Honestly, I have no pity for Mr. Gunn or any respect for Disney. TGoTG franchise is disposable entertainment and the next director will do fine because the movie doesn’t need to be good (witness that last two aren’te really very good anyway) It is a spectacle-type movie with traditionally low expectations from its teen and young adult audience. Mr. Gunn will be just fine with his huge pile of money from the last two, plus the pay or play clause in the contract that he undoubtedly has on this one
I share the same speculation that Disney wanted to sever ties with Mr. Gunn for some other reason(s) and this was a convenient excuse.
Disney; guilty of racial and gay stereotypes in many of their movies. Song of the South, Dumbo, Lady and the Tramp, the list goes on. Hypocrites. Not excusing anyone at all, but I’m saying hold them accountable for what they’ve done, too.
I don’t really have that strong of an opinion on the Gunn situation, could argue it either way. But Song of the South was made in 1946, Lady and the Tramp in 1955. Disney has skeletons a plenty in their closet, but it’s casual racist past is not quite the same as offensive jokes in 2012.
I love the Guardians movies. The first one is my favorite MCU movie by far. That said, I don’t really get the overwhelming support for him. I know his tweets were jokes, but they were in very poor taste and he was not a teenager. Frankly, I don’t see what difference it makes who dug them up, either. Gunn made the jokes. It’s unfortunate, but he should have known better.
He’s getting the support because the people who know him think he’s grown since then and his shitty jokes were just jokes. Is there any co-worker or acquaintance saying “about time that jerk got fired!”? He hasn’t been accused of doing anything to anybody.
What’s the problematic content in Lady and the Tramp?
I support him because I’m tired of this pearl clutching, walking on eggshells society we’ve become. Lenny Bruce fought this battle 60 years ago and we are going right back to those days. Not all jokes are for everybody. I’m also tired of the “clean out your desk card”. We need a mechanism for forgiveness in this country. People DO change. Ebeneezer Scrooge was visited by persuasive ghosts and kept Christmas very well the rest of his life. It’s the most beloved Christmas story ever and yet we’ve lost the whole point of it. People CAN be redeemed.
ETA: Ninja’ed by caligulathegod.
To be fair and just to argue against myself a bit, I will add that Aladdin was a bit problematic as recently as 1992.
This situation reminds me of generally disliked posters who keep just on the right side of the jerk line until the day they go one millimeter over it and give the Mods a “casus belli” to ban them. Or maybe he’s not generally disliked but he’s had clashes a small number of people who wanted to get rid of him.
[quote=“caligulathegod, post:68, topic:818297”]
[/QUOTE]In fairness, Siamese cats are the cats of cats.
Were they supposed to sound East Asian? I wouldn’t associate that musical and verbal style with Thailand.
[quote=“caligulathegod, post:68, topic:818297”]
[/QUOTE]Oh, right.
If it’s not funny then why am I laughing lol
When GLAAD complained in 2012 he apologized to them, and he hasn’t repeated the behavior. He’s been supportive of marginalized people, online at least, and is a nice dude who’s cool with his fans. This is all bullshit.
There’s a petition on Change.org if you’re interested. I won’t link to it as I think that’s against board rules, but it’s easy to find. The AV Club put a link to it in their article about how the GotG cast has come out in support of Gunn.
Hmmmm.
This an interesting one. Unlike most of these hot-button news items, it took me a while to form my opinion because there’s quite a bit to unpack. Per usual, Moviebob was far more eloquent and articulate about the matter than I could ever hope to be (and I do recommend you watch the whole thing).
Anyway, my rundown, piece by piece:
Issue 1: Spewing offensive, unfunny crap in public (and expecting no repercussions)
Ugh. So done with this. Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences, or freedom from criticism, or the right to a platform, or the right to not get dragged away by the police for causing…you get the picture. And even the most dimwitted brat soon realizes that the get-away-with-murder-while-being-constantly-enabled-by-pathetic-worms party ends the instant high school does and never starts again. There is absolutely no excuse for any man who is not literally living under a rock to think he could make those jokes on Twitter and not receive blowback. And personally, I think this world has way, way too many hack comedians as it is and would not go to the mat for a single one of them with a gun to my head.
Issue 2: Freaking Twitter
Then again, this is Twitter we’re talking about, which not only seems hellbent on becoming Vomitous Slime-Dripping Wild West Internet Hellhole #536,922 but lowing draconian punishments on users seemingly at random, some of them not even remotely close to the biggest offenders. In other words, combining the worst aspects of childhood and school. Brr. The idea that Gunn deserves a harsh penalty for cracking disgusting jokes on Twitter, when about 99.9% of the toxic waste on there doesn’t get touched at all smacks or rank hypocrisy at best, a thinly-veiled petty vendetta at worst.
