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Wait.WHAT?!? Scarlett Johansson Believes Rub & Tug Casting Backlash is Hypocritical, SHE QUIT!

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Scarlett Johansson responds to the backlash after the announcement that she was cast as transgender criminal kingpin Dante "Tex" Gill in the biopic Rub & Tug with Ghost in the Shell director Rupert Sanders. However, her response to the backlash didn't necessarily indicate she understood the criticisms of her taking the role, as she believes the backlash is hypocritical.

Based within Pittsburgh's criminal underground in the 1970s, Rub & Tug focuses on the rise and fall of kingpin Dante "Tex" Gill. Born Lois Jean Gill, Gill was a transgender man whose life of crime was based around a massage parlor front that notably specialized in prostitution and an anabolic steroid ring for the Pittsburgh Steelers. However, after using the LGBTQ community to help support his budding underground empire, his defiance of both the mob and law enforcement led to a life of violence, corruption, and death. Now, Johansson is facing backlash over her casting due to the fact that she is not a transgender man - which she believes is hypocritical, considering the fact that other cisgender actors have also played transgender characters in the past.

Related: Hollywood Needs To Stop Using "Bait" LGBTQ Characters

Following the backlash, Bustle reached out to Johansson for an official comment, and her personal rep responded with a quote from Johansson herself. She said, "Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman's reps for comment," referring to other cisgender actors who have starred in transgender roles. Jeffrey Tambor earned a Golden Globe for his performance as a trans woman in the Amazon original series Transparent (though, it should be noted Tambor was fired from Transparent earlier this year after accusations surfaced he had harassed trans women on the project's set), Felicity Huffman earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance as a trans woman in Transamerica, and Jared Leto won an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club.


The backlash surrounding Johansson's casting has to do with the lack of transgender roles, and those roles not going to people within the actual transgender community. Though there have been exceptions - namely with Laverne Cox in Orange is the New Black, Daniela Vega in A Fantastic Woman (which recently took home the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film), and Mya Taylor in Tangerine - advocates for equal employment opportunity are not satisfied with trans roles going to cisgender actors. As for Johansson specifically, the backlash is especially potent given that she and Sanders recently collaborated on the adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, which received its own form of backlash due to the whitewashing of Johansson's character.

While the whole point of the performing arts is to be a transformative experience for actors in bringing characters to life, the backlash isn't without merit. As the LGBTQ community makes strides to create equal footing in the mainstream, handing over roles aimed at those within the LGBTQ community to individuals who do not identify within said community feels dated and unnecessary. Acting is just as much about entertainment as it is about representation, so perhaps the negative response to Johansson isn't completely unwarranted.
 
They be on some bullshit. This is a real film that they want people to go see. I’m sorry, ain’t nobody going to see a movie with a trans anything starring. Fuck outta here.

People are NOT ready for too much weird shit. Not in mainstream cinema. They dont want it in their porn either. I remember reading somewhere that Pinky said some shit where instead of using a dildo on broads she should just make videos with she-males. Savanah Fox said something similar and as much as I like watching both them whores work I was INSTANTLY turned the fuck off. I ain’t watch either of them since. The film industry is the same way.

I want to read the script to see where it goes. Can’t see how they can turn thick ass, curvy little Scar Jo into a man but we will see what happens.


They already trying to make faggotry mainstream and I can tolerate some shit in film and TV - just as an artist - but too far is just too far. Stick to the crime aspect and keep that trans shit at an extreme minimum.

oNE
 
EPDC said:
WTF is cisgender? While I'm at it, WTF is a transgender man, a man pretending to be a woman or vice versa?

Hate these new made up terms.
Click to expand...
My girlfriend's friend was trans so she's super sensitive about this subject. Says everyone is transphobic because we don't want to live in their fantasy.

She talks about them being assigned a gender. If they were assigned a gender, was I assigned a race? Could I be trans-white? She was actually defending the trannies who trick guys at the club. "Well, they should have known better."

I'm sick of all these new fucking terms

 
EPDC said:
WTF is cisgender? While I'm at it, WTF is a transgender man, a man pretending to be a woman or vice versa?

Hate these new made up terms.
Click to expand...

I was just about to ask that same question.
What the fuck is a "cisgender" person. :confused:

This shit is out of control dealing with the LGBTQ crowd. Motherfuckers aren't just happy being gay, lesbian, bi, trans or queer. Now, they're trying to get us to embrace terms like "gender fluid" or "cisgender"...?o_O
I'm WAY passed being sick of this confusing shit these millenials come up with. Pick a goddamn title and stick with it, for crying out loud!!! :mad:

Whatever happened to them just being: "Here and queer" and telling us to "Get used to it..."? :dunno:
 
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CptMARVEL said:
Whatever happened to them just being: "Here and queer" and telling us to "Get used to it..."? :dunno:
Click to expand...
In order for us to get used to something there's got to be some level of consistency, which there isn't. They keep on adding a new letters to LGBTQ and it's getting ridiculous.

