Daniel Radcliffe Explains It All for Us

The Parade magazine for today contains, as its cover story, a featured interview of the English actor Daniel Radcliffe, of titular Harry Potter film fame. Mr. Radcliffe is an engaging enough young man, but I have to wonder about the wisdom of asking him questions that produce answers such as this, speaking of his upbringing:

There was never [religious] faith in the house. I think of myself as being
Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English. My dad [Ulster Protestant]
believes in God, I think. I'm not sure if my mom [Jewish, English] does. I
don't. I have a problem with religion or anything that says, "We have all the
answers," because there's no such thing as "the answers." We're complex. We
change our minds on issues all the time. Religion leaves no room for human
complexity.

And the interview leaves it at that. Perhaps it would be more fair to Mr. Radcliffe to give him the benefit of the doubt, that a more complete, thoughtful, and probing interview would allow him to develop some of these thoughts. But as provided, they're vapid to the point of absurdity. They certainly reveal a terrible deficiency in his education or (to place blame on his parents) home environment.

Perhaps in a future post I'll take a stab at replying to his statements, but for the moment I wish to ponder the folly we regularly engage in by supplying a platform for celebrities to expound on matters of great import. Do not mistake me. Mr. Radcliffe is entitled to his opinions and to express them when asked. But he is an actor. His thoughts on religion or philosophy or human complexity carry no more weight than those of the mailman, the supermarket cashier, or any number of otherwise anonymous persons who have not starred in a $7.7 billion movie franchise. Yet here he is given space provided in a national publication distributed to hundreds of thousands of American households to make unchallenged statements such as "religion leaves no room for human complexity" as if this is an unassailable truth.

Of course, he's only the latest example of this unhappy aspect of Western pop culture. We regularly hear from all sorts of celebrities pronouncing on the great issues of our times, and typically their expressed thoughts are no better developed than this. And yet the media eat it up and regurgitate it all for the consumption of the rest of us. A most unpalatable intellectual and spiritual diet.