Greetings, my Gidsciples! I’m a little tired of talking about how the world is falling apart, but it seems to be how 2020 is going overall. I’m so bummed out about life in general that I can barely bring myself to update the ol’ blog, and some of my favorite podcasters have been so down that they’ve put their work on hold for a few months now. Since I haven’t updated since the beginning of last month, I figured I should throw up another post so that you guys don’t forget I exist, and that I’m magnificent. So, I’m going to steer this blog beast away from it for this post, throw in a little personal life, and a lot of analysis of the world at large.
As usual, strap in for greatness, kiddos.
Recently, your favorite High-Brow Book Scientist (patent pending,) had a near and dear friend drop off the face of the Earth. In these terrifying and surreal times, losing contact with a friend could be something serious. (Oh, we still have a death plague, by the way. The US has topped the number of cases for the rest of the world combined, because America sucks now. We’re at one hundred and fifty one thousand deaths now.) So, when you lose contact with a friend you care about, (even in my own way,) you want to make sure she’s functioning properly, and doesn’t need ‘friend maintenance.’ I reached out to her a few times, but she wasn’t answering my texts, and she wasn’t showing up on my Facebook anymore, so I didn’t know if she shut down her account, blocked me, was hit by a bus, killed by a murder virus, hospitalized in a riot brawl, or any of the other many, many possibilities which could have befallen her in the shit-tastic year 2020.
Instead of screaming into the void I’d been screaming into, I hopped on Facebook messenger, and asked a mutual friend of ours if she knew if our missing friend was okay. It turned out she was, (Whew!) but then the strangest thing happened. Missing Friend replied with what was almost a robotic form letter response explaining that I hadn’t done anything wrong, and that she will miss being friends with me, but that she was no longer allowed to talk to me; she was off-limits, and I was not to reach out to her anymore.
I asked Mutual Friend what the fuck was going on, (pretty much in those exact words,) and it turned out that this was something Missing Friend’s new, creepy husband had her doing with a lot of her male friends. This surprising exchange happened while I was brainstorming blog post ideas, and was already planning to talk about “Cancel Culture.” I thought the coincidence and similarity were fairly amusing; as far as Missing Friend was concerned, I was cancelled, never to be spoken to again.
Author’s Note: I have not liked Creepy Husband from the get-go. I won’t go into how Missing Friend’s new husband sets off a gazillion red flags for the rest of us, and that this is the kind of controlling, insane shit they make Investigation Discovery shows and Lifetime Original Movies about; but since Missing Friend has cut me out of her life, I’m going to assume she’s not reading this anytime soon. …I hope they get a nice actress to play her in the movie when she inevitably gets made into a skin lamp, but I also hope nothing bad actually happens to her, and she comes back to her senses soon.
For those of you who have been tuned out from the world in general lately, (or maybe have that Memento brain damage that makes you lose short-term memory,) “Cancel Culture” is when someone famous or influential acts like a jackass, or offends people, and then get blacklisted by society as a result. The internet gets all mouth-foamy, Twitter tweets fly, Facebook posts… trundle? (I don’t know what Facebook posts do when it comes to verbs,) and before you know it, what was once a popular celebrity is now a social pariah—people stop going to their movies, watching their shows, or reading their books.
However, this sort of thing isn’t always going to happen, and it’s a little weird to think about how arbitrary this shunning by the masses actually is. Kevin Spacey faced over 30 sexual assault charges back in 2017-2018. An underage boy made allegations against him for the same thing, and Spacey’s “apology” was basically to say, “Oh, it’s excusable, because *suprise!* I’m actually gay!”
…It went over about as well as you’d expect it to.
Regardless of his clumsy handling of the situation, there are folks out there who think he’s despicable, and yet other folks who can still sit down to watch House of Cards or American Beauty without a care, because he’s so entertaining as an actor.
James Gunn—director of Guardians of the Galaxy, one of my favorite Marvel movies—was fired by Disney from working on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, over a series of offensive tweets he’d made ten years before. The tweets in question were clearly bawdy jokes, (which some could definitely be offended by,) but he wasn’t being serious in any way. (One example was describing a weak shower at a hotel as “having a three-year old pee on my head.) I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be judged on stupid jokes I made ten years prior. If I were twenty, I wouldn’t want someone coming after me because I made a poop joke when I was ten, and thought the word “poop” was still funny. When I was in my early thirties, I made jokes and had opinions about things that are very different from how I think now. Thankfully, enough people from the cast, crew, and fandom pushed back until Disney relented, and hired him back. But a man temporarily lost his job over stupid, old, long-forgotten jokes.
Similarly, Hartley Sawyer lost his job as The Elongated Man, Ralph Dibney, on CW’s The Flash. He’d made some tasteless jokes six or seven years prior on Twitter, which resurfaced recently, and he was fired for them. Hartley apologized for them, but it was clearly humor told for shock value about boobs, and self-deprecating racism jokes. These were made long before he was hired on to play the character. I’ve seen the tweets, and I don’t think they justify a firing, considering they existed before he was hired in the first place.
