Damn right we should boycott
Everyone’s getting into the movie boycott business these days, ith New York City police officers recently calling for a boycott of The Hateful Eight after director Quentin Tarantino spoke out against police brutality in NYC — you know, the home of Alberta Spruill, Abner Louima, Sean Bell, and Eric Garner. NYC’s police brutality isn’t just Springsteen song fodder; The Wall Street Journal reported that the 10 cities with the largest police departments (including New York) collectively paid out $1.02 billion in settlements over the past five years for police misconduct cases.
So it’s easy for me to support Tarantino’s desire to create conversations about police reform in New York, and as a black, bi, queer woman of color, it’s critical that I support and champion the demands of Black Lives Matter across the country. I also support the idea that NYPD police officers support a boycott against The Hateful Eight for two reasons:
1) Everyone, including The Hateful Eight’s own mega-producer Harvey Weinstein, knows no one is seeing anything other than The Force Awakens these days. Weinstein even told Variety, “It’s not sour grapes, but if I’m writing a memo to myself, I would say, ‘Do not open against Star Wars.”
2) I personally delight in the opportunity for free speech for everyone — including the police. If NYPD officers can pull together a petition for The Hateful Eight, surely they can muster the internal reforms necessary to stop killing innocent, unarmed black and brown people, can’t they?
If not, I think we should protest! We should all be disrupting and getting in the literal way of any group of people terrorizing any community, just for being born a certain way! So a movie boycott can work both ways, as most things can for this bisexual. I can vote with my dollars and take a trip to see The Hateful Eight and, in some small way, support police reform in New York. (Plus, folks say Jennifer Jason Leigh is at her best and I mean, c’mon: when is she not?)
Zoolander 2 premieres this spring, already sparking a boycott in the fall of 2015 after its trailer included Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch in what petitioners called “an over-the-top, cartoonish mockery of androgyne/trans/non-binary individuals.” The Care2 petition, which at the time of this writing has over 23,000 signatures, gave helpful hints to the filmmakers, saying that the movie should have cast a trans or non-binary actor if it intended to “provide social commentary on the presence of trans/androgyne individuals in the fashion industry.” With producer Ben Stiller having yet to respond to concerns, it seems likely the boycott will continue to have a critical impact on audience interest … in protesting it.
In the spring of 2014, Annalee Newitz at io9.com was critical of the first official The Force Awakens cast list, crying, “Hey Star Wars: Where the Hell Are the Women?” Within a day of tweets rising on the topic, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that director JJ Abrams had “another substantial role to fill — and it’s a female part.” Before it even premiered, The Force Awakens screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan confirmed to Vulture.com that the concerns about the representation of women had been heard and resulted in a twist, one never seen before in the Star Wars universe. Before a boycott could even get off the ground, criticisms were heard and responded to, with the resulting Star Wars film now on track to become the highest-grossing movie of all time.
Movies do better when they reflect more of our collective humanity, and when more people can see themselves in roles, no matter if they’re hero, villain, or both. Storytelling is at its most successful when we’re all yelling at the screen with joy, and I think that’s always worth fighting for.
