Author: Gabriel Persechino-Forest Published: August 2nd, 2018
MeToo Comes Back with a Vengeance
#MeToo, the “social” movement that has been rampaging through society appears to have had its first major setback. Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn was found to have posted several “jokes” on Twitter that openly supported child abuse and made light humor of it and the response was swift: People were disgusted, social media storms transpired and eventually, Disney had to fire him. So what’s so different about this incident you might ask? In previous cases, those accused of 40 years ago having thought of touching a woman’s behind would lose their job and the media would collectively attack them and do everything but excommunicate them from the city. Even Roseanne’s recent tweets received no mercy from the media establishment, including, ironically, Gunn himself, and she was fired and saw her series cancelled. But Gunn is “One of the gang”. He’s not supposed to be outed or punished. That is what makes the difference. For all the talks that there is no “Establishment” in Hollywood, recent events certainly showed otherwise and actually showed us who this establishment is. Since he was fired, the media backpedalled on MeToo so hard they might actually get whiplash. Suddenly, the court of public opinion is getting “Out of hand” and “Good people” are having their careers ruined because of “Jokes”. They have made article after article coming to this guy’s defence (Where were they for everyone else that got fired for stuff they allegedly did years ago, no matter how trivial?) and then celebrities started pouring out to support him as well (I explained before how the establishment uses celebrities when convenient for their agenda). This was followed by a petition to reinstate him as well as the cast of Guardians of the Galaxy making an open letter begging Disney to rehire the man (The question that comes to my mind is: How important in the establishment must Gunn be to be getting that level of protection). Some of the media’s many articles lionising the man can be sampled here, and they certainly deviate from the previous “This sort of behavior will not be tolerated in a modern society” rhetoric that was floating around for months whenever anyone stepped out of line according to the edicts of political correctness:
And here is James Gunn’s ironic statement when Roseanne was fired:
I wish some of these so-called defenders of liberty would start to understand what freedom of speech is AND isn’t. Roseanne is allowed to say whatever she wants. It doesn’t mean @ABCNetwork needs to continue funding her TV show if her words are considered abhorrent.
Other celebrities apparently had enough skeletons in their closets to react severely to the incident, deleting their tweets or outright leaving Twitter in some cases (This includes Rian Johnson and Dan Harmon):
As usual, the media is trying to shift focus from the “crimes” committed to focusing on who exposed them instead, painting this as an Alt-Right smear campaign started by Mike Cernovich, who first exposed the tweets. Of course who exposed them or what agenda they might have had is immaterial, the tweets are still the same and the reality of the situation unchanged either way.
Even more astounding is how the media, after all these years, still managed to blame GamerGate for this fiasco. Yes, the more than 4 years old gaming movement to expose corrupt journalists is apparently responsible for the fall of a Marvel movie director in 2018.
James Gunn did respond to the controversy on Twitter.
Basically, they created a monster called MeToo, never realising it could turn around and burn their town too. Now the establishment has two choices: Stand by all of their own as they are outed for their wrongdoings one by one and destroy MeToo, or dish out the same punishment equally and see their own ranks thinned out as the social justice inquisition marches on. Considering how MeToo is being pushed hard in Japan as we speak, it will be interesting to see what happens from now on.
Source: One Angry Gamer (Article image as well)
Always More Political Correctness
Moving to other news, political correctness apparently never takes a day off. Actor Yudai Natsume was forced to apologise for stupid posts he made on social media at a time he was merely a student (16 years old). The talent agency Omnia has already cancelled Natsume’s contract. The posts were supposedly sexist and misogynist (I say “Supposedly” because I cannot independently confirm the tweets in question).
Daniel Vavra was recently forced to cancel an appearance at Spanish gaming convention (Gamelab) after social justice warriors and Buzzfeed spread false rumors around Vavra being a Nazi. The Buzzfeed journalist who smeared Vavra is actually a known misandrist who posts content such as this:
Meanwhile, Patrick Soderlund called all those who don’t accept Battlefield 5’s heavy handed propaganda and unrealistic historical re-writing “Uneducated” and said he doesn’t want them buying the game (Sometimes, you get what you want). In spite of Patrick’s insistence that he wants to be on the “Right side of history”, he apparently chose to depict women during the WWII era in a manner in which they weren’t actually involved, instead of focusing on the real women who fought during WWII, often in militias and rebel groups. Is anything going to be exempt from SJW propaganda by 2020?
Facebook is also getting in on the social engineering with their new initiative Women in Gaming (#SheTalksGames) whose stated purpose is to “Champion diversity in games” in which they encourage developers to make a “Conscious choice” to include more forced diversity in games for the sake of the agenda, whether they fit or not in the context of said games. Games already affected by the social justice warrior agenda include, but is not limited to: Gears of War 4 (And upcoming 5th game), Mass Effect: Andromeda, Battleborn, Agents of Mayhem, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider and Lawbreakers. All of them had poor sales and since women and minorities also play games, it’s fair to say they don’t like the forced agenda anymore than the average “White male” gamer does.
