We covered it in our latest Quackcast here:
https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/quackcast/episode-518-gina-carano-no-more-right-to-bare-arms

I think it's a complex subject.

My own view is:
Employers can dismiss staff for various reasons and one of them is if they're going to be harming their bottom line by bringing negative attention to their brand, which is what was happening here. Disney is a business, advertising and social media presence are a huge part of that. They had the right to take that action and it was the right thing to do for them commercially.

On the other side of it- 99% of actors and creators are idiots and have stupid views on one thing or another, personally I prefer to separate the artist from the art where possible. I can still love the song Scottish Tea by The Amboy Dukes even though Ted Nugent is a crazy loon. We know that Rolf Harris and Bill Cosby were sick criminal pervs now, but I still like the old songs by Rolf and the Cosby Show and Fat Albert are still good… any many other examples haha XD

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I think the show will go fine without her. It doesn't need a recasting or a replacement for her character's role. Those are both weak ideas.

It's always a money issue. If a company feels an action will lose money, they won't. If gain money, they will. There is no deeper implications, tbh. It's not a political or ethical call on the part of the company. It may be a perceived one on part of the target audience. But it just comes down to execs/advisors said, “This action will equal more money instead of less money, so do this.”

The same goes for whether they recast or eliminate a role. It's not about writing or art. It's just money.

Now, are my views of a work tainted by knowledge of the actor/writer/company's personal views or actions? Of course they are on some level. Although, for me, it's usually on the more positive end. Like, learning something positive about someone will make me watch or read something I normally wouldn't have any interest in. For example, I read October Skies as a school requirement. I don't care for drama or nonfiction, so it was meh. I met Homer Hickam later at a science workshop. He was such a soft-spoken, kind, and brilliant man that I read his book again.

usedbooks wrote:
The same goes for whether they recast or eliminate a role. It's not about writing or art. It's just money.

I think you'd be surprised there, “art” definitely has a huge influence on the way things go. People come up with an idea (art), and then get their people to advocate and fight for it (the money).
Even when the idea comes from the money people first- it's the idea people who're the ones who make it actually happen and decide in what way.

usedbooks wrote:
Now, are my views of a work tainted by knowledge of the actor/writer/company's personal views or actions? Of course they are on some level. Although, for me, it's usually on the more positive end.

Funny that it doesn't really work for me in a positive way that I remember… I met Raymond E Fiest a couple of times and been a friend of his on Facebook for years but I don't like his books more than I used to before that. Magician is a cool book but knowing him doesn't make me like it or the rest more.
I will say though that knowing a creator influences me to LOOK at their work and get into it, and if a creator recommends something I'll check it out…


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-Contrary to my above statements (in a way), I stopped reading Dilbert after Scott whatshisname came out as being an extreme trumpster-dumpster-fire.
I think Dilbert is STILL pretty good though and the work was never tainted for me. It's just that every time I viewed it online Scott's silly opinions were also splashed all over the place AND the comic was getting repetitive to me anyway so I thought it was a good time to quit it.

Ozoneocean wrote:
Funny that it doesn't really work for me in a positive way that I remember… I met Raymond E Fiest a couple of times and been a friend of his on Facebook for years but I don't like his books more than I used to before that. Magician is a cool book but knowing him doesn't make me like it or the rest more.
I will say though that knowing a creator influences me to LOOK at their work and get into it, and if a creator recommends something I'll check it out…

That's pretty much the case for me too. Learning something nice about someone leads me to checking out their work in a genre I wouldn't have in my sphere/radar, which *sometimes* leads me to discover I actually can enjoy it (or not, but without that positivity influence, I'd never even check it out).

The opposite doesn't apply, though. If something is in a genre I like and piques my interest, no one's personality is going to make me not check it out.

And I don't think personality affects my perception of the work. Although, like you said, presented on the internet with commentary can really spoil the experience.

It can be a nuanced and complex situation though many on the internet love to simplify things into “good and bad”

I remember when the first Wonder Woman movie with Gal Gadot was being promoted and certain people were going on about her being “a real life badass” for serving in the Israeli defence forces- which is pretty much a compulsory thing for almost all Israeli citizens.
For me, that certainly didn't make her a “bad-ass” and I said so- because although I support Israel and its right to exist and defend itself I am very much against celebrating the IDF, because of the occupation there and the various actions against the bordering countries.

But the internet idiots took that to mean I wouldn't see Wonderwoman and hate Gal Gadot! Which of course is moronic. She's good actor and I'll definitely see Wonder Woman one day (when I get to it finally), I just don't support celebrating the IDF.

