5 Celebrities Who Get More Hate Than They Deserve (Part 4)
At least half of my job responsibilities at Cracked involve needlessly hating things. Of course, just like working the cash register at McDonald's doesn't necessarily mean a person enjoys Big Macs (gross), me writing a joke about an athlete or entertainer doesn't necessarily mean I agree with the prevailing public opinion about the subject of that joke. Sometimes I'm just doing my job.
Celebrities who get unreasonable amounts of hate are the main order of business on this week's Unpopular Opinion podcast ...
... where I'm joined by musician Danger Van Gorder of the band Countless Thousands and comic Delanie Fischer. Up first, we discuss ...
Nicolas Cage
Why All the Hate?
Is "hate" the right word as it pertains to public sentiment about Nicolas Cage? Maybe not, but "respect" certainly isn't the right word, either.
It used to be, though! Up until the last decade or so, Nicolas Cage was a highly regarded actor who made more good choices than bad when it came to selecting roles. It wasn't until the mid-2000s, when notoriously terrible movies like Ghost Rider and Wicker Man started making regular appearances in the Cage catalog, that things took a turn for the worse.
Just kidding, I know everyone loves Wicker Man.
From that point on, Nicolas Cage was recast as a tragic-head-injury-less version of Gary Busey, just spewing crazy on everyone and everything he encounters, all while squandering his vast Hollywood fortune on worthless trinkets and artifacts along the way. That would all be fine and well if his movies were still enjoyable, but more often than not, we strike out on that front as well.
Again, excluding Wicker Man.
To anyone with an interest in the matter, it's become painfully obvious that Nicolas Cage is making movies strictly for the paycheck these days. In short, Nicolas Cage has become a sad real-life embodiment of the deranged lunatics he was once (and now understandably is) so adept at portraying on screen.
Why He Doesn't Deserve It
Aziz Ansari and/or Chris Rock recently joked that being a comic is way harder than being a musician, because comics are expected to come up with completely new material constantly, whereas musicians can play the same hits for an entire career. I'm not sure who came up with that comparison first, but I think they're both wrong.
I suspect most musicians with any sort of back catalog to their credit would love nothing more than for their new stuff to become popular enough that people are content just hearing that, as opposed to screaming out requests for decades-old hits night after night. They probably wouldn't bother making new music if that wasn't the case. If your chief complaint as an entertainer is that fans expect and encourage you to try new things, you should examine your motivations for wanting to be an entertainer in the first place.
What does this have to do with Nicolas Cage? The answer, of course, is Neil Young.
Yes, of course.
In keeping with the spirit of this article, don't take the fact that I bashed his stupid "high-resolution music player" last week as some sort of sign that I dislike Neil Young. Quite the opposite. In the annals of music history, he's like my third or fourth favorite person ever, primarily because he's built a career on giving not a single shit if people actually enjoy the work he's doing. He doesn't record a weird '80s synthesizer-laden album full of electronic dance music and then hit the road to play "Heart of Gold" and "Cinnamon Girl" to throngs of adoring fans. No, he makes that album, puts on a skinny tie, plays that album in its entirety, and then records it all so you can still see it decades later on DVD.
It is a path he has been on his entire career. He has never wavered from it, and people love him for that, even if it means running the risk of being unexpectedly subjected to hearing a concept album about the environment in its entirety when you spend money to see him in concert.
For all intents and purposes, Nicolas Cage is the Neil Young of movies. Just like Neil Young, we tend to forget that, even back when it seemed like he was doing nothing but great work, a quick examination of the facts reveals that there has never been a time when Nicolas Cage wasn't shitting on his body of work by making movies so terrible that they border on self-sabotage. Sure, Neil Young mostly ruled in the early '70s, but he also followed up the biggest success of his career, the 1971 album Harvest, with a terrible movie with an equally terrible soundtrack by the name of Journey Through the Past.
With that in mind, can you remember what Nic Cage came back with after the one-two punch of Raising Arizona and Moonstruck? That's right, Vampire's Kiss, a movie you've never seen about a publishing executive who thinks he might be a vampire. As terrible as that movie might be, I can guarantee Nicolas Cage is the best thing about it.
That and the poster, obviously.
What I'm getting at here is that Nicolas Cage is not a once-great actor who destroyed his own legacy. Nicolas Cage is an unspeakably talented actor who takes a lot of chances without regard for how any of them might impact his reputation or career. Yes, he's hit a bit of a rough patch in terms of making "great" movies, but he's got a lot of years ahead of him. Many people had given up on Neil Young after he spent the entirety of the '80s making terrible music, only to welcome him back to work right at the end of the decade when "Rockin' in the Free World" came out and put him back in everyone's good graces.
