Saying that Jane Fonda was popular in her youth would be a tremendous understatement. Fonda was a movie star at a time when a single name was enough to make a movie rise to the top of the charts. Men loved her and women wanted to be her. But all of that changed during the Vietnam War. The news didn’t spread nearly as quickly in the 1960s as it does today. But like a wave, the news of her activities with enemies of the United States started to wash over the public. Images of her spending time with military units who were poised to fight against American troops began to surface more and more often. As is often the case, emotional extremes flipped fairly quickly as people started to take in that new information. Love and admiration turned to anger and resentment.
Time has a way of making even the most emotional moments disappear into the fuzzy mists of memory. And that’s exactly what happened with Fonda’s presence in the world’s collective memory. Cut to the present day, and most people who were alive during the time had more or less forgotten about Jane Fonda. And of course, whole generations had grown to maturity without ever really knowing who she was or why she was such a contentious figure. One wouldn’t expect her name to come up again. But Fonda would start to dip back into political activism again during the Trump administration. This has continued on into the Biden presidency as well. This alone wouldn’t be especially noteworthy. But along with her commentary, there’s also been an increased call to action for people to remember her past. The trend began in earnest when Stephen Miller, who had served as white house advisor during the Trump presidency, spoke out against her in a Fox News segment.
In speaking out Miller would bring the entire event back into the minds of those who’d lived through it. And those who grew up in the Internet age were now being introduced to an emotional issue in a way unique to modern times. During the initial scandal, people were essentially given out information at a slow pace. Today’s Internet makes it a simple matter to find a vast collection of multimedia at the click of a button. No matter what people’s preferred method of research, the information was becoming more readily accessible by the second. This worked in synergy with Fonda’s own activist revival. Interest in her past began as she criticized Trump. And it’s raised progressively as her criticism of Biden has risen in volume. The more she spoke out the more people spoke out against her.
Likewise, the more people remembered her the more likely they were to look for all of the images from those days. One of the pictures that have sparked public debate to a new level is of Fonda straddling a gun that was used to take down aircraft. Specifically, it was intended to be used to attack American aircraft. Many people felt that it was an especially tasteless and tone deaf choice by Fonda. Fonda has largely been focusing on the future rather than the past. She warns that we need to cut emissions by half over the next nine years if we’re going to avoid ecological disasters. And it’s quite apparent that no matter her past, she wants to make sure people hear her views on the future.