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I also don't like to watch things in general that celebrate the IDF or Mossad, or Shin Bet or whatever, because of the nasty stuff they've done, though stuff that celebrates Israel is great!
And if the thing is more two sided then that's great too. The silly American comedy Don't Mess with the Zohan by Adam Sandler portrays him as an IDF bad-ass, but it makes fun of that and it's also two sided.

As a fan of the character and the show, I'm sad. I also feel sympathy for her; she strikes me as a good person who feels pain over what's happened.

At the same time, I do recognize the extremity of some of the tweets (not the one she was allegedly fired for, but others), and the fact that she was being rewarded very well not just to act, but to represent her company.

Mostly I'm just tired of the divisiveness. In our Star Wars and everywhere else. It's exhausting and depressing, and I am worried about the road ahead for all of us. I think we'll figure things out eventually. Hope so.

But I look forward to the series still, and also hope Carano lands on her feet. I'm going to try really hard not to look at behind the scenes drama anymore. I hate it. And politics. Why's this anger and drama so addictive??

Personally it concerns me that people are being ostracized because of their political opinions , I think it sets a dangerous precident if we intend toremain a society based on freedom . It doesn't matter weather I agree with someone's statements or not , I still defend their right to make them .the problem here is that in a society that cancels anyone who disagrees with the popular narrative , sooner or later they're going to cancel everyone . Also as creative folks I think we can all agree that none of us exactly fit the normal mould and if being different and thinking differently is not tolerated , we're all in trouble , I don't do social media so I don't know specifically what she tweeted , but this is a trend in our society I definately oppose .

I looked up the tweet which apparently set this all off and I don't even know what to make of all this. What she wrote was definitely controversial, but I can't see by what criteria it could even be considered offensive… unless you just happen to be someone who automatically classifies any opinions you disagree with as offensive.

In a non-dysfunctional society, a statement like that would be a conversation starter. But sadly, there's a large contingent of people who not only don't wish to themselves engage in such conversations, but actually don't wish for these conversations to happen at all.

Banes wrote:
As a fan of the character and the show, I'm sad. I also feel sympathy for her; she strikes me as a good person who feels pain over what's happened.

At the same time, I do recognize the extremity of some of the tweets (not the one she was allegedly fired for, but others), and the fact that she was being rewarded very well not just to act, but to represent her company.

Mostly I'm just tired of the divisiveness. In our Star Wars and everywhere else. It's exhausting and depressing, and I am worried about the road ahead for all of us. I think we'll figure things out eventually. Hope so.

But I look forward to the series still, and also hope Carano lands on her feet. I'm going to try really hard not to look at behind the scenes drama anymore. I hate it. And politics. Why's this anger and drama so addictive??

I'm struggling myself with resisting the allurement of looking at the politics and the internet drama that is going on. It's hard:P Especially when you've done it for a long time like I have. Althoguh in my case it's more of a Youtube thing then a Twitter thing. I've never been able to wrap my head around the mere technicality of that social media site and I tried it twice, briefly, before I quit all together.

@Andreas - Yeah, it's just YouTube for me too. And even that feels deadening to the spirit at times.

Hollywood, California is a communist state. Say anything against the status quo and you’re banish. At least that is what it looks like. I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney own Hollywood at this point. They are already taking over cable tv here. She spoke her mind and got fired for it.

She still has the right to say what she wants but the world is a lot more reactive at the moment and ripe of social campaigns and such, Disney doesn't need or want that kind of controversy attached to its flagship show and multi-billion dollar series (Star Wars). There's just too much at stake.

At its core Disney is actually more right wing than anything and always has been. I believe that old Walt was even supposed to be anti-Semitic.

So… only right wing people can be anti semitic? Not sure what you were getting at there, but I do think there's a good argument to be made that a lot of Disney,s supposedly ideologically driven decisions over the years were actually profit-driven, if somewhat misguided.

For what it's worth the evidence indicates that though Disney didn't like unions he was a social liberal like most of the people in the motion picture industry of the time.

As for antisemitism American society as a whole was antisemitic in the first half of the 20th century.

However if anything the motion picture industry as a whole is very conservative and always has been regarding the personal views of people in it. Been a whole lot of scandals and a whole lot of people fired and blacklisted throughout the history of the industry.

El Cid wrote:
So… only right wing people can be anti semitic?

Why do you think I said that?

I made the comment about the rightwing leanings of Disney because CD was talking about communism in relation to the subject.
I mentioned old Walt's antisemitism because of the subject of Gina's Tweet (though he's long dead I know). It was to highlight the profit driven motives of Disney in contrast to their own ideologies.

I misinterpreted your post then. It sounded like you were saying, “Well of course Walt Disney was right wing; he hated Jewish people!” That would have been an odd and exceptionally nasty thing to say, but I've heard similar before. My mistake.

