In recent days, the firings, retractions, suspensions and resignations at top publications over various accusations that are deemed offensive, should concern Hollywood in the coming months heading into Oscar season.
We were already here, just on a smaller scale, as we saw with Green Book and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and La La Land. It was as if Trump’s rise to power broke something precious and valuable and suddenly it was time to start assigning blame and bringing down people and films that could be brought down. As with all things cancel culture related, this only impacts those inside the bubble and those that depend on that insular world for feedback, support and a shared experience. Thus, if all of Film Twitter is calling Green Book racist, and if people who watch the movie outside of the bubble love it and think the accusations are overblown, and the film wins Best Picture? Well, needless to say, it causes problems. These two worlds do sometimes intersect. But only one is getting louder and the other is too afraid to speak out.
We all saw how the Me Too movement ignited the entire film community in the first wave of fear and panic. So many people will tell you that it was a necessary purge, those 200 men who lost their jobs and each of those resignations or firings were just. Still more people will believe they are making the world, the country, the industry a better place by purging it of sinners. They believe it too because they are 100% convinced anyone accused of something is the thing they are accused of being. For some, if Dustin Hoffman slapped a woman’s ass 40 years ago he is a rapist for life. The movies, their past, anything they said or did or wore is scrutinized to reveal them to be what they’re accused of being.
And everyone is crippled by fear. Fear someone highly respected will tweet to them something like “you are disgusting,” which happens with casual frequency on Twitter. So no one says anything. They just cower in the darkness and the storm passes. The people doing the accusing, those who believe in a utopian left free of all bad apples, are convinced everything they do is right. This is the new reality and those who disagree are left behind.
What is happening in the publishing industry right now and with journalism (RIP) is likely to hit the film industry and the Oscar race in the coming months the same way the Me Too movement did. Someone has to pay. Someone has to resign or lose their job or be called out. Someone who can be hurt by accusations, whether they are valid or not. Can it be stopped? Who knows. Maybe if Trump wins in November, maybe if Republicans win in 2024 but if left to our own devices we will destroy ourselves on the left. That’s my best prediction but I’m willing to keep an open mind.
Lest you wonder on which side I fall, I wrote a piece demanding that journalists and journalism stand up to Twitter and against the mass hysteria blooming around them, you can read that piece here.
Katie Herzog and Jesse Signal are two people who are speaking out against the purge on their podcast Blocked and Reported. In a recent episode called “Everyone Is Getting Fired All Once” they lay out their fears about this rapidly changing landscape of hysteria, accusations and resignations. They say the recent firings are because of what is being called “racist micro aggressions.” Both have long since been canceled. With nothing to lose they are speaking out. I recommend their podcast for anyone who is, needless to say, alarmed by what’s been happening lately.
A list has been compiled on a website called The Future of Capitalism, as follows:
The editor of the editorial page of the New York Times, James Bennet, for having published an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton calling for the deployment of the US military to quell what the article called an “orgy of violence,” and “rioters and looters” in American cities following the death in police custody of George Floyd.
The founder and CEO of CrossFit, Greg Glassman, for what seemed to be a dismissive or insensitive response to the situation.
The president of the Poetry Foundation, Henry Bienen, and its board chairman, Willard Bunn III, for a statement responding to the situation that critics said was “vague and lacking any commitment to concrete action,” the Associated Press reported.
The editor in chief of the food magazine Bon Appetit, Adam Rapoport, after photo surfaced of him in 2004 “dressed in a racially insensitive costume.”
The head of video at Conde Nast, Matt Duckor, who critics said presided over a racially biased compensation system.
The top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stan Wischnowski, over a headline that read “Buildings Matter, Too.”
The editor of the website Refinery29, Christene Barberich, after employees of color complained about the work environment.
David Shor, a political data analyst who was fired for having tweeted out a summary of a paper by a Princeton sociology professor.
Audrey Gelman, CEO and cofounder of the Wing, a coworking community for women, who had conceded, “Employees were required to attend diversity and antibias trainings, but it was a one-time requirement and didn’t go deep enough.”
…
University of Chicago professor of economics Harold Uhlig was placed on leave from his role as editor of the Journal of Political Economy following “accusationsof discriminatory conduct in a classroom setting.” Uhlig also had his contract with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago canceled after a Fed spokeswoman said the bank determined “that his views are not compatible with the Chicago Fed’s values and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.”
St. John’s University assistant fencing coach Boris Vaksman was fired “after making derogatory remarks about black people in a private lesson” according to “what appears to be an edited video,” the New York Times reported.