Last but not least, Netflix is making a superhero series with drag queens. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with this premise (Heck, anime series have done it recently to great success) or perhaps I should say there wouldn’t be if it weren’t just another attempt to earn social justice points while continuing to shove the agenda down everyone’s throats. In this regard people are less than pleased as the trailer currently sits at 7.6k likes and 4.7k dislikes and many comments seem to indicate people are getting tired of sitting down for entertainment and staying for social engineering. What is most interesting about the trailer is that it shows a lot of butt and “Boob” jiggle; so apparently fanservice featuring women is sexist (Objectifying is the word they use), but fanservice featuring drag queens is “empowering” and not sexualizing at all. No double standard to see here people.
Anime Medium Further Attacked
Otaku she Wrote attacked Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card (And the original series too, for good measure) for “Not being queer enough”. They include some valid criticism, but the meat of the article and what really bothered the writer was that the series was never actively trying to push a social agenda, and so, when certain plot threads were concluded in the previous series, they didn’t offer equivalent replacements in the new series. The reason is obvious, the makers of the series were trying to make an interesting show and weren’t keeping tabs on their social justice points, dealing with issues of homosexuality and others as they saw fit and appropriate. That, of course, is not acceptable in our new “Woke” age.
Anime Feminist wrote an article disparaging Kill la Kill. It starts off by attempting to paint some of Mako’s comedic moments as “Encouraging poverty and insulting the poor as being greedy” and then criticises Satsuki for supporting a capitalist, Darwinist, fascist society, in spite of the fact that she’s the bad guy and you’re clearly not meant to root for her in the beginning. The writer also mentions that Satsuki fulfils a power fantasy for her and that’s why she’s still her favorite. It’s interesting that when 4th wave feminists experience a power fantasy through a tyrannical character that is clearly the bad guy (At the start of the show anyways), that is okay, but when guys have a harem power fantasy it is suddenly sexist and, their words, “Exhibiting the worst the fandom has to offer”. Then it’s back to the old “Sexualizing the female characters” rhetoric and attacking the series for actually daring to have sex appeal, focusing on female sexuality and not male (Because shows aimed at girls where they focus solely on the guys don’t exist right?) and of course it continues to try and reinforce the idea that we can’t laugh at sexual comedy anymore. One memorable quote did surface out of the article though:
Treating feminism as a metric gives us the false assurance that, because an anime has an “It’s Feminist!” stamp on it, that means it’s A-Okay for uncritical consumption. It can prevent fans from doing real criticism and analysis, and instead just do shoddy ones that give an easy, quick answer.
On this, I agree completely.
The same website also criticises Future Diary for a “Bad portrayal” of mental illness, claiming that Yuno makes mental disorders seem violent and dangerous. While it is true that most mental disorders do not actually make someone dangerous, psychopaths and sociopaths actually exist and so do severe, and exceptionally rare, disorders that do make people violent and dangerous. While it is rarely a disorder alone that will cause such a transformation, a disorder as well as a negative environment, the right trauma and a life of abuse can certainly create violent tendencies that only get worse the more the mental state of the individual deteriorates. So while I agree that mental disorders are not inherently, or primarily, violent, the attack on Future Diary, once again, seems unjustified and filled with nitpicking since deranged lunatics like Yuno do exist (Otherwise we wouldn’t have serial killers now would we) and guess what, most serial killers are usually deranged people with severe mental disorders. So it’s more like there should be a distinction, one that is arguably often not made in our society, between non-violent mental disorders and violent mental disorders. In any event, the article further adds that the dark themes of the series are “Not treated with respect” (What does that even mean?). The series is further criticized for its disturbed characters getting worse rather than improving; once again, character development can be positive or negative and seeing a character falling further and further into madness until they destroy themselves is not only thematically relevant, but interesting, in a dark way, as well. They then go on to compare the series to A Silent Voice and ultimately make the point that Future Diary has a “Toxic” representation of mental illness; which, for the last time, ignores the fact that observing people at their worst can be a powerful thematic drive. Not every series has to be about how things “Should be” or about “Getting better and improving” or always needing to be positive… This isn’t an educational series for children, it’s a nuanced series for adults. Or as the article aptly puts it:
…sometimes people do change for the worse instead of the best.
The article also attempts to responsibilize artists for the undue negative perception some people have of mental illness in real life, even though it is not the artists’ fault nor should they be censored because of potential, perceived harm their series might do. It has also been demonstrated that society changes along with culture and education and that a few TV series rarely have an impact on controlling human behavior (Art is influenced by society, not the other way around).