"I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization."
The Grim Reaper has had a busy week, which heralded the death of iconic figures in politics (Margaret Thatcher), fashion (Lilly Pulitzer) and entertainment (Annette Funicello). And for those who love film and film criticism, many are most saddened by the loss of a great, Roger Ebert, who passed away last week at age 70 after a long battle with cancer.
The tributes to Ebert keep rolling in and deservedly so. His story is well known, from his modest beginnings in Urbana, Illinois, to his career at the Chicago Sun-Times, to his Pulitzer win in 1975, to his success as an author, to his almost biblical partnership with the late Gene Siskel, to his illness and courage in later years. Ebert lived his own version of the American Dream.
Yet he was first and foremost an ambassador of film and a champion of the medium's ability to transcend time and place. It is slightly ironic perhaps that in my mind, and arguably in the minds of many, the quintessential image of him that lives on is that of him circa 1980, portly and bookish, sat in an armchair in a pair of jeans and a beloved sweater, arguing with Siskel, his other half (a man who was both a nemesis and a brother to him), about a film he loved or hated. In a way, it is the very embodiment of upwardly-mobile, 1980s Americana. So I bestow on him a sobriquet apropos of the (Reagan) era: The Great Communicator.
And he was. A lifelong student of film, his knowledge of filmmaking, film history, film genres, film criticism was matched by only a handful of others, but he possessed the knack of discussing film in a way that was accessible to everyone. And he gave each film he saw a fair shake. He was no snob.
I often agreed with him. When it was good, he was as likely to champion a small, heartfelt film as he was a self-proclaimed masterpiece from one of the great auteurs in cinema. His review of Dogfight (1991) comes to mind. Written by Bob Comfort and directed by Nancy Savoca, the film starred River Phoenix and Lili Taylor as a pair of tentative young lovers on the eve of the Kennedy assassination. It is a small, modest film, but one I feel close to and I am very protective of it. Ebert saw in it -- and loved -- the same things I did: that it is a fragile love story about the great need for human connection; that it is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of war and the deep anxiety which pervaded the era; and that, ultimately, it is a story about life as a constant negotiation between gendered performance and authenticity, the latter attainable only when we discover and embrace empathy for another human being.
And beyond his persona as a critic, it was empathy that most defined who he was. Part of it I imagine was the generation to which he belonged -- a generation that came of age at the beginning of the 1960s (not unlike the protagonists of Dogfight). They were idealists and liberals in the best sense. This was the generation who believed in President Kennedy's vision for the Peace Corps, a generation who cared deeply about race relations, a generation who wanted to change the world (and to a large degree, they did) ... before the nation lost its innocence -- or the veneer of it anyway. Roger Ebert was a man of his time in this regard; he was a man on the right side of history.
Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than Siskel and Ebert's "Sneak Previews" broadcast on October 23, 1980, the famous and controversial "Women in Danger" episode. (The episode is largely out of circulation; however, it is available in its entirety in two parts on YouTube; for copyright reasons, however, I am not posting links here.) The pair took on the horror genre's slew of copycat slasher flicks which came out on nearly a weekly basis in the summer and fall months of 1979-1980, following the premiere of Halloween in 1978. Both critics were obviously disturbed by a number of films (and they put several examples on display during the broadcast) that demonstrated deeply misogynist attitudes. The fact that none of them were terribly well executed only reinforced their conviction that the eroticized violence they portrayed was cheap and cynical and reflected the deep antipathy towards the rise of women and the Second Women's Movement of the 1960s and 1970s among their target audience: white, middle-class men. Ebert was critical of the films' messaging, noting that the idea of "women as sport" was particularly dehumanizing.
Siskel and Ebert took great pains to underscore that it was not the concept of the horror film itself which they found objectionable. In fact, ironically, the film that kick-started the rash of slasher films they took to task, Halloween, is one they both liked because it was well made; it spoke to deeper, universal fears in our subconscious and it was always sympathetic towards its female protagonist, who was smart and resourceful (not a scantily-clad, vacant, sexual object or a woman who had to pay with her life for her independence). Nonetheless, they took heat for their scathing reviews of these films. And over the years, their remarks have become even less popular.
One blogger even suggested that their objections stemmed from the strictures of conventional morality (or the new political conservatism of the era).
Nothing could be further from the truth, though I guess I should not be surprised at such misapprehensions; we live in a post-feminist world where boundaries long settled -- such as what constitutes "rape" -- are suddenly in flux again among certain segments of the population. Roger Ebert simply was a man who lived through the feminist movement and "got it." He respected women; he respected people in general and he always strove to see their humanity. In other words: he had empathy for those who struggled as he did with the human condition.
And he brought this empathy with him to every film he saw and communicated it in his work as only he could. He left the world a better place than he found it and he will be sorely missed.