More hypocrisy from Hollywood
Marvel’s most recent installment, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, has been banned in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar.
The reason according to The Hollywood Reporter, is that the film has a gay character named America Chavez, who also features in the comics.
Since homosexuality is illegal in the Islamic countries in the Middle East, the film didn’t get the approval of the censorship boards.
Previously films such as Eternals and West Side Story were banned in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait, too.
Marvel’s Eternals had a gay character with a major role. The film also depicted two male characters sharing a kiss and a gay couple adopting a child. In West Side Story, the character named Anybodys was written as transgender in the new adaptation, and played by nonbinary actor Iris Menas.
In China, streaming platforms censored the running lesbian plotline in the TV series "Friends" All mentions of the homosexuality of one of the series' main characters, Ross’s wife, was expunged. Also in China, the film Bohemian Rhapsody about the life of British rock star Freddie Mercury was released with two minutes of LGBTQ content removed.
So how did the dogmatically pro-LGBTQ Hollywood, particularly Disney, which owns Marvel, react to these bans?
They chose a path of silence and placed business interests above LGBTQ rights.
It is not just movie bans in these countries. LGBTQ behavior itself is punishable by lashes, and prolonged prison sentences in Muslim countries such as Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Syria, Brunei, and Egypt. China's record on LGBT rights also is repressive.
Hollywood relentlessly talks about its compassion for minority groups. Prominent denizens donated to Black Lives Matter and even bailed out BLM rioters to show their commitment.
Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghur Muslims over the past few years in a large network of state "re-education camps," and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms.
Countries such as Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Jordan, Tunisia, and other Islamic countries in the Middle East and North Africa have consistently banned films starring actress Gal Gadot because she is Jewish and Israeli.
Hollywood once again hasn't uttered a syllable against these blatant acts of religious discrimination and human rights violations. The business continues as normal.
After Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, Hollywood studios such as Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, Sony Pictures, and Paramount stopped releasing new films in Russia.
But when Florida passed a law that prevents classroom indoctrination on “sexual orientation or gender identity” for very young children, Disney went ballistic.
The bill was mischaracterized as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill. The noise created almost gave the impression that LGBTQ behavior was outlawed in Florida.
Disney CEO Bob Chapek was attacked for not speaking up and employees staged a walkout in protest.
In reaction, Disney vowed to donate $5 million to organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign, that work to protect LGBTQ rights. Executives are holding town hall meetings on how to better serve the LGBTQ community in the future.
Pixar employees asked that their parent company, Disney, “take a decisive public stand” against the legislation and reinstated a same-sex kiss in the upcoming Pixar film “Lightyear” that was previously removed.
Disney proclaimed that they “are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+”
Alas, no such proclamations for LGBTQ people in Muslim nations and China where there is real danger and discrimination.
The truth is that Hollywood’s sole aim is reaping profits.
They attack President Trump or Republicans in Florida because they know there is no real threat to either themselves or LGBTQ people. Neither Trump nor the GOP are going to ban their movies or hurt them financially. In fact, their relentless virtue-signaling may give them some easy publicity which means higher ticket sales.
The reason Hollywood claims to care for LGBTQ rights is that the LGBTQ advocacy organizations have over a period of time become pressure groups. These organizations follow the ‘donate generously or else you are a bigot” business model. These are similar to criminals or to corrupt officials who collect protection money
Most in Hollywood post a rainbow flag on social media and donate generously to these groups just to appease the monster and appear to be 'the good ones.' An identical business model has been used by BLM. The result is both BLM and LGBTQ groups are wealthy and powerful, the equivalent of rich corporate houses, except that they are earning profits without selling products.
Even for the Florida situation, a part of the compromise was Disney pledging to pay $5 million to LGBTQ organizations. Money is, was, and always will be the core aim behind these manufactured ruckuses. These groups know they can rely on cowardly or compromised business leaders to capitulate and donate with ease.
Like most businesses, LGBTQ organizations know where their customer base exists, i.e., who can be pressured to donate their millions. When it comes to Islamic countries and China, they know they do not stand a chance. So they stay mum and they don't pressure Hollywood to act.
For Hollywood, China and various Islamic nations mean hundreds of billions of dollars in profit to corporate enterprises, so human rights concerns are placed in the back seat.
We should never ever take the empty utterances from Hollywood seriously. They should from now be known as Hollowood.
The larger message of the appalling Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial
I’ve been assiduously ignoring coverage about the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial. The headlines I’ve seen tell me that it’s incredibly sordid and I’m not sufficiently interested in either of these two people to care about the details. However, to the extent I’ve become aware of some of what went on in their home, it seems worthwhile pointing out that Hollywood is a deeply dysfunctional place that has way too much sway over our culture and, worse, over our children.
