I can’t help but think that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are sitting back laughing at all of this. They’ve made careers of pushing the envelope with South Park, book of Mormon etc. You name a taboo and they’ve done it and nobody cares. I guess jokes about raping babies is funny in a musical or when it’s animated but not on twitter or YouTube.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Cecil Terwilliger For This Useful Post:
The common thread between them is they’re (obviously?) jokes, so the question is: is there a limit to what you can joke about, and I think 99% of comedians would say no.
End of the day though, people just need to be more aware of what they say online, the fact that it isn’t said in a bubble, and that there can be real life consequences (and you’re not going to know what they are until they happen to you).
This is true in a number of contexts, but I think people are only now finding out that twitter's one of them. There is still some protection around stand-up. Anthony Jeselnik can joke about rape, killing babies and child molestation until the cows come home on a Netflix special, and as long as that's who he is and what he's known for, he can do it on twitter too (as long as it's sort of abstract and not joking about a tragedy while the bodies are being cleaned up). Trey Parker and Matt Stone are in the same boat - this is who they are and what they're known for, so they can do it with relatively little controversy. But if you work in an office job, or really anything that isn't comedy (as Gunn clearly found out), you cannot say anything in print that Jeselnik would get away with without any issue without risking your entire life. It's a difficult and nuanced double standard to navigate.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
So you guys know Gunn was a Troma director/producer/writer for years, including the head writer and assistant director for Tromeo & Juliet (with Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman, he of Toxic Avenger infame), a movie involving an intense amount of ultra-violent Three Stooges-level humor, body horror, fart jokes, incest, narrated by Lemmy (of Motorhead), a hermaphroditic cow-woman, a giant penis monster, and a generally bat#### crazy atmosphere.
That said, Gunn's tweets are sophomoric, in poor taste, and extremely try-hard. Which is fitting, because despite a deep teenage love for Troma, Troma is also sophomoric, in poor taste, and extremely try-hard.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
Settle down there, Temple Grandin.
The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to PsYcNeT For This Useful Post:
Would Trey Parker and Matt Stone ever get hired by a big company to direct a blockbuster? Has their own production company been successful?
As far as I know, they created the production company to take more revenue from South Park and Book of Mormon. Last I heard, Book of Mormon had done half a billion on Broadway alone. That doesn't include all the touring shows.
A theatrical production is probably one of the least censored spaces an artist can utilize. An animated show is one of them as well. The Book of Mormon could have completely bombed and no one would ave been surprised.
The difference is, as over-the-line as those guys may go, it is always done with a satirical purpose that is very clear and direct. Not sure what Gunn's tweets are trying to say so they just look vulgar and not funny (except for Jerkloose, that is indeed funny. Jerkloose could be a South Park episode and it would be great).
In the context of a South Park episode, they may have very well been funny. But they are not. They are not spoken by cartoon characters or lampooned religious zealots. They are spoken by him using his personal twitter account. This is why artists tend to use other mediums to express themselves and can end up in trouble when speaking in their own voice.
Even the Dan Harmon thing posted, while certainly weird and not to my taste, the way it's presented makes it clear it is intended in jest. Some people may find it offensive (even ones that find it funny probably still do), but the content and context make it clear. Gunn's tweets, some of them are clearly jokes, in his mind they are all clearly jokes, but many of them fall flat and are just down right gross. Unfortunately he can't hide behind it being a character he wrote or something and let the disgust be absorbed by the show/movie/play or whatever. He used himself as the medium for expression and thus, it's directly associated with his personal thoughts, rather than that of an over-the-top cartoon character.
I know the lead singer from Hedley was already brought up long ago but he is officially being charged with two counts of sexual assault and one count of sexual interference.
Thanos creator Jim Starlin with some interesting insight on the Gunn firing. Not that his opinion holds any more weight than anyone else’s, but the idea is that this was alt right retaliation for Rosanne getting cancelled by Disney.
Quote:
“After giving it a couple days to think over this James Gunn/Disney controversy, I've come to the conclusion that the Mouse got played. Yes, Gunn's decade-old tweets were distasteful and stupid, but clearly meant to be foolishly provocative rather than taken as advocacy. The whole uproar over them was plainly ginned up by two Breitbart hatchet men, John Nolte and Mike Cernovich, in response to Rosanne Barr's firing for her repeated hate-filled and racist tweets. I have to agree with Dave Bautisa on this one. Disney accepted a ridiculous apple and oranges argument and made one hell of a bad call.”
