OK so reverse order timeline of events like this that I’m aware of
- Laura Bailey being harassed for something a character she voiced in The Last of Us Part 2 did
- Anna Gunn being harassed because people misguidedly and misogynistically didn’t like Skyler White (taking this back to 2008)
- Ahmed Best and the kid who played young Anakin being harassed by Star Wars fans after the Phantom Menace came out, taking us back to 1999. You could argue that these two weren’t about the character’s actions but rather the quality of the performances/product so its a bit difference but its still the same overall problem.
- I just happened to get curious about what TV Tropes had to say about All in the Family because my roomate was watching it. By weird coincidence, because I had commented about the first three when this news was posted in a discord server already, I learned it goes back to the 70s because an actor who appears in one episode and does something incredibly evil got hate mail over it. So yeah, this shit has been going on forever
But like. WHAT the fuck is going on with that. What is going on in brains that can’t separate actor from character? Is it just needing an outlet.
I think there’s some discussion to be had about this shit getting worse because of increased atomization, COVID, social media giving people easy access to celebrities, and a more media obsessed population in general. But it apparently goes all the way back to All in the Family so what is going on?
And I don’t think that its a minor problem either! Ahmed Best and the small child that played Anakin have shared some pretty harrowing stuff. And like, this was a reality show but I’ve discussed before how upset the story of Hana Kimura is to me as a fan (if you look her up, suicide cw).
My best guess is that people with very little emotional intelligence have emotions over the media they consume and need to let it out on someone as an outlet? Combined with just, poor education leading to poor media literacy?
But yeah this has always confused me lmao. I truly wish to understand the confusing actions of humans.
I watched an interview with a screen actor once, talking about playing a stage villain and the vibe of negativity that can be felt coming from an audience. they related a story of another actor playing Iago in Othello in a production in Texas, when this guy stood up in the audience, pulled out a gun, and shot them.
the wound was not life threatening and the shooter was clearly disturbed, but the actor who was shot admitted later that it was the most flattering personal review of his talent that he ever received.
I remember the director’s commentary on The Wire mentioning that some of the local actors they’d hired got shit in the local scene for things their characters did, so that’s another example of it.
I also read somewhere that the actor who played Bubbles was offered heroin in the street because he looked like he needed it, and he felt like that was his “street Oscar”
The Skyler White thing is just completely based on misogyny, the whole time Skyler was trying to save her husband from being an absolute piece of shit and killing himself and possibly even his whole family in the process. Men see past all that and go “aaah woman annoying, probably on her period the whole time ”
Honestly I never understood the hate she got; Walter was working with literal psychopaths and she had (two?) children to keep safe. Did people really just see themselves in Walter to this extent and considered her a nag? She was the most sane person in the family and the only thing she did wrong was not cutting Walter out completely.
Also all this aside, it’s unbelievable that people are seriously getting upset with an actress over the events in a TV show.
her scenes were boring family shit for a long time instead of cool drug guy shit. Similar happened with iris west on that flash show, but the hate was 100% magnified because women were getting in the way of the cool part.
If you’ve ever played D&D you know that being unable to separate the actions of a character from the person portraying that character is a disease afflicting the brains of, like, most Americans at least
This kind of lack of separation between character and actor makes more sense to me, though. Those are improv characters portrayed by an individual making spur-of-the-moment choices, so getting aggravated with the choices your friend is making for their character doesn’t seem totally unreasonable. The friend is in direct control of the character.
Getting mad at an actor for portraying a part written entirely by somebody else, directed by somebody else, costumed by somebody else - that’s unreasonable. The actor is not in control of the character.
People (often bourgeois people in this case) want an escape from the troubles of the real world, so they lose themselves in art. When that art reminds them of the real world, they get pissed off.
It happened to me at the beginning of covid. I got really into Babylon Berlin. Then, spoiler, one of the main characters died. I had developed a parasocial relationship with this character, so I was shocked and devastated. I didn’t realize how attached I was until it happened. Then, one or two episodes later, they managed to bring the character back to life.
This might explain why blatantly communist art isn’t that popular and why g*mers have meltdowns over pronouns, women, and the existence of Black people. Bourgeois people want an escape from the teeming masses who are defeating them everywhere. So they lose themselves in art (and are often the only ones with the time and money to enjoy it). They don’t want a reminder in that art of how their time is running out.
