This is the post that I meant to post one New Year's Day, which jumps off a little from my earlier post about celebrity apologies. It isn’t about sexual
harassment or assault, but it is about so-called “cancel culture” and making
apologies/amends. This time, I’m looking more at words. In the context of
celebrity, you see it most often with old tweets that resurface. Again, the
situation is very different than looking at the abuse brought to light in the
MeToo movement, but there are similarities in how these things often play out.
Something bad comes out about someone’s past, people react, and the person
responds, often badly and more to try and mitigate consequences for themselves
than anything else.
When it comes
to this sort of situation, I feel readier to talk about redemption/restitution
than I am when we’re talking about people who’ve been confronted by allegations
in the MeToo movement. First of all, it’s less likely that these are situations
where someone committed a crime against another or messed with someone’s career
for the sake of gratifying their own power (not to diminish the power of words;
I’m just stating how I feel about this.) Second, I know that we as people can
evolve throughout our lives in terms of our belief and understanding. I may
never have “joked” about beating a hypothetical gay son (Kevin Hart) or
rape/pedophilia (James Gunn,) but my attitudes have changed greatly over the years, on a range of subjects.
Growing up, I learned homophobia along with my religion, and and when I was 11,
I wrote a “novel” (which was maybe 20 pages long?) in which the circumstances
of the Antebellum South were flipped (white slaves, Black masters) and I
thought I was being so profound. I didn’t hurt anyone’s body or anyone’s
livelihood, but I’m sure that, at various times, my words and attitudes hurt
feelings. As I became better informed and more sensitive to others’
experiences, I didn’t simply flip a switch and become “woke.” I know I still
say things and believe things that are afield from what they ought to be. I’m
sure I’ll never be done improving my understanding of my fellow human beings.
To bring
this back around to apologies, “old tweets” scandals similarly often disappoint
when it comes to how celebrities respond when their past words are dug up. We
see a lot of “it was a long time ago” and “humor is about pushing boundaries,”
and of course there was Shane Gillis’s offer to apologize “to anyone who was actually offended” (emphasis mine.) Again,
there’s often little effort to engage with why
it matters that these things were said and more a desire to hurry everyone
along and move past this. I have yet to see a celebrity in this situation who’s
given what I'd consider a “Dan Harmon apology,” one that makes me go, “Okay, they really get
it.”
In light
of this topic, I’ve been thinking about how to apply it to myself, to
acknowledge past problems without sweeping them under the rug or making
excuses for them. While, to my reasonably-confident reflection, there aren’t
any statements from my past that rival the sort of “jokes” I’ve brought up
here, that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize times when I’ve erred. So, since it
feels appropriate with the new year, I’d like to begin an annual tradition of
addressing some old posts on this blog. I don’t know how many there are in
total, and I’m sure I’ll continue to uncover new ones as my thoughts continue
to evolve, so my plan is to look at twelve a year.
I decided
not to delete the old posts, even though I realize that some things I’ve written
can be offensive. There’s an argument to be made either way, but I came down on
the side to leave them up – nothing ever fully goes away on the Internet
anyway. Instead, I’m going to leave the posts as they are (mostly – I have one
exception, which I include below) but add a disclaimer recognizing the issues
with it.
To be
honest, many of the posts in this round weren’t necessarily problematic when
they were written (maybe I’m going easy on myself for this first go-around.) The majority of them deal
with celebrities who were since accused of sexual harassment or assault, but I
do have some where I very truly wrote about opinions that I now realize were
ill-informed or where I made excuses for someone else’s problematic areas
because I wanted to be less critical of them. I’ve linked all the relevant
posts in this write-up, and my 2020 disclaimers will be shown here as well as
placed at the start of each individual post itself.
House of Cards review (06/24/14) - I wrote this review in 2014, before the allegations against Kevin Spacey came out. I remember it was a hard one for me to process initially, because I’d been a big fan of Spacey, and I had a kneejerk reaction to half-want to make excuses. It was a short-lived reaction, but that doesn’t make it better. Since then, I’ve taken more care to interrogate my responses to allegations against people I’ve liked. As for Spacey, he’s one that I’ve really been unable to watch at all since I came to terms with the allegations; I can’t see his face without thinking about what he did to Anthony Rapp and the others.
2017 Tony Awards review (06/12/17) - Again, I wrote this review before I knew about
the allegations against Kevin Spacey. Here, it’s particularly gross that
Spacey’s hosting duties include a closet joke, when he in fact didn’t come out
until he wanted to control the narrative after being accused of trying to
assault a 14-year-old boy, giving fuel to homophobes who equate gay men with
pedophilia. Way to throw the community under the bus, creep.
