ShapeShifter Lab in New York City has cancelled a screening for the movie “The Rise of Jordan Peterson” because its staff felt uncomfortable.
An email was circulated to customers who had bought tickets to the show, and gave the reason that some staff were made uncomfortable by the first screening.
The customers were refunded for their purchases.
Jordan Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, has risen to become a personality that has inspired many.
He is an outspoken critic of political correctness, identity politics, and what he calls “Post-modern Neo-Marxism.”
Peterson recently debated notable Socialist philosopher Slavoj Žižek on the topic of “Happiness: Capitalism versus Communism.”
The film’s producer, Holding Space wrote a press release that stated:
Déjà vu. Our encore screening in New York today was cancelled because of staff complaints. We found out at 11pm last night that the venue, Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn, decided to cancel. The screening was scheduled for 4pm today. Ticket-holders are all being refunded.
We’re disappointed, to say the least. We sent the venue owners a link to the film a month ago so they had a chance to review it and to be aware of what they were getting into. Instead they went in blind and made a last-minute decision under the guise of accommodating both sides because they had already screened the film once, on October 3. We hardly consider this an accommodation if we’re being notified when it’s too late to find a replacement venue. We’ve spent money traveling to New York for this and invested in promoting the screening, all of which we hoped to compensate for through ticket sales.
Some people have accused us of adopting “right-wing talking points” and of being bias in our filmmaking if we’re adopting a shutting down narrative akin to Jordan Peterson. It’s particularly difficult to digest comments like this on a day like today. How can one attempt to dismiss what is actually happening as a “narrative” or a “talking point” as if the reality of the situation isn’t relevant?
To be honest, we’re pretty bored of this story. It’s played out, and we spent years investigating it for this film. We were – and are still – hoping that our public conversation about the film can actually shift to being about the film.
We also hope Canadians watching cinema-on-demand screenings across the country today in 11 cities get a lot out of the film. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.
ShapeShifter Lab was contacted by The Post Millennial and confirmed that there was a cancellation, but provided no comment as to why.
