Maybe Waner Bros will hire him to make The Flash.
Supposedly said by Cardinal Richelieu. While there is some dispute as to whether he actually said it, it does indeed represent his SOP.
Basically you’ll find dirt on anyone…
The whole lesson I think is the difficulty in finding and having it broadly agreed what is the big difference between the same words in different contexts. The internet is a big context removing machine.
And that’s assuming people arguing the context are on the ‘same side’ politically. If not, forget it. John Schnatter is generally on the ‘wrong side’ for most people here whereas Gunn presumably as a major Hollywood type is on the ‘right side’. Still, Schnatter was kicked to the curb by his board of directors (at Papa John’s Pizza) pretty much ignoring the context of his use of the n-word, though it wasn’t comedy per se. Or maybe they thought the guy had become a net negative for various PR (his position against the NFL kneelers, basically) and perhaps non-PR business reasons already and this was a good excuse to get rid of him. Some have suggested the same with Disney v. Gunn (I had not really have heard of Gunn before this, haven’t seen any of his movies AFAIK so I’ve no idea if this is plausible actually).
People who constantly joke as if they are violators of societal taboos often are. Maybe this is a coming new stage of the socio-sexual revolution: to ask whether it’s fair to shun people with pedophilic inclinations as long as they never act on them. But if one was a betting person the odds somebody making that many jokes about pedophilia having such inclinations are IMO way higher than random. And naturally the general public (Disney’s public) isn’t going to react well to that inkling.
All that said I’m disturbed by the lack of any apparent limiting principal to going though people’s past statements then have social media mobs destroy their livelihoods. No apparent principal besides ‘he’s a scumbag anyway’ (often meaning, ‘he’s on the opposite side of the political divide’) or ‘he’s a good guy besides this’ (‘he’s on my side of the political divide’).
But it does prove IMO what a dumb idea real name social media is, or anyway ever saying what you really feel on it (unless you’re a very straight laced person) rather than reserving your honest opinions or bad jokes for anonymous venues.
I am just going to re-iterate my earlier post. One story going around is about him joking about an incident where monkey ejaculated on a kid on set of *Max Keeble’s Big Move *. If it’s true, than that is him joking about what amounts to basically a sexual assault on an actual child, not some just hypothetical joke about pedophilia. To me, that alone is sufficient grounds for Disney to fire him as a director. It’s telling that the people who are defending James Gunn aren’t bringing this up because, realistically, what exactly could they say to defend him.
An animal can commit sexual assault on a human?
I’ve met a couple leg-humping dogs that have a lot to answer for…
Is it defending him to point out that you yourself don’t even know if this is true? That you don’t know if he said it at all? That you don’t know if the event occurred?
What does that tell you, that I asked those questions? :dubious:
Your leg was asking for it. In fact, I would posit the dog is the victim here.
Mel Brooks made rape jokes. Graham Chapman made rape jokes. ZAZ made child sexual abuse jokes. ANYONE who makes a To Catch a Predator joke is “trivializing pedophilia” etc…etc…
You actually do have a point here. This actually raises the question about how fast Disney and other companies responded to this incident and the Roseanne Barr firing. In both cases, they basically fired both of them within 48 hours of both stories being made public. Disney probably should waited to verify whether allegations were true. There really should be a “cooling off” period before a company fires an individual in such as a situation so companies can investigate whether the person accused actually made the statements. I distinctly get the feeling that someone is going to end up getting fired for the statements they didn’t actually make.
Social media has basically made the old saying “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on” a harsh reality.
If I am wrong about this whole incident, I apologize. It’s being reported all over the internet. But to me, it’s probably one of the first things the press and Disney should look in to. If they are true, I still say it’s a good justification for Disney to fire him.
Wonder what this means for Rocket and Kraglin in the next movie, given Sean Gunn does mocap for the former and plays the latter. Obviously they can get someone else to do the mocap and Kraglin might not even be in the movie, and that’s only if Sean leaves out of solidarity, so might not mean anything.
I think this is dumb - if someone does change for the better, as Gunn has been quite open about doing, we do want to encourage that behaviour. Especially since this is not news to Disney and they didn’t care last time it was raised. I think they’re just completely misreading the crowd with this one, too. I see there’s also messages of support from Dave Bautista and Selma Blair, as well as a petition to rehire him. Like that’ll work.
MrDibble are you quite well?
I have no idea why you’re asking this.
I’m honestly a bit torn about this one… and it’s hard to say how much of that is due to bias because I like the Guardians movies. I freely admit that I think that’s coloring my judgement a bit, as is my feeling that the guy who brought these things to light is an absolute a-hole. Logically it doesn’t make sense for Gunn to get a free pass just because the guy pointing out what he said is an a-hole, but man it bugs me to think that guy (the accuser) got even a tiny bit of satisfaction out of this.
