It's been a question on our minds a lot lately, as Skip Ender's Game picks up steam, how will the producers behind Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game deal with the very real issue of their author's antigay activism? How will the Hollywood press frame the issue? In an early interview with the Wall Street Journal, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci seem to make it fairly clear they intend to punt.
Orson Scott Card has publicly expressed his disapproval of gay marriage and homosexuality. (His appointment by DC Comics to write an upcoming “Superman” issue caused controversy and eventually led an illustrator to quit.) He is a producer on the film and is very associated with it. Do you think his views may affect how the film will be received?
Orci: I was never aware of in the book – and we’ve read it three or four times during our lifetime before we got into this movie – I never saw any sign in “Ender’s Game” of anything that offended Alex or me. The book is beautiful. It’s about tolerance, it’s about responsibility, it’s about growing up. We just tend to judge a book on its own merits. Nothing that anyone could say is going to remove our original reaction of how we perceive this beautiful book. For us, it’s just about the book.
Kurtzman: Look, obviously it’s a First Amendment issue and Mr. Card is free to express whatever point-of-view he chooses to express, and we are free to disagree with him. At this point, that’s all I really want to say about it.
There are a couple of interesting points here.
Notice how the Journal is very much soft-pedaling OSC's venomous campaign against marriage equality and gay rights? Joining the Board of NOM and publishing editorials in favor of constitutional amendments (North Carolina's Amendment One in 2012) banning gay marriage is a wee bit more than publicly expressing one's views. His words, too, have done greater damage than to "express his disapproval." He said this in 2004, re: gay marriage:
The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.
It's that desire for normality, that discontent with perpetual adolescent sexuality, that is at least partly behind this hunger for homosexual "marriage."
They are unhappy, but they think it's because the rest of us "don't fully accept them."
Homosexual "marriage" won't accomplish what they hope. They will still be just as far outside the reproductive cycle of life. And they will have inflicted real damage on those of us who are inside it.
Yeah, not exactly a publicist's dream job, but the producers are also totally ducking the real issue, wrongly putting it into the context of the film. Who cares about the story, you clueless jerks? It's about the box office, or to put it another way, OUR MONEY. You're asking us to FORGET that our money is going to support the guy who, by "they" in the above quote, means US and thinks we're gay because we got molested.
Orci's a class act, too. He previously dismissed the idea, displaying a slimy disingenuousness to Entertainment Weekly:
Producer Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Fringe) says he wasn't aware of Card's views when he decided to adapt the beloved sci-fi classic: ''It didn't occur to me to do background checks on anybody.'' Still, he says, the movie should be judged onits message, not the personal beliefs of the original author. (Card had minimal involvement in the film; Gavin Hood penned the screenplay.) As Orci says, ''If it's on the screen, then I think it's fair game.''
By "didn't occur to me," I guess he means that no one in either the publicity or legal departments has ever heard of Google, which I find very, very hard to believe.
Once again, then, for the back row, Skip Ender's Game is about taking control of our cultural and economic power in the marketplace. Movie studios and book publishers recognize that the geek audience is huge and spends freely on what it loves. It seems not to want to recognize that much of that energy—and disposable income—comes from the queer fans, who aren't going to pass a single cent to one of our community's biggest enemies no matter how you spin it.
Sign the pledge at Skip Ender's Game to signal your commitment to keeping your money out of antigay activist Orson Scott Card's hands. Don't go to the movie, don't download it or buy the DVD. On Friday, November 1, find one of the many Geeks OUT-sponsored Skip Ender's Game events around the country or start your own. Currently parties are in the works in New York, Boston, Toronto, Orlando, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, and San Francisco—with more to come!
