When I first heard about The Hunt, I was intrigued. A right wing personality online was tweeting it out like “Hollywood executives hate you and want to hunt you for sport” and doing a bunch of fake pearl clutching.
Days later, the President himself came out slamming the movie (on Twitter, of course) and a few short days after that, Universal Studios announced that they were cancelling the movie’s release just a week out from its premiere date.
Trump supporters treated this like a victory, but I can’t help but think of it as a big fat L not just for Trump supporters, but for discourse, art and our country as a whole.
Granted, I understand that sensitivities were obviously heightened following a weekend of mass shootings and just weeks after an ICE facility was attacked. But this reactionary bullshit has got to stop.
First thing’s first: The Hunt is nothing close to the first movie about humans being hunted for sport. The Purge saga says hello. And the 3rd Purge had an overtly political theme, where the NFFA, obviously meant to represent the Republican Party, is pro-Purge because of course, they hate poor people and minorities. . Political allegory aside, it was a terrible movie with terrible acting and a trash plot. What’s upsetting is that a movie that looked at least somewhat promising is being scrapped so close to its release date to appease a literal right wing social justice mob.
People on the right are always talking about how we need to “play by the Left’s rules” and so on and so forth, and I guess they raise an interesting point, but I don’t understand how people that are always saying “tHiS iS 1984” and railing against censorship can actually think it makes sense to start banning media because it offends them.
Republicans are CONSTANTLY bringing up freedom of speech and the First Amendment when it’s completely irrelevant. Freedom of speech means your government can’t come after you for what you say. It doesn’t mean you get to live a life free of consequences for what you say. So can we keep some of that misused and misdirected energy for a movie that might actually portray “deplorables” in a positive light?
I’m being hard on fellow conservatives and Trump supporters because we should know better. Because we’re being hypocrites. Because you’re nothing if you can’t hold your own side accountable. And also because I really wanted to see that damn movie. Glenn Howerton was in it.
I get that we’re in a weird place as a country and that tensions are high, but anyone that actually watched the trailer with a critical thinking capacity above that of a toaster oven should be able to see that the Trump supporters are clearly being portrayed as protagonists. Seriously, think about it. Do you actually remember a movie in recent history where we were supposed to be rooting FOR bloodthirsty billionaires? Get a grip.
Not to mention, the movie actually widely echoes talking points among Trump supporters. How many times have you heard Trump voters or Trump himself mention “globalists” or “the elite.” A huge part of his campaign was positioning himself as the savior of the working class against ultra powerful international players that were at best indifferent and at worst openly hostile to the every day American’s interests.
This movie could have been great. It could have been the one event in popular culture to actually make the public rethink the way half of the country is demonized on a regular basis. Or it could have been hot garbage. But we’ll never know because “conservatives” decided that their feelings mattered more than facts.
Trump supporters are always complaining about being prematurely judged and labeled — and their complaints are completely valid. You shouldn’t assume that a person hates immigrants, black people or women’s rights because they own a red hat. In grade school, we all were told not to judge a book by its cover (or in this case caricature). But Republicans judged a movie by its trailer, threw a temper tantrum and probably lost a good thing.
what do you think?