I did not know much about the actress and her political views before this came up, but I find it frustrating because everything has to be politicized. Both sides of the political spectrum have keyboard warriors and activists ready to foment discontent, so in this day in age, it's prudent to keep personal views off social media, even more so if you're a celebrity and actually have some sort of clout. We have freedom of speech, and she has a right to post whatever she wants on social media. But she's gotta face the consequences and potential legal ramifications of that. Unfortunately the reactions to her social media brought bad attention on the franchise, and they had to let her go.

That's a sad world to live in.

Celebrities regularly make statements on any number of contentious issues – abortion, imperialism, capital punishment, go down the list – and I'd say not only is it a good thing for people to raise awareness on issues that are important to them, but if you have a very large platform to do so, you almost have an obligation to do so. That becomes doubly true in my opinion if you're calling attention to something the general public is not aware of, or if it's a message they'd rather not hear.

Carano was drawing parallels between our current political divisions here in the US and some ugly events in European history, and I believe her point was prescient and well made. She did nothing wrong. The problem, as I understand, is that some people who didn't like what she had to say went into her past and dug up some old posts she'd made which were insensitive enough to the LGBTQ community that they could claim time traveling offense over them. That seems to be why she got into trouble.

I don't think that we should take away from her story that we shouldn't speak out on that which is important to us; we just need to accept that there are risks involved. You're not doing anything brave if there's no risk of serious consequence, and you're probably not doing anything important if you don't ruffle some feathers. We should remember to always be thoughtful in what we say, but not be cowed into silence.

I find it pretty disgusting really, at worst she should have been warned by disney, well maybe she was… Nothing I've seen of her posts say to me she deserved it, I may not agree with some of what she said (I haven't read much, just a rough overview) but she is welcome to her views and to share them. The post about nazi germany may have exaggerated things a bit but that's hardly a crime. Actually I'd go as far as saying what has happened sort of validates her point. One of the articles I read before posting this was for more intolerant and abhorrent than the posts it was complaining about. Bloody keyboard warriors. As has been said, sad times we live in.

El Cid wrote:
I don't think that we should take away from her story that we shouldn't speak out on that which is important to us; we just need to accept that there are risks involved. You're not doing anything brave if there's no risk of serious consequence, and you're probably not doing anything important if you don't ruffle some feathers. We should remember to always be thoughtful in what we say, but not be cowed into silence.

Thanks, this was what I wanted to articulate, but you said it better. It's hard to balance the right to free speech without ruffling feathers. I have seen people post far worse things online and not face consequences, and wonder why the heck they would blast that on social media, but in this day and age, you can't be too careful :(

Hollywood is different from sports or even politics. In sports, you can beat your wife and as long as you can sink a three-pointer, you’re alright. I won’t even get into politics. We saw so much of that.

However, with Hollywood, it’s different. It’s all about whether people like you or not. If you do something that people don’t like, they’ll stop watching you in movies or TV shows, and that’s money. And frankly, there’s enough actors competing for parts that you don’t need to worry about it. Even actors who have played unlikeable characters (although they’re meatier parts) will sometimes be type-casted and eventually ostracized.

its obvious and history will show the the current chaos we are in was majorly orchestrated by the CCP as a way to undermine the USA. they want to rule the world.they ahve said so. they created covid , funded BLM and antifa , supplied fentenol and are fucking with the power grid , put that senile dinoausr in power as their puppet .. its so obvious. im glad i got out of there cuz the US is playing right into Chinas game . all this cancer culter BS is part of their plan.

i used to be a liberal but they changed what liberal is and now liberal is weird and scary …… it will happen to you !!!

READ 1984

Long ago when celebrities didnt have a vehicle to say their crazy views we only glimpsed what was behind the curtain in tv interviews and magazine articles.
some opinions were shocking and I'm paraphrasing here: john wayne saying blacks didnt need equal rights until they matured, connery with the famous if rape is inevitable lay back and enjoy it and others.

with the Cosby and Michael Richards incidents it took me awhile to be able to watch Seinfeld and Cosby show again but I can now.

The bottom line is the bottom line and if you become too much of a problem and cost studios or a company money you got to go! That is why the term cancel culture is stupid because its about money, the public has no real power if a employer doesnt relent.

what carano and other conservative celebs and actors need to understand is you dont work for FOX news or any conservative outlet that pay commentators to be crazy and radical you are a actor or celebrity.

hollywood tolerates crazy a little, but perceived antisemitism is a no no. gina hit the jackpot with the holocaust reference filling up her crazy meter limit.

I think Rick distilled it right to the essence.

I need an explanation for this lol. This is like…why???? lol