P eople are always complaining about celebrities getting political on awards-show stages. An impassioned argument for empathy, it was an instant classic of the genre and deserves to circulate far beyond the viewers who watched the ceremony live on Netflix.
Hailed with a standing ovation, Fonda approached the stage with a contagious energy that belied her 87 years. What we create is empathy. Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls. And you can pretty much know⦠their father bullied them and called men that he felt were weak⦠losers or pussies. And then she issued a challenge to her fellow actors, reminding them of all the ways that their predecessors in Hollywood fought McCarthyism during the Red Scare of the s and exhorting them to muster the same courage and community spirit.
Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs? It was a remarkable speech. Yet its power came not from her words themselves or how eloquently Fonda spoke them, but out of her six-plus decades of experience in often-controversial frontline activism.
She used her celebrity to make films like Coming Home , which drew attention to the plight of Vietnam vets; China Syndrome , which sounded the alarm on the dangers of nuclear power; and 9 to 5 , a feminist romp about sexual misconduct in the workplace. And she has continued that work in tandem with her acting, demonstrating with Indigenous Water Protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in and getting repeatedly arrested while protesting in favor of the Green New Deal in D.
When she speaks about her experiences with cancer, it is in service of persuading us that concurrent crises in public health and the environment are connected. At a moment when faith in the soft political power of American pop culture is at an all-time low, it takes a figure like Fondaβwho has consistently put not just her money but her body where her mouth isβto point the way forward for the artists and entertainers who are her peers. We must stay in community.
