Ah, San Diego Comic Con: a time for trailers, rumors, celebrity hijinks and all the news about your favorite franchises you’ve been waiting desperately to hear. This year is no different: we got the rebirth of The Clone Wars, Joss Whedon is rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer and oh yeah, James Gunn was permanently let go from Disney/Marvel.
Hold up, what?
That’s right, Disney gave Gunn the axe after a handful of old tweets popped up that are, frankly, tasteless and borderline disturbing.
How could a man — a man who penned a script that made us all Groot — say such disturbing things? Easy: Gunn cut his teeth in Hollywood writing for a little studio called Troma.
If you’re unfamiliar with Troma, lets just say they specialize in all the stuff Disney wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. They’re gross, crass, dirty, and to a lot of people, very funny. Gunn’s too-edgy shock humor (some of them from the days before Miley was a blonde and Chris Brown didn’t have a domestic assault conviction on his record) is gross, that’s a fair assessment. But is it a fireable offense? Did he deserve what he got?
If you ask Dave Bautista, no. He’s been outspoken about his support of James Gunn. Gunn’s brother, Sean Gunn, (who plays Kraglin and does the mo-cap for Rocket) agrees. So do Selma Blair and Michael Rooker (who quit Twitter in protest). There are a lot of people out there in Gunn’s social and professional circles who think that something he tweeted back when he was working on titles like PG Porn and Lollipop Chainsaw aren’t a reflection of the man he is today. Gunn, himself, agrees; in an interview he gave in May of 2017, he said:
“I felt like Guardians forced me into a much deeper way of thinking about, you know, my relationship to people, I suppose. I was a very nasty guy on Twitter. It was a lot f******g edgy, in-your-face, dirty stuff. I suddenly was working for Marvel and Disney, and that didn’t seem like something I could do anymore. I thought that that would be a hindrance on my life. But the truth was it was a big, huge opening for me. I realized, a lot of that stuff is a way that I push away people. When I was forced into being this” — he moved his hand over his chest — “I felt more fully myself.”
And what’s “this”?
“Sensitive, I guess?” he said. “Positive. I mean, I really do love people. And by not having jokes to make about whatever was that offensive topic of the week, that forced me into just being who I really was, which was a pretty positive person. It felt like a relief.”
So it was no mystery Gunn tweeted the way he did. Certainly, Marvel wouldn’t hand him Guardians without checking into him. Gunn’s ancient-by-internet-standard tweets are such a not-secret that he talks about them himself. When conservative bloggers dredged up old tweets after Gunn made fun of Ben Shapiro, they went on a destructive spree in an attempt to nuke the director’s career. It worked. Gunn’s opponents include people like Mike Cernovich, one of the most disgusting humans on the planet. Keep in mind, these are people who supported the election of a man accused of criminal acts with minors in Alabama.
Disney, a company built on entertaining children, backed away from a man making sexual jokes about them. How do parents send kids to school with lunchboxes and notebooks featuring Marvel heroes when the guy writing and directing the heroes joked about criminal acts with children? It’s PR 101.
So who is at fault here? Conservatives like Ben Shapiro, for getting that enraged over a tweet calling him names and criticising the president? Disney, for being so reactionary that they kicked to the curb a man who helped make Chris Pratt a household name and built the space side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Gunn, for not deleting those tweets when all of Hollywood is looking to root out the sexual predators and other assorted rot?
Since Gunn’s firing, the same group of people who dredged up his old tweets have targeted other Hollywood celebrities who have openly disagreed with the president. Patton Oswalt, who might just be the most harmless guy in Hollywood (and a recent widower, who spends most of his days fighting his deceased wife’s cause — a cause that saw an arrest for one of the most notorious unsolved serial killing in US history). It went pretty poorly. They’ve also gone after Dan Harmon, best known for creating the sitcom Community and Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty. Adult swim issued the following statement:
“At Adult Swim, we seek out and encourage creative freedom and look to push the envelope in many ways, particularly around comedy,” the representative said. “The offensive content of Dan’s 2009 video that recently surfaced demonstrates poor judgement and does not reflect the type of content we seek out. Dan recognized his mistake at the time and has apologized. He understands there is no place for this type of content here at Adult Swim.”
Dan Harmon left Twitter.
They’ve also gone after acerberic comic Michael Ian Black, who indicated that he was reported to both the FBI and Child Protective Services.
Let’s be clear: James Gunn is not accused of hurting anyone. He’s not accused of putting his hands in inappropriate places, like Al Franken. He’s not currently in court battling sexual assault charges, like Harvey Weinstein. He’s not accused of showing people his genitals, like Louis C.K. He’s accused of making gross, crass, over-the-line, ill-advised, and horrifying jokes. While social media can be a powerful tool for law enforcement when it comes to catching predators, is this one of those scenarios?
Is Gunn guilty of bad taste, or is he the victim of cyberbullying at the hands of rabid internet pundits?
Are we still Groot?
There’s an online petition to bring Gunn back to direct the third Guardians film (he’s already written it and delivered the script to Disney). Whether the media titan (which will represent 40 percent of box office releases once the deal to acquire Fox goes through) will ever work with Gunn again remains to be seen. And if he doesn’t, what does that mean for anyone who works with Disney? Or anyone who has ever cracked a joke online that might not have hit the target? Or is Gunn the beginning of the alt-right culling in Hollywood of anyone who speaks out against the right?