Top Five Performances: 2017 Tony Awards (06/20/17) - Rounding off my old write-ups
involving Kevin Spacey. I didn’t know he was such a predator when I wrote it,
but it still makes me cringe to look back on it now. As much as we might like
to associate talent with being a decent human being, that obviously isn’t the
case, and Spacey’s talent doesn’t make up for his crimes.
Favorite "Characters": Jonathan Van Ness - Queer Eye (05/22/19) - This is the one instance where I did edit
my original post. Jonathan Van Ness came out as non-binary some time after I
did this write-up, and so I’ve changed some of the language to better align
with his identity. While he’s said he still uses he/him pronouns (among others
– he seems open to all the pronouns,) I took out words like “guy” and “man” and
adjusted accordingly.
"That Old-Time Racial Insensitivity" - Buster Mondays (05/25/15) -
I get that my opinion on the level
of racism in Buster Keaton’s films isn’t really helpful or welcome. While I do
still think that the racism in Buster’s movies, for the most part, isn’t as
egregious as some of the material I’ve seen in other films from that era, that
doesn’t particularly matter. “Not as racist as it could have been,” as a
designation, serves no point beyond me wanting to feel better about liking
Buster’s work in spite of its occasional racist content. This was an
unnecessary post, and it’s clear I went easy on Buster because I’m such a fan
of his work.
Top Five Roles: Lee Pace (04/08/15) - I paid lip service to this in
the write-up, but it should have been said more strongly. Lee Pace shouldn’t
have played either Calpernia in Soldier’s
Girl or Roy in The Fall. His
talent doesn’t negate the fact that a trans actress and a disabled actor should
have been cast in these roles and lost opportunities because Lee Pace was cast
instead.
Top Five Roles: Johnny Depp (08/13/15) - Johnny Depp was one of my favorite
actors once upon a time. I thought he was fantastically-interesting and
creative. Even though it had been a while since I’d really loved any recent
work of his when I wrote this post, and it was even later that I heard the
allegations against him, it was still a rough one. I don’t know whether he was
doing the same shit back in the day or if it was only in recent years, but it
both makes me mad and saddens me that some truly great roles have been tainted
for me.
X-Men review (12/12/15) - I was a fan of Bryan Singer for a
number of years, and although his was a case where I did hear about allegations against him years before MeToo and
TimesUp, I’m sorry to say that I bought into his counter claim, that
allegations against him were lies motivated by homophobia. I believed that the
accusations of abuse were attempts to tear down an openly-gay director, and so
I continued to watch his films without guilt for many years. It wasn’t until a more recent article came
out detailing allegations against him from multiple accusers that I really
faced up to it.
X-Men: United review (01/08/16) - Bryan Singer again. This was the
first film of his that I ever saw, and I really loved it. Singer is one whose
films I have a hard time watching now, and, since X2 is the film I probably have the fondest memories of, it’s the
one that was the biggest bummer to lose. Obviously, the worst thing about
predators like Singer, by far, is what they did to their victims, but another
thing about them that sucks is that their crimes retroactively taint things I
really liked.
X-Men: Days of Future Past review (06/17/14) - I really enjoyed Days of Future Past when it came out and, regrettably, welcomed Bryan Singer’s return to the X-Men franchise. Once again, it sucks that a film has been soiled by the presence of a powerful predator.
Bohemian Rhapsody review (12/21/18) - Okay, so the whole second half of
my added disclaimers for the year are basically a requiem for my fandom of
Bryan Singer. This is the only Singer film (yes, Dexter Fletcher took over
after he was fired, but Singer is still the credited director) that I saw after
the TimesUp-era rumors started resurfacing. Even though, as I’ve said, these
were far from the first allegations I heard against Singer, I was far more
ready to listen to them this time. In light of that, I was uncomfortable with
the idea of seeing Bohemian Rhapsody,
but I still saw it. If I were doing this again today, I’d hope I would choose
not to see the movie.
X-Men: Days of Future Past review (06/17/14) - I really enjoyed Days of Future Past when it came out and, regrettably, welcomed Bryan Singer’s return to the X-Men franchise. Once again, it sucks that a film has been soiled by the presence of a powerful predator.
X-Men: Apocalypse review (06/09/16) - One more Bryan Singer X-Men movie. Even though the overall MCU
and the DC TV shows have definitely upped the ante for me when it comes to superhero
media, I enjoyed this franchise for a good many years, but I have a hard time
watching any of Singer’s films now. At least we still have First Class and Logan.
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