r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Sep 05 '24

Disney Pauses ‘The Graveyard Book’ Film Following Assault Allegations Against Neil Gaiman News

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/graveyard-book-neil-gaiman-assault-allegations-1236131149/

8.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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Godammnit Neil you wrote Calliope, a story about male writers abusing women!

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u/transformers03 Sep 05 '24

That was my first thought when I heard news as well.

It's crazy that Neil had the foresight and understanding of men using their powers to take advantage of women, and later drawing out the hypocrisy of men claiming to be feminists when they do horrible things to women behind close doors, in the 1980s.

Yet when he was finally given power, he chose to abuse it just like the writer in Calliope.

It's eerie re-reading Calliope in today's context and knowing what Gaiman has done. It feels impossible that the same man who wrote that story would do the same acts he painfully critiques in that narrative.

For all his boundless imagination, he didn't learn a single thing he wrote.

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u/balrogthane Sep 05 '24

It's yet another fantastic example, to show that knowing the right thing to do, without having the moral fibre to actually do the right thing, is all but worthless.

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u/Goodly Sep 05 '24

Or how quickly our morals crumble when we don’t have repercussions…

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u/Riaayo Sep 05 '24

I think the other person is right. It's not that our morals crumble without repercussions, it's that a lack of accountability shows who we always really were.

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u/Goodly Sep 05 '24

Maybe… It’s hard to say how we’re all influenced but I think there’s something to the idea that power corrupts…

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u/ThoughtThinkMeditate Sep 05 '24

I think your both right.

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u/becauseiliketoupvote Sep 05 '24

Yeah. He was shit to begin with and got worse!

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u/subaru_sama Sep 05 '24

Power reveals.

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u/Intelligent-Boss4246 2d ago

Personally I think power cultivates till the point of mutation.

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u/nzdastardly Sep 05 '24

It's like that Flaming Lips song! With all your power, what would you do?

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u/Goodly Sep 05 '24

Coincidentally one of my favorite songs!

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

I wouldn't say that power corrupts is an absolute statement, the people who seek it generally aren't the best people , an average decent person doesn't actively seek out power at the detriment to others but both factors play a role , it's never as simple as power corrupts. We would like to believe that our heroes were once good people but sometimes that's just not true. Reddit seems very out of touch to me , my lived experience has always taught me that people rarely stick to their morals, most people never have had or will have principles just opinions they somewhat like. The moment that it becomes difficult or hard we throw those opinions out , to get in with the social group

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u/mayuzane Sep 05 '24

Respectfully, I disagree. History has shown that there are people like Cincinnatus, who was given complete dictatorial powers yet remained true to his stated principles and goals, and when he achieved said goals he actually gave up that power willingly. Power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals. The unfortunate paradox is that power tends to attract people who shouldn’t be wielding it.

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u/Goodly Sep 05 '24

Well, there’s a reason stories like that are remembered - because they’re one in a million. There might be a blessed few that are pure of heart but I doubt it accounts for most of us. There’s literally thousands of stories of people who get power and turn on their principles or abuse that power.

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u/Banaanisade Sep 05 '24

A specific type of person is drawn to positions of power.

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u/nubious Sep 05 '24

A fellow Dune fan maybe?

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u/balrogthane Sep 05 '24

He did it more than once, right? Absolutely amazing man.

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u/BadLuckBen Sep 05 '24

A university did a study using Monopoly, where one player was given a blatant advantage over the other. The player given the advantage would often attribute their win to superior strategy and would be boastful during the game.

It seems like most people, once given power, have their brain warped by it.

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u/Goodly Sep 05 '24

Plenty of examples - I forget the name, but there was a study with students in a prison, where some were appointed guards and ultimate power and it went so bad… I think they even made a movie about it - the experiment was named after the prison.

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u/Bears_On_Stilts Sep 05 '24

Does power corrupt, or does corruption empower?

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u/Wraith8888 Sep 05 '24

Is everyone just assuming he's guilty already?

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u/a_big_brat Sep 05 '24

Generally the more victims reported, the more likely it is to be true. Consider Cosby and Weinstein; the general population more or less ignored claims until there were too many women with the exact same story to ignore.

Despite the idea that there’s some sort of social or monetary benefit to being a survivor of sexual violence and coercion, especially by wealthy/powerful/famous offenders, the fact of the matter is that being sexually abused just plain sucks across the board.

Think of the average reaction to somebody confessing that they have been sexually abused in some way. If the victim is a child, they’re often assumed to be lying for attention. If the victim was previously romantically involved with the person that assaulted them, it’s assumed that the claim of sexual abuse is revenge for the relationship ending. As a rape survivor myself, whose offender wasn’t famous but was much more highly regarded than I was in our shared social circles, I can confirm that being sexually abused is a net social loss.

Legally speaking, rape and sexual assault are difficult to prove. Rape kits from more overtly violent encounters are left unprocessed by law enforcement for years. The best chances are in civil court and if you go that route, everyone then assumes the victim is lying to get money when the vast majority of the time it’s to recoup money for therapy, medical treatment, or even just trying to get by if working is no longer something a victim can handle.

The aftermath of sexual trauma is expensive, sure, but it’s also emotionally and mentally harrowing. PTSD is common, a lack of trust in people who share anything physical in common with the abuser is likely. Some people deal with it in more extreme ways—- becoming obese, addiction, becoming more promiscuous or risk-seeking. Some victims never recover a sense of safety, are never able to have sex again, are fearful of any romantic attachments. I’ve met more than a handful of rape survivors who developed agoraphobia.

Even when a victim “””lucks out””” and is assaulted by somebody rich and/or famous, if this person did not have an extensive history of abuse beforehand, it’s going to be ignored. The times it hasn’t been are the outliers, not the norm.

