Arrow Announcements, Speculation & Wild, Irresponsible Conjecture

[swo17]

If the aim is to not shine a light on someone (which announcing a deluxe Arrow edition for their film would naturally afford), I would note that making a public statement like this unavoidably does the same thing. Anecdotally, I've never heard of this guy before and am now morbidly curious to check out his films, purely given that they may soon become difficult to see. If Arrow had said nothing and just quietly dropped the releases, these films likely would have stayed completely off my radar. Actually, if they had proceeded with an eventual release, I wouldn't necessarily have sought them out even then without strong recommendations from others. Perversely, it is this very act of "cancelling" him that most effectively jumps his films up on my viewing queue. (Though, full disclosure, I am a terrible person.)

[Glowingwabbit]

I think it was known that they were working on those. I could be mistaken as it's hard to keep track. So in that case making an announcement is needed (it didn't come from Arrow's actual twitter handle if that makes.a difference). I also don't think there is anything wrong with now wanting to check out his titles which is a far cry from having to work with him and then promoting that work.

[hearthesilence]

I also don't think there is anything wrong with now wanting to check out his titles which is a far cry from having to work with him and then promoting that work.

Exactly. People are free to read, watch, etc. whatever they want. Sorry to drag out Nazis for yet another analogy, but plenty of people read Mein Kampf without any dubious motive - it should be available and I'd never ban it myself even if I would have no desire in printing it if I had my own publishing empire.

[Glowingwabbit]

I also don't think there is anything wrong with now wanting to check out his titles which is a far cry from having to work with him and then promoting that work.

Exactly. People are free to read, watch, etc. whatever they want. Sorry to drag out Nazis for yet another analogy, but plenty of people read Mein Kampf without any dubious motive - it should be available and I'd never ban it myself even if I would have no desire in printing it if I had my own publishing empire.

Severin put out Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau on blu awhile ago. I doubt they'll say or do anything about it since it's already been published. The
Color Out of Space will probably remain on blu-ray to buy. So he's not really canceled so much as two companies have announced they don't want to work with him (and rightfully so imo).

Edit: Nevermind, I literally just saw Severin post something after I wrote this lmao

[beamish14]

If the aim is to not shine a light on someone (which announcing a deluxe Arrow edition for their film would naturally afford), I would note that making a public statement like this unavoidably does the same thing. Anecdotally, I've never heard of this guy before and am now morbidly curious to check out his films, purely given that they may soon become difficult to see. If Arrow had said nothing and just quietly dropped the releases, these films likely would have stayed completely off my radar. Actually, if they had proceeded with an eventual release, I wouldn't necessarily have sought them out even then without strong recommendations from others. Perversely, it is this very act of "cancelling" him that most effectively jumps his films up on my viewing queue. (Though, full disclosure, I am a terrible person.)

I've always been partial to Hardware, which is really a low-budget marvel and has a fantastic soundtrack. Dust Devil is an interesting movie; years before George Miller used the deserts of Namibia to stand in for Max Rockatansky's post-apocalyptic playground, Stanley employed them for his vision of a barren hellscape. It's also unique in that it is a rare Miramax-butchered film that its maker was able to (mostly) salvage.

I maintain that Edgar Wright's The World's End is a prequel to Dust Devil, with the final moments easily segueing into the beginning of Stanley's film.

[DarkImbecile]

(Though, full disclosure, I am a terrible person.)

Maybe this will make you feel like slightly less of a terrible person (we’ll still know the unchanged objective truth, of course, but you might feel that way):

[hearthesilence]

(Though, full disclosure, I am a terrible person.)

Maybe this will make you feel like slightly less of a terrible person (we’ll still know the unchanged objective truth, of course, but you might feel that way):

Also a good way to resolve the issue. Maybe the best way for most labels.

[Glowingwabbit]

I like that response. But unlike Arrow they've already put it out into the world.

His films are a mess but they have enough interesting ideas going on that I was looking forward to his next two films in the Lovecraft trilogy.

[swo17]

Maybe Ben Shapiro can hire him?

[DarkImbecile]

You already said you were a terrible person, no need to be repetitive

[Maltic]

Exactly. People are free to read, watch, etc. whatever they want. Sorry to drag out Nazis for yet another analogy, but plenty of people read Mein Kampf without any dubious motive - it should be available and I'd never ban it myself even if I would have no desire in printing it if I had my own publishing empire.