I’m an old movie buff. I love the fact that I can watch a movie from 1918, 1928, 1938, and so on and, through those movies, see people of the past moving in real-time. That’s the extraordinary thing about movies. For the first time in human history—and for a very short part of the span of human history—we get an almost three-dimensional window into the past. Even in black-and-white movies, people aren’t static. They’re living, breathing, talking, and moving. It’s wondrous.
Because I like reading about the old movies, I know that many of the old-time actors were people who had horrific childhoods, failed at most activities before drifting into Hollywood, were uneducated, engaged in distasteful habits (sexual perversions and substance abuse), and often ran afoul of the law. However, under the old studio system, these matters were kept secret, only emerging decades later, often after the star had died.
Beginning in the early 1930s, after the morality police started taking a whack at Hollywood studios for their decadent movies, Hollywood worked hard to align itself with American values. In the movies, the bad were punished and the good rewarded. Marriage and family were celebrated. America was presented as a virtuous country. Men were manly and women were feminine, except for the handful of character actors who played against the norms, always for laughs. Most importantly, the studio made sure that their actors were presented as avatars of American virtues: hard-working, family-oriented, and moral. The truth was irrelevant. It was the image that mattered.
When the studio system broke up in the 1960s, that tight control over the stars ended. The counterculture encouraged actors to present themselves as edgy and progressive. Now, of course, Hollywood actors, the majority of whom are marginally educated, try desperately to present themselves as intellectual heavyweights. The easiest way to do that is to ape the leftist politics on college campuses. “I may not have credentials but I can be every bit as crazily leftist as an actual college graduate.”
Image: Johnny Depp (edited). YouTube screen grab.
However, when you start reading about so many of the actors, you discover that they’re exactly like the people who drifted into Hollywood in the early years of the industry: horrible childhoods, broken homes, failed educations, failed work histories, distasteful habits (sexual perversions and substance abuse), and problems with the law. If they were your next-door neighbors, you’d do your best to keep your children far away from them. But because they’re “stars,” they’re admired. Worse, impressionable children fail to understand that their lifestyle choices are awful.
And that gets me to Johnny Depp. Over the years, he’s been politically innocuous. He’s also shown himself to be a talented actor. He gets points for both those things.
However, poor Depp is also the perfect star stereotype: Horrible childhood, limited education, substance abuse, and sexually perverse relationships. On-screen, he’s in control, even if his character is not; off-screen, he married a woman who was famously crazy and vicious and then suffered horribly at her hands because he’s weak and lacks internal resources.
The headlines tell the story: drunken binges, screaming fights, physical violence, severed fingers, drugs, fecal matter, and an atmosphere of paranoia and hatred. It made me think that, back in the old days, when ordinary people viewed actors with deep suspicion as immoral, they may have been on to something.
One day, we’ll look back on the second and third decades of the 21st century as the “great revealing” because we’re finally seeing past the shiny surfaces our institutions presented. We’ve learned that our American government bears little relationship to its constitutional guidelines and is scarily close to a third-world dictatorship. We’ve learned that our federal law enforcement agencies are dangerously corrupt. We’ve learned that those institutions to which we’ve entrusted our children, whether schools or corporate entertainment (Disney, Nickelodeon, etc.), aggressively indoctrinate our children into leftist politics and dangerous gender lunacy. And we’ve learned that the people who have a disproportionate amount of control over American culture are truly awful, second-rate human beings.
Dennis Prager is fond of saying “I prefer clarity to agreement.” Well, we’re getting our clarity and I think a lot of Americans are reaching an agreement: Our institutions are broken and must change. And getting back to Depp v. Heard, one way to start that change is to withdraw our money from Hollywood. These people really don’t deserve it.
Paramount Parts Ways with ‘Ray Donovan’ Director After Investigation into Misconduct Claims
April 24 (UPI) — Former Ray Donovan showrunner David Hollander has been fired from the upcoming Showtime series, American Gigolo, following an investigation by the network and producers Paramount Television Studios into his alleged misconduct.
“David Hollander is no longer on the drama series American Gigolo and Paramount Television Studios no longer has a producing relationship with him,” a statement from Showtime and Paramount said Saturday.
Deadline cited unnamed sources as saying the investigation and firing involved comments Hollander allegedly made on the set of American Gigolo.
MAY 20: Director David Hollander, Liev Schreiber and Susan Sarandon of Ray Donovan speak on “Fix This: Ray Donovan” during Day Two of the Vulture Festival Presented By AT&T at Milk Studios on May 20, 2018 in New York City. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Vulture Festival)
Although the type of statements have not been disclosed, they were not of sexual harassment nature, the outlet said.
Hollander has not publicly remarked on the situation and Variety said Hollander’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The series adaptation of the 1980 Richard Gere film stars Jon Bernthal, Gretchen Mol, Rosie O’Donnell, Gabriel LaBelle and Wayne Brady. Bernthal plays former male escort Julian Kaye who returns to the Los Angeles sex industry 15 years after he was arrested for murder.
Hollander also created created CBS’ The Guardian and TNT’s Heartland.
No comments:
Post a Comment