A Pepper Grinder Post

Fired Gunn

You may well have heard recently that James Gunn, the man who directed the first two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, was fired by Disney because of some tweets he made seven to nine years ago (and later deleted) where he joked about rape and pedophilia.

On the one hand, I don’t think there’s anything funny about these topics, and I think joking about them is in horrible taste. On the other hand, I think that digging up very old things people have said, and publicizing them with the aim of getting them in trouble, is a scummy thing. I know I have said things in my life that I hope people don’t remember. In a way, it feels to me as though the social justice wars in the U.S. have followed the path of the French Revolution. When the revolutionaries ran out of easy targets such as royalty and oppressive landowners, they started to turn on their own. More and more frequently, the people being led to the guillotine were revolutionaries themselves, who just weren’t quite revolutionary enough. In the same way, when it was revealed that a vociferously anti-Trump liberal like Gunn had tweeted un-politically-correct things in the past, the cry went out, “Off with his head!” and Disney quickly complied

It also disturbs me that, according to the story I read, it was a conservative group who dug up the old tweets and publicized them. I really hope this is not a trend, where conservative groups feel they are justified in using the same tactics that liberal groups have used against people like Brendan Eich.

But here is the main thing that struck me about this story. When the old tweets were revealed, this is how Gunn defended himself:

Many people who have followed my career know when I started, I viewed myself as a provocateur, making movies and telling jokes that were outrageous and taboo. As I have discussed publicly many times, as I’ve developed as a person, so has my work and my humor. It's not to say I'm better, but I am very, very different than I was a few years ago; today I try to root my work in love and connection and less in anger. My days saying something just because it’s shocking and trying to get a reaction are over.

This sounds good as far as it goes, but what really struck me was that Gunn felt the need to assert he wasn’t saying he was better. Why would that be? If he doesn’t think what he said in the past was bad, why is he apologizing for it and trying to show how he has changed? If there was nothing wrong with his old tweets, why did he delete them? Why did Disney quickly sever its connection with Gunn and issue a strongly-worded statement once the tweets became public? It is clear to me that everyone involved either thinks that jokes about rape and pedophilia are bad, or they are afraid that a significant chunk of the paying public would be offended by them.

So what’s to be gained by denying that he’s saying he’s better now, when that’s obviously exactly what he’s saying?

I think Gunn’s statement reflects the strange corner into which modern society has painted itself. We aren’t allowed to say that things are morally Wrong or Right. Modern society is very aware that these types of moral absolutes could put a serious crimp in our if-it-feels-good-do-it lifestyle. And yet, it is extremely clear that almost everyone still thinks there are moral absolutes. Two single people engaging in consensual sex is 100% okay, but rape still isn’t. Having sex with children is still (according to most people) bad. So we should be pleased that we have not switched over to complete moral relativism, right?

The problem becomes clear when we think about the foundation of our current morality. And that foundation is …? That's the question. It clearly is not some unchanging wisdom handed down to us over the ages or written in a book. Much of that type of morality has been discarded. And yet, one gets the feeling that many people think that "we all" agree on the things that are good and bad. "Love" (whatever that actually means in our culture) and "connection" are good. Respect is good, though it seems that many people feel that some people are not deserving of respect. (For example, people with guns, people who voted for Trump, people who think some things are wrong that society thinks are fine.) It is clear from Gunn's misfortune that rape is bad and that being a pedophile is bad. Or is it?

There are a group of people who want to have sex with children. I have heard that some of these people think this is bad to want and work very hard not to give in to these desires. I've heard that there are others who think this activity should be legalized (providing the child "consents," of course). It is hard to remember, but there was a time not that long ago when much of society didn't think a homosexual couple should be allowed to marry, and when most psychiatrists thought that a biological male who felt he was actually a female had a psychiatric disorder. My point is this: what makes us so sure that in about 5 or 10 years, the rights of trans-age-sexual persons (or whatever clever label we find) will not be trumpeted in the way that transgenderism is now? And if that happens, what is it that will have changed? Popular opinion will have changed.

This,I believe, is the foundation of morality in much of our current culture. If most of the people we like and respect think something is right, it IS. If those same people think something is wrong, it IS. This, I think, is part of why we see a larger and larger gap, with more and more animosity, between people on different sides of issues. Let's take the example of Donald Trump. For people who despise him, doing so may be completely in line with the people they like and respect. That means that, for them, it is Truth (with a capital T) that Trump is a disaster. For others, whose views are shaped by a different group of people, the Truth may be exactly the opposite.

In the past, I think there was more agreement in our country about what was right and wrong. There may have been plenty of disagreement over interpretations of sources of truth like the Bible and the U.S. Constitution, but there was no doubt that these were sources of truth. People may have had very different ideas of how to achieve the ideal society, but their ideas of what that ideal was were not that different.

I think that in rejecting an absolute, unchanging view of right and wrong, we have created a kind of black hole that can suck in and destroy those orbiting around it. We may think we're keeping safe by holding our opinions in line with the majority, but what if the majority view shifts faster than ours does? What if someone later digs up something we said that was edgy when we said it, but is now just plain bad? We may find our necks in the same guillotine that executed those we branded as enemies of society.

- Pepper
Posted 2018-08-23

*Image credits: James Gunn from The Telegraph India, guillotine from Mental Floss UK.