It's ok, we're not Disney.

[furbicide]

The inevitable posts of “Yeah, he abused those women, but I want my sci-fi blu-ray” are disheartening.

Some of us simply don't accept the premise that you can't get serious about combating interpersonal violence (and other social ills) unless you suppress creative work. One can absolutely respond ethically, respectfully and urgently to allegations like these while also feeling uneasy about, say, Kevin Spacey getting erased from All the Money in the World, and I'm disheartened that this is the framework through which people see these things now. Many of us care very much about the prevalence of these harms and in fact are doing our own work to combat them; personally, I strongly believe in justice system reform to make historical crimes easier to prosecute, opening up funded preventative avenues for potential abusers to seek help, and developing accountability processes that can function outside a legal setting. I also strongly believe that there's something messed up about wanting only "good" people's art to be in the canon of acceptability, and that access to alleged abusers' art shouldn't be used as a tool for social change. These things aren't mutually exclusive.

The economic decisions by DVD companies caught in this landscape are an entirely different matter. I can't say I would want to be in Arrow's shoes here, and I'm not saying that my preferred approach – to go ahead with the release, but to nonetheless publicly acknowledge the allegations, more or less as SpectreVision did in the Tweet above – would be easy to make or to justify to stakeholders. Companies are faced with dilemmas like this all the time these days, and it actually takes a lot of courage to go against the flow; when you're dealing with a lot of other people's money, I can well understand getting cold feet. But none of that has anything to do with ethical principles, or about what kind of precedents we actually want to set as a society. So calling those who don't agree with Arrow's decision "keyboard warriors", and saying we might think differently if we were in their position, kind of ignores the point that maybe it's people who aren't financially invested in taking the safest option who should be speaking up right now.

[Reifferschizzle]

The inevitable posts of “Yeah, he abused those women, but I want my sci-fi blu-ray” are disheartening.

I also strongly believe that there's something messed up about wanting only "good" people's art to be in the canon of acceptability, and that access to alleged abusers' art shouldn't be used as a tool for social change. These things aren't mutually exclusive.

This feels like a red herring to me when we're talking abou living artists. The point is for abusers to a) not receive my money and b) not to feel like the industry they're in gives them backing to remain abusers. I freely acknowledge terrible people can make great art - but this is not imo a good reason to support them.

[MichaelB]

This feels like a red herring to me when we're talking abou living artists. The point is for abusers to a) not receive my money and b) not to feel like the industry they're in gives them backing to remain abusers. I freely acknowledge terrible people can make great art - but this is not imo a good reason to support them.

Yes, absolutely - it's the nature of the support and the career/reputational benefit accruing from it that's the core issue here.

Now it may well be that Stanley is a total squeaky-clean innocent, but I seem to recall various media outlets dropping Craig Charles (then pretty ubiquitous) like a radioactive potato after he was not merely charged with rape but remanded in custody until trial. I mention him because of course he was famously acquitted after the court decided that his ex-girlfriend had falsely accused him of rape, whereupon he was able to rebuild his career and reputation (and pretty successfully too) - but I absolutely don't blame the media outlets who, at the height of a tabloid frenzy, decided that it would be ruinously bad PR to continue to use his services.

Which has in turn reminded me of how Chris Langham singled out Armando Iannucci as one of the people who stood by him when he was up on child porn charges and had been pretty much totally shunned - but while I'm sure Iannucci was very supportive behind the scenes, he pointedly didn't reinstate Langham into The Thick of It, although I daresay "not killing off the character" could be said to constitute a form of support. (Langham was convicted of possessing child porn, jailed for ten months, and his career never recovered.)

[Calvin]

I fully understand Arrow's reasons for cancelling the releases and, if I were running a label, I'd almost certainly do likewise.

But I find it difficult to comprehend the inconsistency with which this particular form of cultural exile is applied - it looks like Richard Stanley's films will largely be deleted from circulation, but there's obviously a number of directors who have done terrible things whose work(s) are still widely available. Kevin Spacey may have been removed from All the Money in the World, but his back catalog is also available. I haven't heard any studios/labels say that they're going to withdraw films by Armie Hammer in the past day. And do we limit this to actors and directors? Should Harvey Weinstein's films have been made OOP?

