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Today we have Christian Bale's exploding in an expletive rage on his DP (Director of Photography) on the set of a new edition of the Terminator franchise, Terminator Salvation. Last year we were allowed to listen with slackened jaws to a leaked copy of Alec Baldwin tearing into his daughter on a phone message he left on her voice mail concerning her self-centered behavior and his frustrated endeavors to have some quality time with her. The message, it appears, was leaked, by his ex-wife, Kim Bassinger. Nice touch there.
There's also the enormously popular video of a younger Bill O'Reilly screaming at the tech people on the set of an Inside Edition episode, with Bill using similar obscenities to those which constituted at least 50% of Bale's tirade. It wasn't the first time Bill was caught on camera tearing into the little people. Bill's screaming comes naturally. So does his bullying. I wouldn't want to live inside his head.
And, of course, we can, if we take the time and effort, listen to the tapes or read the transcripts of Richard Nixon cursing out everyone under the sun in his inimitable fashion. Here is a man who was just never comfortable in his own skin and he made everyone else pay for it. Maybe it was a father thing. Like Dubya, you know.
And, I ask you, who can forget Jesse Jackson's pungent wish to emasculate then-candidate Barack Obama for "talking down to Black people on matters of faith," when Rev. Jackson thought the microphone was off?
So, with YouTube and archives, we can immerse ourselves in these Vesuvial moments, when people are at the end of their patience or tolerance and nothing but a rant from a Hallmark Evil twin will do. Indeed, YouTube has made almost any verbal misstep a possible "great moment in infamy," because it often becomes viral and, in so doing, makes the event highly visible, highly topical, highly likely to be talked about on David Letterman, and likely to temporarily derail whatever career track the misspeaker was on (Think Sen. George Allen of Virginia and his Macaca moment. His senatorial re-election cum leveraged Republican presidential campaign overture never recovered.)
But if we weren't interested in this staring at road wreckages in the making, YouTube wouldn't have this pernicious impact. What is it about us as a people that we find swearing in the rich, powerful or famous so fascinating?
As is well known, we seem to enjoy watching gods, demi-gods and wannabe gods pratfall every now and then. It makes them more human, more like...like us. Of course, if we like or dislike a particular god, demi-god or wannabe god, affects how delicious the moment might be and whether or not we try to explain it away as situational ("he's undera lot of pressure, his teenage daughter is pregnant and his wife and the mail man, well, you know...") or nail it to the god's body with "boy, that's just like him/her" or, "Doesn't surprise me one bit" thereby making it a personality trait or characteristic.
We are also very voyeuristic. It's not peculiar to us humans, I might add. Our simian cousins show similar inclinations to watch what others are doing. Watching alpha males and females succeed or fail is in our DNA. Since celebrities are in many ways our pack leaders, since they affect our lives in great and merely entertaining or informing or motivating ways, it is no wonder that we leer and lip-smack when they screw up and it's caught on video or audio tape.
It's one thing to hear our friend explode in an obscene tirade; it's quite another to hear Bale or Nixon do it. They're special. So what they do is special-even if it's actually quite mundane. Years ago someone fasked me if I wanted to watch a class mate take a dump? I said no. Then he asked me if I wanted to watch Jackie Kennedy? I paused and then gave a halting "no, I don't think so..." Hey, it's a guy thing. Nonetheless, the point was brought home to me. Nothing gods and goddesses to is mundane, ordinary, mainstream.
That's the key to celebrity-watching, then. They're our royalty, our Olympians, or gods and everything they do (at least initially, or for a little while, or not over and over) fascinates us. Maybe they do everything different than us, who knows?
But the expletive-riven Bale tirade seems to be something different. It seems to be an act of undeniable bullying of someone he knows really can't fight back and keep his job. That "power" to intimidate, which comes with the star power to "open a picture" (i.e., audiences will come just to see you almost regardless of what movie you're in), feeds into the Diva or prima donna syndrome found so often with celebrities, in what ever field of endeavor. He's done it before. He's got a temper problem, just like Senator John McCain was reported to have.
People don't like tantrumers and bullies. My wife once said to me "the way a man treats his ash tray is the way he probably treats his wife." At first I stared at her thinking that she had misspoke. Nope, she repeated it. Then I got it. Ever see someone be rude to a waitress or publicly berate some other service person? No matter how nice they are to you, at that point in your relationship, such a person has a strong likelihood of possessing a bullying streak, a tendency to treat those in power deferentially and those out of power ruthlessly, as vehicles to elevate self-esteem at the expense, indeed on the hide of others.
Listening to Bale you hear it all, the worst side of bullies, prima donnas, self-doubters. He curses, he menaces, he threatens, he ridicules. He shows a dark, dangerous, moody side, not inconsistent, it should be noted, with movie roles that have brought him B-level stardom (e.g., Batman, American Psycho, The Prestige). While Bale's star may seem to be in the ascendant, it may just as likely be on a precipice and his temper and ‘tude may be the deciding factor in his alpha male time on earth.
