“A Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the Dark Side. Anger, fear, aggression. The Dark Side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path forever it will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.”
Those are the words Master Yoda spoke to Luke Skywalker and they are words the entire company at Disney and specifically Lucasfilm needs to hear. But it might be too late, Lucasfilm and especially the people who work on The Mandalorian appear to be consumed by fear, dominated by it.
None of them have an ounce of courage to stand up for their cancelled castmate Gina Carano. None of them. Most of them haven’t even spoke about it whatsoever in public including executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni.
Now, Carano did reveal in her interview with Ben Shapiro that some people did stand up for her internally. She stated, “I know that there are some people that went to bat for me, but I know that they didn’t really win out in the end.”
But the fact of the matter is that none of them have made any public statements about Carano’s firing whatsoever.
And the one person who has spoken up about it, readily admits that he’s controlled by fear.
Comedian Bill Burr, who plays Migs Mayfeld in The Mandalorian, recently discussed Carano’s firing back on February 24th on The Bill Bert Podcast Episode 49.
https://youtu.be/lU-TCOmC1uw?t=1402
While discussing Carano’s firing, Burr states, “I’m on that f***ing show. Now, I gotta watch what the f**k I say.”
It’s clear he’s in fear of losing his role as Mayfeld if Disney decides to falsely claim that he’s “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities.”
That’s what they did to Carano. A spokesman revealed Carano had been fired back in February through a statement that read, “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future.”
The spokesman added, “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
It’s a flat out lie because she shared a post warning people of the dangers of how hating your neighbor can lead to horrific, evil violence.
Not only did Burr reveal he’s controlled by fear, but he also heavily implies that Carano’s sharing of the post is a “bad comparison.” At multiple points he describes it as “ignorant.”
The post is clearly not ignorant. The ignorance comes from those describing it as a bad comparison.
In his interview with Gina Carano, Ben Shapiro succinctly explained, “It was obvious that this had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. The post was obviously not anti-Semitic. You would have to completely twist the post backwards in order to get to the idea that it was anti-Semitic.”
He continued, “Since it was specifically decrying the treatment of Jews. It was saying what happened to Jews was evil and this should never happen again. And that’s why you should be careful about how you should treat your neighbor.”
Decrying the post as ignorant also shows that Burr is living in fear. He’s partaking in the media lie that there was something wrong with it. There wasn’t.
It also shows a lack of courage. Soviet dissident Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his 1970 Nobel Prize speech brought to our attention by a recent Twitter post from Carano, “The simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions!”
He would later add in his speech, “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”
Not only does Burr decry Carano’s post as ignorant, which it is not, but as the conversation surrounding cancel culture begins winding down he stated, “Now it’s becoming like, ‘Hey you made an ignorant comparison. (flushing sound) there goes your dream, right?”
He then questions, “I look at that and it’s like, ‘Who the f*** stands up to that?”
Obviously, Bill Burr is not standing up to it, otherwise he wouldn’t be asking the question. No one at Disney and Lucasfilm is standing up to it at least in the eyes of the public. Instead, we get statements from Burr that reveal he’s afraid he might be the next person to get fired from the show over his comments.
The only person who is standing up to it is Gina Carano.
She tells Shapiro, “The thought of this happening to anybody else, especially like somebody who could not handle this the way I can, no they don’t get to do that. They don’t get to make people feel like that. And if I buckle then little girls and little boys who are not getting a good, fair shake at growing up right now…’
She continued, “If I buckle it’s going to make it okay for these companies who have a history of lying to be lying and to do this to other people. And they have done it to other people. And I’m not going down without a fight.”
While Carano is actually standing up for it, Burr makes platitudes about how awful cancel culture is. Just this week as reported by The Hill, a new CAPS-Harris poll shows that 64 percent of respondents believe that “cancel culture posed a threat to freedom in the U.S., while 36 percent said it was not a threat.”
It’s clear most people know that cancel culture is awful, so much so that 64% think it’s a threat to freedom. It’s not courageous to say how bad cancel culture is. It’s an empty gesture.
Courage requires putting your own neck on the line. Courage is taking a risk. And sometimes courage is sacrificing.
Bill Burr can’t be courageous because he’s controlled and dominated by fear as his own words prove. And he proves that when he ultimately shuts down the conversation on his podcast altogether.
He stated, “Can we just talk about something else? Who gives a f***? Joe, let’s talk about taste buds. Jesus Christ we are sitting here talking about Britney Spears and f***ing Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake s*** from 20 years ago.
His character might have been able to directly confront an Imperial officer and call him out for his wrongdoings, but Bill Burr appears unable to do that in real life.
And worse than Burr are the rest of Carano’s former costars and the production team on The Mandalorian that includes Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. They haven’t even spoken an ounce in public. And their silence, their lack of courage to speak the truth speaks volumes.
And I’ll close with these words from Master Yoda, “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”