Film is a collaborative medium and I'm unconvinced that the work of other members of the cast/crew should be 'cancelled' through no fault of their own.

[Glowingwabbit]

I fully understand Arrow's reasons for cancelling the releases and, if I were running a label, I'd almost certainly do likewise.

But I find it difficult to comprehend the inconsistency with which this particular form of cultural exile is applied - it looks like Richard Stanley's films will largely be deleted from circulation, but there's obviously a number of directors who have done terrible things whose work(s) are still widely available. Kevin Spacey may have been removed from All the Money in the World, but his back catalog is also available. I haven't heard any studios/labels say that they're going to withdraw films by Armie Hammer in the past day. And do we limit this to actors and directors? Should Harvey Weinstein's films have been made OOP?

Film is a collaborative medium and I'm unconvinced that the work of other members of the cast/crew should be 'cancelled' through no fault of their own.

I think it goes to show how much currency auteurism has these days. Notice the difference between Spacey/Hammer (actors) or Weinstein (producer) and what has happened to Stanley, Polanski, or Woody Allen (all writer/directors). Also look at the example of Louis CK. I don't believe any of the films or tv series in which he was just an actor were canceled, rather it was where he was the director/creator (also notice Better Things, which is an excellent show btw, survived because he was only a co-creator).

"This is Nolan's film. This is Snyder's film. This is a Richard Stanley film." You see this all the time but when someone (like Richard Stanley) is outed for being a heinous person I see folks suddenly want to say it's a collaborative medium (which we all know to be true).

Calvin, I don't think your wrong in mentioning the inconsistency. Joss Whedon is an interesting case. Why hasn't all his stuff been canceled?*** I guess I'm just trying to say there are consequences of having auteurism (specifically associated with the writer/director) having come to dominate film discourse. Also JFC if we were to lose everything Weisntein had his hands on (he's already done enough damage to limit what films were made available during his tenure).

I also like what Spectrevision is doing as they do acknowledge the other members of the cast/crew who don't deserve to be canceled.

***my two cents: I think Buffy/Angel are too entrenched in pop-culture (pretty similar to canceling JK Rowling but not Harry Potter) to suffer, meanwhile Avengers is really a Kevin Feige/MCU/Disney vehicle anyway (plus Disney would not bury something so profitable). If anything his name could be removed from future home video releases.

[knives]

This feels like a red herring to me when we're talking abou living artists. The point is for abusers to a) not receive my money and b) not to feel like the industry they're in gives them backing to remain abusers. I freely acknowledge terrible people can make great art - but this is not imo a good reason to support them.

Yes, absolutely - it's the nature of the support and the career/reputational benefit accruing from it that's the core issue here.

Now it may well be that Stanley is a total squeaky-clean innocent, but I seem to recall various media outlets dropping Craig Charles (then pretty ubiquitous) like a radioactive potato after he was not merely charged with rape but remanded in custody until trial. I mention him because of course he was famously acquitted after the court decided that his ex-girlfriend had falsely accused him of rape, whereupon he was able to rebuild his career and reputation (and pretty successfully too) - but I absolutely don't blame the media outlets who, at the height of a tabloid frenzy, decided that it would be ruinously bad PR to continue to use his services.

Which has in turn reminded me of how Chris Langham singled out Armando Iannucci as one of the people who stood by him when he was up on child porn charges and had been pretty much totally shunned - but while I'm sure Iannucci was very supportive behind the scenes, he pointedly didn't reinstate Langham into The Thick of It, although I daresay "not killing off the character" could be said to constitute a form of support. (Langham was convicted of possessing child porn, jailed for ten months, and his career never recovered.)

This is an interesting point, but not everyone is able to succeed after acquittal, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a minority, with even a couple of prominent if old examples coming to mind like Fatty Arbuckle and in a roundabout fashion Allen.

[MichaelB]

A significant factor seems to be the person's popularity prior to the accusation. When Pete Townshend had his own spot of bother with child porn, the number of people immediately leaping to his defence was overwhelming, and when Rolf Harris was accused of being a predatory paedophile, hardly anyone wanted to believe it because Harris was previously right up there with David Attenborough and Alan Bennett in the "great national treasure" pantheon.

