Scarlet Johansson doesn’t make perfect career decisions (who does?) and sometimes wavers a bit (like all of us), but for my money she has a pair of cast-iron cojones. Because she’s stood up to the wokester thugs by going her own way on Woody Allen and by recently repeating her view that political correctness can get (and in fact has gotten) in the way of creative freedom.
“I recognize that in reality, there is a widespread discrepancy amongst my industry that favors Caucasian, cisgendered actors and that not every actor has been given the same opportunities that I have been privileged to,” Johnasson said in a statement after her views were misrepresented, she claimed, in an interview with As If magazine.
In the As If piece, Johansson said that she continues “to support, and always have, diversity in every industry and will continue to fight for projects where everyone is included. [But] as an actor I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job. I feel like it’s a trend in my business and it needs to happen for various social reasons, yet there are times it does get uncomfortable when it affects the art because I feel art should be free of restrictions.”
In a 7.3 HE piece called “Ciswashing” I assessed the criticism that Johansson was getting at the time for wanting to play real-life trans massage parlor owner Dante “Tex” Gill in Rub & Tug, a crime drama that would have been directed by Ghost in the Shell helmer Rupert Sanders.
“The trans-twitter community apparently feels that only a real-deal trans actor should play Gill (who transitioned from being a woman to a man),” I wrote. “They presumably regard Johansson’s casting in the same light that Native Americans probably saw the casting of Henry Brandon as ‘Scar’, the Comanche villian in John Ford‘s The Searchers (’56).
“Let’s back up and consider how this could have been avoided. Actors in top-tier Hollywood films are typically cast by producers and directors with two goals in mind — (a) find the most gifted actor to play a given role for the benefit of the film, and (b) preferably an actor with name recognition among the hoi polloi, in order to help boost ticket sales. So in a perfect world Johansson would have declined and Sanders would’ve found a gifted trans actor instead…fine. But who would that be?
Posted last year by HE commenter “Adam”: “This is just the latest outrage from ScarJo. She played an alien in Under the Skin for crying out loud when every single person knows full well she’s from Earth. And then there was The Other Boleyn Girl nonsense in which we were expected to believe she was British royalty! I mean, you can’t make this stuff up! And don’t get me started on her Black Widow character…I’ve seen her try martial arts in real life and it’s all totally fake — she can’t fight for shit. So I’m glad someone finally called her out for the fraud she is.”
Here‘s what Deadline‘s Mike Fleming and Peter Bart had to say about p.c. Stalinists a la Donald Sutherland in the final shot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