I've always felt that if they want to be that, go ahead. What you eat don't make me shit, and who you fuck don't make me anything.

But real talk, I'm about a half second away from getting in a Batman costume and forcing everybody to call me either Batman or trans Batman, because it follows the same ridiculous logic as their shit.
 
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Scarlett Johansson Ditches 'Rub And Tug' To Save 'Black Widow'

https%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fscottmendelson%2Ffiles%2F2015%2F11%2FBest-Black-Widow-as-matchmaker.jpg



We’ve had a few weeks of onlineindignation following the announcement that Scarlett Johansson would be producing and starring in a movie about Dante Tex Gill, a 1970s/1980s Pittsburgh massage parlor operator and organized crime figure who was born female but assumed the identity of a man. But as of an hour ago, Scarlett Johansson has bowed out of the project. The outcry came over the notion that Johansson would be playing a real-life character who was apparently a transgender man. After an initial statement where she (through her rep) told those opposed to be directed to “Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment,” the actress will no longer star in Rupert Sanders’s Rub and Tug.

Oh, and Marvel just hired Cate Shortland to direct the long-in-development solo Black Widow movie. If you think those two developments are connected, well, you’re probably right.

Even if we give Johansson the benefit of the doubt that she merely saw the true-life crime melodrama (think American Made) as a juicy role about a “tough woman” who assumed a male identity to succeed in a male-dominated arena, the outcry has been fast and furious: Tokyo drift. Speaking of Tokyo Drift, couple this with the controversy over her playing the lead in last year’s Ghost in the Shell adaptation, where she technically played a Japanese woman whose mind and soul was transported into the body of a white lady, and I imagine the actress (or those around her) decided it wasn’t worth it.


There was little chance of Johansson scoring awards consideration or even much acclaim unless the movie turned out to be a stone-cold masterpiece. Even then, the controversy would have become the prime narrative around the otherwise run-of-the-mill studio programmer which would need positive media attention to survive alongside the tentpoles. Whether it would have made any money is an open question (Dallas Buyers Club, with a huge Oscar boost, earned $55m worldwide on a $5m budget in 2013/2014), but it wasn’t worth the possibility of doing PR-related damage to the Black Widow movie.

Sure, general audiences wouldn’t have cared about (or had known much about) the Rub and Tug outcry. But it’s something that would have followed the actress on the publicity trail and may well have been a two-strikes-you’re-out scenario for the very sort of progressive/uber-woke online fans who Marvel and Walt Disney were counting on to sell the heck out of the Black Widow movie. It wouldn’t be a fatal distraction, but it’s not great when you finally make your Black Widow movie and your longtime star has essentially been (justly or not) “canceled” by the geek media at large.


So, for better or worse, even (again) giving the actress the benefit of the doubt that she really dropped out because it was the right thing to do, the comic book superhero movie took precedent over the adult-skewing crime melodrama. If more adults actually went to the movies these days to see flicks like Blow or The Infiltrator, this might be a different conversation. But even with the notion that Johansson would like to get into the year-end awards pool before she gets replaced by the next batch of hot young things (no, that’s not fair and it’s not right, but it still is), the outcry over this possible box office flop doing long-term damage to her image in the MCU wasn’t worth it.

It would be deeply ironic (and not surprising) if the film gets made with a transgender male in the lead role only to flop upon release. The internet is great at being "here for it" on social media in terms of certain movies and then ignoring them in theaters. Fair or not, movie stars still matter for movies like this. Part of the problem, I would argue, is less about Johansson getting to play a transgender person in a major movie and more about the (general) lack of opportunities for transgender actors and actresses to play characters who aren’t necessarily defined by their transgender status (and thus become “stars”). I’d argue this specific sort of casting would be less of an issue absent the utter lack of parity that exists in the industry.

So thus ends, for now, the controversy over Scarlett Johansson playing Dante “Tex” Gill in Rub and Tug. And, coincidentally, it happened just one day after Marvel made good on their promise to find a female director for the solo Black Widow movie. I’m not sure why there is a rule declaring that nearly all female-led action/superhero movies (Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Atomic Blonde, Red Sparrow, etc.) have to be period pieces and/or prequels, but that’s a conversation for another day. So to recap, Rub and Tug may die so that Black Widow may live. Even if it's the right call (and the right thing to do), it sure looks like “trading lives” to me.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottm...sson-ditches-rub-and-tug-to-save-black-widow/
 
I bet this movie never gets made or it might now become a small indie that will make 2M and get a ton of awards - like call me by your name.
 
