Gunned Down

This past week was…interesting for film fans. On one hand, there was the surprise announcement of a revival of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Considering that I never thought one of my favourite Star Wars properties would return from cancellation, that made me happy. On the other hand, however, there was the shock of James Gunn, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, being fired by Disney over some Tweets he wrote many years ago. Many people, myself included, were unhappy about that.

For context, James Gunn’s an…unusual individual. He got his start with Troma Films, under Lloyd Kaufman, as a man known for his offbeat filmmaking. Gunn became a rising star under Kaufman, directing his first major feature, Slither, in 2006. He’d then go on to a slew of gross mediocrity, including the horrible Super and the abhorrent “Beezel”, before being hired to direct Guardians of the Galaxy. I remember bemoaning the decision, blasting Marvel for “killing their credibility”, yet being pleasantly surprised when the film came out.

This is important context for understanding how I feel about James Gunn: he used to be my least-favourite director in Hollywood, having been responsible for two of the worst features I’d seen in my adult life, yet he’s actually grown on me recently. I shouldn’t be surprised by the change in identity, Peter Jackson also had a weird career pre-Lord of the Rings, but it’s the rapid change that’s warmed me to Gunn as a person. Because James Gunn isn’t the wilfully bad taste individual he was 6 years ago, but rather, as his Tweets have demonstrated, a kind, compassionate and sensitive man unafraid to speak up about the injustices committed by the Trump administration. This is something I pointed out on my Twitter Feed not too long ago.

But no one gets a happily-ever-after when they’ve got skeletons in their closet, right?

Let’s get this out of the way: James Gunn shouldn’t be let off the hook for his Tweets between 2009 and 2012. He wasn’t a snot-nosed punk when he wrote them, he was in his 40’s. That’s old enough to know better. It may not be fair to hold them over him now that he’s changed, but that doesn’t mean he gets a free-pass; in fact, why don’t I share some of the Tweets he’s been fired over? (Warning: some of these are nauseating.)

“RT @peteralton I like it when little boys touch me in my silly place. Shhh!”

“I’m doing a big Hollywood film adaptation of The Giving Tree with a happy ending – the tree grows back and gives the kid a blowjob.”

“Three Men and a Baby They Had Sex With #unromanticmovies”

““Eagle Snatches Kid” is what I call it when I get lucky.”

“@DrewAtHitFix Honesty’s the best policy. Tell your 3 year old you’re laughing thinking of me fucking 3PO. He’ll appreciate it when older.”

If these all share a pattern, I think you can figure it out. What’s telling is that Disney knew about these Tweets when they hired him. They had to, as The Mary Sue had already written about him. If there was ever a time to fire Gunn, it was in 2012. Firing him now, especially in light of how long they kept Roseanne Barr and the revelations about John Lasseter and Johnny Depp, feels peculiar and hypocritical. Considering that Gunn no longer holds these views, it’s as if he’s being punished for growing as a person.

It's especially troubling in-light of two complications: one, Disney isn’t so innocent. The company’s spent decades peddling racist caricatures of minorities, even dedicating a song in Peter Pan to mocking Native Americans. This continued long into the 21st Century, such that The Princess and the Frog had a black witch doctor who spouted blackface dialogue to Tiana and Naveen. That Disney refuses to acknowledge this behaviour is troubling and reeks of double-standards.

And two, as I mentioned earlier, Disney kept Roseanne Barr on their payroll knowing that she was racist. Her Tweets reflected that, constantly getting worse until she was fired for calling a former Obama aide an ape. Disney knew what Gunn had said in the past, yet they hired him anyway. Roseanne, on the other hand, continued to be awful, but she wasn’t let go until she proved “too much” to handle. Again, some double-standards.

It's not even like Gunn was another Alison Rapp situation, getting fired for moonlighting prostitution while in college. Both are sympathetic situations, but Gunn didn’t breach a contract. Gunn also didn’t lie about why he was fired, while Rapp did. And while I’m not happy with how Nintendo handled Rapp’s termination, they weren’t wrong on a legal level. Gunn’s firing, on the other hand, seems like a retroactive panic in light of who initiated the public revelations of his Tweets: Mike Cernovich.

Yeah…let’s talk about Cernovich.

