Cont: Cancel culture IRL Part 2

[TurkeysGhost]

If only there were a phrase which nicely encapsulates the notion that actors have to avoid sounding like conservatives in order to remain employable. Anything come to mind?

I didn't say she was conservative. Plenty of conservative actors do fine, despite the gnashing of teeth of oversensitive busybodies.

She destroyed her reputation by being intentionally abrasive, ignoring an explicit warning from her boss to stop engaging in pointless flame wars.

 

[ponderingturtle]

*Snorts* Okay.

Show me a conservative "cancelled" for being conservative and not just being hateful and we'll listen to your tripe.

It's not my fault if your define conservative AS being hateful.

But hate is a vital fundamental part of being a conservative.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

But hate is a vital fundamental part of being a conservative.

Increasingly so, yes. More people are going to get fired for practicing their god given rights to trigger the libs, which is a core tenet of modern conservatism.

Conservatives and reactionaries will frame this increase of social consequences as evidence of a novel, censorious movement, rather than the inevitable outcome of a large population of people embracing belligerence as a virtue.

I trust we have all worked with that one clueless person who refuses to keep things professional at work, regardless of their political persuasion or whatever. Instead of seeing this as an example of social ineptitude, modern conservatives see such a person as the model of good behavior.

 

[JoeMorgue]

But hell let's hit the "I believe" button hard and say you can get "cancelled" just for being "conservative." That's nowhere near an actual, intellectually honest version of anything resembling the truth, but let's run with it just for argumentative sake. You listen to one William F. Buckley speech and society will just put you on the ice flow... whatever.

Again... so? People stopping voluntarily interacting with because they don't like/support you IS HOW ******* SOCIETY WORKS. It doesn't stop working that way just because your ideology is dying hateful nonsense and you don't want to see it go.

Even if this was just about "cancelling conservativism" again... so? What's supposed to happen people who aren't conservative are supposed to keep it alive and supported for no reason?

 

[pgwenthold]

But hate is a vital fundamental part of being a conservative.

Remember, anti-hate policies on Twitter discriminate against conservative viewpoints.

 

[dirtywick]

The average star wars fan likes having their social media feeds filled with aggressive right wing conspiracy theorist memes and political opinions about as much as anyone else does.

 

[JoeMorgue]

And again we keep coming back to the core point, the one that got made literally years and a whole thread ago, and it gets ignored.

People aren't obligated to watch/enjoy/purchase something if they don't like it. When they decide not to do it NOTHING WRONG HAS HAPPENED AND NOTHING NEEDS TO BE FIXED.

Everything else; all the fear mongering, keeping "Cancel Culture" a word where the exact same people (or well person at this case) that keeps complaining is defined enough because it only works as a vaguely defined scare monger term, all the pretend pearl clutching about freedom of speech from the side that doesn't give a crap about it when they have the leading narrative in society, cherry picked non-example... all of that not only means nothing but wouldn't even mean something if it were true.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

And again we keep coming back to the core point, the one that got made literally years and a whole thread ago, and it gets ignored.

People aren't obligated to watch/enjoy/purchase something if they don't like it. When they decide not to do it NOTHING WRONG HAS HAPPENED AND NOTHING NEEDS TO BE FIXED.

Everything else; all the fear mongering, keeping "Cancel Culture" a word where the exact same people (or well person at this case) that keeps complaining is defined enough because it only works as a vaguely defined scare monger term, all the pretend pearl clutching about freedom of speech from the side that doesn't give a crap about it when they have the leading narrative in society, cherry picked non-example... all of that not only means nothing but wouldn't even mean something if it were true.

The Gina Carano is an example that is transparently nonsensical. Celebrity is an important element to showbiz. These people don't get huge paychecks simply because they are very good at acting. For better or worse, the general public seems to engage in parasocial relationships where the actor's off-screen character matters as much, if not more, than the work they do on camera. There's whole industries of journalism and entertainment that focuses on carefully studying these celebrities. Actors must take the good (huge amounts of money) with the bad (the public's fascination with their personal lives).

