Rusty Saber: Role model comments presages Apocalypse

I wonder, is it possible that the Apocalypse is near? If actress Jennifer Love Hewitt's comments about her role in an upcoming movie make sense to anyone, the Apocalypse indeed may have already arrived.

I confess, I don't keep up with all the latest movie stars. Some have come and gone without me knowing they were ever here. To the question "Whatever happened to Cindy Lou Swartz (or whoever)?," I say, "I give up; what happened to her?" Jennifer Love Hewitt is of the genre of Hollywood types I wouldn't know from a load of coal.

I became aware of her only by running across a news article identifying her as having an image of a "bouncy girl-next-door." Apparently this image came from her role in "I Know What You Did Last Summer," an opus that was apparently overlooked by the Academy Awards folks.

The lovely Jennifer (I'm assuming she's lovely, but since I've never seen her, I don't know that for a fact) wants to put the nice-girl image behind her. I certainly understand her concern. Why would any young actress want a reputation like that? Think of the horrors of being typecast as a nice person. Such an ominous cloud hanging over her head could ruin her career.

In a publicity blurb for her current movie, "Breakers," she is quoted as wanting to rid herself of the nice-girl image, replacing it with a sexy role of a grifter in an upcoming comedy. I don't know for certain what a grifter is, but I'm assuming it's a con artist, certainly not a "bouncy girl-next-door." Ms. Hewitt told the New York Daily News she wants to play up the temptress side of her role in "Breakers," while making her character a role model that her young fans can admire. Please, dear readers, for a moment hold the thought of her hankering to be a role model for young girls. Are you holding it? No fair letting go.

Hewitt and Sigourney Weaver play a mother-daughter con team. This is where the role model for girls stuff kicks in; pay attention. The plot involves shakedowns of wealthy Palm Beach suitors. Weaver marries them and the 21-year-old Hewitt seduces them, whereupon Weaver harvests tons of money from the blackmail/divorce scams. If that plot doesn't put "Breakers" in a league with "Citizen Kane" and "Gone With the Wind," I don't know what would.

OK, readers, take Ms. Hewitt's role-model-yearning off hold. Of the character she portrays in the movie, Hewitt says, "she's a role model in her own right. She's a young woman with a career, though it's not the normal one most parents would choose. And she's really strong, smart, clever, witty and sexy."

I think we need to pause and give some thought to what is a role model. I believe it means one whose approach to life is worthy of being emulated by others.

So, Ms. Hewitt believes her character is a positive role model, one young girls should emulate. Let's see, the character is a role model because she seduces men her mother has married in order to blackmail them into big payoff divorces. Is it possible that she actually believes this tripe? I can't imagine telling my granddaughter that Hewitt or her character is the sort of role model she should emulate.

Let's see, the movie character is a role model because she has a career. Al Capone had a career, but I've never thought of him as a role model.

To her credit, Hewitt said that this isn't the sort of career parents would choose. Sounds to me like she is saying that it really doesn't matter what young girls' parents think.

The movie character is, according to Hewitt, "smart, clever, witty and sexy." She omitted the fact that it was these traits that enabled her to pull off her unsavory scams. Neither Hewitt nor her character appear to be the stuff of which role models are made.

When I read the article about this movie, I wondered why the newspaper (not a local one) printed it. It was a blatant promo for the movie and gave credence to the crackpot ramblings of a young woman so totally lacking a moral compass that she proffers as a role model for young girls a con artist who along with her mother uses sex as a scam.

Would anyone pay attention to her? If so, the Apocalypse is here.

(Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University and a Springfield public relations consultant.)