I won’t criticize his speech impediment, for starters. Not only would it be hypocritical, since I kinda have my own speech impairment, but it’s ableist rhetoric. Plenty of other people have already done that too, so I don’t want to come off as unoriginal. Instead, allow me to shed light on who Mike Cernovich is, what he stands for, and why he’s so important to this ordeal. Brace yourselves.

Remember how the 2016 elections came down to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? Near the last few months, Cernovich began spreading a rumour that Clinton was running a sex trafficking ring in the basement of a pizzeria in Washington DC. Known as “pizzagate”, it became so prevalent amongst Clinton haters that it led to a shooting in said shop. I don’t know why every “controversy” these days has to end in “gate”, but it was pretty troubling that one man with a Twitter account could instigate something so horrific. Then again, social media’s quite powerful.

It gets worse, though. In addition to this conspiracy, Cernovich has casually Tweeted about date rape on multiple occasions. His most tame Tweet reads as follows:

“Have you guys ever tried “raping” a girl without using force? Try it. It’s basically impossible. Date rape does not exist.”

My apologies to any of my readers who were victims of rape. It’s not your fault that people like Cernovich constantly make your trauma a living nightmare. Additionally, to everyone who read that and felt sick, congratulations: you’re sane. To everyone else: I can’t help you. Cernovich, essentially, is a social media predator whose recent shtick is digging up Tweets that reflect badly on people and using them to get them fired. This is the case with Gunn, where he succeeded, but it’s also become the case for comedian Ian Michael Black. And it’ll only happen more and more frequently as companies like Disney kowtow to his will.

It also makes me self-conscious in light of a Tweet I wrote when The Supreme Court of the United States, or SCOTUS, passed a ruling making gay marriage the law of the land. I was so overwhelmed by the partying and bombarding of Tweets that I said, to paraphrase myself, “these pro-LGBT Tweets are too much”. (I don’t know the exact wording, but I’m sure someone could find it.) I lost 15 Followers over it and got into several arguments, eventually prompting an apology once I’d realized the error of my ways. I haven’t deleted the Tweet, as I feel my mistakes are more worth learning from than my successes, but I’m still scared that a Cernovich-type could easily exploit that.

Because that’s what this is really about: predatory Tweeters with baggage using their power to ruin other Tweeters’ careers. Cernovich has already succeeded with Gunn, though I’m sure he’ll be fine (it’s Hollywood, even rapists like Roman Polanski can still find work.) With this one victory, more people’s jobs could be in jeopardy. Because Mike Cernovich has a lot of influence. He could easily do this again and again, and that worries me.

On a final note, I don’t think James Gunn being fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is the end of the world. This isn’t like what happened with Phil Lord and Chris Miller for the most-recent Star Wars spin-off, as the movie’s barely even begun pre-production. Does it suck that he was dropped? Do I think it’s fair? Yes and no. But directors are fired and replaced far more often than you’d think, and there’s always someone who could fill the role. Like Nicole Perlman, who co-wrote Guardians of the Galaxy with Gunn. Considering her success in Marvel’s comics universe, perhaps she can take over directing?

So that’s all I have to say here. Does it suck that James Gunn was fired? Yes, it is. Did he deserve it? No, he didn’t. Does that make his past behaviour less-egregious? No, it doesn’t. But we’ll survive, despite the petition to rehire him currently surpassing 85000+ signatures.

Now then, about Season 7 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars…

Pixar Imperfect

As a kid, I was ignorant about sexual assault and rape. I knew it existed, having been violated young by a neighbourhood boy, but I thought it was rare. Even as an adult, hearing how 1-in-4 women will experience harassment, I still believed that claims of assault and rape were over-dramatized until fairly-recently. These acts were awful, but they were infrequent in my mind. Surely the problem wasn’t as rampant as it was made out, right?

How wrong I was.

I should preface this by saying that I like Pixar. A lot. They’re not only responsible for innovating CGI in film, but they’ve made many movies that helped shape my childhood and early-adolescence. Even in recent years, they’ve still wowed me with their bouts of mediocrity in ways that others have failed.

Which is why I’m still shocked that John Lasseter, as well as Pixar themselves, hasn’t lived up to expectations. On some level, I shouldn’t be surprised: Lasseter’s a nerd, and nerds are, at best, somewhat sheltered from reality. Considering that so many predators in the line of fire right now are nerds themselves, Lasseter’s creepy, lusty behaviour toward women shouldn’t be unexpected. But I can’t help it. Lasseter’s always prided himself on incredibly high-standards as a creator and film-aficionado, even introducing many to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. So to find out what I know about him, well…it hurts.

