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Marlon Brando, Barbra Streisan, You and Me and Cults

My wife and I are listening to Barbra Streisand narrate her memoirs - My Name is Barbra.  It’s a 48-hour long audio book!  With clips of her singing!  It’s quite interesting - in more ways than one.

One of the themes that emerges in the book is Barbra’s troubles with men.  She is a take-charge woman in an era when that was frowned upon and some of the men she works with treat her terribly, perhaps because of how strong she is.

The Guardian provides some details …

Barbra Streisand has discussed her early experiences with sexism, including an incident with Sydney Chaplin that contributed to the stage fright that stopped her playing concerts for 27 years, before the release of her memoir.

The singer and actor recalled her fraught relationship with Charlie Chaplin’s son when they both starred in Funny Girl on Broadway in the 1960s.

“I don’t even like to talk about it,” Streisand, 81, told the BBC before the release of My Name Is Barbra. “It’s just a person who had a crush on me, – which was unusual – and when I said to him, ‘I don’t want to be involved with you’, he turned on me in such a way that was very cruel.

“He started muttering under his breath while I was talking on stage. Terrible words. Curse words. And he wouldn’t look into my eyes anymore. And you know, when you’re acting, it’s really important to look at the other person, and react to them.”

The experience, Streisand said, left her “flustered” and contributed to her quitting live performance. But throughout her career, she said she also encountered other male collaborators who proved problematic.

These included Walter Matthau, who humiliated her on the set of Hello, Dolly! by screaming: “I have more talent in my farts than you have in your whole body”.

Barbra holds her own pretty well against the good old boys club early in the book, though she’s an upstart in her 20s and the guys are well-established men who are thirty or forty years older than she is.

But then … there’s Brando.  

Me as Marlon Brando’s “Godfather” character, Missouri Governor’s Mansion, New Year’s Eve, 1999.

Streisand’s first major encounter with Marlon Brando is at a party, where he ‘introduced himself by kissing the back of her neck, saying: “You can’t have a back like that and not have it kissed.”’

What a line - creepy, manipulative, boundary violating, and (I’m sorry to say) effective.

After the kiss on the back, Barbra and Marlon talked for three hours alone in a bedroom at this same party (while Brando’s wife was in the living room and Barbra’s husband was elsewhere).  From that point forward, Brando would call Barbra out of the blue every now and then for what were apparently quick hook-ups.  She then goes months without hearing from him again; until he’s horny or lonely and he gives her a call, always being both seductive and vulgar with her at the same time.  He’s old enough to be her father (Streisand’s father died when she was young, by the way), and he clearly perceives the vulnerability that’s under her tough-girl-from-Brooklyn demeanor.  Their on-and-off relationship lasts through Brando’s physical and emotional decline toward the end of his life.

And strangely … she loves this.  She eulogizes Brando.  She speaks of him the way Rita Moreno does.  

In a prime example of Brando’s ability to be both completely awful and completely irresistible, Rita Moreno has described being treated horribly, being forced to abort a child and driven to near-suicide during their eight-year relationship, but insisted that she still has fond memories of their time together.

Brando was clearly a sexual predator - and a very disturbed man.  His mother forced him into an incestuous relationship as a child and this had predictable consequences.

He said in his book that he always maintained affairs with multiple women at a time so that even if one of them abandoned him, he wouldn't be alone like he was when his mother abandoned him, and would have someone else to fall back on. He also said "With women, I've got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end. I slip the loop around their necks so they can't get away or come too close."

To be cynical about this, I’m convinced that the only difference between Marlon Brando and Harvey Weinstein is that Brando was better looking.  And he was a movie star.  And he was Marlon Brando.  This is why he got away with it.  And Barbra Streisand fell in love with him when she saw him on the big screen when she was 13.

But what does this have to do with the rest of us?

Quite a bit, actually.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are living in an era of cults.  In America, there is a mass psychosis of at least one-third of the population, who are utterly cut off from reality and who are being fed lies and conspiracy theories by television and internet sources that they are eagerly gobbling up.

As I wrote to a friend …

Sadism, forced abortions, statutory rape. But his victims loved him.

Brando was to his victims what Trump is to his.

This sordid stuff makes me wonder.  Do people have no shame?  Do they not aim higher?  In that one article, Rita Moreno brags about her long affair with Brando, admitting to how horribly he treated her along the way.

It’s like this ... "Oh, I loved Jim Jones!  I wish I could have had that Kool-Aid, even though it killed everybody.  He really was a profound man, you know.  And Kool-Aid is so refreshing on a hot summer's day!"

That's what bothers me.  I'm sure Brando talked a good game and was sensitive and artistic and good-looking - but he had sex with a 14-year-old girl (by her own proud admission), raped people, tortured one of his gay lovers and bullied his women to get abortions when they conceived.  I mean, come on.  He was acting out his pathology.

But he gets away with it.  It's the allure.  It's the willing submission.  It's the praise after the fact.  How sick are we?

In fact, a one-on-one cult is still a cult.

The one-on-one cult is a deliberately manipulative and exploitative intimate relationship between two persons, often involving physical abuse of the subordinate partner. In the one-on-one cult, which we call a cultic relationship, there is a significant power imbalance between the two participants. The stronger uses his (or her) influence to control, manipulate, abuse, and exploit the other. In essence the cultic relationship is a one-on-one version of the larger group. It may even be more intense than participation in a group cult since all the attention and abuse is focused on one person, often with more damaging consequences.

I once had a friend who had slept with thousands of women in his lifetime. This was the only thing that mattered to him in life.  He kept a book filled with their names.  He was not particularly attractive or charismatic, but he got what he wanted from vulnerable women.  And I learned something from him.

If you devote your life to anything - to either sex or money or power - and if what you want is all you live for, you will get it.

For would-be cult leaders (of either group cults or one-on-one cults), there are potential victims aplenty all around you.  You can decide ahead of time to be your own cult leader, as the leader of the Sarah Lawrence cult set out to do - and achieved.  And your potential victims will meet you halfway - not because they desire to be victimized, but because there is a built-in need in human nature, a desire for a leader or a strong figure or for a savior.

We need and desire a savior.

Of course, when our real savior appeared, we crucified Him - but in the meantime, whether it’s a pathological lying, law-breaking, manipulative slob like Marlon Brando or Donald Trump, our heart goes out to them … and sometimes our heads.

We live in an era of cults - and we are all potential victims.