Issue 3: Offense vs. punishment vs. contrition
America has always had a pretty dismal track record for matching punishments and the prices expected of forgiveness to crimes. For every good, honest worker who never stepped out of line once having his life utterly ruined because the camera caught him throwing one goddam snowball during an Eagles game, there’s a cop who freaking MURDERS a black man and faces zippo repercussions and has armies of boot-slobbering victim-blaming scum of the earth troglodytes defending him unto death. Gunn didn’t rape anyone, nor did he promote or condone rape, nor did he give justification for pedophilia. He made a bunch of horrible jokes. Again, a thing that happens way too often and gets way too much of a free pass, but not a crime. Astoundingly pigheaded and moronic and immature and ill-advised and cretinous and facepalm-worthy, and idiotic and stupid and addlebrained and stupid and stupid and stupid stupid stupid STUUUUUUUUUPID…but not a crime. For something like this, I’d say fessing up to it and making some effort to be a better person is worthy of, if not complete forgiveness, at least a grudging admission that there are bigger fish to fry and he’s no longer worth the scorn. Hell, by the standards of the usual level of jerkholery on the Internet (see #2), it’s downright admirable.
Issue 4: That playing field thing, a.k.a. Mike Cernovich and the importance of never allowing a nanoparticle of a victory, ever
Let’s face it, when it comes to issues of social progress, advancing as a civilization, and making a world our children lean more towards “want to live in” than “want to fire all the goddam nukes at”, the forces of bass-ackwardness have it easier than Lebron James against a paraplegic. How long did it take feminism to become anything other than joke fodder? How long did it take us to even invent the term “sexual harrassment”? How many servicemen had to get chewed up in useless, hopeless, pointless wars before we decided this maybe wasn’t the best use of their lives? And years or even decades of progress can get wiped out in a flash to the stupidest crap imaginable. ACORN, a worthy organization that helped countless minority voters, got permanently shut down by a video so transparently bogus it might have been made by Strong Bad. Bottom line, if some Astroturf movement goes after a director for daring to be critical of Donald Trump (a pretty freaking disturbing thought in itself), and the originator of said movement is a proven Grade-AAA sleazeball most famous for making up some outrageous conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton that ended up a restaurant freaking shot up, I say we cut Gunn some slack. I’d say it’s like Scylla vs. Charybdis, except that in this case Charybdis is the head of an army of several thousand Charybdises which will demolish every seagoing vessel in ten countries given a tenth of a chance.
Issue 5: Is EVERYONE a goddam idiot here?
And of course, the 900-ton gorilla: If he’s truly contrite, why not delete the goddam Tweets? That he didn’t find this extremely elementary step necessary, especially after his initial round of apologies in 2012, shows a horrendous lapse of judgement regardless of how serious he was about those stupid pathetic unfunny worthless ridiculous lame “jokes”. On Disney’s end, you’re telling me that they either had no inkling of these old tweets, or they kept him on and just hoped and prayed that some right-wing waste of oxygen gutter trash sack of pig excrement I wouldn’t urinate on if he was on fire wouldn’t think to fire a low blow against him? Fish or cut bait, guys. Leaving things in the murky, squishy middle just means you’re going to get blasted from both ends, and I find it hard to muster much sympathy.
So what do I think should happen?
Keep James Gunn fired. And replace him with a director who’s also left-wing and can’t stand Donald Trump.
Don’t give Mike Cernovich and the slime brigade any ammunition or even a pretense of a victory. Let them know that Hollywood has more might than their feeble minds can even imagine, and they’re not going to capitulate to anyone. Let them know that the clock isn’t turning back, sexist, racist, homophobic pigs are never going to be cool again, and progressive ideals are going to thrive long after President National Disgrace is just another doddering geezer whining about rap music and IPhones.
Exit creative, forward-thinking visionary with baggage, enter creative, forward-thinking visionary without baggage.
(I actually think of all the possible scenarios, this might have the best chance of happening. I don’t see any reason to placate the right-wingers. Like that’s even possible.)
Since we are talking about the “should” and not the “could”, I’m not torn at all: No, they should not have fired him.
His … jokes were not just expressed before he worked for Disney, they are also not aimed at Disney and while you can easily call them offensive - so what?
Someone can call anything said by anyone offensive, and mean it. Or not. But if saying it already has the power to shut someone up or impact this person’s life harshly, it’s a nice weapon to point at anyone you don’t like or diasagree with.
If you accept the proposition that it is wrong to say something that might be construed by someone as offensive, and that such an offense deserves punishment, you breed self-censorship into the DNA of a society - which then cannot be an open one.
The result is the tyranny of the offended.
James Gunn is not accused of actually doing harm to someone or challeging others to do harm, he is simply accused of being offensive in his speech.
That’s all. If that’s enough to be fired, people won’t speak freely.
But, wait a minute, you might say, now you’re implying that this has something to do with free speech - but that doesn’t come into a relationship between a person and a company; and in any case, it’s a legal construct, and we didn’t want to talk about legal implications of this incident in any way.
Well, you’re right. And not. Free speech isn’t just a legal construct, protected by Western constitutions and defined by their legal codes.
It’s the foundation of democracy and the modern open society; and we can harm both without violating the letter of the law.
