Let's be real: the past few years on this planet have been pretty bleak, to say the least. It can be challenging to maintain a sunny disposition about a world in which increasingly apocalyptic events continue to threaten the future safety and happiness of society. You can toil and advocate for a better world to no end or resolution, it seems, so it can sometimes feel safer to check out entirely. Fortune favours the indifferent? Sean Penn seems to think so.
The 61-year-old actor-director has gone full nihilism, describing a perceived path to the future that he evidently doesn't jive with — at all — in a new interview with, uh, the Toronto Sun.
"I'm a little frustrated with the world," Penn told the publication. "I'm glad I'm old and won't be having to deal with where this stuff is going."
It's hard not to agree that this "stuff" — perhaps environmental destruction, growing wealth inequality, human rights violations and the lot — could spell disaster for generations to come. But, as Penn clarified in an added statement, he seems more preoccupied with another societal issue; without spelling it out for us, the actor appears to be whining about the old-timey red herring that is cancel culture.
"We give too much of a shit about what we are going to be accused of by people who want to be self-righteous because they can get a quick reward," Penn continued, going on to suggest that it's the children who are wrong: "They're self-righteous hypocritically — they damn this, but don't worry about why kids are being bombed in Yemen, because it's not getting them into a club right away."
Sounds familiar. Back in 2018, Penn had expressed a similar attitude about the #MeToo movement, stating that he was "very suspicious of a movement that gets glommed onto in great stridency and rage and without nuance" — and that women coming forward with their experiences could prove to be too divisive between genders.
These comments, of course, follow Penn's storied history of alleged abuse. Dang kids and their demands for accountability!
The 61-year-old actor-director has gone full nihilism, describing a perceived path to the future that he evidently doesn't jive with — at all — in a new interview with, uh, the Toronto Sun.
"I'm a little frustrated with the world," Penn told the publication. "I'm glad I'm old and won't be having to deal with where this stuff is going."
It's hard not to agree that this "stuff" — perhaps environmental destruction, growing wealth inequality, human rights violations and the lot — could spell disaster for generations to come. But, as Penn clarified in an added statement, he seems more preoccupied with another societal issue; without spelling it out for us, the actor appears to be whining about the old-timey red herring that is cancel culture.
"We give too much of a shit about what we are going to be accused of by people who want to be self-righteous because they can get a quick reward," Penn continued, going on to suggest that it's the children who are wrong: "They're self-righteous hypocritically — they damn this, but don't worry about why kids are being bombed in Yemen, because it's not getting them into a club right away."
Sounds familiar. Back in 2018, Penn had expressed a similar attitude about the #MeToo movement, stating that he was "very suspicious of a movement that gets glommed onto in great stridency and rage and without nuance" — and that women coming forward with their experiences could prove to be too divisive between genders.
These comments, of course, follow Penn's storied history of alleged abuse. Dang kids and their demands for accountability!
