The Absolute Balls: Disney Claims It Had an Absolutely-Unquestionable First Amendment Right to Fire Gina Carano (for Exercising Her Own First Amendment Rights)

I will mention again that this just isn't true -- in California. To protect filthy communists from being fired, California law prohibits the firing of employees due to politics.

There is an exception: Expressly-political operations -- partisan political pollsters, ideological think tanks, etc. -- have the right to reject applicants or fire employees based on, as a Disney SEC filing might put it, "misalignment" with the company's politics.

Is Disney ready to declare itself an expressly leftwing partisan operation?

We'll see!

Disney argued Tuesday that it had a First Amendment right to fire Gina Carano, the actor who played a bounty hunter on "The Mandalorian," after she allegedly trivialized the Holocaust in an Instagram post.

Carano sued in February, arguing that the company unlawfully retaliated against her for expressing her personal political views, which were at odds with Disney's preferred ideology.

Disney's lawyers filed a motion on Tuesday to throw out the lawsuit, arguing that it has "a constitutional right not to associate its artistic expression with Carano's speech."

...

Carano was fired in February 2021, after she analogized the treatment of modern-day conservatives to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.

This was not the real reason she was fired.

She was fired because Disney's huge number of trans extremist employees demanded it, but Kathleen Kennedy wanted to hide their hand in Carano's firing.

So she did what evil people often do -- she blamed the Jews.

"Because history is edited, most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews," she wrote. "How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"

Carano had faced significant pushback for earlier social media posts, in which she strongly objected to COVID restrictions, questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election, and refused to show support for trans rights.

There you go. In a rain of disinformation, a single drop of truth hits the ground.

According to her lawsuit, Disney forced her to have a 90-minute Zoom meeting with GLAAD, the LGBTQ rights organization, after she posted that her pronouns are "boop/bop/beep."

But for Disney, the Nazi post was "the final straw," according to the company's motion. The company argued that the post trivialized the Holocaust by referred to "thousands" of Jews, not "millions," and by likening their experience to those of contemporary conservatives who face scorn on social media.

"Disney had enough," the motion states.

The company put out a statement the same day saying it had no plans to hire her in the future, and that her comments were "abhorrent and unacceptable."

They claimed she was disparaging Jews, which is defamatory.

Carano sued under a California law that prohibits employers from retaliating against employees for political activity.

Yup.

Disney doesn't want to declare itself a leftwing propaganda organization -- which would have the right to fire conservative employees -- so it's attempting to claim there's a general right of any company which engages in communications to act as if it were an expressly-political organization:

In its motion to dismiss, Disney argued that there is a broad exception for companies whose business is to engage in speech, such as newspapers and entertainment companies.

All companies engage in speech. This "exception" invented by Disney swallows the rule, as they say.

Relatedly, Film Threat published part 5 of its "D-Files" expose, this time documenting the disastrous path that led to the box-office bomb Wish.

The disaster began by elevating Jennifer Lee, the writer of Frozen but with little management or production experience, to be Pixar legend John Lassiter's replacement, because #MeToo exists to get men fired and replace them with unsuitable women.

It all began with Wish...for the D-Files, that is. After I attended an early press screening of the feature, it was clear to me that Disney's Wish was the worst animated feature in the 100 year history of the Walt Disney Company and, ironically, was the film meant to commemorate this incredible milestone. My early review opened a floodgate for current and former Disney artists and animators reaching out to Film Threat with their stories about what is happening behind the scenes at Disney and has been for the last decade. I was told that not only was Wish bad...but it was intentionally bad...or, more accurately, misguided from the start!

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Disney’s Animation’s Slow Descent to Obscurity
It all began with Wish…for the D-Files, that is. After I attended an early press screening of the feature, it was clear to me that Disney’s Wish was the worst animated feature in the 100 year history of the Walt Disney Company and, ironically, was the film meant to commemorate this incredible milestone. My early review opened a floodgate for current and former Disney artists and animators reaching out to Film Threat with their stories about what is happening behind the scenes at Disney and has been for the last decade. I was told that not only was Wish bad…but it was intentionally bad…or, more accurately, misguided from the start!

In the D-Files: Part 1, I recounted the events that led to this Wish disaster, beginning with John Lasseter’s firing and humiliation over alleged #MeToo accusations and the outcry to “get a woman to run this place.” That woman would be Jennifer Lee.

Ezoic

In Part 2 and Part 3, I showed that Jennifer Lee slowly and subversively ushered in her new vision for Disney Animation and its staff. In response to the #MeToo Lasseter ousting and with the help of the gender equity advocacy group Woman in Animation, Lee strove for 50/50 equity between male and female Disney artists. But we learned that leveling the playing field was never her intention. She replaced the “Old White Guy” veteran artists with inexperienced women from Tumblr. Sources told us that these new recruits were used to slowly and systematically remove the Old White Guys by fostering a hostile work environment where every move they made and every word they spoke was under constant scrutiny. After a steady flow of unwarranted complaints with HR, humiliating re-education sessions, and living under the constant fear of firing, the Old White Guys, who did not submit to Lee’s new vision, were finally gone.

Notice the lack of depth of field in this image? © 2023 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

“…ultimately, you were either “with Lee” or “against Lee” in her mind.”

Part 4 describes the new storytelling mandates put in place not only at Walt Disney Animation but also at Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel. Lee’s first feature film with her complete stamp of approval from start to finish was Strange World, which leaned heavily into producing an environmental allegory with a gay teen love story. Audiences stayed home for this one. Tanking at the box office, Lee responded, “This is a bummer, but the ‘message’ is important, and we will press on with it.” And press on they did, which brings us to Wish.

...

