A petition has been circulating around the places I frequent online, urging people to further spread it to reach its goal of collecting one million signatures. The purpose? To stop Uwe Boll from making more movies.
I have stated before that while he doesn’t make great movies, at the very least, he makes entertaining ones. Some may argue that he’s entertaining through utter ineptitude, and that getting B-movie laughs isn’t the same as writing something witty, but I think that’s missing the point.
So, Boll makes movies that you don’t like. So? I don’t like fanfiction or furry porn or magazines where the guys on the front are so muscle-y that you can see every one of their veins in bulging detail. I know I don’t like these things, so I don’t read, watch, or buy them. Who then, exactly, is forcing you to sit in a theater and watch Uwe Boll movies? Is it at gunpoint? Knifepoint? Or just the utter fanboy obsessiveness that dictates that if a movie is being made on a subject you’re tangentially interested in, you MUST see it?
While you think that passing around these petitions might eliminate that temptation or morbid curiosity from your life, I see it as something far more sinister. You’re trampling on speech; the best, truest, and most free thing we have. It’s what allows me to bitch about recycling one day, and insinuate I would do terrible, terrible things to Johnny Depp in the dark of the night the next. I spout my opinion off regularly, uninvited, and most of the people who read this do the same; no one tells you to shut up or stop writing, and if they did, I doubt any of you would take heed. Many people who read this are artists or musicians–would you stop creating art or music if someone told you that your work is crappy and offensive?
What’s the difference between stifling your personal speech and stifling his creativity?
