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A fascinating series of controversies erupted last week, and they had nothing to do with Donald Trump or Robert Mueller.
Business Insider ran a column defending actress Scarlett Johansson of fierce criticism for her decision to play a transgender man in a forthcoming film called "Rub and Tug". The writer, Daniella Greenbaum, took the seemingly outrageous stance that actors can claim to be people they are not. Or, as Greenbaum puts it, "Scarlett Johansson is the last target of the mafia of warriors of social justice." (Johansson gave up on Friday)
Ironically, the Greenbaum column made this claim obsolete, because "… in writing this, Greenbaum itself has become an even more recent victim of the mob social justice warrior. "In response to complaints, both internal and external, Business Insider removed the column from its website and invented new editorial standards to justify the decision.
So now we have three separate controversies: 1) Is it okay for non-transgender actors to play transgender people 2) Can people defend these actors? 3) Is it okay? it is acceptable for publications to retrospectively fill such defenses?
Let's look at them in order
The answer to the first question is both simple and complicated. and in a good sense, the actors can of course pretend to be anybody. The law is clear – for now at least – and common sense tells us that it's actually what actors do to make a living.
But to be fair on the other side of the argument, such complaints are nothing new. Whenever a minority group is pioneering in social acceptance, and in the kind of political and cultural power that comes with such acceptance, these controversies emerge. White actors playing African-Americans are culturally taboo, and rightly so. But one of the reasons why such minstrel shows are in bad taste is that they were historically a form of racist mockery and disrespect.
This does not apply here. Trace Lysette, a transgender actress who plays a transgender character on the Amazon series "Transparent," has not protested against Johansson's cast because the character was an insult to transgender people. Lysette was offended that Johansson was taking the work of people like her.
Lysette complained on Twitter that "… not only are you playing and stealing our story and opportunity, but you're tapping on the back with trophies and rewards to mimic what we've been through … so crooked I'm so finished. "
That sounds silly to me. It was not long ago, drawing attention to the existence of transgender people was considered a victory for their cause. In 1999, Hillary Swank received mbadive critical acclaim, and an Oscar, for playing a transgender woman in "Boys Do not Cry" – a film I despised. Nobody complained about stolen stories then. By the way, someone's complaining when Charlton Heston, an Episcopalian, stole the most famous Jewish story of all time while playing Moses?
But we pbaded the awareness phase, and now the question is about cultural influence. Transgender people follow in the footsteps of other identity politics groups who want to use their cultural power to create more roles for their members. They are free to do that, of course. But it is worth noting that it's hardly outrageous for a movie studio to prefer an international movie star like Johansson to an obscure transgender actor.
Whatever the case may be, this game of cultural power is the real problem, and it is the only relevant prism for questions two and three.
There is nothing faraway about what Greenbaum wrote. His sin was simply to highlight the evidence, which is often considered a great offense without really being offensive. That's why what she calls the "crowd of social justice warriors" has turned against her and Business Insider.
Again, no law has been broken. Greenbaum has the right to say what it believes to be true, and Business Insider has the right to publish, or not to publish, what it wants.
If Business Insider had simply chosen to reject the piece at first, it would have been good, and it would have saved him a lot of embarrbadment. Instead, its publishers chose to yield to political pressure. His surrender to the crowd tells us a lot about the power of the mafia warrior of social justice and the weakness of the editors of Business Insider.
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