Both were in fact guilty, although Townshend's reputation survived because there were significant psychological mitigating circumstances, he was never actually in possession of child porn (a criminal offence in Britain), and he was ultimately let off with an official police caution (which basically means "yes, you did what you're accused of, but we don't think it's serious enough to take further"), whereas Harris was jailed for multiple sex crimes involving young girls and has since become a total pariah outside a hardcore fan base who believes he's innocent no matter what.

By contrast, when Jim Davidson and Freddie Starr were caught up in the Operation Yewtree net, the media (tabloid and social) were full of people saying "I knew they were wrong'uns from the start", although this is an impression that seems to be at least as much related to their right-wing politics as anything else. Both were completely exonerated, Davidson's career seems to have recovered, but Starr's didn't (he died a couple of years ago) - although a key issue there is that after he was acquitted he tried to sue his accuser for libel, but the case was dismissed, leaving him with a £1 million legal bill.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Both were completely exonerated, Davidson's career seems to have recovered, but Starr's didn't (he died a couple of years ago) - although a key issue there is that after he was acquitted he tried to sue his accuser for libel, but the case was dismissed, leaving him with a £1 million legal bill.

Freddie Starr was already on the skids much earlier. He never should of eaten that Hamster.

[Maltic]

Has Stanley's other alleged victim come forward? At first, I took it that Scarlett Amaris had written the blog post in reaction to further accusations made by another woman and that charges had been brought against Stanley. If Arrow and SpecteVision dropped him based on the blog post alone the day after it was published, it seems to me they were caught up in the moment (of course they could be vindicated if new shit comes to light).

[hearthesilence]

A significant factor seems to be the person's popularity prior to the accusation. When Pete Townshend had his own spot of bother with child porn, the number of people immediately leaping to his defence was overwhelming, and when Rolf Harris was accused of being a predatory paedophile, hardly anyone wanted to believe it because Harris was previously right up there with David Attenborough and Alan Bennett in the "great national treasure" pantheon.

Both were in fact guilty, although Townshend's reputation survived because there were significant psychological mitigating circumstances, he was never actually in possession of child porn (a criminal offence in Britain), and he was ultimately let off with an official police caution (which basically means "yes, you did what you're accused of, but we don't think it's serious enough to take further"), whereas Harris was jailed for multiple sex crimes involving young girls and has since become a total pariah outside a hardcore fan base who believes he's innocent no matter what.

But to my understanding, Townshend - who had recently come to the belief that he may have been sexually assaulted as a minor - was actually researching sex crimes against minors. He went as far as to see how easily child porn could be purchased on the internet, and he used his own personal credit card to pay for some kind of access without, as mentioned, actually acquiring any of it. Granted, it's the type of story that would sound like a comically lame excuse if it wasn't for the seriousness of the accusation, but with his full cooperation the investigation backed up his story. It may be a relief to Who fans, but even now I have friends who maintain he's a pedophile because of that arrest and won't believe otherwise.

[furbicide]

I also strongly believe that there's something messed up about wanting only "good" people's art to be in the canon of acceptability, and that access to alleged abusers' art shouldn't be used as a tool for social change. These things aren't mutually exclusive.

This feels like a red herring to me when we're talking abou living artists. The point is for abusers to a) not receive my money and b) not to feel like the industry they're in gives them backing to remain abusers. I freely acknowledge terrible people can make great art - but this is not imo a good reason to support them.

I understand this point of view, and in fact support it 100% if we're talking about people who exploit their position in the industry to commit abusive acts – Weinstein being the obvious, but far from only, case in point. People who do things like that should lose their jobs and, in at least some cases, never work again in that profession.

But I see that as fundamentally different from an artist who commits (even heinous) sins in their personal life, which I think ultimately is about them as citizens / individual members of society, and ought to fall within the purview of the law. The reason why I think that distinction is important is that conflating workplace misconduct with general harmful behaviour outsources justice to corporations that 1) simply aren't in a position to assess guilt/innocence or broader questions around moral culpability, 2) are not in any way accountable for their decisions, and 3) are really only interested in how cases like this will affect income (whether directly or via however much worth they assign to their brand image). That means we'll get a lot of knee-jerk "cancellations" of "problematic" people (for everything ranging from serious allegations like those against Stanley to bad social media posts) but not much else. 

