Marlon Brando
A great actor who stood against racism
By Monica Moorehead
A number of well-known actors have come under
media and government attacks because of their progressive
stances against war and racism. They include Danny Glover,
Susan Sarandon, Woody Harrelson, Martin Sheen and Sean
Penn.
Marlon Brando, who died July 1 at age 80, was the target of
similar attacks more than a generation ago. In fact, he should
be forever memorialized for his passionate concern for social
justice as much as for taking method acting to unprecedented
heights.
Many of Brando's roles and films did not reflect what
bourgeois critics might call his liberal politics.
He appeared in a reactionary, anti-union movie, "On the
Waterfront." Some of the films he starred in were insensitive
to women. Not a Latin@, he nevertheless portrayed the legendary
Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata in the 1952 film "Viva
Zapata," which would understandably outrage the Latin@
community and their supporters. As an activist, he made the
unfortunate choice of supporting the Zionist state of Israel,
not the Palestinians.
But he also appeared in "Quemada" or "Burn," a progressive,
anti-slavery movie.
Despite these contradictions, and more, Brando was
considered a rebel on and off the screen. The press labeled him
"eccentric," mainly for being anti-Hollywood and
anti-establishment. But he didn't seem to care. He didn't
believe in competition among actors for awards. He admitted
that acting for him was a vehicle for making a living, for
making a lot of money.
In his 1994 autobiography, "Brando--Songs My Mother Taught
Me," he explains: "Except for moral and political issues that
aroused in me a desire to speak out, I have done my utmost
throughout my life, for the sake of my children and myself, to
remain silent. ... But now, in my 70th year, I have decided to
tell the story of my life ... so that my children can separate
the truth from the myths that others have created about me, as
myths are created about everyone swept up in the turbulent and
distorting maelstrom of celebrity in our culture."
Impact of civil rights movement
Brando was schooled as an adolescent in a military academy,
but came out against the U.S. war in Vietnam. In his
autobiography, he reflects about the civil-rights movement's
great influence on his life. A number of actors, including
Brando, participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery, Ala.,
march and attended the historic 1963 March on Washington where
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous "I Have a Dream"
remarks.
At a civil-rights march in Torrance, Calif., in 1963, Brando
was verbally singled out by racists.
There were not too many celebrities who supported the Black
Panther Party, but Brando was one of the most prominent, along
with composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Brando wrote
about his 1968 meeting with Panther leaders Kathleen Cleaver
and Eldridge Cleaver and 17-year-old Bobby Hutton, the first
Panther murdered by Oakland police. Brando attended Hutton's
funeral.
"Those Panthers made me realize how protected my life had
been as a white person, and how, despite a lifetime of
searching, curiosity and empathy, I would never understand what
it was like to be Black," he wrote. Brando, along with actor
Sean Penn, openly supported Panther Geronimo Ji Jaga (aka
Pratt), who was imprisoned for 27 years, before his release in
1997.
For many years, Brando denounced the U.S. government for its
racist treatment of Indigenous peoples. A longtime friend of
Brando's, columnist James Bacon, remarked on CNN's "Larry King
Live" on July 2 that Brando would slowly rewind John Wayne's
reactionary films to see Native people win the battles against
the Cavalry.
In 1973, Brando refused to attend the Academy Awards
ceremony to accept his second Oscar in protest of Hollywood's
racist portrayal of Native peoples.
His March 30 speech for that occasion reads in part, "For
200 years we have said to the Indian people who are fighting
for their land, their life, their families and their right to
be free: 'Lay down your arms, my friends, and then we will
remain together. Only if you lay down your arms, my friends,
can we then talk of peace and come to an agreement which will
be good for you.'
"When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. ... We
cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing
fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never
kept.
"It's hard enough for children to grow up in this world.
When Indian children watch television, and they watch films,
and when they see their race depicted as they are in films,
their minds become injured in ways we can never know."
In 1992, Brando asked that his name be removed from the
credits of the movie "Christopher Columbus--The Discovery"
because the final movie version did not expose the genocide of
the Indigenous peoples. (MSNBC)
Over 40 years ago, Brando supported the struggle led by the
Puyallup Native nation in Washington state for fishing
rights.
Upon hearing of Brando's death, SuZan Satiacum, whose late
husband Chief Bob Satiacum was arrested along with Brando for
defending these rights, commented: "Marlon Brando was the first
person of non-color to step forward to help us. Marlon Brando
was ahead of his time. ... We named the place where he was
arrested 'Brando's Landing.' And it's still that name yet."
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter, July 3)
Reprinted from the July 15, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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