Saturday 25 May 2013

Why Boycotting the Ender's Game Movie to Express your Displeasure at OSC's Stance on Gay Marriage is Ridiculous: a rant.

To preface: Ender's Game is a sci-fi novel written by Orson Scott Card (OSC), a very well-known sci-fi and fantasy writer. Ender's Game is kind of the sci-fi book, and I would highly recommend it to everyone. It's about a boy named Ender who is sent to a space station to learn how to defend the Earth against aliens ('the buggers' - it was written in the '80s) who have previously been involved in war with Earth. Ender Wiggin is somewhat of the last hope of Earth, and as well as cool sci-fi action, there's a lot of interesting psychological elements and sweet battle scenes.
Orson Scott Card, the author, is a devout Mormon. He is a prominent supporter of the Biblical definition of marriage and therefore vehemently opposed to homosexual marriage. Some of his quotes on the subject are quite verbally aggressive, stating he will destroy any government who tries to legalise gay marriage. He is, as you might expect from a devout Mormon, also very conservative in other areas, though his stance on this issue is most prevalent at the moment, due, I assume, to our current social environment where defending traditional perceptions of marriage to the exclusion of others is a relatively socially unacceptable thing to do, and given that the Ender's Game movie is coming out this November.

Please note that by calling marriage between a man and woman 'traditional' I am not saying I think that's all marriage is. I understand that my language could lead you to believe that I am against marriage equality for homosexuals; that's not what I'm saying. It can't be argued that man/woman marriage is the current tradition.

Before I get into the rant in the title, I just want to very briefly address another issue which is actually of more concern to me, but I feel like I can't blog about without it a) going on foreverrrrr because I have so many 'pinions and b) making me upset because reasons. But in summary, I'm sick of people's entire identity and personality being determined, in the eyes of others, by one factor. Last night on tumblr, there was one of OSC's quotes about how he doesn't support gay marriage, which was met with comments about how he is a 'vile, hateful, piece of shit', amongst other things. You know what? I'd bet you good money he isn't. It's a problem exacerbated by people's need to identify the failings in everyone around them, and then determine who that person is based on that one thing. OSC is not vile and hateful because he disagrees with your stance on gay marriage. He is not a piece of shit because on this matter, your opinions are not in alignment. Stop judging people based on one facet of their identity and wake the hell up and realise that everyone is just as complex, full of contradicting emotions and messy inside as you. Personally, I'd be pissed the f*ck off if people judged my whole personality based on my views on one issue, even if I agreed with you and you decided that made me awesome. I deserve more than that. I deserve to be seen as more than just one part of myself. And so does everyone.

So re: boycotting the movie, this is seriously the stupidest response to finding out OSC's stance on this issue that I can think of, for these reasons:

  • The rights have already been bought from him. While I'm sure he'll make a percentage of whatever profits there are, it's already done. It's already in the hands of someone else.
  • And that's exactly what it is - this is no longer OSC's baby. It belongs to another person. OSC is involved in production, but he is not the only one. There are many other people who are helping to guide this movie.
  • Which means, obviously, that OSC is not the sole, or even primary, beneficiary of the film. He is not the only person receiving money for this, and he will not be receiving the most money for this. Aside from the cast, there's the whole production team and crew, who by boycotting this film, you would be hurting a heck of a lot more than OSC. And it's not purely financial - the crew who won't get more money no matter how well the movie does are still going to be more successful if this movie is more successful. If they're crew on some bomb movie that no one goes to see, how much less work do you think they're going to get than if they were on the crew of the super box office hit of 2013.
  • I challenge you to find any movie ever where there has not been at least one person on the cast or crew who was against gay marriage, or some other thing you strongly believe in. Literally every movie, I would hazard, has had SOMEONE on it who doesn't agree with you on this matter. So why is this different?
Boycotting the Ender's Game movie because you disagree with OSC is the most irrational and honestly, kinda selfish response to this issue. I just. I don't get it. It makes me angry and sad and confused. 

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