No one’s asking me about Gina Carano’s Mandalorian lawsuit, but if they were I would say: Stop, you’re making it worse. It’s been painful watching Gina Carano’s rising star fizzle out. I suspect no one’s had a Dutch Uncle conversation with her, or they have and she didn’t listen. Sad really, because Carano clearly has talent and energy. If she doesn’t smarten up and get out of this quick, she’s going to find herself as another discarded pawn on the side of an abandoned Boring tunnel. More on that in a minute.
I read the news with growing unease and disappointment. We’ve seen this movie before and it never ends well. Disney – for better or worse – has one of the best and most-feared team of lawyers on the planet. Maybe she has some juice in this fight I don’t know about. After all, Elon Musk is backing Carano as opposed to Pete Thiel backing Hulk Hogan against Gawker Media. Something tells me Disney can afford better representation than Gawker, but that’s just me.
That’s the backstory to everything I’m going to say next. Let others discuss the legal, corporate, and Hollywood ramifications of the lawsuit. I’d rather talk as though we’re talking directly to Gina Carano. I think we’d all agree, especially after cheering for her in her Mandalorian role, that *she* is who we of the scifi community should be focused on. So, this is an open ‘Dutch Uncle’ letter to Gina Carano, from all of us who care about her and her scifi career.
Stop – You’re Making It Worse
Let’s start at the beginning. We care about you. When we saw your successful sporting career transition successfully into entertainment, we were all-in. Do you know how hard it is to do what you did? We do. Very few athletes pull it off successfully. There’s like, you, and the dearly departed Carl Weathers, and then … yeah, I can’t think of anyone else. A pivot like that is like jumping from one bumpy, fast-moving train to another bumpy, fast-moving train. Hard to do it, and yet you pulled it off with style. Yeah, you were our hero.
And then.
It’s not like we were waiting to see you fail, okay? You said a number of things we weren’t exactly on board with, but we gave you a pass. The gender pronoun thing, for example. I can understand why you’d initially resist, feeling like people were trying to paint you into a corner. But, at the end of the day, if people need to see you attach specific pronouns to yourself to feel good, what do you care? I’ve heard a stack of people complain to me about it and I’m like ‘so they want to know what my pronouns are – big deal.’
I’m not here to rehash that – the gender pronoun event is over. But it did raise some red flags as far as your reasoning process is concerned: are you reasonable? Can you say something as simple as ‘I have my own opinion, but I can understand why you feel the way that you do?’ Boom, there it is: empathy. Can you empathize?
So that was one thing. Then you started in with the political views. Ye gods, the political views. The rest of us were sitting at home going ‘why? Why? WHY?’ Do you know that? Do you know that there’s a time and a place for those discussions and your Mandalorian / social media platform was neither? Couldn’t you look at other examples of previously-successful pop culture figures who turned their persona into a political platform and go ‘yeah, that didn’t work out for any of them’?
Now, you’re claiming you were: “‘harassed and defamed’ for having rightwing opinions and refusing to conform to those held by Disney and Lucasfilm,” as though any employer would tolerate a lead employee hijacking their corporate presence to voice specific and polarizing opinions.
Please.
I’m not an expert, but your story smacks of ‘I didn’t learn important adulting lessons and my defenses prevent friends from delivering authentic feedback.’ Or maybe not. Maybe you’re a terrible person and you weren’t ‘screwed by the system’ so much as ‘revealed by the system.’ You can’t fool all the people all the time, right? Or maybe you can, with enough money, time, and energy.
But we aren’t the kind of people who can get away with that. You must know that by now, if you haven’t figured it out already. The terrifying part of wealth and fame is how it transforms people into their worst selves. You think you’re escaping the prison of poverty only to find yourself in the penitentiary of prosperity. Money changes you, and it changes how people see you. Unknown pressures, and unseen stresses can break people under the best circumstances.
I’ve mentioned you before on my blog and what I earlier said remains true: I think you fell into the category of people who stopped working on themselves because ‘hey, we arrived!’ Nobody graduates from learning about life. Nobody gets to stop working on themselves.
Here’s what ‘working on yourself’ would look like. If you genuinely believe that the election was stolen or that masks don’t prevent COVID, where’s the Instagram post of you going to Harvard Law and spending an afternoon with a constitutional professor, or the video of you talking with Dr. Fauci about masks and viral transmission?
In other words, where’s the work? Do you take the time to show us the process by which you inform your opinions, or is it just about chasing those IG likes and you got caught up in the toxic social media cycle? I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I’d like to, maybe you can reach out and tell me what I’m missing.
Now you’re making it worse. You’ve exchanged your previous missteps for a truly dark path, where you’ve placed yourself between two titanic, corporate forces. How do you see this playing out? Has anyone ever succeeded as Elon Musk’s personal hand puppet? Hulk Hogan’s life didn’t get better after the Gawker media trial, as I’m sure you’re aware. I fear that you’re going to see something similar for yourself and you’ve got a lot more years ahead of you than Hogan does.
No one argues that everything Disney does is correct. I’m not arguing that this world doesn’t need to get better. What I am asking is, is this how you see things getting better? Because I don’t think it’s going to play out for you. If anything, I fear it’s going to get worse.
I Want Good Things for Gina Carano
Remember this quote? This doesn’t have to be your epitaph. It’ll be painful, but most growth comes from pain. Just as you survived the transition from sports to entertainment, I think you’re strong enough and powerful enough to admit when you’ve made mistakes and publicly discuss how you’ve learned from those choices. Think of how much good you could do, right now, by showing people how to step back from the precipice.
In closing, again – I’m just a guy who’s made bad choices and is trying to learn from them. No one’s asking me about Gina Carano’s Mandalorian lawsuit, but if they were I would say: Stop, you’re making it worse. I don’t want to see things get worse for Gina Carano, I want to see good things for Gina Carano.
I hope Gina takes this opportunity to let cooler heads prevail, and smarter choices lead the way.