Stephen A. Huffman was dismissed by TeamHealth from his job as an emergency room doctor in Ohio after publicly speculating about why blacks have been hit particularly hard by Covid-19.
The CEO of Crisis Text Line, Nancy Lublin, “ousted by the nonprofit’s board of directors on Friday, in response to allegations of racism and mistreating staff,” Axios reported. Lublin’s mental-health resource has saved literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. The board said that “at least two members of the board will be replaced with black, indigenous, or persons of color candidates” and “Anti-racist trainings for board members will begin in July.”
A Canadian television personality, Jessica Mulroney, whose show, “I Do, Redo,” was canceled by its Canadian network after a blogger accused her of exhibiting “white privilege,” the New York Post reported.
Barbara Fedida, an ABC News executive, placed on “administrative leave” after what a HuffPost article based on unnamed sources described as “a long pattern of insensitive statements, including racist comments.” The HuffPost article said “Fedida issued a statement through her lawyer calling the claims “incredibly misleading” and saying she’d “been a champion for increased diversity.”
We also know that Variety’s Claudia Eller is “taking a leave of absence” after a dust up on Twitter.
A story appeared on The Wrap that was sort of a strangely written profile of the woman who filmed George Floyd’s murder. No doubt it was an odd take, decidedly tone deaf. But you had a choice of how to react to it. What we saw on Twitter was reactions of reactions. The more people were offended, the more people were offended by people who were offended. Big blue checks weighed in. The Wrap attempted to do damage control at first. They offered up an apology and said the story didn’t meet their editorial standards, and they affixed a message at the top with a warning. But for a while they left the piece up.
For a while, it looked like she would try to keep the article posted. As with The NY Times they tried to keep one foot in journalistic integrity and one foot in buckling to the angry people on Twitter but Twitter won and the article has been deleted. One glance at the comments on Twitter and it’s easy to see why.
After the outrage they ultimately deleted the article – though if you read those tweets carefully that is not enough. The people involved are eternally and permanently guilty for their crime of posting a piece others believed to be insulting, capitalizing on Floyd’s death, exploitative. The piece is no longer there so you can’t decide for yourself. In the old days it would have been debated in the comment section, which is what comment sections are for or in letters to the editor but that was before. We’re no longer living in that kind of culture, at least not on the left. We now living in a culture that shuts down dissent of any kind, even if the article was well meaning, and not deliberately offensive.
So I can’t tell you to read it – I can only tell you Twitter found it offensive and shut it down.
The writer Ross Johnson whose twitter feed has now been deleted — took to twitter to attempt to defend himself but that didn’t go very well either:
For Waxman, who built The Wrap as one of the few women in publishing, it wasn’t worth the fight, clearly. Just as with the New York Times or Bon Appetit or the Philadelphia Inquirer. These outlets are just hanging on barely for dear life. They depend on advertising for revenue which depends on eyeballs. If Twitter has a fit and decides to boycott every story that appears at The Wrap (full disclosure, in the past I have written for The Wrap and for Variety) then they lose money. Even the New York Times has to worry about eyeballs.
That is power, my friends. Power is what the people on Twitter have and the publications don’t because they are at the mercy of their readers and they need the support, whether it’s the New York Times or any other.
All of this to say, be ready Hollywood. Be ready anyone involved in the Oscar race. Now that the Academy has announced they will be measuring each potentially eligible Oscar film in terms of its inclusivity — no details yet as to what that means — Twitter will be watching and scrutinizing and digging and calling out each and every film that is released and reviewed. It will go farther than that. Every production or production assistant with a story to tell might blast it out to Twitter and that will be the end of that. You wouldn’t believe that all it takes is one call-out but that is indeed all it takes.
So, what to do about it? Well, you can’t buckle, that’s for sure. You have to stand there and take it and not back down. Once you back down, you’re done for. There is no forgiveness. There is no redemption. There is no way around being called out as a racist. What happened to Sharon Waxman, regardless of if she took the story down, is permanent, at least in Twitter shining puritanical city on the hill.
They can take heart that most people don’t agree with this. Most people see it for what it is: mass hysteria that they hope comes to an end. And it will come to an end. Either Trump will win or the GOP will take power in 2024 to shut it down for good. Why, because no one can live that. It is not sustainable. Journalism, film, art, politics — can’t be ruled by an angry group of people out for blood who police every word people write or say, everything they wear, every decision they ever made, good or bad.
People can’t force you to cover news or make art so that not a single person is offended — there is still a thing called the truth, even if we’re all living inside our own curated realities online. Usually the truth is the thing the most people can agree on. But in the era of social media and the hive mind I’m not sure that’s true anymore.
