James Gunn's Firing Is What Happens When We Outsource Morality to Capitalism

In 2014, Disney hired director James Gunn to carry out the impossible task of taking the Guardians of the Galaxy, a comic property so obscure that even committed fans barely recognized it, and turning it into a blockbuster. And somehow, Gunn did it. And now not only is the Guardians of the Galaxy a muli-million dollar franchise, not only is its star, Chris Pratt, the man of hour, but the characters and world introduced in these films are so popular that the locales and feel of them have come to invade the Marvel brand in other titles such as Thor: Ragnarok and even Avengers: Infinity War.

This entire endeavor was a massive success, and Disney is still cashing in on it today. So that is why it was so shocking when, just a few months ago, Disney showed Gunn the door.

It all started when conservative writer Mike Cernovich uncovered old tweets on James Gunn’s account that make light of rape, pedophilia, and more topics difficult to describe. So, Cernovich spread his findings and soon caught the attention of Disney executives. Then, within a few hours, James Gunn was fired.

This is odd. We live in a capitalist society and Disney, being one of the most profitable companies in the world, is a part of the integral structure that defines it. As such, it makes sense that this company would want to constantly chase profit to ever grow their power, influence, and, most importantly, their wealth. So in what way was Disney’s firing one of their most lucrative directors a wise financial decision? It wasn’t. But to understand why Disney thought it was, we need to take a look into how consumer behavior is changing.

A study last year from Cone Communications found that 87% of consumers said they’d purchase a company’s product if said company showed that they cared about issues consumers cared about. On the flip side of that, 75% of consumers said they would not buy from a company which showed they did not care. If business executives and CEOs are following along, as they surely are, the lesson is this: If a company wants to stay on top in the modern age, and if they want to maximize their profits, then they need to beat their competitors not only with superior products, but also with demonstrated, superior moral behavior.

This, on its face, does not appear horrible. Indeed, this new development has led to a lot of undeniable good. It’s this idea that gave the #MeToo movement its bite and toppled industry giants such as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Les Moonves. It’s this strategy that’s led Warner Brothers to mandate an inclusion rider, Sony to diversify their comic titles, and Marvel to get their heroes to visit children in hospitals.

So how could any of this be negative?

Well, consider the other side of these attempts at corporate responsibility, the efforts that look good but help no one. What am I talking about? Consider that we recently had a major movie with a song celebrating difference and being true to yourself. That sounds good. However, the plot of the film is actually about exploiting minorities for profit. So it falls flat. Or consider that we had a woman cast in a Marvel franchise playing a role normally reserved for a man. Sounds progressive, right? Until we realize that that is also an example of a white actor trying her best to look Asian and thus limiting diversity. Also consider that Sony decided to try and help fight back against bullying. Noble intent, but the way they went about it? They helped put up posters oddly suggesting that bullying could be stopped with sending positive emojis. Again, all of these sound sort of good on paper, but in practice they help no one.

This is the problem we encounter when we outsource moral responsibility to the capitalist machine. Our companies, currently, do not know how to be properly moral, they only respond to profit. If behavior resembling social impact drives profits, companies will follow suit. No matter that the behavior actually does nothing positive for anyone.

This is all the more true in the case of James Gunn. The capitalist machine tried to respond in such a way that looks morally responsible and so fired him. But in reality, James Gunn’s specific case was not black and white and needed careful, deliberate consideration. Instead, Gunn was ousted and labeled a problem, leaving us to deal with what all of this meant. And we did not deal with it neatly. Subsequently, the film’s stars have all come out against the decision, an army of other celebrities have all called out Disney, a petition to reinstate Gunn has gained over 400,000 signatures, and Hollywood has actually empowered internet trolls and created a dangerous precedent. By trying to behave morally responsible, this decision caused chaos, not positive change.

All this is evidence that while Hollywood looks like it's learning how to be morally responsible, in many ways they are just acting it out. Companies have taken away the lesson that audiences respond well to dropping someone at the quickest hint of controversy, when in truth consumers likely just want abusers punished and ethics upheld.

And in the short term all this may be fine. In the short term all of this helps us get greater diversity on screen and helps us remove sexual predators from executive offices. But in the long term, if we cannot teach Hollywood the nature of the ethics we care about, then the culture of the industry will only shift backwards with time. The band-aid solutions will dissolve. And then, a few decades from now, it will come out that another big executive has been harassing employees for years.

And then we’ll just have to start all over again.

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