Patrick Stewart Slams Hollywood Violence

6th March 2004

The former Star Trek actor, Patrick Stewart, has hit out at Hollywood for its portrayal of violence towards women, heavily criticising the producer Quentin Tarantino for his film Kill Bill. He claimed the film did nothing to promote the empowerment of women and simply encouraged them to kill each other.

However, the star continued with his barrage of Hollywood’s ethics, slamming it for promoting violence towards animals. In this case he singled out the children’s cartoon Tom and Jerry.

“Tom and Jerry is classic example of Hollywood sensationalising violence towards animals,” Stewart explained, “All it does is encourage cats to try and eat mice. It may look good on screen, but people don’t realise this is a growing problem. Statistics show that more and more mice are being eaten by cats each year.”

MGM Studios, responsible for producing the cartoon, argued that in most cases Tom was unsuccessful in catching Jerry, and on the few occasions he managed to get the upper hand he never actually bothered to eat the mouse.

Stewart refuted this claim: “It’s nonsense and irrelevant. The only reason Jerry evaded capture for so long was because he used comical and impractical methods to foil Tom’s attempts to eat him. They claim that they are empowering mice but in the real world these methods wouldn’t work.”

Most Hollywood producers were shocked at Patrick Stewart’s claims:

“I’m not exactly sure where he is coming from,” Producer Chuck Hankman, chairman of Random Perspective’s film division commented, “Usually Hollywood studios make a real effort to preserve the animal – in Independence Day the mother endangered hers and her son’s life holding the door open for the dog to leap to safety, in Twister the dad died saving the dog.

“What do we have to do - have them sit safely in front of a fire all day? Geez – in the real world most dogs would get wiped out if aliens invaded and blew up LA.”