Honor, Shame, and a Woman’s Reputation

I hated the movie The Greatest Showman.

Oh come on, put down the torches and pitchforks, it’s just a movie.

I grew up in Northern California, specifically in Calaveras County where The Swedish Nightengale, Jenny Lind, was so wildly popular (even though she never travelled there) that there is even a “town” (formerly a mining camp) named after her. Quite contrary to her portrayal in the movie, Ms. Lind was an incredibly reputable woman who never had romantic interests in PT Barnum (who actually was a scoundrel by all accounts and nowhere near as irresistible as Hugh Jackman), and was certainly not the homewrecker that she was so callously portrayed to be. She, in fact, donated most of her $350,000 in earnings to free education causes in Sweden and the rest to charities in other countries, including the US. That was who she was – incredibly talented, staggeringly generous, and by all accounts, a virtuous lady. She had overcome her childhood as a “bastard” in the 19th century – which was quite an accomplishment in and of itself, only to fall victim to our insatiable desire for a tawdry story about a famous person.

Sadly, for the purposes of everyone’s entertainment, Ms. Lind is now associated with attempted adultery. And yes, I imagine most folks who enjoyed the movie are now saying, “Big deal. Grow up. She’s dead and so no hurt feelings.” Well, yes, she is dead. We have no recordings of her voice available, and tragically, most people who know her name now know her by the false reputation that the movie has foisted on her because most folks believe whatever is put in front of them. She will be forever remembered as a beautiful voice attached to the sort of woman who didn’t mind stealing another woman’s man. And that is a big deal because, being dead, all she had left was the reputation she worked hard to earn over the course of her very generous lifetime. And for what? For an entertaining musical experience.

Recently, Olivia DeHavilland (Miss Melanie from Gone With The Wind) was portrayed very negatively in a movie and maybe the producers didn’t think (or didn’t care) she was still alive, but she is 101 and sued for defamation of character. Sadly, a court tossed out her claim, ruling that entertainment is more important than a woman’s reputation. How sad that we have become so cavalier with a person’s identity that we can legally harm them for the amusement of others. Shame on us.

Well, I am crying foul. I hated it when Antonio Salieri was slandered in the movie Amadeus – they took a talented man who was a friend and admirer of Mozart and made him into a sadistically selfish murderer. Let’s look at a passage from the wikipedia entry on Salieri:

“However, even with Mozart and Salieri’s rivalry for certain jobs, there is very little evidence that the relationship between the two composers was at all acrimonious beyond this, especially after 1785 or so, when Mozart had become established in Vienna. Rather, they appeared to usually see each other as friends and colleagues, and supported each other’s work. For example, when Salieri was appointed Kapellmeister in 1788, he revived Figaro instead of bringing out a new opera of his own, and when he went to the coronation festivities for Leopold II in 1790, Salieri had no fewer than three Mozart masses in his luggage. Salieri and Mozart even composed a cantata for voice and piano together, called Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia, which celebrated the return to stage of the singer Nancy Storace. This work, although it had been printed by Artaria in 1785, was considered lost until the 10th of January 2016, when the Schwäbische Zeitung reported on the discovery, by musicologist and composer Timo Jouko Herrmann, of a copy of its text and music while doing research on Antonio Salieri in the collections of the Czech Museum of Music.^[41][42] Mozart’s Davide penitente (1785), his Piano Concerto KV 482 (1785), the Clarinet Quintet (1789) and the 40th Symphony (1788) had been premiered on the suggestion of Salieri, who supposedly conducted a performance of it in 1791. In his last surviving letter from 14 October 1791, Mozart tells his wife that he collected Salieri and Caterina Cavalieri in his carriage and drove them both to the opera; about Salieri’s attendance at his opera The Magic Flute, speaking enthusiastically: “He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture to the last choir there was not a piece that didn’t elicit a ‘Bravo!’ or ‘Bello!’ out of him […].”^[43]

Salieri, along with Mozart’s protégé J. N. Hummel, educated Mozart’s younger son Franz Xaver Mozart, who was born in the year his father died.^[44]”

As with Jenny Lind, people believe what they see in the movies just as they are quick to pass around fake news about Meryl Streep eating babies for New Years. We have become so used to lies and slander that the improbability of what we are reading just doesn’t even faze us and we have become fools enslaved to every catchy headline. We have trouble believing that largely anonymous website writers would publish a lie, but we have no difficulty believing the most horrific stories they write about people. Not only has our love grown cold, but our wisdom has departed almost entirely. We have an insatiable appetite for wanting to believe the worst of people, whether we know them or not, and assign virtue to gossips, liars, mockers, and talebearers.

I think the worst thing that can happen to a woman, or anyone, is to be accused of something they did not do yet also cannot prove false. How on earth can one disprove a negative? “It didn’t happen!” “Oh yeah? Prove it!” And who can even imagine how quickly gossip and accusations travel, or to whom? Accusation is the work of the enemy for the precise reason that accusations can never be fully retracted–a multitude will hear the slander and only a few ever hear the retraction. It is the nature of the – well, the Beast, frankly. Women know how fragile our reputations are–men are not so hindered. Men’s reputations can fall and rise in a moment, but women lose their reputations (especially when the accusation is adultery) in a heartbeat and never escape suspicion no matter how ludicrous the charge.

The Psalms are chock full of angry warnings to, and curses against slanderers, gossips, accusers, and people just waiting for dirt on a person (real or imagined). Accusation is not a freedom of speech matter, and it isn’t entertainment–it is a Biblical matter, and we are held to incredibly high standards, even if we don’t realize it yet.

A person who has earned a good reputation ought to be able to keep it, and when believers see that reputation being harmed – well isn’t it a weightier matter of Torah to do right by the oppressed? It’s easy to throw money at a charity, but not so easy to stand up to liars, bullies, gossips, slanderers, and opportunists–and some people out there are just plain old crazy yet never lacking an audience for their rantings. And after all, it really isn’t a big deal right? Someone else’s reputation? Someone else’s Mother, wife, sister, or daughter. No big deal, not until it happens to you or someone you love…and that is the height of hypocrisy. It’s either always wrong or it is never wrong.