Okay, I kinda promised my take on this whole thing, and even though I still don't really want to actively get into this mess, I think I'll make a few statements (because I'm that important, and you're all dying to know my opinion).
In my opinion, James Gunn shouldn't have been fired. Also, Roseanne Barr shouldn't have been fired, at least not as quickly as it happened. And the reason is Freedom of Speech.
Now, I get that, legally, your First Amendment only applies to the Government, and that private businesses can do however they please. But I'm not talking about the legal issue, I'm talking about the moral and social issue. The idea behind Free Speech is that you can say whatever you want without fear of punishment, without censorship. It is something that is highly important for a functioning democratic society, because once the precedent is given that you can censor somebody for one thing, it is that much harder to argue against censoring somebody else for another thing. It's the most slippery of slippery slopes.
Freedom is always the Freedom of the Other, too, or however the saying goes, but you know what I mean. Or, to quote The Drumhead: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
So, Free Speech is something to be held up against all kinds of odds, because it is that important. And therefore, we shouldn't just accept private corporations trying to punish an employee for expressing themselves. We certainly shouldn't support this. Because we don't trust our government to be responsible with what speech is allowed and which isn't, but we trust big corporations with no democratic control mechanisms whatsoever?
Now, I'm allowing for the argument of not wanting to lose business, although my own personal feeling would be that corporations as big as Disney should be able to carry that burden. So, okay, it's kind of understandable for a company to fire an employee if they feel that public opinion against that employee is so strong they'd boycott the company in order to punish said employee. And while it can feel like mob rule at times, it is at least some form of semi-democratic process.
But the problem there is that, with both Barr and Gunn, Disney didn't even wait for an actual public opinion to form. In Barr's case, especially, where she was fired less than twenty hours after her tweet. That's the company trying to guess public opinion. And while they were kinda right on Roseanne Barr, the case is way less clear with Gunn. Right now, from what I've seen and heard on- and offline is that people tend to disagree with Disney (that could be my own bubble, though). In any case, it is a dangerous situation for society when a private company, especially one as dominatingly big (and about to get even bigger) as Disney, is penalizing employees for what they say outside of work.
Now, on the second, less important and far more personal issue, the jokes. My feeling is that there's no topic you can't joke about. To para-phrase Ricky Gervais: No, pedophelia and rape are not funny. But jokes about pedophelia and rape can be funny. Because jokes can be many things, they can be for something, they can be against something, they can be indifferent to it. In fact, instead of para-phrasing Gervais, I think I just link to his talking about this subject on Jim Norton's podcast:
Another way to put it, racist jokes aren't funny, but jokes about racism are brilliant. And they are almost indistinguishable on a superficial level, the difference comes with context, with who is telling the joke, and to whom. So, yes, that is another difference between Barr and Gunn. I do believe that Barr is a racist, but I don't think Gunn is a pedophile. That said, Gunn's jokes were just not funny. It's not their topics were bad, but they were just shitty comedy.
And, yes, even though I find pedophilia to be despicable beyond measure, I have laughed about jokes about pedophilia (off the top of my head, I remember jokes from Gervais, Jim Jefferies, Family Guy, and I'm sure there are more). Just as I have laughed about jokes about murder, accidents, wars, Hitler, and a whole lot of other topics that some people apparently can't be turned into humor. As Steve Allen used to put it, "Tragedy plus time equals comedy". And the remaining problem is to decide whether a tragedy is long enough ago to be funny, or if it's "too soon".
In my opinion, James Gunn shouldn't have been fired. Also, Roseanne Barr shouldn't have been fired, at least not as quickly as it happened. And the reason is Freedom of Speech.
Now, I get that, legally, your First Amendment only applies to the Government, and that private businesses can do however they please. But I'm not talking about the legal issue, I'm talking about the moral and social issue. The idea behind Free Speech is that you can say whatever you want without fear of punishment, without censorship. It is something that is highly important for a functioning democratic society, because once the precedent is given that you can censor somebody for one thing, it is that much harder to argue against censoring somebody else for another thing. It's the most slippery of slippery slopes.
Freedom is always the Freedom of the Other, too, or however the saying goes, but you know what I mean. Or, to quote The Drumhead: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
So, Free Speech is something to be held up against all kinds of odds, because it is that important. And therefore, we shouldn't just accept private corporations trying to punish an employee for expressing themselves. We certainly shouldn't support this. Because we don't trust our government to be responsible with what speech is allowed and which isn't, but we trust big corporations with no democratic control mechanisms whatsoever?
Now, I'm allowing for the argument of not wanting to lose business, although my own personal feeling would be that corporations as big as Disney should be able to carry that burden. So, okay, it's kind of understandable for a company to fire an employee if they feel that public opinion against that employee is so strong they'd boycott the company in order to punish said employee. And while it can feel like mob rule at times, it is at least some form of semi-democratic process.
But the problem there is that, with both Barr and Gunn, Disney didn't even wait for an actual public opinion to form. In Barr's case, especially, where she was fired less than twenty hours after her tweet. That's the company trying to guess public opinion. And while they were kinda right on Roseanne Barr, the case is way less clear with Gunn. Right now, from what I've seen and heard on- and offline is that people tend to disagree with Disney (that could be my own bubble, though). In any case, it is a dangerous situation for society when a private company, especially one as dominatingly big (and about to get even bigger) as Disney, is penalizing employees for what they say outside of work.
Now, on the second, less important and far more personal issue, the jokes. My feeling is that there's no topic you can't joke about. To para-phrase Ricky Gervais: No, pedophelia and rape are not funny. But jokes about pedophelia and rape can be funny. Because jokes can be many things, they can be for something, they can be against something, they can be indifferent to it. In fact, instead of para-phrasing Gervais, I think I just link to his talking about this subject on Jim Norton's podcast:
Another way to put it, racist jokes aren't funny, but jokes about racism are brilliant. And they are almost indistinguishable on a superficial level, the difference comes with context, with who is telling the joke, and to whom. So, yes, that is another difference between Barr and Gunn. I do believe that Barr is a racist, but I don't think Gunn is a pedophile. That said, Gunn's jokes were just not funny. It's not their topics were bad, but they were just shitty comedy.
And, yes, even though I find pedophilia to be despicable beyond measure, I have laughed about jokes about pedophilia (off the top of my head, I remember jokes from Gervais, Jim Jefferies, Family Guy, and I'm sure there are more). Just as I have laughed about jokes about murder, accidents, wars, Hitler, and a whole lot of other topics that some people apparently can't be turned into humor. As Steve Allen used to put it, "Tragedy plus time equals comedy". And the remaining problem is to decide whether a tragedy is long enough ago to be funny, or if it's "too soon".
