So the House of the Mouse finally decided, after all the grotesque shit that former MMA fighter-turned-actor Gina Carano had been putting up on social media had gotten to be too much and it was time to axe her from the role of Cara Dune on Disney+'s biggest hit show, The Mandalorian. I, for one, think it's about time. She started it when she decided it would be to make fun of trans people by changing her pronouns in her Twitter bio to the hilarious "Boop/Bop/Beep", and then it gradually progressed into liking "The election was rigged" tweets, liking Insurrection tweets, and also spreading disinformation about the pandemic and mask-wearing, and it finally all coalesced into a social media post where she compared being a conservative voice in Hollywood to being a Jew in 1930's Germany and that was finally a bridge too far for Disney and Lucasfilm and they gave her the bum's rush.
But like all backlash on social media content, it had people who loved it, made apologies for it, and "this is the hill I will die on" defended it.
One person in particular, a writer for New York Magazine named Jonathan Chait, called Carano's firing and loss of representation as "blacklisting" her for being conservative and called her post re: Jews in 1930's Germany not anti-Semitic. Chait ironically is Jewish and is also a staunch Trump hater if you read his other pieces for New York Magazine. He says that basically people like Dalton Trumbo, who was a blacklisted screenwriter for being a member of the Communist Party in the 40's and 50's, were worse than Carano because being a Communist in that era meant you either directly or tacitly supported Stalin. Chait goes onto admit that Carano, while being an idiot, is not deserving of the same treatment.
Here's the thing about this: Carano is an idiot, but she's an idiot whose profile on a show that is made honestly as much for kids as it is for adults is very high. And when you're dealing with a pop culture phenomenon like Star Wars and more specifically The Mandalorian, you're under a very powerful microscope. The hashtag #FireGinaCarano has been around for months, either gaining or losing traction depending on the day. And despite reportedly repeated warnings by Disney execs, she wanted to show everyone that she wasn't afraid of getting fired by sticking to her incredibly stupid guns and got fired for it. Is that the same thing as someone like Dalton Trumbo, who would eventually be lionized in cinema when Bryan Cranston played him in a 2016 film? No.
But why isn't it the same thing? Because no one in our government was calling for an investigation into her past and making sure that if Hollywood didn't sever ties with conservatives, there would be severe danger of additional government involvement in who's hired and who's fired. Blacklisting, if you bother to do literally 60 seconds of research, was the practice of just that: you could fire someone who indicated they were or had been a member of the Communist Party and they would be barred for being hired for anything else. Carano was not fired for The Mandalorian because she's a conservative; she was fired for being an asshole.
Hollywood, as most Republican politicians would have you believe, is a rotting, fetid cesspool of crybaby (or baby-eating, depending on how fucking insane your views are) liberal Jewish homosexual pornographers when the truth is anything but. Hollywood might actually be one of the most conservative places on Earth. They want limited oversight and their primary interest, when it comes right down to it, is the almighty dollar. Major studios, like Disney, do not really give a shit when it comes to your political views; if you make them money, you're pretty much allowed to do whatever you want. But if your political views get in the way of making that sweet sweet money, you might get shitcanned, liberal or conservative.
You might recall a few years ago when conservative Twitter worked together to get James Gunn fired off directing the third Guardians of the Galaxy film by pointing out some incredibly stupid and tasteless jokes long before he was hired to make both GOTG films, had apologized for the "jokes" and stated that Marvel Studios and Disney were well aware of the "jokes". The only reason that conservative Twitter ganged up on him was because he was anti-Trump. He was fired due to what was essentially a bad faith campaign and then rehired after Disney walked it back due to it being a bad faith campaign. I stood up for Gunn then not because I defended the "jokes" but because it was obvious to pretty much everyone (except, apparently, Disney) that this was a bad faith campaign.
How is what happened to Carano any different from what happened to Gunn, you might ask? That's a good question, and fortunately I have the answer. Gunn had long ceased his really tasteless "jokes" before he was ever hired to make the first Guardians film, let alone the second one. Carano didn't only make one gross social media post; she made more and doubled down on them, much like her political hero.
Interestingly enough, I figured she'd still find a home on Direct To Video fare just like Mel Gibson, Dean Cain, Kevin Sorbo, Steven Seagal and the various assortment of other disgusting racist, homophobic, loser assholes, but as it turns out, she's already found a home with The Daily Wire, the shitheap right-wing Trump-worshipping website run by absolute con artist, notorious vagina-drying husband, white privilege poster-boy and failed screenwriter Ben Shapiro. She states, and I quote from Deadline:
"They can't cancel us if we don't let them."
😆😆😆
She was unapologetically gross and toxic, and Disney looked at the positives and negatives of her continuing to be attached to the Star Wars franchise, and she got fired because the positives were not outweighing the negatives. That's all there is to it.
And imagine for a moment that losing a role on a TV show broke your spirit so badly that you'd see the prospect of working with Ben Fucking Shapiro as a step in the right direction.
It also doesn't exactly help her case that she's not a good actress. At all. Frankly, I still don't understand what Steven Soderbergh saw in her that led him to cast her as the lead in Haywire, the role that led her to being someone of note in Hollywood.
There is no shortage of conservatives in Hollywood. They might not be the cash cows they once were, but people like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, and Eastwood (to name a few) are all still working in Hollywood. Stallone seemed to want to start something of a career renaissance when he reprised his role as Rocky Balboa in Ryan Coogler's brilliant Creed, and also appeared as the leader of the Ravagers in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Arnold is still making Terminator films, even though that's a franchise that died a very ugly death with Terminator: Salvation. Bruce Willis... well... he's been in a lot of films since his star lost its luster, but the only film he seemed to actually give a shit about being in was Rian Johnson's Looper. And Eastwood is still directing some of the most economical and under-budget films in Hollywood, even if he's still catching some much deserved flack for making some of the most misogynistic films in Hollywood as well. And there are a lot of other conservatives in Hollywood as well and many of them are doing just fine. You know why? Because they're not all up in your fucking grill about it 24/7. They're not being deliberate provocateurs. They're being normal human beings.
If Carano believed in conservatism and not extremism and not warned numerous times about being deliberately combative and still provoking controversy, she would still have a job on The Mandalorian.
If Pedro Pascal came out on Twitter tomorrow stating that he believed that Trump ate babies and the GOP have a pizza parlor in Delaware that keeps child sex slaves for Mitch McConnell, and then continued to double down on that once a week after Disney kept telling him to knock it off, I would say that deserves firing too.
I hate to state the obvious here, but this is not "blacklisting". This is an employee being an asshole and asshole employees can occasionally get fired for that. And anyway, she's obviously going to land on her feet with her upcoming project being made with Hollywood titan (*insert insane hilarious laughter here*) Ben Shapiro.
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