BREAKING: Lucasfilm Reportedly Fires Gina Carano With Official Statement
Well, it finally happened. Originally this article was going to cover why Gina’s social media presence was so controversial with her newest bad take: implying that being a Trump Supporter was akin to being a Jewish person under Nazi Germany. But now, after months of stonewalled silence from the company, Disney has decided to take action against the company’s biggest liability to their public reputation: Gina Carano is no longer a part of Star Wars, made official by a statement that io9 obtained from a Lucasfilm spokesperson.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
There are many people under the impression that Twitter is the perfect platform to show the ugliest side of yourself that you're still inexplicably proud of. Gina Carano is one of them. These are the same kinds of people that shout "Free Speech!" on reflex without truly knowing what that means. As a reminder: the basics are that freedom of speech is a right preventing the United States government from persecuting individual citizens for having an opinion. Like many rights, it has limits, and nowhere does it say that private individuals can't shout down bad opinions or that rich individuals are entitled to a job that plenty of people can do instead. But for the sake of argument, let's look at the merits of Gina's side: they're there.
Gina's Actually Getting Mobbed on Twitter
There's reasonable disagreement, and then there's flat-out abuse. Social media mobs aren't a court and jury; they do their work by being reactive, not thoughtful. Like traditional mobs, they aren't primarily fueled by the need for clout, but by a feeling of righteous indignation. This is important to distinguish because mobs can do horrible things without feeling a single twinge of regret; harassment is a line that too many are willing to cross while feeling justified.
There are reasons to be mad at Gina (we'll get there), but it would be a complete lie to paint her as the sole villainous wrongdoer. If anything, the abusive parts of the flood of tweets are probably the only ones that matter to her. If one person says, “Hey Gina, you probably shouldn't imply that it's fine to go out maskless in a pandemic, because you’re a TV star and people will believe you,” and another person threatens you, the threat is going to mean a lot more. Common sense says that while you may have problems with a person, it’s never okay to send them death threats, but common sense isn’t common practice. That being said, what’s the worst that can happen to Gina Carano under cancel culture?
There's a real point in that people are abusive on Twitter and Gina's faced harassment: that's true. Gina chose a poor way to handle it: insulting people indirectly, as she has a pattern of doing.
The Worst Thing that Can Happen to Gina Carano Has Already Happened
What people mean when they say they don’t have freedom of speech is actually talking about cancel culture: the idea that people can be as cancelled as easily as a TV show over saying something that people disagree with. Businesses have definitely cancelled things in response to online rage against content from creators, but when it comes to celebrities, it’s hardly the life-ending punishment that people online make it out to be. Not being able to host the Oscars and still being extravagantly wealthy isn’t a life-ending punishment. Having your vintage show’s revival cancelled isn’t a life-ending punishment. Having to switch from shilling doomsday kits on major network television to doing it yourself online with direct donations isn’t a life-ending punishment. Getting banned from Twitter on your personal account only to try and sidestep that ban by embarrassingly switching to spreading conspiracy theories on your pillow-selling Twitter account isn’t a major punishment (even when your pillow Twitter gets banned as collateral).
Plenty of “cancelled” celebrities have bounced right back into their previous roles. As it turns out, once you’re wealthy or a celebrity, it’s difficult to have any meaningful consequences applied to your life. In fact, a lot of celebrities have made a living out of playing victim. Average people get cancelled, too: they’re removed from businesses, schools, and associations, and this honestly means a lot more to them. Getting someone fired from a job they need to survive is entirely different from having the honor of playing someone in the most-watched TV show on the air.
Gina Carano was fired from a position she neither needed, was entitled to, nor valued. If she did value it, she would’ve thought twice about the horrible things she regularly put out on social media while representing one of the biggest media companies in the world. Ultimately, she will still be better off than most people in the country; she’s not in any real trouble, especially with how many people support her because of her views instead of in spite of them. To say that she has no right to free speech is to ignore the tens of thousands of followers she has on her accounts. If anything, she has more than most of us. That being said...
Gina Carano "joking" about how she doesn't trust vaccines or absentee ballots. Two things which, to her, are comparable.
Disney Is A Business And Not A Government
The rights afforded to us by free speech are relatively well protected. Criticizing the government isn’t a crime. Criticizing a celebrity? For better or worse, that’s an American tradition: once a celebrity does something that jeopardizes their position, the spotlight gets put on them even more. Celebrities have more power than ever. Whether they intend to be or not, they are role models and leaders of movements. When a celebrity says something, there are people who value it and take it to heart. This is why what they say to the public matters, and why we should be careful about who has the privilege of being given the authority of a role model for millions.
