Despite this post’s header image, I’m loath to use the phrase “cancel culture” or even refer to somebody as “cancelled,” because both are loaded terms. Corporations—movie studios, television networks, music labels, streaming services and all those in between—seek the almighty dollar. If they find somebody’s actions toxic enough to imperil that dollar, they’ll stop working with said person. Sometimes, it’s because they have a horrifying history of sexual assault; other times, it’s because they blame Ambien for racist tirades. Sometimes, certain corporations won’t work with them, but others will; sometimes, nobody will touch them; and sometimes, despite the claims of them being cancelled by cancel culture, these corporations still work with them. Why? Because their risk assessment shows plenty of people will hand over their dollar.
This isn’t a post about cancelling people, nor is it a post about cancel culture, even as the people I’ll discuss have been “cancelled” to varying degrees. This isn’t a post about corporations trying to score our dollar, it’s about us. It’s about that internal wringing about whether we hand over that dollar, and sometimes, if we can continue to enjoy that thing we once paid that dollar for.
As I write this, three names come to mind. You may have a visceral reaction to these names. You may hate these people with every fibre of your being; you may feel the world has unfairly maligned them. That’s okay. I’m not here to judge; we all have our opinions. You may have three other names that come to mind, and that’s okay, too. The people I’ll refer to throughout this piece are the ones who have been bouncing around my head for the last week or two. While I’ll discuss them here, my thoughts are as pertinent to anyone you may struggle with supporting.
So, who is this mysterious trio (to build the dramatic tension, let’s pretend you didn’t see them in the header)?
- Joss Whedon
- Ezra Miller
- J.K. Rowling
Back on 20 May, “Chosen,” the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned twenty. A little over six years ago, when Buffy’s first episode, “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” turned twenty, the internet, magazines, and any other outlet who could capitalise on their audience’s love of that series, celebrated all it accomplished. 10 March 2017 was a far more innocent time, well before Joss Whedon was accused by various Buffy cast members of bullying and misconduct. It was even a few months before his ex-wife, Kai Cole, outed his affairs with younger actresses. Sure, the last couple of weeks have seen retrospectives about Buffy’s influence, but they are written under the spectre of Whedon’s behaviour.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a highly influential TV series that followed a less than influential film. It is a TV series that explored feminism, the high school experience, vampires as both a physical threat and allegory for the struggles people experience. It featured well-rounded characters and was packed with a wit that infused comedy and drama. Buffy balanced monsters of the week with season long arcs, with a healthy dose of melodrama. And it has inspired a long line of writers of various disciplines, with much of the art we see today taking inspiration from Whedon and his works (Angel, Firefly and Serenity each also proved to be inspirational; Dollhouse, less so).
Hell, Whedon’s work has inspired my storytelling sensibilities.
Buffy was long heralded as a beacon of feminist television, with Whedon being lauded—and lauding himself—as a male feminist writer. Yet, as his actions have involved both sleeping with young actresses and bullying them, it puts a question mark over the feminism he blazed a trail with. Elements of Buffy’s (and Angel’s, and Firefly and Serenity’s, and most certainly Dollhouse’s) gender politics haven’t aged incredibly well. Instead of this simply being the passage of time, where people’s understanding has grown, it makes one wonder what the motivation was. It makes some elements distressing to watch.
As a longtime fan of Whedon’s work, whether it was those TV series, comic books, or movies, I haven’t been able to enjoy his works for a while now. It’s difficult to separate the art from the artist, and this is further complicated by me having given up my physical copies of his work. Another view will slightly tilt a metric that tells a corporation that I’m comfortable enough to view his works. Another view may even add to a residual payment for the offender.
While I’ve enjoyed some of Ezra Miller’s work, I can’t claim to be a fan. I was certainly gobsmacked by their crime spree of 2022, watching a slow motion car crash that’s collateral damage increased with every passing story, but I didn’t feel the pang that comes from watching someone you’re a fan of shock and appall.
But on the other hand, Ezra Miller’s The Flash.
I’m a superhero fan, particularly of DC’s stable of heroes. You may have seen me reference this on this website, and you may have seen me mention it in my newsletter, more than once. My gateway drug into the DC Universe was Batman, particularly the Batman I saw on the big screen in 1989: Michael Keaton.
As much as The Flash looks to be a superheroic spectacle that may or may not officially close the door on Zack Snyder’s dystopian vision of DC films, in a world where superheroic spectacle isn’t earning corporations as many dollars as they used to, the film is designed to capitalise on nostalgia. For every quip Barry makes, Batman says, “I’m Batman.” For every retort the other Barry responds with, Batman says, “You want to get nuts? Let’s get nuts.” This nostalgia doesn’t end with the Batman of my childhood, it extends as far as the Superman movie Kevin Smith wrote that Tim Burton never directed, derailing my teenage fandom of both creators. In the fine tradition of Warner Bros spoiling its superhero cameos, director Andy Muschietti has announced the film features Nicolas Cage as Superman. Sure, Teen Titans Go to the Movies did it first, but this is live action, dammit.