Generally, I’m pretty hard-line on this sort of thing… If we’re talking about a celebrity losing a job because of the abusive or harrasing treatment they’ve inflicted on people, even if it happened years ago and they’ve supposedly changed, I still see the value in making them pay a real price for what they did, to discourage others from doing the same and thinking they can get away with it. Especially because, ultimately, whatever price they pay still leaves them a millionaire with a comfortable life – it’s not like people are being jailed except in the most blatant cases.
But in this case, there’s no particular victim – other than in the sense that words can be hurtful to those who read them (and I don’t mean to discount the legitimate hurt some victims of child molestation might feel at seeing the topic joked about in this way). That coupled with the fact that it happened years ago makes it more borderline than a lot of the cases we’ve seen lately, where either the offensive conduct was current (e.g., Roseanne) or it involved more than just some social media posts.
I will say that the fact that he made so many child-molestation related jokes, without any obvious humor to them, makes me a little suspicious that there’s something more going on there. (Humor is subjective, but usually it’s possible to understand how something is intended to function as a joke, even if it doesn’t work for me personally. Some of the examples just seemed like he was saying he likes thinking about child-molestation… with no punchline or surprising twist.) There’s a point where one starts to say “Why is this a topic you bring up so often?” Of course, that’s not proof of anything.
I will also say that of course Disney can make a judgement call on if he’s more of a liability than an asset to them and do whatever they think is right for their business… I’m mainly trying to work out how I feel about it, not whether it’s the right business move.
[Moderating]
I have no idea why you’d ask this, either. He made a simple factual observation about the movies, and expressed sentiments similar to those expressed by many others. What are you construing as being “unwell” about this?
On the aggregate I think he’s just as offensive as Barr. One “joke?” Okay, maybe. But this? Ask yourself, what would you think would be going on right now if they dredged up these tweets on Sean Hannity?
If we’re going to crucify people for what they say on the internet, it can’t just cut across people we don’t like and don’t appreciate their work.
The big travesty is Disney knew about this (as evidenced in previous posts), and didn’t do anything until the new era of social media lynch mobs came to be.
I’m not entirely sure Hannity would be fired for the same thing… Maybe?
Is there another recent case where a celebrity lost their job over offensive social media postings (not targeted at a specific individual) that were several years old?
Genuinely trying to assess my own degree of bias: I suppose the Trump Access Hollywood tape is an example of something where offensive words from years earlier that weren’t targeted at a particular individual were enough that I thought it should disqualify him from the job he was seeking (even if that were the only reason). Some relevant differences are (1) I’m more convinced that Trump actually believes what he said (although I’m sure some would attribute that to my bias) and (2) the office of the President can reasonably be held to a higher standard than the office of Guardians of the Galaxy director/script writer.
A better comparison would be if I could think of someone else who lost their job in the entertainment industry over old social media posts.
Honestly, I don’t think any of this would have happened if it weren’t for #meToo.
Imo, Al Franken probably would still be senator if #meToo happened. But that, in conjunction with trying to show how morally superior democrats are (as opposed to Roy Moore) meant he had to go. If the Access Hollywood tape came out after #meToo, I doubt Trump would be President.
Anyway, yeah, you probably shouldn’t say stupid crap under your own name on the internet. In this case I probably wouldn’t have fired Gunn (I think they were stupid, vile, inappropriate jokes, as I think Barr’s was), but then again, I’m not a studio exec. But I do think we have swiftly moved to a guilty until presumed innocent, “off with your head!” kind of mob mentality lately. #meToo needed to happen, but I think this has been an unfortunate side effect.
I mean, really, Disney firing a guy after offensive stuff he said years ago? Are they even aware of the offensive things they have produced in the past? Is ending distribution of Song of the South (a show I saw in elementary school in the late 70’s) the same as deleting a tweet?
I’m glad I never had a twitter account I posted on.
You are a bit jumbled there, but I think I know what you mean. I don’t believe James Gunn is denying the tweets. So at least in this case, I don’t think the presumption of guilt is unwarranted. The tweets are really there, what is there to prove?
Again, from Gunn’s twitter feed.
https://twitter.com/JamesGunn/status/1020121092805967873
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but there is a precedent for making sick jokes on behalf of someone who disgusts you. Back in the '50s after the crimes of Ed Gein were made public, there were a line of jokes called “Geiners”. In just a bit of research, I found all kinds of serial killer jokes. Sample: Picture of Jeffrey Dahmer with the quote: “I like my coffee like I like my men. Ground up and in the freezer.” Does that make the meme artist a potential serial killer? Of course not. Context is everything. No one says you have to like the jokes, or even not be offended by them, but it’s not worthy of labeling the man a pedophile because of some second rate Tosh-esque jokes heard out of context.
tim314:
But how do you feel about him possibly being 100% a dick?