The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Cecil Terwilliger For This Useful Post:
Of course this stuff is being weaponized politically. That's what happens during moral panics, when due process and proportionality are abandoned in the rush to mob justice. Nobody should be surprised by this.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
I keep seeing the word "provocative" used as an excuse for Gunn's comments. I don't see that at all. I see a 40+ year old (at the time of the tweets) weirdo that actually thought the vile stuff he was spewing was funny and you have to wonder what's going on with a person that's generating this kind of stuff in their head. I get that some people have a twisted sense of humor but even a regular person that works for a small business or works for a public service could lose their jobs if past tweets like that were brought to the attention of management so Gunn isn't getting treated any differently than the rest of us. What if it was found a current teacher made tweets like that ten years ago when they were a student? If that teacher was teaching your kids would you still just consider that as simply "edgy" or "provocative"? No you would not but since he makes entertaining movies it's okay to look past this behavior? Unlike a teacher who would probably have their teaching careers terminated forever Gunn will get to work in Hollywood again. He will survive and he will probably be a better man because of this. It's also a lesson to others in the industry that trying too hard and pushing the boundaries too far may have consequences.
Last edited by Erick Estrada; 07-24-2018 at 07:27 AM.
Five years ago Patton Oswalt put out a series of tweets that were in two parts. The joke was that the second tweet could be offensive if seen out of context.
Cernovich has used this tactic a whole bunch of times.
EDIT, also those Patton Oswalt tweets are hilarious.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Chris Hardwick is returning to AMC next month. An interesting development for sure. You'd think their investigation was pretty thorough considering the accusation.
#rehire James Gunn. This was a right-wing hatchet job on someone who criticized the Supreme Leader, and it worked. Nobody should help these people. It's also an example of why I've never liked these internet lynching mobs.
If you care enough to have an opinion, then you should care enough to know the context.
MovieBob has the context for you. I'm sure there are others.
Chris Hardwick is returning to AMC next month. An interesting development for sure. You'd think their investigation was pretty thorough considering the accusation.
"Following a comprehensive assessment by AMC, working with Ivy Kagan Bierman of the firm Loeb & Loeb, who has considerable experience in this area, Chris Hardwick will return to AMC as the host of 'Talking Dead' and 'Talking with Chris Hardwick,'" AMC said in a statement to CNN. "We take these matters very seriously and given the information available to us after a very careful review, including interviews with numerous individuals, we believe returning Chris to work is the appropriate step."
So the convicted rapist know as Brock Turner is in the news again. For some reason, a lot of the articles I’m seeing about this clown call him the ‘Ex-Stanford Swimmer’ or ‘Ex-Stanford Student’, which is infuriating. He’s a convicted rapist. Call a spade a spade, cowards.
Anyway, his lawyer is arguing that the rapists conviction should be overturned, because:
Quote:
He just wanted “outercourse,” attorney Eric S. Multhaup told the court in a brief and in oral arguments.
Which apparently means, this lawyer alleges, that the rapist, Brock Turner didn’t actually intend to rape his victim because he has his clothes on:
Quote:
The distinction is central to Multhaup’s argument that Turner should not have been convicted of assault with intent to commit rape because, he claims, Turner’s clothes were on when two bicyclists saw him thrusting on top of the half-naked, unconscious woman. He argued that Turner was engaged only in “outercourse,” a “version of safe sex” with no “penile contact,” Multhaup explained.
Luckily the judge isn’t having it:
Quote:
“I absolutely don’t understand what you are talking about,” Justice Franklin D. Elia said, adding that the law “requires the jury verdict to be honored.”
It’s insane to me that Brock Turner the rapist doesn’t just go away and hide. He can’t be helping his cause at all by pulling stunts like this, especially after he was already handed a lenient sentence. Here's the articles:
Ex-Stanford swimmer appeals sexual assault conviction:
What Brock and his lawyer are trying to tell us is that the next time some dude has you unconscious on the ground and is fingering you, if he’s got his pants on, it’s not only totally OK, he’s actually doing you a favour because you won’t get pregnant and you won’t get an STI so, you know, you should be thanking him instead of suing him, because what more do you want out of life, right? Be satisfied with that extraordinary act of generosity, you ungrateful bitches.
During the trial, she had to listen to Brock and his team repeatedly invalidate her trauma. Before sentencing she had to listen to Brock’s team minimize her trauma by calling it “20 minutes of action”. At sentencing she had to accept the judge’s undermining of her trauma by giving her rapist a short summer prison term. And now Brock is trying to legally rebrand her trauma – and the trauma of so many others – as “outercourse” and “safe sex”, like rape was actually, all along, a misunderstood sugar-free soft drink that’s really good for you.
Last edited by Nyah; 07-26-2018 at 08:35 AM.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Nyah For This Useful Post:
