Helena Bonham Carter’s recent comments in defense of author J.K. Rowling and film star Johnny Depp, who have both come under sustained public attack and faced calls for their cancellation from the “woke” community, are unusual for a Hollywood and pop culture star in an age when community censorship poses an ever-present danger to the livelihoods of industry figures, an expert on free speech has told The Epoch Times.
Carter may have felt emboldened to make her controversial comments because she is a well-established star with many awards and iconic roles under her belt, and therefore slightly less susceptible to the pressures and intimidation that keep struggling people in the industry from speaking out against cancellation, the expert said.
The Rowling Furor
The most controversial part of the interview may be Carter’s defense of J.K. Rowling, who has been the target of transgender activists for her insistence on the reality of sex differences. After the dismissal of a researcher from a British think tank in 2018 for having written on Twitter that “it is impossible to change sex,” Rowling sent out tweets of her own questioning whether it is appropriate to fire anyone “for stating that sex is real.”Decrying the campaign to cancel Rowling, Carter stated, “It’s horrendous, a load of bollocks,” and added, “I think she has been hounded.”
Co-Stars Respond
Other people involved with the Harry Potter franchise, including actor Daniel Radcliffe, who has portrayed the eponymous character, have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from Rowling’s views. In an open letter on the website of the activist Trevor Project, Radcliffe apologized to readers of the Harry Potter books who have taken offense at Rowling’s comments and said, “I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you.”In the current environment, Carter’s defense of the embattled Rowling is brave but relatively uncommon, and it is not surprising that younger, less established members of the entertainment industry would take pains to distance themselves from Rowling, believes Clay Calvert, a professor of law and director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida.
“Expressing viewpoints that fall outside the scope of popular orthodoxies or belief systems today is risky business, so, again, Rowling is certainly brave to say what she feels,” Calvert told The Epoch Times.
Career Anxiety
The Rowling and Depp controversies have played out in an environment where respectful disagreement has all but vanished, and political speech, particularly on Twitter and other online platforms, has devolved into vicious personal attacks on anyone with views deemed heterodox. These realities make themselves felt in particularly acute ways for those members of the entertainment industry who are struggling to make progress in their careers and deeply concerned about the consequences of adverse publicity and the ad hominem flogging that happens daily on Twitter, Calvert observed.“For an upcoming, aspiring actor, living in L.A., it would be very difficult, given the competition and the political environment, for that actor to express his or her views if they fall outside the accepted orthodoxies in Hollywood, L.A., and the movie industry. You might never get that break you think you have earned, and it would be a career-ender, you’d end up waiting tables, not as a part-time gig but as a permanent job,” Calvert continued.
This is not to say that figures in the industry never take heterodox positions, but, again, they tend to be such established, senior figures that there is no possibility of their celebrity fading.