The Queen of Passive Aggression

Disney's Animation's Slow Descent to Obscurity
It all began with Wish...for the D-Files, that is. After I attended an early press screening of the feature, it was clear to me that Disney's Wish was the worst animated feature in the 100 year history of the Walt Disney Company and, ironically, was the film meant to commemorate this incredible milestone. My early review opened a floodgate for current and former Disney artists and animators reaching out to Film Threat with their stories about what is happening behind the scenes at Disney and has been for the last decade. I was told that not only was Wish bad...but it was intentionally bad...or, more accurately, misguided from the start!

In the D-Files: Part 1, I recounted the events that led to this Wish disaster, beginning with John Lasseter's firing and humiliation over alleged #MeToo accusations and the outcry to "get a woman to run this place." That woman would be Jennifer Lee.

Ezoic

In Part 2 and Part 3, I showed that Jennifer Lee slowly and subversively ushered in her new vision for Disney Animation and its staff. In response to the #MeToo Lasseter ousting and with the help of the gender equity advocacy group Woman in Animation, Lee strove for 50/50 equity between male and female Disney artists. But we learned that leveling the playing field was never her intention. She replaced the "Old White Guy" veteran artists with inexperienced women from Tumblr. Sources told us that these new recruits were used to slowly and systematically remove the Old White Guys by fostering a hostile work environment where every move they made and every word they spoke was under constant scrutiny. After a steady flow of unwarranted complaints with HR, humiliating re-education sessions, and living under the constant fear of firing, the Old White Guys, who did not submit to Lee's new vision, were finally gone.

Notice the lack of depth of field in this image? © 2023 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

"...ultimately, you were either "with Lee" or "against Lee" in her mind."

Part 4 describes the new storytelling mandates put in place not only at Walt Disney Animation but also at Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel. Lee's first feature film with her complete stamp of approval from start to finish was Strange World, which leaned heavily into producing an environmental allegory with a gay teen love story. Audiences stayed home for this one. Tanking at the box office, Lee responded, "This is a bummer, but the 'message' is important, and we will press on with it." And press on they did, which brings us to Wish.

Ezoic
The Queen of Passive Aggression
With Wish, Lee's hand-selected animators, artists, writers, and musicians were now in place. No excuses for failure! When asked about Jennifer Lee, many former Disney artists spoke about Lee's management style, especially regarding how she formed her teams. Many felt that when she took over to replace John Lasseter, her goal was to clean house of Lasseter loyalists. They felt that, ultimately, you were either "with Lee" or "against Lee" in her mind.

When interacting with her, you knew right away if she liked you or not. If she liked you, she would listen to you and give you the best scenes to work on. Of course, her favorites mainly consisted of female artists and male Yes-persons. If you got on her bad side (or were male), you were given the crappy assignments, which rarely involved character animation and often consisted of environmental animation or quick scenelets slipped in between significant scenes. It didn't matter how many years you had been with the company or how many features you worked on in the past; it ultimately boiled down to whether Jennifer Lee liked you or not.

Sources describe Lee as very cunning in how she conducted herself with those on her s**t list. If you could get a conversation in with her, she would nod and acknowledge you, and then end the conversation quickly. Then, in a typically passive-aggressive move, she would have you taken off the project for being a "problem." This happened to many veteran talents who dared to express their opinion, particularly in matters of how things used to be.

The animation and especially the backgrounds in Wish look amateurishly "flat" -- no depth to them. The figures in foreground move against a background that is plainly two dimensional, like in old Bugs Bunny cartoons.

And sure, those are great, but this piece of crap is being generated with computers which are a stone's throw from being artificially intelligent.

Allen Ng called this the worst Disney animation in history, citing, among many other problems, the flatness of the thing. He thought that this was the result of a rushed job.

Nope -- Jennifer Lee actually wanted it this way.

It turns out that many insiders within the production said that the amateurish look of Wish came directly from the top...Jennifer Lee, and it was intentional! Facts that would be backed up in the "Making of" documentary coming on the Wish DVDs and Blu-rays. With decrees coming from the top, they told artists and animators that Wish was going to be a 2D animated feature created with 3D technology.

I guess it was her idea of a "tribute" to Disney glories of the past.

But it didn't work. And in the non-woke world, we grade on outcomes, not intentions. Even if you're a Wahmen.

He also reports that the only thing Jennifer Lee cared about was the insider references and Easter eggs to earlier, competent Disney films. When they'd show the film in test screenings, audiences would say they thought the characters and story were weak. But Jennifer Lee's crew running the screenings didn't care -- they just wanted to know how many references viewers had spotted.

Further harping on Easter Eggs, a significant section of the "Making of" documentary was devoted to the subject--again because we all love Easter Eggs. For example, Asha was supposed to be a young Fairy Godmother. Cinderella's Fairy Godmother used her magic to create a carriage from a pumpkin. Thus, pumpkin seeds were sewn into Asha's costume. She also wore a pumpkin seed anklet. How's that for an Easter Egg? Did you notice it? I sure didn't.

What a great bit of trivia to focus all of your efforts on. Story and characters -- that's #OldThinking. The kids just want their art filled with #hyperlinks to other things.

This is the mark of a talentless hack -- focusing on trivial "callbacks" and references to prior good works of art, instead of fighting to make this work a work of art itself.

I think Nietzsche wrote of periods of decadence that they produce no original art -- just infinite regurgitations of what has come before. He called this "epigonism:"

Noun. epigonism (usually uncountable, plural epigonisms) An artistic or literary imitation of an artist by a later generation; stereotyped repetition.

But this is what #MeToo demands. Move the men out, so that the activist, Marxist, talentless leftwing grievance-farmers can move in.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:20 PM

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