While I understand that, on a case-by-case basis, this often seems like a better outcome than no consequence at all for people who've otherwise evaded legal repercussions for their alleged actions – though I have no idea whether that is or will be so for Stanley – I think the bigger-picture outcome is a really dehumanising approach to art in which actions are seen to define a person and mark them as pariahs who must be neither seen nor spoken of (to the extent of actually being erased from screen, in Spacey's case). I don't know how that even vaguely fits within a progressive/humanist approach to criminal justice, where we're directly trying to fight against notions of people being irredeemable / only fit to be outcasts, and where the ability to ply one's trade upon release is an absolutely essential aspect of rehabilitation.

If you give Stanley money for the art he makes, I don't see how that's any different to paying an ex-con to serve you at a supermarket checkout. In each case, they're doing work that you're benefiting from, and that's the extent of the transaction. The notion that you're enabling them to be violent in their personal life just doesn't really come into it unless the work itself they are doing is tied up in exploitation. It's not that they shouldn't be held accountable for what they're doing off the job; it's just that there are good and bad ways to hold people accountable (good = calling the police; bad = getting a posse together and beating them up in the supermarket carpark, for example). I acknowledge that these lines aren't always clear, but I think they're necessary ones to draw and that – in businesses' rush to distance themselves from any and all undesirables – we as a society are categorically failing to do so at the moment.

***my two cents: I think Buffy/Angel are too entrenched in pop-culture (pretty similar to canceling JK Rowling but not Harry Potter) to suffer, meanwhile Avengers is really a Kevin Feige/MCU/Disney vehicle anyway (plus Disney would not bury something so profitable). If anything his name could be removed from future home video releases.

I think you're basically right, and I also think it's a real sign of the times that the individual (necessarily flawed) human artist is expendable but the inhuman corporation is cancel-proof.

[brundlefly]

If you give Stanley money for the art he makes, I don't see how that's any different to paying an ex-con to serve you at a supermarket checkout. In each case, they're doing work that you're benefiting from, and that's the extent of the transaction. The notion that you're enabling them to be violent in their personal life just doesn't really come into it unless the work itself they are doing is tied up in exploitation. It's not that they shouldn't be held accountable for what they're doing off the job; it's just that there are good and bad ways to hold people accountable (good = calling the police; bad = getting a posse together and beating them up in the supermarket carpark, for example). I acknowledge that these lines aren't always clear, but I think they're necessary ones to draw and that – in businesses' rush to distance themselves from any and all undesirables – we as a society are categorically failing to do so at the moment.

Did I miss the part where Stanley has been arrested, tried, convicted, imprisoned, and released? (I haven't seen anything about the results of the charges in 2014, or the revenge porn incident, and obviously some of the public square outcry about these kinds of crimes is that there has not been adequate official responses to them.) Aside from a matter of scale and urgency, an "ex-con" would have at least in theory done his time and paid a price to society. The ex-con needs an income and a re-integration into society and people need food. The world can wait on an upgrade of Hardware until this guy has faced some consequence for his actions. In the meanwhile, if Stanley needs to get a job bagging groceries to get by, maybe he can find one of those.

Am thankful Michael B linked to Amaris' post. The writing's sharp and direct and compelling, and the fact she co-wrote Color Out of Space helped ameliorate some of the queasiness I got when Netflix shipped me that DVD the day before all this stuff broke.

[MichaelB]

Victor Salva is of course a famous example of an ex-con who has in theory repaid his debt to society, but plenty of people still boycott his films - indeed, his is often one of the first names to come up in these discussions, and pretty much never in the context of "well, he did the crime, but he's done his time, so that's OK".

But they're entirely free to refuse to watch his films, and in this case it's an unusually informed decision because the facts of his case are a matter of public record. I've never seen any of them because I'm simply not interested - but Roman Polanski is a lot harder for me to ignore, not least professionally, so I just have to keep emphasising that I condemn what he did on that fateful day in 1977 totally, completely and unreservedly.

Ultimately, it's always going to be an individual decision, and if it's a genuinely informed one, I respect that.

[yoloswegmaster]

In other news, Arrow is going to be releasing standard editions of Tremors, the Tsukamoto box, and the Graveyard of Honor series.