But sure, the dangers of reputational harm to the career of an actor is a new phenomena.

 

[JoeMorgue]

There is... an angle I guess I do want to put on the table. I'm hesitant because certain forces will take it the wrong way but...

Listen celebrities. If you want to push the envelop that's fine (sorta to a degree, within context, all that jazz) but... you need to be good enough of a performer to back it up.

You're Gina Carano. You're not even the most famous MMA fighter with a bit role in the Fast and the Furious franchise. You're not Charleton Heston. You aren't irreplaceable.

Gina Carano, on a functional level removed from her opinions, is a halfway acceptable actress with a specific look, a real world backstory, and a decent amount of onscreen charisma, enough so she's functionally pretty good to drop into specific tough girl action roles. But that's it. You aren't some irreplaceable thespian who can bluff "Can't nobody do the job I do."

 

[johnny karate]

Indeed. The Ars Technica article you linked says that "pressure had mounted for months" and then links to a Hollywood Reporter piece that explains where the pressure came from:

Now you have to do is establish that what Disney did was a response to that "pressure" as opposed to their own internal assessment of Carano's behavior, which they specifically referenced in their statement on the matter.

The existence of campaigns to boycott or ban things is not evidence that they work.

 

[johnny karate]

If only there were a phrase which nicely encapsulates the notion that actors have to avoid sounding like conservatives in order to remain employable. Anything come to mind?

There are plenty of openly conservative people working in Hollywood. Hell, Jon Voight is a vocal Trump supporter, and somehow it didn't cost him his role on a long-running series. Perhaps because he's a professional who knows how to behave himself.

Your implication that Carano got fired for being conservative is silly.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

There is... an angle I guess I do want to put on the table. I'm hesitant because certain forces will take it the wrong way but...

Listen celebrities. If you want to push the envelop that's fine (sorta to a degree, within context, all that jazz) but... you need to be good enough of a performer to back it up.

You're Gina Carano. You're not even the most famous MMA fighter with a bit role in the Fast and the Furious franchise. You're not Charleton Heston. You aren't irreplaceable.

Gina Carano, on a functional level removed from her opinions, is a halfway acceptable actress with a specific look, a real world backstory, and a decent amount of onscreen charisma, enough so she's functionally pretty good to drop into specific tough girl action roles. But that's it. You aren't some irreplaceable thespian who can bluff "Can't nobody do the job I do."

It's entirely possible this was a deliberate career move. How many times have we seen "cancellation" as simply a gimmick to launch a new career a la Bari Weiss?

Carano went from being a small fish in the big Disney pond to a medium fish in the right wing crankosphere. It's hard to imagine that this is more lucrative than working for the Mouse, but I surely there's some fringe benefits of being a right wing martyr lazily farting out propaganda films and grifting Ben Shapiro's gullible paypigs.

In the week after Lucasfilm severed ties with her, Carano stated that she would be undertaking a new film project with conservative media company The Daily Wire.[70][71][72] The film, written by Eric Red and based on his novel White Knuckle, follows a woman (Carano) who survives an attempted murder by a serial-killer trucker known as “White Knuckle” and teams up with another truck driver to catch the killer after the police fail to do so. Carano will also produce the film and is scheduled to begin filming in October 2021 in Tennessee, Utah and Montana. The film will be released exclusively to subscribers of The Daily Wire in the U.S. and released internationally by Voltage Pictures.[73]

On October 13, 2021, Jeremy Boreing gave an update on the movie. He stated that the movie, Terror on the Prairie had started filming on October 12 and had a release target of March or April 2022.[74]

In November 2021, Carano was tapped to play a secret service agent in My Son Hunter, a biopic on Hunter Biden directed by Robert Davi. The movie is currently filming in Serbia.[75]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Carano#Ousting_from_Lucasfilm

 

[ponderingturtle]

There is... an angle I guess I do want to put on the table. I'm hesitant because certain forces will take it the wrong way but...

