that speak to certain ideas about America. And the way in which, you know, if we live up to our ideals, we achieve great things. And I think that's a very wonderful story to tell. And it's a very necessary story to tell. But it's also true that a lot of these movies, by and large, tell stories about white heroes. And that brings us to the conversation Eric Deggans waded into when he reacted to an essay published in The New York Times by Tom Hanks about race, history, and the stories that

Hollywood puts on screen. One of the reasons why you publish a guest essay in the New York Times is to start a conversation. If you want to start a conversation, then you've got to be prepared to have that conversation. But this is what the conversation became on Fox News. For NPR and perpetual protesters, no matter what Tom Hanks does, it will never be enough. We'll explain in this Sunday bonus episode and talk to Eric Deggans about how Hollywood reckons

with its own power. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish. It's Sunday, June 20th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money It's Sunday, June 20th. The first podcast series to ever win a Pulitzer Prize, NPR is no compromise. We dive into the political movement that's driving extreme gun rights activism and more. I'm Chris Haxel. And I'm Lisa Hagen. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

It's Consider This from NPR. This whole thing started with an essay Tom Hanks published in the New York Times earlier this month. And we've got a link to it in our episode notes if you want to pause, go check it out, and come back. But I'll sum it up here. The essay was called You Should Learn the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre. In the essay, Hanks made the case for a more widespread teaching of American history involving Black Americans, especially of events like the Tulsa Race Massacre. You know, what Tom Hanks did was he kind of outlined a problem, that America's history books and Hollywood have often avoided or downplayed stories about Black people

that reveal the brutality of how we've been oppressed in this country. This inspired NPR critic Eric Deggans to write a response. We'll link to that column in our episode notes as well. Eric said that while he's a huge fan of Hanks' work and appreciates the actor's words, people in Hollywood as powerful as Tom Hanks, well, Deggans says they could wield that power to make the change they often advocate for. After all, Hanks isn't just an actor. He's also a writer, director, and producer. Eric Deggan says that Hanks has power and influence over what kinds of stories Hollywood tells. No, for one guy from NPR, he isn't doing enough to make the world a better place.

Turns out that the internet and a few other folks did not have a lot of appreciation for the nuance in Eric's argument. I hope he comes out swinging. I hope he goes line by line. Wow, will he? Somebody has to. Tom Hanks hasn't responded to Eric's piece, as of when we're recording this anyway. I mean, if there's any celebrity who might engage in this conversation,

I think it would be him. So, you know, I hope maybe he does reach out. In the meantime, Eric and I continue the conversation about what kind of power Hollywood A-listers like Tom Hanks really have and how they use it. Here's our chat. I think it's great that Tom Hanks published this essay because in part it was pushing back on these people who are insisting that troubling racial incidents shouldn't be taught in schools. He was making the point that the Tulsa race massacre in particular, the fact that people didn't know about until relatively recently, was a shame and it happened because people didn't talk about it in history classes,

maybe because they were afraid of upsetting some people who want to believe in that exalted American story. So all of that is great. And I'm glad he wrote that column. But in doing that, he also sort of opened the door. And it's sort of like, well, now we got to talk about the full implications of what you just said. But he's not the screenwriter. He's not the director. He's not the studio guy greenlighting things.

I mean, when you look back at films like Forrest Gump or Philadelphia, how would taking a different approach change things? Like what could a Tom Hanks have done? Well, first of all, he has served as executive producer for a lot of films and miniseries that are rooted in history, including Band of Brothers, The Pacific, John Adams on HBO. He didn't appear in any of those, but he was an executive producer. So he does have that kind of influence. But if you think about a movie like Forrest Gump, for example, if a person of color, if a woman of color had been cast

as his love interest in that film, as Jenny, making that character Black would have required telling a story that included what it was like to be Black through all of those episodes in history that she lived through with Forrest Gump. And it would have done exactly what Tom Hanks has talked about in his own essay, bringing more light to the Black experience as it connects to American history. I mean, Tom Hanks has talked about teachers in his essay, but in a lot of ways, he's a teacher. He's relating stories about what history matters in America and what doesn't in his work. And all he has to do is make a few different choices, and he could expand that focus.

I want to get into that more. But first, let's talk about his career, because you're right, this is the guy who's been Captain Phillips,, you know, the main character in Philadelphia or Forrest Gump, which is literally like a tour through American history. And you call these roles basically the stories of American white men doing the right thing. What do you mean by that? Well, we have these stories that are considered Americana now, you know, valiant, you know, soldiers in World War II, you know, astronauts who are courageous. I'm not denigrating those things. Those are great stories that absolutely need to be told. But when your goal is to sort of create this story that buttresses America's feelings about itself and about the superiority of its values and about, you know, how we're built on the actions of these wonderful people doing the right thing, then it's harder to say, hey, wait a minute, you know, there were also moments during World War II where Black soldiers didn't

get treated well. Hey, there were also moments during the space race where Black people were not allowed to be part of the engineering programs or not allowed to be astronauts. And so once you decide you're going to focus on those heroic stories, it makes it much harder to talk about the realities that Black people and other non-white people faced in those circumstances. And he as much admits that in his essay, but he also played a lot of those roles. So I just thought it was surprising that he didn't, you know, sort of talk about that. I was only half joking about everyone saying you're trying to cancel Tom Hanks. Fox News published a story online, and one of their pundits, I think it's Joe Concha, discussed it on air. Right.

