A Finger on the Trigger
Jason Lei Howden, director of Guns Akimbo, is becoming the cyberbully he allegedly wants to prevent
(Trigger warning: this article discusses suicide.)
If I know one thing, it’s that people that I used to be a huge fan of have the uncanny ability to absolutely tank my perception of them in just one instant.
In July of 2019, as you may recall, I wrote my first piece on this site: a bit about the Soska sisters’ Twitter suspension, allegedly over their sharing of some gory makeup effects from their upcoming film Rabid. An alt-right political commentator gave them support along with a wide audience of similarly-minded people, and they accepted it, seemingly without checking who the aforementioned supporter was. Naturally, I found this to be a bit of a letdown. Ever since I started watching horror films, I’ve been in Jen and Sylvia’s corner, and to see them accepting Posobiec’s help felt like a betrayal of everything I held dear. So I wrote about it, hoping to come off as the disappointed fan that I was.
I suppose they didn’t see it that way. In the following week, rather than the measured response — if any response — I hoped for, I got a small firestorm of vitriol directed at me, triggered by the Soskas themselves. They posted on their Facebook wall, used my full name, tagged me in their post, and we were off to the races. I endured a lovely seven days of public posts, direct messages, comments on my piece calling me all sorts of things. I even got threatened with legal action — which, last time I checked, having an opinion isn’t libel.
I bring this up because a similar incident in recent days reminds me of that entire business. You may have heard of the film site Much Ado About Cinema; its editor in chief, Dilara Elbir, was recently “canceled” due to someone posting a screenshot of her saying the n-word in a private conversation. In the aftermath of a torrent of online abuse, she apologized, had her entire staff step down, and made a series of videos in which she was visibly seen attempting suicide. (She’s in the hospital and recovering as of this writing.)
So what does Jason Lei Howden, writer-director of Deathgasm and Guns Akimbo, have to do with all of this? Much Ado About Cinema included several Black people on their staff who were among those tendering their resignations from the site. According to Howden, who took time away from promoting his latest film to tweet about this, respectfully resigning because you’re uncomfortable is tantamount to cyberbullying.
“These toxic, disgusting “film writers” bullied Dilara Elbir from Much Ado About Cinema until she attempted suicide. Remember their names,” Howden tweeted the day after this occurred, and included pictures of two of the site’s former writers (both people of color) and their Twitter handles. He continued by tweeting out a whole list of handles that had resigned from the site, ostensibly so people could block them, all in the name of stopping online harassment.
By doing more of it.
And Howden followed this by angrily replying to, specifically, the people of color who attempted to get him to back down, going so far as to accuse them of attempted murder by driving Elbir to attempt suicide.
This feels like watching history repeat itself. A movie I was initially excited for winds up attached to some online controversy regarding its director(s) essentially directing their followers to strike at the people that they consider a blight on society due to a misconception. Only this is far worse than my little situation. The situation is far more delicate. Someone’s life nearly ended because of all this, and any amount of research (or listening, considering the staff’s replies to Howden’s tweets and his angry retorts) could have given Howden or any of his hundreds of followers the information they needed to know the simple fact that none of these staff members started or perpetrated the bullying. Howden’s Twitter hatred, as well, is specifically aimed towards women of color; he doesn’t seem to be pointing fingers at anyone else.
As I write this, the whole thing is still going on. Howden has deactivated his account, reactivated it under a private lock, deactivated it again. He’s doubling down on his comments, refusing to listen to the actual people who are part of this and taking the moral high ground against the women of color attempting to call him out. He’s even calling bad reviews of the film “review bombing”, taking full advantage of this controversy to dismiss any negative attention, and using the official film Twitter page to continue to harass people in his official absence. As a huge fan of Howden’s previous effort Deathgasm, I am once again looking back on the things I enjoyed in my past with disdain after seeing their creators die on an unfortunate, vitriolic hill.
The irony, to me, is the first trailer for Guns Akimbo lays bare that the protagonist winds up trapped in a live-action death game as a result of posting insulting and bullying comments online. The film’s director seems to see himself as far above the character he’s created, failing to realize that in his attempts to stop cyberbullying, he’s only becoming one himself. Jason Lei Howden is a product of the Internet, a culture that has taught him and his followers to fight fire with targeted carpet-bombing to put themselves on a high horse by acting like they care about a cause. He is not the hero we need, nor the hero we deserve. The most heroic thing Howden can do at this point is to apologize, shut up, and let the people who are actually involved handle the situation.
As for the rest? I don’t think the n-word should be used by people who aren’t Black, even casually. And I don’t think online vitriol, especially to the extent that one attempts to kill oneself, is the right way to handle anything. And I certainly don’t think respectfully resigning is in any way the same as cyberbullying. Those that resigned did so on good terms — if you’re uncomfortable with your boss, you have every right to not want to work for them. And a situation such as this needs to be handled delicately, not with whatever sort of nuclear option Jason Lei Howden seems hell-bent on using.
You don’t have guns bolted to your hands, Howden. Put yours down.