Likewise, brands are more powerful than ever, and their reputations matter to them. When a brand is employing a celebrity, and that celebrity is directly hurting their reputation by painting them as being okay with a person who encourages her following of anti-masking, transphobic, election-fraud conspiracizing groups of people…they’re not going to be happy. This does not make Disney a moral authority; it makes it a business that wants to stay relevant. Since it has a reputation of family friendliness to protect, no one should be surprised that Disney must fire people who hurt it and are replaceable.
Gina Carano sharing both a distrust of masks and Democrats before yesterday's post, implying they were going to start a holocaust.
Disney Isn't Blind
Gina Carano didn't get "cancelled" out of nowhere: she's been spending a lot of time on twitter biting the hand that feeds her. If you look at her tweets and how they're taken by her most loyal followers, you'll see a trend: they're largely antimaskers, antivaxxers, voter fraud conspiracy theorists, transphobes, and all other manner of hateful science and reality deniers. They're not rare: they feel welcomed in her space because she's catering to them as her intended audience. This isn't a coincidence: it's by design. Disney isn't the "intolerant" one for noticing the obvious. She went out of line repeatedly and took it to the point where it could no longer be ignored.
Context: As this story is shared, former president Trump is on trial for inciting an insurrection, claiming to his followers that "If you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore." This is Gina trying to paint herself in similar circumstances to Jewish holocaust victims whose country turned on them.
So What Happened This Time?
When it comes to politics, Gina is rarely ever explicit about the message she's trying to convey. Sometimes she'll post facts, other times misinformation, but the takeaway is always meant to be obvious if you’re paying attention. It's the "I'm Not Touching Youuuu" approach to political tweeting. For example, she’ll post a "funny" image of a man covered from chin to forehead in face masks subtitled "Meanwhile in California." Gina would probably never say, “Wearing a mask makes you look stupid!” But we happen to have both context and brains enough to put two and two together.
This time was different: Gina Carano tried to equate being a Trump supporter to being Jewish in the time leading up to the Holocaust, citing that the German state didn’t have to come for the Jewish people when their neighbors were ready to round them up. The truth is you don’t need to use the n-word to be a racist. Likewise, you don’t need to directly say that Democrats are going to round up Trump supporters like the Nazis did to Jewish people. All she did was lay down that history after talking about MAGA because she’s trying to lead you to that conclusion. This time though, she went too far, and it got her fired. Can you guess what people thought should have gotten her fired long ago?
Looking back, it seems like she was trying on the idea of comparing herself to someone persecuted under Nazi Germany, shown by this post of dialogue from someone persecuted under Nazi Germany.
Transphobia
You may have noticed on social media that people list their pronouns in their descriptions a lot more frequently: “he/him,” “she/her,” “they/them,” and similar lists. These lists are made so that a person can be referred to correctly by other people when you don’t have the chance of a formal introduction. Gina Carano used hers as a joke to put “beep/boop/bop,” instead. In keeping with her style of not being direct, it’s not explicitly a transphobic statement in itself, but it’s definitely poking fun at people who list their pronouns. Who are the people that usually need to list their pronouns? Trans people. She didn’t directly make fun of them, just laid down the tracks to have you follow along the breadcrumb she laid down to lead you to that conclusion.
To her credit, Gina removed the fake list of pronouns from her description some time after this tweet was released. Against her credit, this was the perfect time to acknowledge trans rights as one of those "genuine causes," and she instead chose to sidestep the issue by making it about the mob.
Conclusion
Gina Carano isn’t the type to directly say her opinion when she can lead you along a trail of tweets that let you put the pieces together, and I believe in her mind that meant she was safe. She got gradually bolder, implying that you shouldn’t wear masks and that there was election fraud without presenting any real proof. She was correct, too, at least until her story about Nazis that she put on her Instagram.
If you still have any doubt that these are her beliefs, just look at how she’s never posted anything to contradict them, despite having every opportunity. When most of the people talking to you on Twitter are asking you about your views and you’re avidly posting around the subject, it makes it pretty clear what you believe, even if you don’t say it outright. Disney, in turn, has decided that they’ve waited long enough and shown that they believe Gina Carano isn’t worth a part on their most successful TV show, let alone a series of her own. She had months to do the bare minimum of not encouraging antimasking, anti-LGBTQ sentiment, voter fraud conspiracy theories, or this most recent weirdness with trying to compare MAGA supporters to Jewish people in the holocaust. It's a low bar, but she simply couldn't resist stamping on it anyway. There's a common sentiment going around and it fits what happened perfectly: "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
The committee on voter fraud that formed under President Trump was unceremoniously closed by Trump's administration after finding no evidence of significant voter fraud.
Despite Gina Carano's retweet, it turns out that holding public officials accountable for spreading lies and misinformation to undermine a free election isn't something Nazis are known for.