When You Are Your Own Worst Enemy

Have you heard about the proposed movie titled “Rub & Tug”? Don’t feel bad if you haven’t; I had not until a few weeks ago when I first heard that a “Culture War” controversy had broken out over the lead actress. You see, the movie tells to story of Dante “Tex” Gill, a female massage parlor owner during the ’70s and ’80s who “preferred to be known as a man” aka transgendered before the T had been added to LGB. However, Social Justice Wars (SJW) got up at arms when the lead was revealed to be a cisgender female and not transgender male (just to help everyone keep score both are biological females).

When you pitch a script in Hollywood, you hope that you can convince studio executives, production companies, directors and big-name actors/actresses to sign on for your project. “Rub & Tug” had managed to get Scarlett Johansson so excited about the project that not only had she committed to play the lead character but her production company, These Pictures, was set to co-produce the film. Now you would think that LGBTQ activists and SJWs everywhere would be excited about having this story told and had one of the hottest stars in Hollywood attached, but you’d be wrong.

In the realm of the Social Justice Warrior, it often seems that virtue signaling is more import than the cause du jour. (I often like to point out that virtue signaling isn’t the same thing as actually having virtue when the topic comes up, but I digress.) This would seem to be a case of exactly that. The SJWs were angered by the fact that Johansson, who is cisgender (a man or woman who identifies with their birth gender), was set to play the part of the transgendered Gill. In their virtue signaling mindset, it is completely unacceptable that a woman who believes that she is a woman should have the role of a woman who believed she was a man.

It’s called acting SJWs, and it’s something that Scarlett Johansson is pretty good at doing. It doesn’t matter that the movie would have a much better chance of success at the box-office with Johansson attached and that she would mostly do a great job of portraying the Pittsburg born gangster. No, it’s far more important that someone else, anyone else, as long as they are the appropriate transgender, success of the movie be damned, play this role. At first, Johansson pushed back against the SJWs saying that there is no difference between her playing a transgender character and a transgender actor playing a cisgender character, but that only served to enrage the activists further. So, Scarlett Johansson has changed her mind is no longer going to be in the movie. Victory for the cause, right? Well, not so fast.

Because of Johansson’s withdrawal, the movie is now in serious jeopardy of getting made at all. With Scarlett no longer playing the lead it is no longer a certainty that These Pictures is still on board with co-producing the film and there is as yet no word if Joel Silver’s production company Silver Pictures will move forward with the project if Johansson’s company pulls out. While several groups are celebrating the “win” and are now making lists of “approved” actors to take the role, they seem to miss the point the making movies is still a business, no matter committed to the cause a studio may be, they still want to make money. After reading what I have about “Tex,” I would like to see the movie get made. I think it is an interesting story about the kind of person who fits the description of “Larger than Life.” I am forced to ask the SJWs out there a question. What helps the cause more, the movie getting made with big stars in it and people going to see it while it’s in theaters or making it “pure” and possible stopping it from being made? Oh, wait, I answered this one already. Virtue signaling, it’s always more important to virtue signal.

 

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