Social justice jihadists seem to demand that everything be just so. It’s not enough to make a major motion picture featuring a female superhero. She also has to have the right political opinions, for example.
Scarlett Johansson was tapped to star in a movie about a transgender man who runs a chain of massage parlors that are a front for prostitution. The film was based on a true story and with Johansson attached, there was serious interest.
However, social justice warriors lashed out. The reason? Johansson isn’t trans.
The backlash got to the point that Johansson left the project, leaving the film in limbo.
The left is deluding itself to think that the attention the film has garnered is sufficient to make the project go forward without a star attached. To be sure, the film title “Rub & Tug” is getting some attention and that might help ensure that a film will be made.
However, even if it does get made, the damage has been done and the outrage-mongers have managed to shoot their own cause in the foot.
You see, movies are difficult to get made under the best of circumstances. Dozens of movies with big stars attached die each year. A great example is the proposed film “The Brazilian Job.” A sequel to 2003’s “The Italian Job,” it already had a major cast lined up with Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, and Jason Statham set to reprise their roles.
But the movie languished until it finally died, despite the star power attached.
If you’re wanting a movie to be made, particularly with any kind of significant budget, you need a star. The reason is that people don’t care about writers or, in many cases, even directors. They want to watch stars. The only exception to that is when it’s a character people already know and love, which is how people who had never even heard of Tom Holland or Chadwick Boseman were going to flock to see “Spider-Man” and “Black Panther.”
The story behind “Rub & Tug” isn’t that well known. That means it needs star power if it’s to become a major draw.
The movie may well have done a lot to humanize transgender men or otherwise help the transgender movement. It could well have raised significant awareness regarding the challenges they live with.
But that won’t work unless people actually go to see the movie.
Complaining about a star like Scarlett Johansson being in the lead rather than a transgender actor and pushing her away from the role makes it far more likely that many will never find any interest in the movie. It will ensure that if the movie is made, it will have a small budget and small release, thus making it far less likely anyone will even know it was made.
In the long run, it does nothing to help the trans community, transgender actors, or anyone else, thus negating any potential good to their cause that could come from a film like this. It’ll help convince Hollywood that transgender actors can’t carry a movie because they’ll have history to show just that.
In other words, they’re cutting off their own noses just to spite their faces.
While it’s not something I actually care about, I do think it’s funny. Especially because we all know that when this fails, it’ll be someone else’s fault that it failed, rather than the jackass looking back at them in the mirror.
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