Nicolas Cage will have another hit someday, and you will love him again when he does. What makes Nicolas Cage special is that, even then, he still won't give a shit what you think, and you'll know it when Wicker Man 2 comes out a few months later.
Anne Hathaway
Why All the Hate?
I don't know, you tell me. Why do so many people hate Anne Hathaway? That she's hated is not in dispute; there wouldn't be an entire BuzzFeed article on the subject if the hate wasn't real. BuzzFeed doesn't deal in trivia. They put together a rundown of some of the main reasons people online cited for their Hathaway hate.
Of course, in typical BuzzFeed fashion, the "article" features approximately 10 to 15 words actually written by BuzzFeed staff, none of which involve addressing the individual shots people fire in Anne Hathaway's direction. It's only because they think you're too stupid to read more than one paragraph at a time, though. No worries, if I was afraid of heavy lifting, I wouldn't be working here. Let's finish that BuzzFeed article for them.
Why She Doesn't Deserve It
Let's get the really controversial stuff out of the way right off the bat.
I don't really know how to address this one. Are we saying Anne Hathaway is ugly? She's not. I'm not sure what else to say. Forest Whitaker has a crazy eye, no one hates him for it, you know?
You sound stupid.
While I agree that it isn't the strongest screenplay she's ever written and her directing work was much better on Inception, it still seems like a bit of a stretch to blame the relative shittiness of The Dark Knight Rises on Anne Hathaway. At least part of the blame falls on the fact that it was a stupid movie. Beyond that, if you weren't satisfied with her portrayal of Catwoman, by all means, tell me who did it better?
Go ahead, say it!
Right, everyone sucks as Catwoman, because Catwoman is a stupid character. That said, you'd probably take the role too if you were an actor.
If you saw Love and Other Drugs, that's your fault, not Anne Hathaway's.
Good.
Citation needed? I don't know, but everything else is basically this said eight different ways. As far as I can tell, the biggest knock against Anne Hathaway is that there isn't anything to hate about her. That's definitely boring, but do we need to be such dicks about it?
Liam and Noel Gallagher
Why All the Hate?
Have you heard the rumors that '90s Brit-pop legends Oasis might be reuniting? Of course not, you're probably in the United States, which means you likely didn't even realize they kept making music after "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova" ruined your summer almost two decades ago.
For a handful of folks here in the states (like me) and just about everyone in England, where Oasis is still popular enough that they set a U.K. record by selling 500,000 tickets for their 2009 tour in just seven hours, an Oasis reunion is huge news. For everyone else, it's a good reason to revisit all the reasons people learned to hate Oasis so much during their heyday.
Why They Don't Deserve It
Liam and Noel Gallagher, for lack of a better term, are a couple of cunts. Relax, ladies, it just means "jerk" in England or whatever. Kids say it in school and such. If anything, it's England's egregious and continued use of the term "fag" that should offend people.
It's a disgusting habit.
Anyway, people don't like the Gallagher brothers much, because the Gallagher brothers aren't very likable. Sure, most of their antics are right in line with the kind of thing that people adored about the Sex Pistols and bands of the like, but for some reason, people are a lot less tolerant of it coming from Oasis. Is it because Oasis also happens to "borrow" a good portion of their catalog from other artists? So do a lot of people, but to their credit, at least they aren't the Spice Girls with cheap guitars, which is a perfectly accurate description of the Sex Pistols, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.
"Which one of you is Ginger?"
I've always seen Liam and Noel Gallagher's unspeakably terrible personalities as something else, though. To me, Oasis has always been an embodiment of the notion that love conquers all.
Including the need for manicured eyebrows.
Sure, if you get them in the same room for more than a few minutes, it's obvious that the two can barely stand to be around each other, but that just makes the fact that they stuck it out long enough to release seven albums over the course of a decade and a half all the more impressive. No matter how successful a band may be, they don't usually survive one member sitting in the balcony smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey, and heckling the other members loudly just a few short hours after dropping out of a televised concert with claims of a sore throat.
Yes, that happened to Oasis, and no, I don't know the exact spot in that 45 minute video where you can see it. I'm sure some helpful Oasis fan in the comments section will have the answer you seek, though. Anyway, Kurt Cobain would've shot Dave Grohl in the head for pulling a stunt like that, and coming from anyone else, Noel Gallagher most certainly would have as well. Liam Gallagher is his brother, though, and no matter how much of a bloody cunt he may be, at the end of the day, those two will always love each other. They even wrote a song about it.
Are the Gallagher brothers assholes? No, but only because the proper term is "arseholes" where they come from. Beyond that, yes, totally. That doesn't make watching them pretend to hate each other any less enjoyable, though.
Nancy Grace
Why All the Hate?
