Mel Gibson's casting on The Continental seems baffling, but perhaps Hollywood's power brokers don't care about his offensive past

Pajiba

"Every time an announcement is made about a new project to star or be directed by Gibson, we engage in another round of fury and bafflement," says Kayleigh Donaldson in response to Gibson joining the Starz John Wick prequel series. "How the hell does this keep happening? Surely even all of the smarmy bad-faith contrarians who whine about the ills of cancel culture can see that maybe it’s not the best idea to keep giving money to a noted racist, misogynist, and anti-Semite? These aren’t mere rumors either. We have documentation! F**ktons of it! None of this is secret nor has anyone really tried to hide it. I wonder what kind of fans Gibson attracts (you know, aside from Holocaust deniers). Do they see his nastiness as some sort of provocation, a daring act in the face of the ‘PC Police’? Is he a ‘bad boy’ to them, an a-hole rogue who has enough charm to distract from the slurs? Is it easier to pretend reality doesn’t exist because Gibson now mostly seems to play douchebags and bad guys? The sad truth is that a lot of people just don’t care about any of it. I truly don’t think it’s anything more complicated than that. People don’t care that Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite. Rather, to be more specific, the people who make all of the industry decisions don’t care. They can make a big show over how they’re oh-so-forgiving or know the ‘real’ Gibson or prize the work over the man, but the end result is the same: a total lack of empathy and a willingness to perpetuate bigotry through empowering the bullies. A lot of viewers and critics don’t care either. They can justify their apathy by claiming that the issue just isn’t their problem, or they simply want to consume the films without having to think about the icky stuff on the side."