Just as I was sitting down to begin a column on cancel culture in the Nerdosphere, the news that LucasFilm/Disney had dropped Gina Carano from The Mandolorian landed like an angry asteroid. I was even planning on using Carano and the controversy that surrounded her social media posts last November as part of my argument. I knew I should have bought some lottery tickets.
We’ve covered this ground a lot lately. I did a column on Marilyn Manson just last week and one on Johnny Depp last December (could we possibly get through a single month without someone doing or saying something stupid? Pretty please?). And predictably, Carano’s unceremonious departure has become the latest chapter in our polarized political flame wars as the right wing and the left went after each other’s idealogical jugulars online.
Even Texan Senator Ted Cruz took time from being a juror in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial to tweet about it, taking shots at “Liberal cancel culture”.
But this isn’t a discussion about Carano or yet another one about cancel culture. Rather it’s a diatribe about consequences and celebrities doing stupid things. Not long ago I wrote a piece about how pointless, petty and ignorant the culture of celebrity bashing was. Well this is that column’s pragmatic big brother.
And Carano is the proof in the pudding.
Once her pioneering career as an MMA fighter ended, Carano tried to transition to Hollywood. But her efforts were pretty much limited to a handful of cameos and roles in unknown action movies that went straight to DVD. Most people didn’t know she even existed until she turned up in the first Deadpool. She openly admitted that being cast in The Mandalorian saved her movie career, even though she only appeared in three episodes during the first season.
But Carano’s Cara Dune became a hit with fans and she was a semi-regular by the time the second (Emmy nominated) season hit DisneyPlus. She even found herself a role model for little girls-Star Wars fans or not-the world over. Word was LucasFilm was planning on using her character in a number of the new Star Wars shows coming down the streaming pike with rumours of a possible spinoff just for her. In other words, her Hollywood struggles were over and she was sitting on the golden egg.
And she threw it all away.
Carano started poking the hornet’s nest months ago when her social media activity was attracting some unwanted attention. This wasn’t Disney’s first rodeo and she should have known how House of the Mouse had cleaned up these kind of messes before. You also have to think there was at least one warning from The Mandalorian’s producers to cool it with her online shenanigans. Carano also should have known that if Disney was willing to cut ties with bigger fish like James Gunn and Roseanne Barr, she would have been a much easier potato to drop.
But she persisted regardless and it has cost her more than her role in The Mandalorian or future Star Wars projects (Hollywood’s biggest gravy train this side of the MCU). Her talent agency has also dropped her and you can bet her name appeared on a dozen casting blacklists the second the mainstream media picked up the story. As you can see from her career pre-Baby Yoda, she wasn’t exactly in high demand. And contrary to what some of her more passionate defenders and apologists believe, this will further erode her already anemic professional credibility.
The truth is she is no longer an asset and her career is dead on arrival. And it’s her own fault.
Don’t mistake this for a debate about free speech or her personal politics either. The evidence of what happens when you poke the social media bear is everywhere. Cancel culture (or more appropriately, consequence culture) is the zeitgeist of our day. If you don’t know what a questionable tweet or two can do to your career, you haven’t been paying attention. Or you’re just plain stupid.
Carano even knew her most recent social media tantrum was wrong because she deleted it shortly after posting it. But the Internet doesn’t forget. And it it doesn’t forgive (some of the tweets that prompted Disney to fire James Gunn back in 2018 were a decade or more old).
Carano is just the most recent example of celebrities being oblivious and deliberately stupid. Especially for people whose lives are scrutinized under a media microscope 24/7. Every person who has a phone also has a high definition video camera and instant access to the Internet. Which means EVERYONE. Everything any of us does can be seen. And it’s a thousand times worse for people who are the centre of attention wherever they go.
Remember Jesse Smollet’s master plan to gin up attention for his career? It took about two seconds to figure out that whole thing was a hoax. Unless your Lex freaking Luthor, you can’t keep anything secret and you aren’t going to get away with anything.
The first moral of the story for the rich and famous is that any and every boneheaded thing you do will be seen by the entire world in real time. And that very same boneheadedness can mercilessly crush your career in a matter of heartbeats.
The second moral of the story is if you don’t want to be fired, don’t do stupid things in public. Including the global public space that is social media. Because while doing something dumb in public-where it will be captured and uploaded for the entire word to see instantaneously-is stupid, doing anything slightly questionable on social media is practically career suicide.
While a content producing company may consider it’s stars investments, nothing is more valuable than its brand. And once someone, anyone, becomes a liability to that brand they are removed with surgical efficiency, even if it risks short term backlash or economic fallout. Thats why many movie studios, production companies and professional sports teams are beginning to include morality clauses in their talent’s contracts.
This is the reality we live in now and everyone has to adapt. Especially celebrities.
(And before anyone tries to paint this as an exclusively left wing issue, cancel culture spreads across the entire political spectrum. Remember when a bunch of people burned expensive merch to protest Nike’s deal with Colin Kaepernick not too long ago? Or were destroying pricey Kaepernick jerseys before that to protest him? Or how we hear the inevitable complaints about “toxic left wing politics” every year at Oscar time? We’re already seeing people threatening to boycott both The Mandalorian and Disney in defence of Carano. I digress.)
While I will defend the hard work and sacrifices many celebrities make to reach their level of success, I will also be the first one to call them on their reckless stupidity and greed when its responsible for the self-destruction of their careers.
It’s widely believed that Disney may have decided to cut ties with Carano as long ago as last November. They were just looking for an excuse to make it official. If that’s the case, her latest social media escapade provided the very bullet they needed. Carano essentially pulled the trigger on her own career. Worse yet, she may have pulled the trigger on her entire future.
Image via www.piratesandprincesses.net
