#toxic holocaust

[alpaca-clouds]

Reading through a lot of Superman posts here, and I realize that a lot of people here (especially younger folks) do not know the story of how James Gunn got to be the head of DC-movies. Because... Yeah, I saw people calling him apolitical. And the entire thing is, that... he is anything but.

But also this story is wonderul and I love it, because it shows that sometimes Karma really works.

So, you know probably that James Gunn did the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, right? And like many directors that Marvel Studios hired at the time he was not quite a big director at the time. He had done a couple of bigger projects compared to folks like Taika Waititi or Ryan Coogler, given that Gunn was a writer for Dawn of the Dead and the Scooby Doo live action movies, but he had not directed anything outside of Indie stuff. But at the time the MCU was hiring a lot of indie darlings.

Now, the other thing you need to know: James Gunn is one of the rare instances of a white cis guy, who starts out very edgy and often misogynist, and queerphobic, and then realizes this before there is a scandal, rethinks his ways and publically apologizes. Like, early on he was pretty shitty. But he basically had his change of heart around 2012 and ever since had been pretty progressive in his politics.

So, he did the first two Guardians movies, and the people working with him (actors, staffers and so on) loved working with him. Said he was a good director. BUT also Gunn was one of those people who online would not shut up about his political opinions. Which very much included calling out Donald Trump and other rightwing pundits on their BS.

Which lead to some folks losely connected to the GamerGate movement - and big, big Snyder-verse DC fans - planning an attack. Mind you, them being Snyder fans is kinda ironic because Snyder and Gunn are good friends.

But yeah, they were among the kind of people who loved Trump and Snyder's dark and egdy Superman and for them James Gunn with his lighthearted, positive Superhero takes, his criticism of toxic men, and his criticism especially of Trump and his cronies was everything wrong with Hollywood and modern superhero media.

So, just as ComicCon 2018 was getting started they posted stuff online. Mostly a collection of screenshots from tweet Gunn had made before 2012. Aka, before he realized that toxic masculinity was shitty. These tweet (which he had not delected) included rape jokes, including CSA jokes, and jokes about the Holocaust. Again, all things he had apologized for repeatedly and unpromptedly back in 2012 and 2013.

But because it was SDCC, everyone was talking about it now, and media was all over it, the heads at Disney got cold feet and fired him before the con was over.

Which lead to outrage... from the left. Because most more progressive movie fans knew that Gunn had long apologized for this stuff. And the main actors who had worked with him on GotG 1 and 2 basically said: "We will not do GotG 3 without Gunn, even if it means we have to pay millions to Disney, for breaking our contracts." (Judgement is out on whether or not they would have done it, but they definitely threatened it.)

But the board of Disney was a bunch of cowards so they did not say anything. For months.

And during those months the folks at Warner were looking at it and came to Gunn: "Say, if you could just take any DC property and make a comic book movie out of it. What would it be?" And Gunn went: "I would make a good Suicide Squad movie." And Warner was: "Okay, here you go."

Which lead to Gunn making The Suicide Squad. Which was one of the better performing and especially better rated DCU movies.

By the time the movie got released Disney had seen the errors of their ways and rehired Gunn for GotG 3.

Which then got shot. But while it was in production Warner was realizing that right now their DC stuff was not working and struggled to find an audience. So they decided they needed someone to actually properly lead the project. Ideally someone who loved comics, and who people liked working with...

Which led them to decide on Gunn (together with another guy, who also is a director).

So then... Gunn got to make all the DC movies he wanted. Including those that were full of his political opinions. That by now are very much focused on toxic masculinity and how it harms people, on the issues of marginalized groups, and so on.

To sum it up: Some right wing nutjobs tried to get Gunn removed from GotG 3, partially because they wanted all comic book movies to be dark, gritty, and toxically masculine. And it ended with Gunn getting the control over the DC movies, putting his politics, that those right wing nuts hated, into those as well.

Karma is a bitch and I love her. :D

Also, you know what? I do not like Snyder's movies. But by now i have been convinced that despite the way his movies look, he is actually not a rigth wing nut-job. And actually, I kinda would like to see a movie written by someone more Gunn-aligned but directed by Snyder. Again, those two are good friends. So I could totally see that work.

[queenwille]

us resident here - i can't speak for any of the college campus experiences of antisemitism, but i do work in queer art spaces within the california bay area (berkeley, oakland, and san francisco). the most common antisemitism i've seen normalized is petty graffiti - "fuck israel" or "fuck zionists" appears somewhere on every block, most of the stop signs near me have a sticker calling to stop genocide where the "i" is shaped like israel colored in with a keffiyeh pattern, and there's a busy freeway underpass that has been wallpapered with memorial posters for hamas, hezbollah, houthi, and iri members a few times (it gets taken down every 6 months or so)

while it's a little less of an every day occurrence, another common trend is artists who aren't making art about i/p will still feel the need to virtue signal with design elements (just putting a crossed out israeli flag in the background for example), or throw away references to an israeli character being hated, or having a villain character (always played by a goy) use a bunch of yiddish words for no reason

this rise in performative vilification is distressing because it's going hand-in-hand with a culture of silence around being able to actually talk about anything jewish

a play by a holocaust survivor i produced recently had the marketing torpedoed by a lot of common arts marketing groups for vague and contradictory reasons (often weaponized incompetence, like one of them would really rather i think they were all morons who don't know how to open a pdf than admit they didn't want to hang up a poster about jews), and i clashed pretty horribly with a dramaturg who kept trying to bring gaza up in the educational resource materials even though the play was entirely set during the playwright's experience before her brother died on a death march

the isolation has had some devastating effects, like the closure of a jewish art museum because of funding problems - something literally every art and culture org in the state is dealing with. while so many other groups are calling for solidarity and mutual aid, this jewish museum received waves of harassing mail and was protested against twice supposedly for NOT promising to NOT platform zionists. showing the truth of "people love dead jews", the first statements of support from other organizations came after the closure announcement, when other museums could play the victim for their own fundraising and cry about how they could be next

while i can't speak for college atmosphere, i do some work in public elementary schools, and they've been removing jewish holidays from their cultural festivals and de-emphasizing the jewishness of many historical americans. mutliple school districts in the state are involved in lawsuits about toxic work environments for jewish teachers, inaction surrounding antisemitic bullying between students, or school boards being too blatant about the erasure i mentioned above

my personal experience might start with dumbass graffiti, and deal more with microaggressions than targeted harassment (except for what i witnessed at the museum), but it is hitting really close to home for me largely because throughout my childhood my family was kind of the picture of jewish american assimilation. we were the only jewish family in town, and i had to consciously try to regain a connection to judaism when i was in college. i'm seeing so many jewish families becoming more quiet and withdrawn and it's like a reenactment of choices my grandparents and parents made long before i was born. i chose to be jewish as much as i was born jewish, but i didn't fight for it as hard as i'm fighting now, and that's what scares me the most

i’m so sorry you’re experiencing this and please remember you’re not alone and we’re thinking of you!!!

thank you for sharing and i’m sending a big tight and overbearing jewish hug 🫂