So, once Disney/Marvel heard that one of their primary actors in their big moneymakers might be taking a role that could potentially fuck with their money due to controversy, they offered up a more profitable movie that they could control as opposed to one that they couldn't that probably was gonna get panned by the gay crowd because she's not a legit tranny. I see what they did there.
 
EPDC said:
WTF is cisgender? While I'm at it, WTF is a transgender man, a man pretending to be a woman or vice versa?

Hate these new made up terms.
Click to expand...

So cis gender = heterosexual males & females

Trans man = born woman who acts like a man
Trans woman = born man who acts like a woman.

I hate how they relable everyone else from their perspective with this cis bullshit.
 
The think I don’t understand about gay people or transgender people is that they want acceptance? How can anybody accept you when you don’t even accept yourself. Men are men and women are women. That’s it!

It’s like a black person painting there skin white and getting surgery. White people will never accept you as a white person!

That’s the problem with LGBT you give them a inch they want to take a mile.
 
Dylan Farrow Responds to Scarlett Johansson’s Defense of Woody Allen
By Madeleine Aggeler@mmaggeler
05-farrow-johansson.w330.h330.jpg

Dylan Farrow and Scarlett Johansson. Photo: Getty Images

Dylan Farrow — the former stepdaughter of Woody Allen, who has accused the director of sexually abusing her when she was a small child — responded on Wednesday night to Scarlett Johansson’s recent defense of Allen, writing on Twitter, “Scarlett has a long way to go in understanding the issue she claims to champion.”

In a profile published this week, Johansson told The Hollywood Reporter that, despite Farrow’s allegations against him, she “loves” Woody Allen, she believes his denials of the accusations, and she “would work with him anytime.”

“I see Woody whenever I can, and I have had a lot of conversations with him about it,” Johansson went on. “I have been very direct with him, and he’s very direct with me. He maintains his innocence, and I believe him.”

In response to a Los Angeles Times tweet about Johansson’s comments, Farrow made oblique reference to the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements of which Johansson has been a vocal supporter, writing, “Because if we’ve learned anything from the past two years it’s that you definitely should believe male predators who ‘maintain their innocence’ without question.”



She added, “And my apologies in advance for disrupting her google alerts again.”

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, and the increased scrutiny it brought to the allegations against powerful men like Allen, many stars have tried, unlike Johansson, to distance themselves from the director. Greta Gerwig, Colin Firth, Kate Winslet, and Timothée Chalamet have indicated they would not work with the accused molester again.
 
Scarlett Johansson Admits She ‘Mishandled’ Backlash About Her Transgender Role
By Zoe Haylock@zoe_alliyah
Johansson stars in Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit this year. Photo: KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/Getty Images

Earlier this year, Scarlett Johansson didn’t want to play a tree or animal in a new movie, she wanted to play Dante “Tex” Gill, a transgender man, in the film Rub & Tug. The LGBTQ community spoke out against it and she issued a statement telling them to take it up with Jeffrey Tambor, Felicity Huffman, and Jared Leto, all actors who had previously played trans characters. To which, everyone was like, “Yeah, we did …” She left the role shortly after. Johansson recently reflected on the controversy with Vanity Fair, admitting that she totally “mishandled” the situation. “I was not sensitive, my initial reaction to it,” she said. “I wasn’t totally aware of how the trans community felt about those three actors playing — and how they felt in general about cis actors playing — transgender people. I wasn’t aware of that conversation — I was uneducated. So I learned a lot through that process. I misjudged that.”

It’s not the first time Johansson has fallen into casting trouble. She received criticism for her role in Ghost in a Shell, where her character was originally written as Japanese. “To feel like you’re kind of tone-deaf to something is not a good feeling,” she said, in regards to the Rub & Tug backlash. Johansson notes that “tone-deaf” is exactly what people might call her defense of Woody Allen, recently resurfaced by an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. She maintains her faith in Allen, whose stepdaughter Dylan Farrow accused him of sexually abusing her when she was a child.

“I only have a close proximity with Woody … he’s a friend of mine,” she explains why she chose to support the director. “But I have no other insight other than my relationship with him.” (Dylan Farrow has personally written two essays about the abuse and has been interviewed by Gayle King, among the many news reports that followed the case.) Johansson insists that she supports women and victims of abuse, but only some of them. “Just because I believe my friend does not mean that I don’t support women, believe women,” she said. “I think you have to take it on a case-by-case basis. You can’t have this blanket statement — I don’t believe that.”
 

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