Meryl Streep's 2017 Golden Globes Speech: A Study in Controversy

Meryl Streep's speech at the 2017 Golden Globe ceremony has led to praise and condemnation. Her speech took a political slant. Accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, award, she began by mentioning the varied backgrounds of Sarah Paulson, Natalie Portman, and Ruth Negga.

Her real, not terribly subtle purpose was, without mentioning his name, to criticize Donald Trump's behavior when he mocked a disabled reporter, "someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the ability to fight back." She warned of the dangerous implications: "this instinct to humiliate when it's modeled by someone in the public platform by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing."

She continued by drawing this incident into a larger context, a context that emphasize values: "disrespect invites disrespect violence incites violence when the powerful use definition to bully others, we all lose."

After making this point, she moved on to a policy question: "that's why our founders in trying to the press and its freedom in our Constitution. So I only ask the famously well-healed Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists because we are going to need them going forward and they'll need us to safeguard the truth."

Controversy quickly followed. Trump responded with a couple of ill mannered tweets in which he called Streep a "over-rated" actress and a "Hillary flunky." Celebrities gave mixed responses. Meghan McCain said that "Streep's speech is why Trump won." Billy Eichner commented that he would "rather live in a bubble than live with people who don't feel the need to respect the disabled, freedom of speech & the arts!!" Anna Kendrick tweeted, "Is there anyone better? #Meryl."

As I have mentioned earlier on this blog, ceremonial speeches are often controversial and often talk about policies. I am sure that many people in the audience expected a nice, calm, fluffy speech about movies. That is certainly fine. All the same, there's no reason to give speeches unless we are unless we are willing to cause controversy once in a while.

The careful listener would have noticed that she began and ended her speech by talking about the arts. She never mentioned Trump's name.

The world is not a safe place, and there is no reason that speakers need to stick to safe topics. It is not to be expected that everybody would like Meryl Streep's speech. At the same time, many people heard what she had to say, and maybe she had some influence.


Some earlier posts about ceremonial speeches that cause controversy:

http://harpine.blogspot.com/2016/06/should-ceremonial-speeches-cause.html

http://harpine.blogspot.com/2016/12/new-years-speeches-part-1.html

http://harpine.blogspot.com/2016/06/just-because-were-magic-jesse-williamss.html