hugging the cactus with Mel Gibson
Does cancellation really mean forever?
A man walks down the street
He says, "Why am I soft in the middle, now?
Why am I soft in the middle?
The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard"
Bonedigger, Bonedigger
Dogs in the moonlight
Far away in my well-lit door
Mr. Beerbelly, Beerbelly
Get these mutts away from me
You know, I don't find this stuff amusing anymore.
~ from “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon
Mel Gibson has been cast in the John Wick prequel series The Continental coming to Starz. This has caused much outrage and consternation around the internet.
The AV Club’s Sam Barsanti snarkily writes that “The Deadline story doesn’t say why Gibson had to play this role, but we can only assume it’s because either the showrunners (Wayne’s Greg Coolidge and Kirk Ward) called literally every other actor and aspiring actor in Hollywood and were told they were busy or because they specifically wanted Mel Gibson.”
All over the internet people are using this news as “evidence” that cancel culture doesn’t exist. After all, Mel Gibson said some truly terrible things—and not in joke form—yet here he is, getting cast in a TV show on Starz.
This is a funny tweet because it inadvertently admits that cancel culture does exist (“If we can’t keep Mel Gibson canceled) and then claims cancel culture 100% doesn’t exist. Its author has apparently missed the irony.
But okay, has Mel Gibson been cancelled or not?
The Braveheart director has been acting in movies steadily since those infamous voicemails to his ex and the drunk-driving incident. But somehow Gibson appearing in a John Wick prequel TV show on Starz of all places is what has the social justice crowd incensed. Never mind that his film, Hacksaw Ridge, was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director and four other awards (winning for Best Editing and Best Mixing).
Still, Gibson’s career is far from what it used to be and his reputation remains in tatters. (Then again, Gibson’s roles are no worse than fellow action star Bruce Willis, so go figure).
Cancel culture isn’t a science, it’s an art. The results aren’t precise. Who you cancel matters. Trying to cancel Dave Chappelle won’t work because it’s Dave Chappelle. He’s too famous and too beloved and too rich for cancellation to have any meaningful impact on him. Someone with less fame, fortune and fandom is a much easier target. Easier to cancel a small YouTuber than it is PewDiePie.
Also, what cancellation looks like varies a great deal. Maybe it’s just the loss of a single gig or maybe it’s being blacklisted from an entire industry. Maybe it’s the loss of someone’s entire income, or maybe the person is wealthy enough that it only puts a dent in their finances. The fact that the super-rich, super-famous, money-making Mel Gibson hasn’t been completely driven out of Hollywood doesn’t mean he wasn’t cancelled. It just means his cancellation is very different than the attempted cancellation of someone like journalist Lee Fang.
And frankly, it doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have faced any consequences for his words and actions either. I may be against “cancel culture” broadly speaking, but that doesn’t mean I think someone like Gibson should get away with anti-Semitic rants or telling his ex he hopes she’s raped by a “pack of n******.”
While that was a private conversation, it’s still gross and hateful and it’s understandable for a lot of moviegoers to say “Uh, not sure I can support Mel Gibson anymore after that shit.” And it’s also understandable for movie studios to question whether he’s going to do more harm than good for their brand.
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What Gibson said, of course, is far worse than anything Chappelle has said. There is a difference between vicious racist rants and comedy no matter how much people in the woke movement despise nuance.
But even if it was horrible and racist and Gibson is clearly more than a little unhinged, I still have to ask, what about redemption?
Seriously, what about redemption?
Wokeness is a religion without one of religion’s most important tenets: A path toward redemption and forgiveness. When people try to cancel someone, they’re cancelling them forever. The idea isn’t just to censure someone, it’s to annihilate them. To scrub them from polite society entirely.
Mel Gibson has a drinking problem. He is an alcoholic who, as far as I know, is now sober—though a battle with alcoholism or drug addiction is a lifelong process. As someone who has struggled with addiction myself, I have to empathize with the man (even if I could never imagine saying something so horrible, it’s not as though I haven’t said things I regret).
Way, way back in 2011 at Forbes I wrote about Robert Downey Jr’s plea to Hollywood to forgive Mel Gibson for his transgressions. This was before the woke movement took off, before “social justice warriors” had taken such an outsized chokehold on media and our culture, but still during a time when, if you said what Gibson said, people would nevertheless be justifiably angry about it.
Here’s what Downey Jr. (also a recovering alcoholic and drug addict) said of Gibson at the time:
When I couldn’t get sober, he told me not to give up hope and encouraged me to find my faith. It didn’t have to be his or anyone else’s as long as it was rooted in forgiveness. And I couldn’t get hired, so he cast me in the lead of a movie that was actually developed for him. He kept a roof over my head and food on the table and most importantly he said if I accepted responsibility for my wrongdoing and embraced that part of my soul that was ugly – hugging the cactus he calls it — he said that if I hugged the cactus long enough, I’d become a man.
I did and it worked. All he asked in return was that someday I help the next guy in some small way. It’s reasonable to assume at the time he didn’t imagine the next guy would be him or that someday was tonight. So anyway on this special occasion and in light of the recent holidays including Columbus Day, I would ask that you join me, unless you are completely without sin in which case you picked the wrong fucking industry, in forgiving my friend his trespasses and offering him the same clean slate you have me, allowing him to continue his great and ongoing contribution to our collective art without shame. He’s hugged the cactus long enough.
This is the problem with cancel culture and one of the biggest problems with the woke movement. There is no path to redemption, no sense of forgiveness, no nuance.
If someone is guilty, even guilty of saying something when they were far, far younger, that guilt is a life sentence. If they emerge from cancellation someday, their career a shadow of what it once was, people scream “Ha! See, there’s no such thing as cancel culture!” while at the same time doing everything they can to cancel that person all over again.
We are witnessing it now with Mel Gibson. The Twitter mob, the chattering class, the glib opinion pieces all part of a concerted effort to get the The Continental’s showrunners and Starz to reverse their casting decision and fire Gibson.
I see Gibson as a deeply screwed up man with enormous talent who has struggled with a shitty upbringing by a racist father, with alcoholism, with fame and all that entails, who has tried—and sometimes failed—to be a better man. We can’t ignore his sins, but we can forgive them.
After all, we are all sinners and we are all flawed and we all want, and deserve, a shot at redemption.
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I agree in principle. But I'd like to see a little contrition before I extend absolution.
Aside from apparently getting clean, there's no indication in the story Gibson has done anything to atone for what he did. His main transgressions were against his family; perhaps he did some acts in private to make things up to them that we are not privy to.
But it's weird to couch this in the language of forgiveness and redemption when there's no indication in the story the fellow has sought either.
I've no issue with Gibson getting a gig regardless for a simpler reason - the statute of limitations. His transgressions were long ago, and despite what folks on Twitter say now he paid a heavy price for them. Absent continuing offense, I favor moving on after a certain period has passed, regardless if a person has sought forgiveness publicly or not (something I don't place much weight on given how shallow it typically is and inchoate the harm is to the public at large - versus the injury someone like Gibson dealt to those he loved, which may be better dealt with in private for a number of reasons).
But that's different than forgiveness and redemption.
I rather be with sinners that forgive than with "virtuous" that condemn.