Listen celebrities. If you want to push the envelop that's fine (sorta to a degree, within context, all that jazz) but... you need to be good enough of a performer to back it up.

You're Gina Carano. You're not even the most famous MMA fighter with a bit role in the Fast and the Furious franchise. You're not Charleton Heston. You aren't irreplaceable.

Gina Carano, on a functional level removed from her opinions, is a halfway acceptable actress with a specific look, a real world backstory, and a decent amount of onscreen charisma, enough so she's functionally pretty good to drop into specific tough girl action roles. But that's it. You aren't some irreplaceable thespian who can bluff "Can't nobody do the job I do."

And with the Mandalorian women in season 2 she is hardly the only tough combat woman in the show.

And lets not pretend that just because someone proposed some show with her character in it that it was anything like a sure deal no matter what that it would happen.

 

[johnny karate]

The average star wars fan likes having their social media feeds filled with aggressive right wing conspiracy theorist memes and political opinions about as much as anyone else does.

And furthermore, the average Star Wars fan doesn't care about Gina Carano or her character. That's why the show was dropped from the production slate. There simply wasn't enough demand for it.

Let Disney cancel the Ahsoka series or the Obi-Wan series and you'll see an outcry in the fan community and a massive effort to petition Disney to reconsider, because those are popular characters that fans are actually invested in.

That didn't happen after Carano was fired or Rangers of the New Republic was dropped because by and large, no one ******* cares.

 

[JoeMorgue]

This and about 3 or 4 other discussions have convinced me of one thing.

Conservatives are NOT handling no longer being (or being able to present themselves as) the prominent social group in American very well.

 

[johnny karate]

I thought I was back on page three of the thread. Just a fringe reset. All cool, but sometimes it catches me of guard.

I would argue that the Gina Carano dust-up is a microcosm of this entire, dumb issue, and therefore worthy of continued discussion.

The irony is that if "cancel culture" critics would stick with unfairly maligned college professors, they might have a point. Unfortunately for them, those types of incidents are few and far between, and therefore do not a "culture" make.

They must resort to defending multi-millionaires who get fired for behaving like jackasses, which makes it seem pretty clear that they are really most interested in protecting their own right to behave like jackasses.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Because if you take the "It's different because I'm not on the winning side of it" out of the equation we're left with nothing but "Life is harder if a bunch of people don't like you" and I doubt I'm going to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Sociology for pointing that little truth bomb out.

The closest, closest, thing to a defining factor that makes "Cancel Culture" unique in anyway shape or form is

1. It's liberals/"wokes"/disenfranchised groups doing it instead of the people already in power and that makes me irrationally angry for some reason.
2. It's more online, grassroots then "Blacks aren't people because the law says so" (which somehow wasn't 'Cancel Culture' because of reasons I guess)

Neither of which are actually a meaningful distinction.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

This and about 3 or 4 other discussions have convinced me of one thing.

Conservatives are NOT handling no longer being (or being able to present themselves as) the prominent social group in American very well.

I think they're handling it fine. Going through some spectacular blowup in Hollywood or in liberal media is a great way to get a weeklong run on Fox News primetime, launch a substack, get some do-nothing job at a right wing outlet, etc. Carano was announcing her upcoming gigs at the Daily Wire within a week of getting the chop at Disney. These people are clamoring for opportunities to be high profile victims of "cancel culture".

The right wing has it's own parallel news and entertainment industry that's always looking to beef up their prestige by snagging some cancelled martyr.

At least that's true for the elites like Carano or Weiss. Normal schmucks who torpedo their normal jobs by acting like an ass might get 15 minutes of fame, but there's no gravy train for most of them.

 

[Darat]

No one said it did.

Rangers should've gone into production, over the objections of the hashtag activists. Sometimes well-muscled actors think like red state voters and that's something we can all learn to live with.

How much did she sue Disney for?

 

[johnny karate]

Rangers should've gone into production, over the objections of the hashtag activists.

Why?