While some of these things aren’t exactly court-worthy, when it comes to being a celebrity, the Court of Public Opinion absolutely matters, and it is sometimes carried out swifter and harsher than anything you’d see carried out during the French Revolution. People lose jobs, fans, and entire careers over something as simple as having bad taste in humor, or opinions that other people don’t agree with.
But then again, some people who you think should lose their careers somehow remain unscathed. My girlfriend said she doesn’t think she can watch Christopher Walken in anything after seeing the documentary about Natalie Wood’s death, and he’s only suspected of being involved. I, on the other hand, have never had an issue with him. People suspect he’s a murderer, and they still adore him, but people hear off-color jokes about boobs and pee, and two people have lost their jobs over it, along with gaining a stain on their careers they don’t really deserve, in my opinion.
Another odd example of “where-do-I-draw-the-line” is J.K. Rowling. She has recently been blasted by the trans community for her strongly voiced support of anti-trans opinions on Twitter. People are saying that they won’t buy her books anymore, they’ll burn the ones they have, and that Harry Potter is a franchise that should be left to die in a ditch somewhere. While I definitely don’t agree with her anti-trans opinions, I definitely enjoy her Wizarding World created around the characters she’s most famous for. I own all the books and movies, and I don’t see a problem with that. She’s already made a fortune off this stuff anyway, so destroying it after the fact does nothing, and there’s plenty of other people involved in releasing these works who deserve to make money, even if she does claim that she’s “worried about the new trans activism.” I don’t think I have to like her to like her body of work.
But, therein lies the rub. There are people I can’t stand to look at anymore, now that we know what they’re like. People I used to really enjoy.
Bill Cosby, as another example, was practically considered “America’s Dad.” He had a hit show about good parenting, and the Huxtables quickly became a sitcom family that people used as a barometer for the happy, nuclear family in the 80’s and 90’s. He was a comedy legend, and he made me laugh unquestionably, every time I saw him in something. I had one of his albums as a kid, and I laughed hysterically no matter how many times I’d listen to it. His comedy was clean, but so sharply written, you’d barely notice that it didn’t stray over the line very often.
Then, “the Cos” was exposed as a long-time roofie-slinging rapist for much of his time in the limelight. It opened a floodgate of #MeToo movement, and women everywhere were empowered enough to come forward and say that this happened to them. It led to many other powerful celebrities and executives being exposed for much of the same horrid behavior.
I can’t even look at box sets of “The Cosby Show” on DVD without being disgusted by the man now. I haven’t looked at Bill Cosby’s work since, and have no interest to. If I still had that old album, I’d probably burn it. But, how is this different from Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise? I wouldn’t burn those books/films, even though I completely disagree with her opinion of the trans community. I don’t know if I can enjoy Kevin Spacey anymore, but I would love to see Hartley Sawyer back on The Flash. James Gunn returning to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was a complete victory in my mind.
Author’s Note: To be clear, Bill Cosby is an unforgivable monster in my eyes, but dick jokes aren’t. Go figure.
A Stephen Fry quote from 2005 resonates with me to this day: “It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning, it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.”
I agree with this sentiment a thousand fold.
So, the question becomes, “what and where is the line?” It seems to be completely arbitrary. I think we should really step back and say to ourselves, “Yeah, he/she/they made jokes that offended me. But, nobody was hurt. Yes, they have opinions I don’t agree with, or are bigoted in a way that I am not, but that’s their personal opinion, and shouldn’t taint an entire franchise… or should it?”
Do we shut these people down just for being offensive, or having a hateful opinion we don’t agree with? That was never a crime. But, why do we let actual criminals bounce back? How does Martha Stewart get a second chance, but a guy who made boob jokes can be put on blast ten years after the fact? Does the actual criminality of the offense matter, or does the Court of Public Opinion reign supreme?
I honestly don’t know the answer, and suspect none of you do, either. We all have opinions on things, and (unless we’re using them to oppress people, and behaving in a way that violates human decency and law,) maybe we should all dial down how harshly we’re passing judgment on people for being dipshits a decade prior. To behave otherwise is to imply that people are incapable of change, or self-improvement. Opinions change. I’ve lost friends over things I’ve said or believed in the past that I later changed completely on. People should be changing for the better, and not socially lynched for some old joke or mentality they may not even have anymore.
While celebrities who committed crimes should be in jail, and maybe have their careers tainted for that, I think there should be a statute of limitations on old offensive tweets. Two years, tops—that’s how far back you can hold someone accountable for saying or doing something stupid. Let’s just show them the embarrassing old Tweets, give them a chance to defend themselves, and see what they say. Maybe, like you, they can’t believe they said something that stupid, either.
It’s not universal, but people change, sometimes. I change, you change, and apparently, even Missing Friend changes; despite the fact that I didn’t do anything to offend them in the first place.
Hey, hey hey—it’s Faaaat Jailtime! But seriously, don’t come at me ten years from now
for something stupid I’m probably going to say or do relatively soon.