And you also, I was watching you fend off some of the criticism on Twitter, right? What kind of response did you get? I got a lot of response. But what seemed to happen is, like, Fox News in particular created a story that inaccurately represented my column. It made it sound like I was attacking Tom Hanks. It made it sound like I was attacking Tom Hanks. It made it sound like I was trying to get Tom Hanks canceled. And I was not trying to do any of those things. And none of that is actually said in the column.

And so I had people rolling up on me and being very abusive and being very defensive. Some people used the N-word in emails and some people used even worse phraseology. And it was all about people being defensive and angry because they were being encouraged to be hateful rather than have a discussion. criticism at such a beloved figure. I mean, people look back at when Tom Hanks got COVID, and literally they were like, now we take COVID seriously. Tom Hanks got it. Like, that is the level of guy you're going after. But this is relatively mild criticism. I know. But if you think about it, one of the things we've learned about this civil rights discussion is that there are a great number of, let's say, white people in

particular who feel like if they take a personal interest and acknowledgement of racial harms, that that is a step in the right direction. And this kind of criticism is somehow undermining that kind of step. Well, you know, the way I always compare it, I compare it to being in a relationship with someone and they apologize for something that they did wrong. But you know that they really only apologize for like half of what they did wrong. And when you're in a situation like that, does it really feel like a full apology? And does it really feel like the person understood what they did wrong and will do differently in the future? If you don't fully talk about what the problem is, then you cannot solve the problem. And so I think part of what has to happen is that we have to get all this ideological warfare and all of this anger and bitterness out of the conversation. And let's just have a reasoned, respectful...

I mean, my column was filled with compliments for Tom Hanks because I love him as an actor and I love him as a public person. I think he's done a lot of cool, really great things. But in this essay, he left something out. And he left something out that, frankly, other filmmakers like Stevenielberg and ron howard also leave out which is what did they specifically do right to create this situation where you know our view of americana excludes black people and he admitted this in his own

essay so let's just talk about what that means and how guys like that can do differently in the future. And why is that so threatening? He already admitted it. I'm not saying anything that he didn't already say. in her awards acceptance speeches, talking about inclusion writers, right? Basically saying that if you are an actor with power, you can put in your contract that a project has a higher percentage of, say, women working on set. Essentially, she was saying, use your individual power to help all of us. And it sounds like you're saying the same thing. Actually, this is obviously a discussion about racism, but it sounds like you're also talking about the idea of, like, what does it mean to have power, right? And have Hollywood A- taking action to dismantle systemic racism around you, wherever you have influence, rather than just decrying it, but letting it exist. You take action to stop it. Now, I would use as an example, somebody like, say, Brad Pitt, who also executive produces a lot of projects, but he executive produces a lot of projects that feature non-white people's stories.

Right. We should mention, I think 12 Years of Slave was part of Plan B Productions. Is that the correct name of his production company? Plan B Productions is the name of his production company. And he doesn't, it's not like he takes a lot of credit for it. If you didn't know that Plan B Productions was his company, you might not know that he executive produced some of these things, but he does it. And so the conversation is richer for it. And so it's possible to do this work. And I don't think people should get defensive when somebody says, hey, you know, you pointed out a problem, you know, here's some things that you yourself could do to solve that problem. And so I'm hopeful that people who really want to make a difference on these issues are willing to hear from people of color who can suggest ways

that they can achieve what they say they want to achieve, but they have to be open to hearing that discussion and having that discussion. Do you think, though, that there is a movement, quote-unquote, in the right direction? I'm thinking of the criticism being leveled at, say, in the Heights about not having Afro-Latinx voices and performers in lead roles. You would think that, you know, given the godly status of Lin-Manuel Miranda, this would be sort of an untouchable project. But out of the gate, this was a question that was being raised. I mean, do you think that, like,

the level of accountability, the threat air quotes of being canceled is actually having a real-time effect or at least changing people's thinking? I hope so. I mean, I do think that one of the problems that we have when we try to have these discussions is that because some powerful people in Hollywood have been incredibly resistant to having these conversations, that you do have to threaten to cancel somebody before they will listen. And I think that is part of the problem. If we can have

these discussions before it gets to the point where you have to have protests to get people to pay attention, then we can solve the problem and nobody has to worry about getting canceled. Lin-Manuel Miranda apologized. He said, I should have done a better job. And he apologized almost immediately. In the Heights is a wonderful film. I watched it myself the day that it opened. But the first thing, not the first thing I noticed, but something that I noticed as I was watching the film was seeing wasn't quite authentic. And so, you know, it makes you wonder, like, how they got to the point where that film got released the way they had cast it. But to his credit, Lin-Manuel Miranda did apologize and say that critics had a point. And that's conversation.

NPR's film critic Eric Deggans. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Kornish.