I mention this because of a relatively-recent article from a former Pixar employee discussing the sexism that plagued the company while she worked there. There was a lot that was uncomfortable, but one part in particular stood out:

“Lasseter set the bar shamefully low for the overall treatment of women in his empire, which also signals troubling themes in the films he’s directed, produced, and overseen throughout the years. These projects, which reach millions of children and adults worldwide, have consistently failed to give women equal voice on screen and behind the scenes.”

This is heartbreaking in light of: 1. How much influence Lasseter’s had at Disney, both in their Disney and Pixar divisions. 2. How badly women are treated in animation in general. The latter is seen pretty much everywhere: women are frequently groomed and gaslighted (as evidenced through John Kricfalusi), denied high-ranking positions (as evidence through some remarks made by staffers at Studio Ghibli), or forced to safeguard against unwanted sexual advances from creepy men (as evidenced through Pixar). And this has persisted for decades.

It’s especially bad because, as the article states, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are plenty of talented women who deserve to have their stories shared, instead of being sidelined with the pathetic excuse of “finding the right story”. Like I alluded to in my last piece, you never know if someone’s worthy until you give them a chance. Art isn’t be-and-end-all or all-or-nothing: it’s possible, as “Bao” has demonstrated, to give newcomers a voice and have a quality end-product. This isn’t rocket science.

It’s also bad because hearing stories of predatory behaviour makes me feel incredibly self-conscious. I, like every other man, have desires and urges. Some of them, unsurprisingly, are sexual. But there needs to be an understanding that my urges shouldn’t interfere with others. There needs to be a societal appreciation that, at the end of the day, consent is key in contact with others. Yet there isn’t.

And it’s incredibly-stressful. It’s stressful because it frequently makes men look like creeps, further adding to the “not all men” backlash. It’s stressful because it highlights my own insecurities as someone with anxiety stemming from a learning disability. It’s stressful because it triggers my own memories of being sexually assaulted. But, most of all, it’s stressful because we can, and should, do better.

It also plays into the aftermath of Me Too, and how this is deeper than I, and many others, would like to admit. True, there’ll always be false positives with word-of-mouth allegations. It’s word-of-mouth, after all. But that doesn’t mean that the accusers are lying about their experiences either. Because victims of abuse are too diverse to conspire on such a large level.

The women at Pixar, and animation in general, deserve better. Until they get that, this’ll never be resolved, if at all. I’m not sure if there’s a long-term, foolproof solution, but there are definitely a few suggestions that can be made. The most-obvious one is to hire more women in positions of power, something Disney seems to have already done with Jennifer Lee. I only hope Pixar does the same.

As for John Lasseter? I don’t know. I feel conflicted, knowing that he’s both had a hand in many great films and was largely instrumental in bringing Studio Ghibli’s repertoire to the West. I’m glad he’s gone on a “sabbatical”, even though it’s possible he’ll return, but the damage is already there. It’ll take more than a replacement to fix that.

I’ll end this with a quote from the aforementioned article, one I feel drives home the issue:

“Female narratives are worthy of world-class storytellers, and women deserve to be treated as respected equals in any creative community.”

It’s definitely something worth contemplating.

Transface: Hollywood and MISrepresentation

*Breathes*

Let’s talk “transface”.

About two years ago, Scarlett Johansson, a well-known Jewish actress, was cast as Major Motoko Kusanagi in the live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell. Despite the movie ending up being mediocre, the backlash surrounding her decision to play an Asian character was so poorly-received that it marred her credibility. I even wrote three separate pieces on Infinite Rainy Day preceding its release, as well as an emergency blog on The Whitly-Verse and a follow-up post-release. It may seem like overkill, but the disturbingly-racist undertones of the whole ordeal, as well as how it was handled, really warranted introspection.

I wish that was the end of it, but director Rupert Sanders and Johansson herself haven’t learned from this debacle. It was recently announced that the two would team up again, this time in a biopic where Johansson would play a transgender man. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her defence of the decision involved bringing up Jeffrey Tambor, who’d played a transgender woman in the show Transparent. And yes, this is the same Jeffrey Tambor who wound up in trouble when it was revealed that he’d sexually-harassed his transgender assistant. Cue the disappointment.

