Moving onto yet another instance of things Hollywood seems to think society in general has some need to know. James Gunn, the man behind the Guardians of the Galaxy movie franchise has been fired for some pedophilia jokes that he tweeted in 2009.
I am speaking now to 99% of Hollywood and 1% of the rest of the population. That 1% is loud and active because they have all the free time to do so, because they are not doing the “working and paying and living and dying” that keep the world spinning. But make no mistake there is another 99% of the population that just doesn’t have time to respond to every one of these non-stories…because they don’t GAF. Because they see no reason to GAF. Because the people in question live in another time zone. will never meet them, and no actual law has been broken. ALL of these little dust ups are YOU 99% of Hollywood pandering to 1% of the population, while the other 99% of us scroll right past the headline.
This is all no different than when you were running scared of angry letters from evangelists in the 90’s. There are over 300 million of us in the U.S. alone. How many people reacted to those tweets? hmm? or ANY of your tweets for that matter? We…don’t…care. Thinking this matters to us betrays a warped unhealthy perspective. I don’t want to speak for the people who dug up these tweets…but I think you may have completely missed the point by firing Gunn. Since, I believe, they were dug up in response to others getting flak for saying things on twitter. I THINK...again I could be very wrong…but the POINT was that any one of you could get some past twitter comment thrown in your face and so handing out rebuke to any one person over tweets is absurd. Your response was to fire someone over a tweet. Brilliant.
First, let me point out the following- every single topic out there has someone who will react to a joke about it negatively. Some people are fat, some people have had some illness, some people have been to war, some people have been the victim of crimes. There is not one single topic that could be used in a joke that someone out there might not want to hear. and if you add them all up there is nothing left. MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT, is that if the role of comedy is reduced to only making fun of things that aren’t sad/scary/horrific/shameful than there is no need for comedy at all. Comedy’s most important and greatest benefit to mankind is that it can get us to laugh at such things. That is it’s role. That is it’s ability and power to bring good into the world.
without comedy making people laugh at what is wrong with the world, the world is a dreadful place. There is NO topic that is off limits and it is NEVER to soon, because THOSE TOPICS AND THOSE TIMES ARE WHEN COMEDY IS MOST EFFECTIVE IN TAKING THE STING OUT OF THE HORRIBLE FINITE DANCE THAT IS LIFE ITSELF. PERIOD.
this being one in a long line of celebrities fired for some thing they tweeted or said…it is time I think, for Hollywood to understand what the rest of us already understand. And understand how the rest of the world, that they have no idea how to relate to, views things-
1- we do not give a sh*t what some celebrity tweeted, not on any profound level. I have traveled the whole country and live in what is known as a battleground state. In a battleground state you have a pretty even number of people on the left and on the right. I have heard/seen/been part of every conceivable argument that has gone on. You know what we don’t argue about? Tweets from celebrities. We have real problems, real actual grown up problems that actually affect our lives and the lives of the people we care about and we don’t GAF about you personally or your tweets.
So go ahead and keep firing each other if you want, but you aren’t doing it for anyone but yourselves. Yourselves and your apparent skittish delicate sensitivities. So brittle are you, that you must run screaming in indignation from a person who told a bunch of crass jokes…ten years ago…on twitter…. How fucking old are you? Grow the fuck up, huh? WE don’t need your protection. We don’t gaf what he said on twitter anymore than we gaf what the plumber said on twitter…we just want him to fix the leak and leave. IN FACT, you have just ruined Guardians of the Galaxy for us, which COULD have been a pleasant escape from our actual grown up problems for a few hours. So thanks for that.
2-We understand that his job was to be an entertainer/comedian. and we understand that you get better at your job as you go along. and we think that firing someone NOW for not being as good at their job ten years ago is asinine. None of us think that he really did any of those things, or would have, or was even trying to get us to believe he did. SO…that leaves his motivation as an attempt at comedy. It failed…that happens quite often.
This guys job now/was to write Guardians of the Galaxy in which the last movie we watched Kurt Russel get his skin pealed off. If you are more comfortable with that than a typed joke from ten years ago…you’ve got some issues. And on any given day there is a movie out with murder, rape, incest, and all manner of black content, but some keystrokes sends you into a tailspin? That’s weird. Us…out here in the real world…we know Kurt Russel didn’t really get his skin pealed off and we know those tweets were just jokes. His jokes were different, more edgy and less good ten years ago before he became established…duh.
3-We understand that the climate on twitter in 2009 was dramatically different than it is now. and firing Gunn for existing on the boundaries of twitter in 2009 is like thinking Bill Hickok was a bloodthirsty madman for shooting a horse-thief in 1870. The climate, culture and customs were dramatically different. We understand this…why don’t you? why don’t you understand that we understand this? Just how f8cking condescending are you trying to come off? and who the fuck are you trying to fool? We know all about all of you. and we are tired of you internal bullshit. We are tired of hearing about it. We have our own problems, most of which are so distanced from yours in what they are and our resources with which to handle them in comparison to yours, that you may as well be living in another dimension. So it would be appreciated if you would refrain from assuming you know what would upset us. When in doubt though…here’s a hint…does it personally affect anyone we actually know? Is it an actual crime? If the answer is no…then assume it is not on our radar as we have more important things to deal with.
4- You’re going to have a tough time hearing this, but we think you are all assholes anyway to one degree or another. There is no shortage of documentaries, autobiographies, biographies, and stories of how creative geniuses are assholes…going all the way back to Beethoven. I’m a creative genius…and also an asshole. The level of creativity needed to compete on a high level seems to go hand in hand with being an asshole. We have grown to accept this. We expect NOTHING from you on a moral level, we aren’t your friends, we would not go to you for advice or counsel. We would rather you F*CK OFF with you opinions on morality, since they are hypocritical and CHANGE BY THE WEEK. and when you take on little causes to attempt to get us to think you actually give a crap…we don’t really buy it. We might cheer if it’s something we agree with, but we don’t trust you any farther than we can throw you. We assume Gunn is a p.o.s. we assume the person who replaces him will be a p.o.s. AND we assume the person who fired him is a p.o.s.
We all understand these things I have listed, believe it or not. We are grown ups, living in the real world…how about you join us? and if one of you actually graduates from run of the mill creative genius who is a p.o.s. to being dangerous, WE will handle it, by throwing that person in jail. I said WE will handle it, since YOU have apparently no perspective on what is or is not a problem nor how to appropriately react to it. Barring the times that one of you becomes an actual problem to the rest of us…just keep pumping out your movies and t.v. shows so that we have a small break in our day from the many real life problems that you are millions of dollars away from being able to get your head around.
Thanks in advance,
the entire rest of the world.
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