The Career of Gina Carano: A Few Thoughts

The career of Gina Carano would seem to have its points of interest for those considering the fortunes of celebrity broadly today, not least its beginnings for those who manage to attain it. Perhaps the last athlete to really successfully cross over from the wide, wide world of sports to the still wider world of entertainment to go by how the Mixed Martial Arts fighter became a Hollywood Name, she did so by way of the short-lived 2008 revival of American Gladiators--already an increasingly rare bridge between the world of sports and the rest of entertainment--as one of the Gladiators (codename: Crush). The new Gladiators was the umpteenth case of grubby media executives simple-mindedly seizing on a past success without understanding that success--how the show worked, what it brought to the market in which was a hit--as they gave viewers a reality TV-ized version in an oversaturated reality market as they forgot what made the original fun for so many, and made the mistake, too, of putting it on in the particularly contested and declining market that was Big Three network prime time, with the predictable result that the show flopped. But Carano did get visibility and a fan base she wouldn't otherwise have had (it probably helping that those who, far outside the media's respectable domains, complained that the new crop of female Gladiators was less appealing than their famously sexy predecessors felt her to be an exception, a view reflected in her making the cover of the 2009 edition of ESPN The Magazine's "Body" issue--its now-defunct semi-p.c. answer to Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue). In short order came the Hollywood career, which in this case went beyond the B-movie level so common for such celebrities to include the lead role in critical darling Steven Soderbergh's Haywire, supporting roles in films of the blockbuster Fast and Furious and Deadpool franchises, and of course, a place in the regular cast of Disney-Lucasfilm's flagship show for its effort to bring the Star Wars franchise to the small screen, The Mandalorian.

There simply hasn't been anything to really compare with that since, all as, less happily for Ms. Carano and her fans, the way in which it all came to a screeching halt in early 2021 seems equally telling of the times--not least, in the muddle surrounding the affair. While Carano was fired from The Mandalorian because of a social media post which compared the situation of sympathizers of the political right in the United States generally and Hollywood particularly to that of victims of the Holocaust some have spun the situation to make it appear as if the "woke outrage mob" had "canceled" a "conservative" voice. Certainly those who do espouse "woke" opinions can be expected to find a light-minded treatment of Anti-Semitism and the most notorious atrocity in its history objectionable, but the truth is also that the post offended a great many people beyond that quarter in ways that would matter for any high-profile corporation displaying the normal concern for public image, if only for purely business reasons (let alone a company in the particularly delicate and even fraught position of Disney in recent years), and that would seem to have factored into their decision much more strongly than mere "woke" outrage.

However, the narrative that came to predominate was about the presumed dominance of the media by a "woke" opinion and its "cancel culture," and the idea that the right is persecuted, especially in Hollywood--all of which would seem to have been to the advantage of the anti-woke right, enabling it to position itself as not just the victim in the situation but the champion of "free speech" against censorious champions of "social justice." With this all encouraged by the continuation of the drama as "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk financed Carano's inevitable suit against the bête noire that Disney had become for the right, concluded by a settlement this past August whose undisclosed terms left Carano telling the world she was "smiling."

Considering the more complex reality one might usefully compare Carano's treatment with that of her fellow combat sports-turned-Fast and Furious actress, Ronda Rousey (whose transition wasn't nearly as successful as Carano's seemed to be). Prior to Carano's troubles in 2021 the Bernie Sanders-supporting Rousey probably suffered more for her progressive political opinions than Carano for her right-wing ones (certainly to go by how much flak she has got for her acting or her off-screen life), though the media doing the penalizing has not been nearly as prone to tell that story, less congenial as it is from the standpoint of the conventional wisdom it so ceaselessly promotes on our screens.