I know some of you don’t understand why this is a problem; after all, a few probably think that calling someone a “trap” isn’t a big deal. Besides, it’s acting! None of this is real! If Johansson’s job is to be a mimic, then why can’t she play a trans man? It’s not like she’s taking on another race, right? Right?!

If only it were that simple.

It’s an open secret that Hollywood, the outward bastion of “progress”, isn’t the best at marginalized representation. Whether it’s romanticizing minorities, constantly reusing the “white saviour” trope, or simply miscasting roles, there’s a long-standing tradition of “getting it wrong”, often deliberately, in an attempt to appeal to “the majority culture” that watches films. It’s baked into the industry’s DNA, and I don’t see it going away despite it not being as prevalent as it used to be. The issue of binary, or “cis”, people playing trans parts, or transface, is another log in the fire of Hollywood’s discriminatory practices.

Some facts: according to a 2016 study, roughly anywhere from .5-3% of the population identify as transgender in the US. The number has grown since then, but in a population of over 300 million, that’s a lot of people. Trans individuals are also routinely the victims of hate crimes and violence, including murder, rape, sexual assault, persecution and laws like the infamous bathroom bills. That alone is cause for concern.

This doesn’t even account for how trans people are portrayed in media. Ignoring the aforementioned bathroom bills, trans individuals are often either the punchline of a joke, like in The Crying Game and 2oolander, or played by cis people. It’s the latter that’s responsible for Johansson’s backlash: if someone would get crap for playing a character whose race doesn’t match theirs, then why shouldn’t they get crap for playing a character whose gender identity doesn’t match theirs?

Think about it this way: let’s say that someone is trans. Now, let’s say that that individual wants to act. And let’s say that a part opens up that fits them perfectly. Would it be right for them to then be rejected in favour of a cis individual because that individual’s more famous? How do you know that that trans individual isn’t charismatic or well-trained? Acting isn’t be-all-end-all, sometimes it’s good to branch out. Especially since Hollywood has no problems finding minorities for antagonists and side-characters, right?

This is the bind trans actors and actresses are in every day. According to Ranker, there are many trans people working in entertainment. It’s not like film and TV don’t attract colourful characters of all kinds anyway, so…why not give trans people more opportunities? To-date, the only trans woman I know of (who wasn’t even trans anyway) to have a big role in a movie was Jaye Davidson, who played Dil in The Crying Game. But even then, she was a needy love-interest whose transness was a punchline. That I can’t think of trans men off-hand is also pretty telling.

It doesn’t help that cis people playing trans parts lead to the stereotype of transness as “a choice” that can be turned off, inciting further violence against trans people in real-life. (Yes, it does actually happen.) Because let’s not pretend that films can’t have real-world reverberations. Especially when Ordinary People, the 1980 Best Picture winner at The Oscars, helped destigmatize depression. Or when Black Panther became such a hit at the box-office that it prompted producer Kevin Feige to take note. And those are only two examples!

This also wouldn’t be as big an issue if: a. Trans talent had more roles in Hollywood. b. If transness wasn’t the discourse in Hollywood right now, yet trans roles weren’t frequently snatched away by cis individuals. c. Transface weren’t as frightening as any other kind of whitewashing for the aforementioned reasons.

I recognize that I’m not the authority on this matter, being a cis man myself. But I do recognize that, as a cis man, I have more privilege than many trans people because “I’m not biased to the cause” (whatever that means.) Since I have that privilege, I figure I might as well use it to help those less-fortunate. Arguing for proper representation isn’t me being “an SJW shill” either: it leads to better writing, a wider net for audiences that don’t normally see movies and more money for execs. And don’t studio execs love money?

Yes, acting is tough. And subjective. And you’ll never 100% get everything right. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Especially if Hollywood’s made progress in so many other fields.

As for Scarlett Johansson? I don’t know anymore. I still think she’s a capable actress, but she’s definitely worthy of the backlash she’s been getting (except for an Oxfam SodaStream critique someone on Twitter lobbed, because that’s more nuanced than you’d be led to believe.) If Johansson thinks she’s doing nothing wrong by playing a trans man, then she’d better be prepared to take criticism. Especially if she looks up to Jeffrey Tambor in the Me Too era.