Jim Carrey’s leading the gossip round-up today because he delivered a sobering speech on Friday night about how much entertainment media has fucked up America. While accepting the British Academy’s Charlie Chaplin Award for Humor, he invoked the story of how Charlie Chaplin channelled his personal suffering into empathy for the oppressed. He told the audience that Chaplin, whose mother was committed to an asylum when he was 14 and whose father was absent, had imagined the Tramp’s funny walk as a person who suffered from blisters from having worn holes in his shoes: which is to say that art and comedy originate from an ability to care about other people. He says that the lack of that kind of empathy in our programming has helped land us with this real life Aldous Huxley hell society:
“We in America are misinformed,” he said. “Reality shows have warped our idea of what a hero is, or what the truth is.”