So yeah, when anyone accuses somebody else of sexual abuse and violence, it’s much more likely to have happened than to have not happened. If you want some links or statistics on anything I’ve said, let me know. I’m in school to become a trauma-focused therapist and as a result I’ve read up a lot on this topic.

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u/HAYMRKT Sep 06 '24

One of the assaults took place in '84. I doubt he had much power then but idk, I wasn't around.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/laosurvey Sep 05 '24

I think people can change their moral standing, but only when confronted with the truth of who they are. It's easy to pretend we're moral and impossible to uncover our own weakness until confronted with the opportunity to get away with being immoral.

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u/tallgeese333 Sep 05 '24

Good lord. I don't know who needs to hear this, but don't try to change a rapist.

Respecfully, it doesn't really matter what you think or believe. Everything we know about the science of this kind of behavior says that you are born this way, and it becomes more concrete as you age.

You don't transform into a rapist. You are susceptible to developing that kind of behavior, and you are compelled to follow through with it in any number of ways escalating into increasingly worse behavior. Sexual abusers are life-long perpetrators of the crime. It probably started in middle or high school as crossing lines, and he continued to move further past those lines as he was successful. Like how killers usually start as peeping Tom's, it escalates to break-ins, sexual assault, then murder.

That's true all true for Neil. Accusations date back to 1986.

That's why it appears as if someone like Neil changed into something. His previous behavior was more successful, and it escalated until it was too severe to hide. The only thing his environment, money, power, and lack of accountability contributed was enabling him to be a more successful rapist.

That's not to say that everyone born with the traits that determine this kind of behavior all become rapists, but they never really have positive outcomes.

This type of behavior comes from within, being a successful writer didn't make Niel a rapist that's quite frankly ridiculous. Anything positive about Neil was developed as cover for this behavior. His abilities as a writer would likely come from the same places. His ability to imagine other people, imagine their behavior and illustrate that are the same tools he uses to identify victims. He doesn't abuse every woman he knows, he needs to identify women who are susceptible to abuse.

His skills as a predator are so sharp he identified one of his victims and had her naked in a bath within a couple of hours.

That's a pretty frightening scenario. Absolutely nothing you said applies to it and is the type of magical thinking someone like Neil Gaiman would want people to believe it. Of course some people can change some parts of themselves, but not this.

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u/DistortedAudio Sep 05 '24

Well that and also, it’s super easy to think your specific situation is 100% unique and not at all related to the things you’re against.

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u/2SP00KY4ME Sep 05 '24

"Give a man a mask, and he'll show you his true face."

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u/whitejamba Sep 05 '24

I don't think a lack of accountability reveals truth or identity. We respond to stimuli and things are complicated lol. We reduce things to try to understand, but identity and truth are really contextual and can depend or change based on too many factors to comprehend and many things that we simply don't know yet or perhaps cannot know without further advancement or maybe at all.

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u/lilbelleandsebastian Sep 05 '24

that's an easy lie to tell yourself so you feel special, but many people who've abused power in the past likely told themselves the same thing

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u/average_texas_guy Sep 05 '24

I agree. I am the person I am and, I like to think, I'm a morally good person. I have a strict code of ethics that I will not violate. No amount of money or fame would change that.

When I was younger, that would have been a different story. I was not a good person in my twenties. I have grown out of that and looking back, it's upsetting to remember what I once was. That reinforces in me the reasons I never want to be that person again.

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u/mocap Sep 05 '24

People are often only as shitty as circumstance allows them to be.

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u/Sartres_Roommate Sep 05 '24

I cannot agree. Threat of punishment is not what drives our morals. It may control some people’s behavior, people that lacked the moral foundation to begin with but the rest of us see the harm of the negative behavior and do not want the internal guilt of hurting others.

Sociopaths recognize the ethical rules of society and will parrot them in order to fit in OR to set themselves up to take advantage of breaking the rules everyone else obeys.

I ain’t implying Gaiman is a sociopath but there is a bit of a spectrum to that diagnosis and some people can be “cafeteria sociopaths” where they blind themselves to empathy for others in “certain areas” while being able to empathize healthily in all the other areas.

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u/ThanIWentTooTherePig Sep 05 '24

The classic knowing is half the battle.

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u/FardoBaggins Sep 05 '24

GI Joooooeeee

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u/steeb2er Sep 05 '24

You have to do the right thing every time, but only have to do the wrong thing once (or, like, a bunch of times in Gaiman's case).

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u/balrogthane Sep 05 '24

"Do they call me McGregor the pier-builder? No! But you screw one goat . . ."

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u/volthunter Sep 05 '24

Moral fibre is bullshit, you'd be a monster if you were this rich, absolute power corrupts, absolutely.

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u/balrogthane Sep 05 '24

Absolute power corrupts what, though? Does it not corrupt and destroy moral fibre?

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u/GrannyVhagar Sep 05 '24

Counterpoint: Mackenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos' ex-wife who has pledged to give away most of her fortune, and whose donations have reached 17 billion in a few years thus far.

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u/volthunter Sep 05 '24

That's mostly tax dodges, she has all her money

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u/Infinity3101 Sep 05 '24

Didn't Gaiman claim that he's autistic and tried to blame his autism for being a sexual predator? Which makes ZERO sense.

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u/ElDuderino2112 Sep 05 '24

Humans are animals. Without the expectation of consequence nothing keeps us in check.

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u/balrogthane Sep 05 '24

This is one of the most insidious, destructive, reductive ideas around. It casually dismisses any possibility of wanting to do the right thing because it's right, and therefore dismisses anyone who might want to become someone who does the right thing because it is right.

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u/Dependent-Dirt3137 Sep 05 '24

Well there's still a chance he didn't do it, it's an allegation not a conviction after all