Is it really that big a deal? I am not going to deny myself the joy of a film/book/whatever just because I disagree with the author.
some people take these things too far.
The main thing I try to boycott in the media is Scientology. It’s not just that I want to avoid financially supporting people who have such inane and harmful views (although that’s part of it). I also just find it hard to enjoy movies with some of the more prominent Scientologists out there like Tom Cruise. The idea that someone could actually be gullible and stupid enough to go along with the madness of Scientology is just so irritating to me that I can’t suspend my disbelief and enjoy their acting.
No celebrity that I like has yet jumped on the anti-vaccination bandwagon, but if that does catch on with more celebrities I would try to avoid supporting that too. While, yes, there is some comfort in the thought that the brand of stupidity that fuels anti-vaccination beliefs could be swiftly killed off in the next generation by a good old-fashioned outbreak of measles or polio, I also think it is kind of sad that people are putting kids in danger like that. I also find it ridiculous that people can be so backwards about science in this era. Either way, it’s not something I want to condone or give financial support to.
I also can’t enjoy a movie with Tom Cruise in it because I can’t stop seeing him as a vastly overfunded pinhead. In this case it’s not a boycott. Better to say, there’s no accounting for taste. I think if Hitler had survived the 40’s and appeared in a movie it would be pretty impossible to see him as Prince Charming or the Little Tramp.
Similarly I read about Jackson Browne beating up Darryl Hannah and that just kind of colored his music for me. More recently I read that these were unfounded rumors. But the taste is still there. These are issues between reason and emotion that don’t stand for full accounting.
Which Tom Cruise himself talks about in court papers available at the Smoking Gun website. He says the allegations that he is gay influence his image, which damages his earning potential. He’s got nothing against gay people, he says, but notes that the ways that people picture him in movies, and so the way he can draw a crowd to them, change when these rumors circulate.
Amusingly, I don’t think the issue of his sexual orientation would creep into my enjoyment of his movies. He should really worry about the rumors that he is a Scientologist, and the rumors that he jumped around like an idiot on Oprah. The footage of which is pretty bizarre, by the way…
I also stopped liking Cruise after the Scientology thing. His movies just honestly don’t seem as good. I’m never sure if that’s absolutely true, or a subconscious hatred of Scientology. I had troubles with Will Smith for a while, too. But nothing for Nancy Cartwright as Bart Simpson.
As for the OP: I think most people who say this really can’t make it not affect them (or it would require a large amount of effort), and thus the movies aren’t as appealing. It’s less of a boycott, and more of a tastes thing.
I want to hate Tom Cruise so badly because of all he’s done to promote Scientology (“How bad can it be?! Tom Cruise is a Scientologist!”). But then I remember A Few Good Men and Tropic Thunder. He’s too great an actor to ignore IMO.
Moved MPSIMS --> Cafe Society.
I don’t watch Mel Gibson movies because he’s a nut job and seems full of hatred.
I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the film with him in it.
Hell, if I didn’t watch a movie because someone with whose politics I disagreed was starring in it, I wouldn’t watch more than one or two movies a year.
The only political reason I would purposefully not see a movie is if the movie itself were overtly political, along the lines of Green Zone or Lions for Lambs.
When I go to a film, I am in effect paying the actors (and the rest of the crew) to entertain me for a couple of hours. I do not give a damn what any given member of the cast and crew do when I am not paying them.
But this goes into most this as well. I recall during the 2008 campagin, there were many polls out there that showed Hillary Clinton actually LOST support of women, who felt she should’ve left Bill Clinton after he cheated on her and in such a public way.
So public image does matter, in the long run
I still cannot watch a Ronald Reagan movie. No way.
Re: The Tom Cruise situation.
I don’t want to contribute a dime towards Scientology or to its supporters, but on occasion I do want to see a Tom Cruise movie.
Our solution: buy a ticket for a movie playing at about the same time as his movie at the multiplex, then go into the Tom Cruise movie.
You know what else would work? Buy a ticket, then go by his house and throw a rock through his window. Morally the same, and you’re not picking the pocket of the hundreds of other people who worked on the movie.
I’ve never encountered anyone who’d refuse to see a movie solely because of the political beliefs of the director or star, not unless the actual movie reflected these beliefs.
There are two directors who I’ve heard people say they avoid for reasons unrelated to the quality of their films: Roman Polanski and Woody Allen. In neither case is it political, it’s a reaction to Polanski’s criminal assault of a young girl and Allen’s creepy-but-legal relationship with Soon-Yi Previn. In Polanski’s case in particular I think it’s understandable that many people would not want their money going to support a known rapist who’s eluded punishment for decades.
Sometimes they check, though. They did that for Passion of the Christ.
Anyway, I don’t really see the point of boycotting based on views–I mean, what about the minor actors? Or the crew? What if the caterer hates the Jews, would you boycott the movie? There’s probably at least one horribly racist person working on every movie. I don’t really care about that. Art is art, for me.
I would like to boycott Tom Cruise over the Scientology thing, but he is in too many good movies…A Few Good Men…Jerry Maguire…Eyes Wide Shut…man, maybe I’ll boycott John Travolta movies other than Pulp Fiction instead.
I voted for Reagan twice, and still think he was a very good (if highly overrated by my fellow conservatives) President, and I won’t watch more than a few of his movies either. Most of them are highly forgettable, several suck, and only a few were very good.
As for me… there are very, very few performers whose politics are so loathsome to me that I can’t appreciate their talents. If I can like Vanessa Redgrave in a movie, who could I NOT tolerate provided their work is good?
This is more how I am. I do not like either of the man’s actions, so I don’t want to see entertainment or art from them.
I do see Tom Cruise movies, though. Sometimes.
I don’t watch interviews with him, though. It’s weird. I always want to reach out, grab him, shake him, and scream at him about how stupid Scientology is.
Well who could? They pretty much sucked. He was a great president and a great man though, if a terrible actor.
Yeah, Reagan’s acting is reason enough not to watch his movies. Although he’s creepily effective as the bad guy in Don Siegel’s remake of The Killers.