on Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston's death came as kind of a blow to me. The reaction is different than hearing that Betty Hutton or even Katharine Hepburn has passed on; you see, neither of them are Moses. Heston played a few noble-yet-manly men over the course of his career, and there was always something iconic about those roles that followed him around, even when he wasn't acting. As a guy growing up thinking that this kind of character is worthy of admiration and aspiration, Heston's death is something akin to the day you see your own father in a wheelchair. It just breaks something inside of you.

There is a great deal of shame to be placed on press organizations who discuss his active involvement in the civil rights movement as entirely anathema to his work with the NRA, as if no one could possibly believe in private gun ownership and civil rights at the same time. It just goes to show how black and white our news organizations really see the world. Just because there are two political parties, they assume that there are only two kinds of people.

I tend to believe that Heston wasn't simply a black and white individual. Look no further than his legendary turn as Mike Vargas in Touch of Evil. Not only did Heston champion Welles as the director, he took on a character whose identity and motivations delve deeply into the metanarrative field of racial identity and social complacency.

Touch of Evil was no chump move by a party-line activist actor. You see, Charlton Heston was nobody's fool.