Gina Carano’s Mandalorian exit proves ‘cancel culture’ doesn’t exist – despite what her fans say

The controversy-hit star of Disney's Star Wars spin-off is being held up by some as a victim of 'cancel culture', writes Louis Chilton. But the phrase is all too often used to avoid accountability

Gina Carano as reformed mercenary Cara Dune in season two of The Mandalorian (Lucasfilm)

Gina Carano has been through the wars lately – of both the Star and “culture” variety. The actor, who played the no-nonsense mercenary Cara Dune on the Disney Plus Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian, has parted ways with the series after sharing a social media post that compared the experiences of contemporary right-wing Americans to those of persecuted Jewish people during the Holocaust. “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbours,” reads the post, which was shared in a now-deleted Instagram story. “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realise that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbours hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

Star Wars production company Lucasfilm denounced her social media posts “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities” in a brief statement, calling them “abhorrent and unacceptable”. The company also announced it had “no plans” to work with Carano again (including, it is presumed, on future series of The Mandalorian). Shortly after the announcement was made, #CancelDisneyPlus began trending on Twitter (though the hashtag was soon taken over by people using it ironically), with the actor’s defenders threatening to boycott the streaming service over a perceived “cancellation”. Carano, in their eyes, is a slain innocent, and the inky fingerprints of cancel culture can be seen all over the murder weapon. But I think they're wrong. Carano’s departure from The Mandalorian isn’t just a shoddy choice of case study for itchy-trigger-finger “cancellation”, it’s proof that cancel culture, as they construe it, simply doesn’t exist.

Carano's “political views” are well documented; they can be understood via a quick scroll through her Twitter page, or by Googling her name (possibly alongside the word “backlash”). Since first appearing in The Mandalorian in 2019, she has faced calls for removal from the series on a few occasions. Last September, there was a minor uproar over posts in which she seemed to mock the trans-inclusive practice of putting pronouns in social media bios and accused trans people of having “abusive” online representation. She later deleted one of the tweets, and said that her Mandalorian co-star Pedro Pascal “helped me understand why people were putting [pronouns] in their bios. I didn’t know before but I do now… I stand against bullying, especially the most vulnerable & [support] freedom to choose.” Then, months later, she faced further condemnation for sharing anti-mask memes during the pandemic, and for repeating Donald Trump’s false claims about voter fraud. By the laws of our supposed “cancel culture”, she should have already been pariahed months ago. She wasn’t even made to apologise. In an interview this January, she simply said: “I’m going to stick around and if my presence bothers you, OK… I bring the fire out in people. I’m not sure why.”

It’s testament to the sheer offensiveness of her social media activity – and, possibly, the cumulative stigma of several different controversies – that Lucasfilm finally saw fit to draw the line. The insensitivity of likening her own situation (being criticised online for spreading potentially harmful disinformation) to the Holocaust was perhaps exacerbated by the US far-right’s relationship with antisemitism and neo-Nazi ideology. Carano’s implicit support of Donald Trump calls to mind the former president’s own history of antisemitism, and his refusal to disalign himself with white supremacist supporters; it seems to me there is little reason to give her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the antisemitic implications of her post.

It seems amusingly misguided for the people crying “cancel culture” to turn their anger onto Disney Plus, as if the streaming service were some kind of ultra-progressive force for left-wing social justice. Star Wars itself has a chequered history when it comes to racism and antisemitic tropes. The character of Watto, the hook-nosed merchant alien from The Phantom Menace, seems almost plucked from a Nazi propaganda playbook. Other aliens (the Neimoidian trade federation; Jar Jar Binks) have also faced accusations of racism and stereotyping.

Carano next to co-star Carl Weathers in a second-season episode of The Mandalorian (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Last year, Star Wars star John Boyega criticised Disney’s handling of his character, and that of co-star Kelly Marie Tran, whose Last Jedi character Rose Tico was sidelined almost entirely in The Rise of Skywalker. The franchise’s white stars, suggested Boyega, received better storylines and more “nuance” (after making the comments, Boyega discussed the matter with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy in what he described as a “transparent, honest” phone call). Tran, in particular, would be justified in feeling aggrieved. She bore the brunt of a racist and sexist online backlash after her prominent role in The Last Jedi; the near-removal of her character in the sequel was seen by some as the franchise’s capitulation to the abusers. And yet, when people talk about “cancel culture”, it is never the case of Kelly Marie Tran that is mentioned.

Carano has not yet replied to The Independent’s request for comment. Yesterday, around the time the Mandalorian news broke, she tweeted that she was going to record a podcast interview with right-wing Christian satire website The Babylon Bee. So if you want to truly know what cancellation sounds like, listen out. It sounds like 680,000 Twitter followers. It sounds like one and a half million Instagram followers. And it’s available soon on all good podcast providers.