Hanks Hands Cancel Culture Pink Slip

Tom Hanks is the latest celeb to cancel “cancel culture”? He says: Let me decide what I am offended by.” Forest Gump thereby joins growing ranks of celebs who have rebuked it, including Baldwin, Gervais, Stone, Iglesias & Cranston.

Hanks was asked by NBC News whether he’d go along with reading a book that was either censored or “modified” with “sensibilities” warnings. Per Hanks: “I’m of the opinion we’re all grown ups … Let’s have faith in our own sensibilities as opposed to having somebody decide what we may or may not be offended by .... I would be against reading any book from any era that says ‘abridged due to modern sensitivities.’”

Not only is the woke editing of books a current trend, but in the movies too. As the Guardian recently noted, Disney sensibility censors have been busy attaching warnings of “outdated cultural depictions” to its classic films, including Aristocrats, Dumbo, Peter Pan & Swiss Family Robinson. And NY Times reports HBO Max temporarily pulled “Gone with the Wind” citing “racist” depictions, until some kind of prelude with a “discussion of its historical context” can be ginned up. As Steven Spielberg recently told NBC, however, “it was a mistake” to edit guns out of ET or revise old films for modern audiences in any way. Films are an “art,” he explained and “sacrosanct … It’s our history. It’s our cultural heritage. I do not believe in censorship in that way. Richard Dreyfuss likewise blasted Hollywood inclusion standards for next year’s Oscars, opining in a PBS interview that films are not only an “art” but to change it (or the rules) about it in any way to take in to account current sensibilities are “patronizing … treating people like children.”

Davd Soul