To say that Nancy Grace has an unpleasant personality would be putting it far too mildly. There isn't an adjective that properly reaches the depths of just how uncomfortable it is to hear her talk. It's something people comment on all the time, and I totally agree. That said, there's always been one thing that's bothered me about how vehemently people hate Nancy Grace.
Why She Doesn't Deserve It
Almost exclusively, Nancy Grace reserves her angry words and general unpleasantness for the perpetrators of heinous crimes and the police and prosecutors who do a terrible job of bringing them to justice. In a lot of cases, the main source of her anger is the senseless murder of an innocent child. Yes, her voice is grating on the nerves, and her anger comes out sounding more like comedy in a lot of cases, but still, isn't murder the kind of thing we want people getting unreasonably angry about?
Not while the World Cup is on!
I mean, Joan Rivers gets every bit as angry over what Taylor Swift wears on the red carpet, but we just call her a legend. Why isn't anyone mad at her for spending her golden years obsessing over fashion choices?
Because you don't care, hopefully.
Oh, but there's also the part where she milks unfortunate crimes for entertainment purposes, right? Yes, because America's Most Wanted and Cops never had commercials, apparently. Everything on television is there for entertainment, first and foremost. If there is educational value to be found in something you watch on television, that's because it's programming aimed at people who are entertained by learning shit, not because those are the "good" shows. Nancy Grace wouldn't have a career in television if there wasn't a huge segment of the population that loves to watch courtroom drama unfold in real life. You do realize people just show up and watch that shit in person, right?
Happy 20th, O.J. trial!
Getting mad at her for calling play-by-play on a court case is no different from getting mad at Al Michaels for doing Sunday Night Football. In both cases, their job is to add commentary to an event that a lot of people want to watch. I understand that Nancy Grace's delivery doesn't sit well with a lot of people, but so what? A lot of people thought John Madden was annoying as shit as an announcer, but he kept the job for a whole lot of years nevertheless.
Probably because he's the only man on Earth who knows how to properly cook a turducken.
If anything, I'd think people would be a little more understanding when Nancy Grace goes overboard the way she does, given the subject matter she's dealing with. There are a lot worse things a person can be passionate about than justice for murdered children, you know?
Tyler Perry
Why All the Hate?
Tyler Perry, first and foremost, gets hate for making terrible movies. Sure, most of those people have never seen a Tyler Perry movie to know for sure how bad they really are, but what do you need to see? Isn't the poster usually enough?
Can't wait to never see it!
That's basically Big Momma's House Part 6 or something, right? Just more of that cross-dressing comedy that Dave Chappelle complained about way back when he first resurfaced after his Comedy Central debacle. Spike Lee basically said as much in an interview when asked about Tyler Perry's success, and it's a hard point to argue against if you're basing your opinion on movie posters alone.
Why They Don't Deserve It
Here's what you don't realize about Tyler Perry's Madea movies -- they are dark as shit. If you think I mean that in a racial sense, you're racist. Everyone else should understand that I mean that, underneath the surface, those movies are barely comedies. Take the chucklefest that is Madea's Family Reunion.
Not exactly the cast of characters you'd expect in a movie with a sentence like this in its plot summary:
"Vanessa is trying to find love while struggling to forgive her mother for allowing her stepfather to rape her numerous times in her younger teen years."
Excuse me? Where was Big Momma when all this was happening? Or how about this pair of dandies from Madea Goes to Jail?
"Candace runs away from Josh's apartment and is back on the streets working as a prostitute, until she gets picked up and arrested by an undercover cop."
"He ended up leaving Candace behind at the party, where a group of his friends gang raped her, for which Josh continues to harbor deep-seated guilt."
See, Tyler Perry's Madea movies aren't the black version of the Ernest Goes to Camp franchise, no matter what the posters may imply to the contrary. Rather, they're more like the movies Spike Lee probably thinks he makes posing as Ernest Goes to Camp movies as a means to rope in audiences that wouldn't normally be drawn to a drama about rape and other assorted family matters. It's kind of like how Babe: Pig in the City seems like a silly kids' movie from all outward appearances, but is actually a sort-of drama that touches on a bunch of social issues. Gene Siskel named it the best film of 1998, and no, I'm not making any of that up.
The Tyler Perry of animal movies.
Dismiss it all you want, but Madea is possibly the most subversive character in Hollywood right now. Those movies are not Tyler Perry at his silliest. They are Tyler Perry being way too heavy for most audiences to handle.
Adam would like it a whole lot if you'd download the latest episode of his podcast and/or watch him tell jokes at Rooftop Comedy. Then come see him do that in person the first and third Tuesday of every month at Westside Comedy Theater in Santa Monica. Once you have all of that out of your system, follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
