Fans Don’t Buy Matt Damon’s “Nice Guy” Behavior, and Here’s Why
What makes a celebrity likable? True humility is a virtue that probably causes people to fall in love with a famous person. This isn’t always a guarantee of affection from the audience, but the ability to sidestep all the pitfalls of stardom earns fans some big points.
Humor (especially self-deprecating), charity, and of course being really good at a showbiz job are all ingredients in becoming a highly regarded celebrity. Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Lawrence, and Tom Hanks are some of the Hollywood stars that fall into this category. Robin Williams and Chadwick Boseman too, before their respective tragic deaths.
Matt Damon might not immediately spring to mind as one of the most beloved stars, but he was never collectively hated either. It wasn’t until recently anyway, when fans started to sense that his nice guy act was just that: an act. It all had to do with a homophobic tendency on his part, which most people couldn’t believe he was still clinging to in 2021.
A selfish act of signaling virtue
All the fury over Damon’s behavior started with an interview he gave in August this year, as part of a promotional tour for his film, Still water. Exclusively, the actor revealed information that shocked many people who considered him sensitive and progressive: he had never stopped using hate speech to refer to gay men.
In his partial defense, he was at least discussing the vice instead of being caught red-handed. Yet the circumstances surrounding his moment of enlightenment were even more mind-boggling for his fans. This is precisely what generally made people feel that his confession was less that he was a really nice person who had learned he was wrong, and more of a selfish act of signaling virtue.
Damon recounted how he said the insult while he was at the table with his family. Incredulous, it would have happened as normal if one of his three daughters had not questioned him, even if it meant leaving the table in protest.
Incredible line of defense
To make the problem even worse, Damon went on to explain how he tried to justify himself. After his daughter confronted him for his behavior, the actor referred to his 2003 film. Glued to you. In the film, he portrayed Bob Tenor, half of two Siamese twins. While Bob is an introvert, his brother Walt is very outgoing and wants to move to Hollywood to pursue an acting career.
In one scene, Walt makes a song choice on a jukebox that Bob disagrees with. To express his dissatisfaction, he calls his brother: “You hit! According to Damon, if Bob could tell, so could he. “I made a joke months ago and got a treaty from my daughter. She left the table,” he told Rebecca Alter of The Sunday Times. “I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie Glued to you! ‘”
It was an incredible line of defense, which would indicate that he is not very smart or that he was intentionally ignorant. As an Oscar-winning, Harvard-trained writer and actor with a net worth of nearly $ 200 million, it was easy to settle for the latter option rather than the former.
admitted his mistake
It was only after his daughter’s “treaty” that Damon apparently admitted his mistake and finally agreed to “withdraw the insult”. “She went to her room and wrote a very long and beautiful treatise on the dangerousness of this word,” he continued in the Sunday Times interview. “I said, ‘I’m taking the f-slur off.’ Understood.” History has shown how homophobia issues are still casually treated, even among the Hollywood elite, even in our time.
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“I think a lot of public figures don’t realize how low the bar is and how little they have to say or do to support the LGBTQ community in order to gain our gratitude and admiration in return,” wrote a frustrated fan on Reddit. “It always sucks when someone you thought had hit the limit. It’s an unfortunate situation that, at least right now, makes me wonder how much I really want to see him and his work.”
The story of Damon’s swapping with his daughter isn’t as trendy as it used to be. Still, it will take much more for the actor to convince the fans of any real remorse on his part.
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