Now, do I want to support a movie starring an actor who reportedly didn’t lose their job for the sole reason it was too hard to replace them in post-production? They released a statement citing their mental health issues, and looking from the outside, their actions definitely don’t appear to be the result of a sound mind. But without knowing what these issues are—and it’s none of my business, and none of yours—I don’t know how culpable they were or weren’t. For an insanity plea to succeed in court, it needs to be demonstrated that the offender had no idea of the ramifications of their actions. Can Miller plead this? Looking at the number of successful insanity pleas, probably not.
As we approach The Flash’s release, the narrative rarely veers in the direction of Miller, their actions or their victims. Whether it’s human nature, or Warner Bros, the corporate overlord steering the conversation into territory where they’ll more likely get your dollar, the discussion is about whether it’s a brilliant anti-Zack Snyder movie or an anti-Zack Snyder abomination. And most importantly, on a scale of ten to one billion, how damn awesome is Michael Keaton?
Perhaps that’s disturbing, or perhaps it’s people putting the art ahead of the artist. Perhaps it’s both.
In what I am sure will be the most controversial statement of this piece, I don’t stand with J.K. Rowling. I find her views on transgender women reprehensible, and I am aghast at how she uses her public image to spew hatred. By her own statement, she has reasons for her fear of transgender women. While I find her commentary to be filled with hatred, conversations need to be had about those reasons. I believe she is wrong; I believe she targets the vulnerable; and I believe this is unacceptable. But rather than simply demonising her—or blindly defending her—people need to talk. We need to have an open dialogue; something that seems increasingly difficult in this age of social media.
In what may rival the above paragraph in controversy, I don’t have a strong feeling about Rowling’s works. I haven’t read the Harry Potter books. I’ve watched the movies and I enjoyed them, and that’s about as far as my interest goes. My wife’s a fan of the books, and my eleven-year-old son is getting into them. Said son is also a fan of video games and desperately wants Hogwarts Legacy.
Once again, Warner Bros is the corporate overlord seeking your dollar, and in order for them to earn that dollar, they are lining Rowling’s pockets with her own dollars. And it’s working: As at 5 May, Hogwarts Legacy has earned Warner Bros over one billion dollars, after selling over fifteen million copies. As much as the Fantastic Beasts movies have seen diminishing returns for the corporation, they have announced a TV series adapting the books.
While you’ll no doubt hear online that anybody who bought Hogwarts Legacy, who is looking forward to streaming the TV show, who watches the Fantastic Beasts films, or continues to buy the books is a TERF (trans-exclusatory radical feminist, if you’re unfamiliar with the acronym) and is against transgender rights, many people are fans of Rowling’s Wizarding World. I’d hazard to say that a lot of Hogwarts Legacy’s players simply enjoy good video games; by most accounts from those souls brave enough to admit they’ve played it, it’s wonderful.
I’m sure my eleven-year-old would love the game, perhaps as much as he loves the movies, and as much as he wants to love the books he’s slowly making his way through. If I were to buy it for him—or to encourage him to use his own money to buy it for himself—we would be telling the corporate overlord that we’re comfortable enough with Rowling’s views to support her work with our dollar. We’d be telling Rowling that we are comfortable enough with her spouting her views to give her a cut of the corporation’s dollar.
Sure, I could explain it to the kid, but it feels like unnecessarily burdening him with the failings of someone who created these works he enjoys.
As a general rule, I prefer not to support artists with a history of hurting people or spreading dangerous misinformation, using their platform to malign segments of the community. Of the creators whose views I disagree with, I’ll gladly support many of them. The ones who don’t punch down on the vulnerable and don’t spread dangerous messages. And I’m okay with that.
The decision to support an artist or not is a personal one. There’s no right answer or wrong answer; it comes down to how comfortable you are with supporting that work. Depending on the artist and depending on your connection to their works, you may find your decisions to be somewhat contradictory. And that’s okay.
Corporations work with creators who have the highest likelihood of earning them that dollar they’re so eager for. By and large, popular art is distributed by these corporations. But as much as we object to the people these corporations do business with, maybe we should look at what they do with the dollar we give them. Whether they pay tax and whether they support unjust causes. And maybe we should examine how these corporations treat the people who work for them. Not those big dollar earners they fear will earn a dollar for a different corporation, but those who work behind the scenes, trying to earn a dollar to support their families.
As these corporations earn dollars from Joss Whedon, Ezra Miller, J.K. Rowling and countless others of ill repute, writers are striking against them, determined to earn that fair dollar for their hard work.
Maybe, instead of boycotting artists we loathe as we love their art, we should boycott those corporations. Perhaps we can tell them that not we don’t want them to enable those dollar earners, and we don’t want them disabling everybody else.
TTFN,
wastanley.com 