Jim Carrey’s new video, which includes his song “Cold Dead Hand,” is meant to make people feel negatively about gun ownership, but more likely makes people watching the video feel bad for wasting their time.

In Carrey’s video, which parodies the 1970s rural television show “Hee Haw,” Carrey plays Lonesome Earl and sings “Cold Dead Hand,” a song meant to turn people against the Second Amendment. This is more effective, however, in turning people against Carrey.

The song’s title and lyrics mock the iconic National Rifle Association speech by the now-deceased Charlton Heston. During the speech, Heston held a rifle in the air and proclaimed, “From my cold, dead hands,” an expression of his right to keep and bear arms, which meant he would die before letting someone take his gun.

Carrey’s video is an absolute failure because it depends on mocking a dead man who cannot respond. The video demonizes gun rights proponents instead of arguing against their position.

As Lonesome Earl sings that Heston’s “immortal soul may lay forever in the sand” because “the angels … couldn’t pry that gun from his cold, dead hand,” Carrey, also in costume as Heston, responds by attempting to kill Lonesome Earl with a rifle.

Gun owners, Carrey sings, are “dead and buried long before they go,” and own guns to “prove [their d*cks are] bigger.”

Carrey, as Heston, accidently shoots off his own foot at the end of the video.

Overall, Carrey portrays gun owners as violent, intolerant, dead on the inside, sexually troubled and prone to accidental and purposeful self-harm. When Carrey paints gun owners as amalgams of these traits, he dehumanizes them.

Creating sub-human caricatures of one’s political opponents is the last refuge of a defeated person.

“Cold Dead Hand” also features actors portraying famous victims of gun violence — John Lennon, President Abraham Lincoln and Mohandas Gandhi — singing Carrey’s song.

This fails because there is no proof Carrey’s cast of dead people would support his cause if alive.

It is certain Gandhi would oppose Carrey’s message.

Gandhi once wrote, “I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus, when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908 … I told him it was his duty to defend me even by using violence.”

Second Amendment supporters describe similar situations and advocate self-defense like Gandhi.

Gandhi added, “But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment … But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is power to punish: it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature.”

Essentially, Gandhi said people must defend the innocent, even with violence. Nonviolence, though ideal, is only meaningful when chosen by someone also capable of choosing violence.

Carrey’s video is not a message of nonviolence, it is a message of helplessness, which Gandhi would consider meaningless and cowardly.

Gandhi also wrote in his autobiography, “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look back upon the Act depriving the whole nation of arms as the blackest.” Gandhi was referring to the British Arms Act of 1878, which heavily restricted gun ownership in India.

Carrey wants to restrict gun ownership in America, but used Gandhi’s likeness to forward the message. He must be ignorant of Gandhi’s positions on self-defense and firearms.

Carrey mocks a philosophy common to gun owners and Gandhi, which Carrey does not share.

Michael Stikkel is a junior computer engineering major and MBA candidate in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mcstikke@syr.edu.

 

Published on April 1, 2013 at 2:06 am