When Disney declares that every action and every word ever made or uttered by one of its employees will be judged and punished according to the company’s whims, it gives itself the right to expand its reach on every single aspect of an employee’s life. That’s a totalitarian point of view.
Granted, companies don’t uniformly push specific whims, so a person fired by one might be employed by another.
But, at times, some ideas gain hold so firmly in a society that it becomes almost impossible to make a career if you’re accused of the contemporary evil; we know, how difficult it was for any actor, screen writer of handyman to work in Hollywood during the McCarthy era once they were accused of being just sympathetic to communist ideas.
And currently, it looks like it gets hard to hold a job in universities or the tech industry if you dare to say anything about the scientifically undisputed biological underpinnings of sex and gender.
Worse, the attitudes that lead a company to decide in a specific case whether an employee needs to be fired, are not at all well defined and transparent, and they can change rapidly while you work there - that’s why I called them whims and not codes.
So, you might not even be able to find out if something you have said or done at some time in your life, might right now offend the powers that be in a way that will damage your career unexpectedly.
If anything called offensive can get you fired, you have no guideline whatsoever.
Gunn’s situation points to a - potentially - dangerous and destructive combination of ideas that can tyrannise the individual but might also impact the open society and democracy.
Not sure if you’re serious, but I’d rather they pick a director who will make a good comic book movie. I love the Guardians movies. I hate political bickering.
Yes it isn’t about legal rights (generally*) but a general environment consistent with a healthy free society.
So I agree it’s not nearly enough to point out that the banned people don’t have legal recourse, where they don’t. Nor do platitudes like ‘speech has consequences’ help much. There has to be some limit, some guidelines about relevance, some concept of statute of limitation and ex post facto (as in, Disney are hypocrites because of racial stereotypes in cartoon movies made decades ago, seriously?). Again these social media mob cases are not generally a matter of law, but we have (or at least in theory seek to have) clear laws, statutes of limitation, bans on ex post facto laws etc. because it would be unfair and counterproductive not to. That general concept of fairness as a societal good is still reasonable to apply in cases which aren’t a matter of law.
The only concept of general fairness from the law that seems to be applied in these cases is precedent. Disney broke relations with Gunn I believe in part because they did with Rosanne Barr and felt it would be ‘hypocritical’ not to given that precedent. But precedent alone is a poor guide, with sequential cases often importantly different.
Of course if people could somehow go back to not posting idiotic offensive jokes under their own names on the internet… though many of these cases aren’t about (supposed) humor, that’s just one corner of it. Anyway even for the supposed joke cases, everybody can’t be Lenny Bruce. And Lenny Bruce was a voice of non-conformity in an arguably stiflingly conformist society. You can’t say that about today’s society IMO. Maybe now we are in a struggle to re-impose old conformity or to impose a new conformity. The view there would tend to depend on one’s politco-cultural tribe, the one loosely called ‘left’ or that loosely called ‘right’. But right now it’s chaotic flux.
In case this seems like a lot of words taking no position, I don’t think Disney should have terminated business with Gunn or Barr. In general I think the least worst outcome would be achieved by big co’s adopting a convention of ignoring social media mob calls for firing people unless the speech meets the required legal standard for the (US) govt to take action, that it specifically threatens or calls for violence against particular people (with no creative interpretation of either ‘calls for’ or ‘violence’). Then let the boycotters boycott in the rare cases that would really be perceptible. Again a least worst approach, not a perfect solution, but compared to making themselves judges of what’s ‘unacceptable’ to say, where it’s clearly going in the wrong direction IMO.
*casting a broad net some of these cases do have legal implications, like the one with the Google engineer James Damore, based on particular labor laws not the US Constitution itself. The NLRB decided against him but there’s still CA law and a narrowly defined decision on NLRB’s part which said some of his comments were protected, they just didn’t find those were the reason he got fired. So it can be a legal issue of ‘can/can’t’ without directly being a 1st A issue, though often not a legal matter at all.
One thing to keep in mind is that Disney is a company that produces a lot of content that is marketed at children so to have an employee who has made numerous jokes about the sexual abuse about children in a position of authority over others as movie director looks really, really bad from public relations standpoint. They really had no choice. If the instigators of this decided to start a boycott of Disney, it could potentially cost Disney millions of dollars in revenue. Coupled with the fact that James Gunn is easily replaceable, it was inevitable that Disney would fire him.
PS: With the announcement that Disney is buying Fox and reclaiming the rights to the X-Men films, there probably no chance in hell that Bryan Singer will ever return to working on them considering the allegations against him are a lot more serious than those against James Gunn.
Update: The main cast has put out a public letter in Gunn’s defense.
The letter is signed by Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Sean Gunn, Pom Klementieff and Michael Rooker.
While they stop short of explicitly asking Disney to rethink Gunn’s firing it walks right up to the line. It’s clear - at least to me - what they’re asking. I just don’t know if Disney will do it.
The letter stops short but some follow-up tweets don’t: