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"Joker" paying royalties to convicted pedophile Gary Glitter because it features one of his songs (UPDATE: Nope)
- Thread starter Syriel
- Start date
For sure. I would imagine probably something like 75% of basketball and (American) football games play it. It's entirely ubiquitous in American pop and sporting culture. I would imagine 99% of people in America do not know he was involved in the song even if they know who he is and what he did.. it's just a song they know. I certainly had no clue it was his song and I'm a total Anglophile. Obviously it gives me pause now, but I do not believe this was a malicious decision.
I agree with you on that, bad choice. I mean more the media outrage over the movie and the fact that we have a 500+ post thread over this song. Michael Jackson's music is still used prominently and he owned the Beatles' royalties for a while. I don't remember people upset about the use of his or the Beatles music in films prior.
Now obviously he was never convicted but a lot of people consider him controversial. My point has always been that every big budget movie is going to have some people making serious money that we wouldn't want to support. I'm surprised at the massive amount of posts in this thread when it is very common to have despicable people profit of movies, and they profit far more than this piece of shit will.
Glitter and the producer are the only credited songwriters though, so the Glitter band won't see a penny, unfortunately.
MJ is Dead. Unless you didn't want his Family get the money.
People have been weirdly desperate to pin controversies to this film, I agree. And as I've already said ITT, I think the incel shooter fear mongering and 'alt right empowerment' takes were fucking stupid. It's a fairly tame movie about a very iconic character.
However, it's impossible for the film makers to have used a Gary Glitter song and not known he was a jailed pedophile and they really shouldn't have picked that song. Like as someone from the U.K. it's very surreal to see people excusing this
What a fucker. Those poor bastards in the band. The tunes were/are still amazing.
Fuck Gary Glitter.
If Glitter had abused middle class white American kids, do you think his music would still be played at US kid's sporting events? The idea that this actually happens btw is fucking mad to me. If his history has been diluted into indifference I'd yes, say it's probably in-line with the tendency of treating rich white paedophiles differently - which also coexists with the general aloofness or apathy towards other people/countries/races.
The incel stuff didn't work, the ''is too violent'' didn't work and this is another shit take to make controversy.
No one is defending the shitstain who wrote the song, but if we were to dive into every song in every movie and who is getting royalties, etc... there are tons of scumbags.
I mean Thor Ragnarok is more popular than Joker is, but we didn't have a thread about Jimmy page. Who is not in jail and is cashing checks. So I don't think this thread was made in good faith, other than a means to be another strike against the film. As well, you just need to look at all the threads recently. Even with the director being an ass.
However, with that said, it is a great oversight to allow a song from glitter to be used, even if I didn't know the history. It brings an interesting point of how much music has been licensed by horrible people. As I don't believe that this will be the last time that something like this will happen, and it's obviously not the first time.
Completely agree. I apologize if it came across as defending the artist.
I did not know who Gary glitter was but I do know the sports ball song. They should dissallow him to receive royalties.
If you made a thread about that, I would be on your side denouncing him. Regardless of anything else surrounding it.
There are also lots of musicians who aren't famously jailed pedophiles to pick from. I don't think this kind of thing is ever okay
In the repeats of a music show currently going on in the UK this has just topped the charts and been performed "live" in the studio and the video been shown in full. I don't think he'd get royalties from that so I don't know if he gets them from the film. I still think the use of the song in the film is very jarring and it made a lot of the cinema very uncomfortable when they realised what song it was.
What channel are repeats on? I'm not trying to catch you out or anything, genuinely curious as I've not seen any of his shit here for decades and I'm really surprised anyone would broadcast it
BBC4, maybe he doesn't get any royalties for Doctorin' the Tardis?
Thanks. Royalties or not, I'm stunned they'd stick him on TV now
I'm pretty sure he will have received royalties if Doctorin' The Tardis was played on TV - The Timelords(/the KLF) mentioned having to give away most of the royalties to it in their book.
If they wanted arena rock they should have gone with some David Eisley IMO
The winner takes all
It's the thrill of one more kill
The last one to fall
Will never sacrifice their will
The winner takes all
It's the thrill of one more kill
The last one to fall
Will never sacrifice their will
Which part is grasping at straws? The part where it is a fact that Gary Glitter is a convicted pedophile or the part that his song is used and thus he is making money and being given a platform?
Gary Glitter appeared on Top of The Pops to perform the Doctor Who song. He is almost certainly getting royalties for that performance, and probably the song itself:
Love the rejoinders of "So what, since they play this song, American sports organizations are corrupt too?" as if that were a gotcha, as if the various leagues weren't all laughably obviously corrupt.
The part where this only became 'problematic' when this movie came out.
It's obvious what is happening here.
I honestly didn't know Gary Glitter songs were still popular in US sporting events. Like I literally found out from Joker that Americans still enjoy his music, while the U.K. cancelled him years ago
If you think it hasn't been problematic in the past, you haven't been reading the thread. Plenty of people have given examples of entities that have banned this song.
People need to stop assuming that because this comic book movie is important to them, that it is to everyone. This issue is more important than this movie.
Paul Gadd isn't the only writer of the song, i'd be pretty pissed off if i wrote a massive glam rock hit and ended up working with the biggest nonce of the 70's bar Saville, i think the unlucky guy is dead though, but i bet he was pissed off with old shoulder pads.
I feel like the thing is that in the US it's one of those corny novelty songs that nobody outright listens to but is subjected to in public anyway. Like who the fuck is putting this song on for some listening pleasure?
Even then I think folks in this thread are exaggerating its presence here in the US (though I grant it's common in sports rock medleys grade school bands might play, but I can't recall the last time I heard the original).
For that matter I would be more than happy if folks replaced it with Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye since it's a better song, I'm at least not aware of any ties the song has to child abusers, and it's still arena friendly / gets the people stomping and clapping and shouting their HEYs.
Can we stop with this bullshit too tho? You know people can have a different opinion than you do on this, and not have a die hard boner for comic book movies. The notion that this issue is "righteous heroes condenming child rape" vs "comic book movie fanboys" is completely misguided, and condescending, and just makes this whole thing seem even more like a sanctimonious hate brigade for this dumbass batman spinoff movie.
Real talk tho, this IS an interesting topic, especially for US members who definitely know this song but probably had never heard of Gary Glitter until now. You can discuss this without putting people who disagree with you in boxes, and being overall condescending.
I only respond like that to the people who feel the need to tell us how unfair this thread is to the movie. Look at who that was in response to, he thinks that the only reason we care about this is because we want some stupid internet points for bagging on a movie. Look at the first page of responses. They can't even process the fact that people are upset that a pedophile is given a platform that he shouldn't be. No, it has to be because of the movie. Even though this happens to be the latest movie with this song, so of course it'll come up.
It is unfortunate that it happens to be THIS movie that has had a bunch of shitty faux outrage thrown at it already. I'm just saying, when you talk down to people like that and make assumptions this whole conversation comes off as disingenuous and in bad faith.
People do have a bit of a point. Like I see people talk about the Office on here all the time, we get plenty of threads about it, but I've never once heard anyone bring up the scene where the entire office is dancing to this exact song.
You can say "we're talking about THIS instance" all you want, but surely you also understand that all of us, even those who give no fucks about comic books, have been seeing people bending over backwards to be outraged by this movie for months already. So when we see "NEW JOKER MOVIE SUPPORTS PEDOPHILE SINGER!," Or whatever, and it turns out to be this ubiquitous sports song of course people are gonna roll their eyes.
There's not much I can do about how you parse my words.
How many people have posted in this thread, ignored the subject at hand, and declared that this thread shouldn't exist and that people are just trying to cancel this movie? What else other than "I don't care about the movie enough to try to sabotage it" can I say to that? I've reiterated what this thread is supposed to be about, and we still get people coming in and dropping their hot take.
Right but that's just you. The media, and a lot of this board in general, has been trying to make "Joker is an alt-right incel movie" a thing for a long time already. Now it's "Joker is an alt-right incel movie using pedophile music" and it just all comes off as self-righteous fart-huffing imo.
Why do you keep jumping out as if the "comic book fan" comments are about you in particular? You made your point about not caring about the film abundantly clear throughout this thread.
Because I keep seeing those comments used to dismiss other people's opinions as well. Whatever though, I'm out, I'll just add a couple of you to my ignore list and move on with my life.
I actually loved that scene and song choice - but I didn't know the history behind this song. Weird that they used this song given the issue with the artist.
I mean at least on this forum we've definitely had arguments about this based on some draft scripts which I believe were more emphasizing of the 'joker isn't getting laid' plot points. Hardly surprising that the movie isn't as bad, as rarely are draft scripts reflective of the final product, but instead we get a movie that traffics in mature subject matter without introducing mature themes -- and has had to bear the brunt of multiple missteps that can be laid solely at the feet of the director, this choice included.
If someone chooses to use a Michael Jackson song in their film at this moment in time, they would be making a statement. You can't divorce music from our surrounding culture and context. If you could, it would be meaningless and hollow nothing, which I doubt many people on this board would agree with. All art is a statement. Even an effort to remove it from its given statement is, in a way, an assertion of a creator's apathy, which is a statement in its own right.
It always means something. Even the effort to be meaningless means something.
And I don't think most of Joker's biggest fans would suggest it is a film devoid of meaning or substance, so analyzing its own choice of music isn't exactly out of line.