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“Mighty” Mike Murga doesn’t much care for the ethical debate swirling around his profession of choice.
The California-based entertainer says his short stature hasn’t kept him from living the high life, spending the better part of two decades in a showbiz career that has taken him around the world.
He’s toured the globe with Mötley Crüe and Britney Spears, partied with Green Day and Cypress Hill, played dozens of roles in movies, TV shows and music videos, and even carved out a musical career of his own with his “Little Elvis” and “Little Eminem” personas.
That long, weird, winding road through the entertainment industry now brings the 38-year-old to Ottawa, where his starring role in a “Dwarf Tossing Contest,” to be hosted by a local strip club Thursday, has generated some controversy.
Murga, who has dwarfism (he stands four-foot-four, 125 pounds) has heard the criticism before — as most recently made by the Little People of Canada advocacy group, from the father of a little person who first complained when the NuDen cabaret advertised the event, and from Jean Cloutier, councillor for the Alta Vista ward where the club is located, who called the planned event “highly inappropriate, violent and disrespectful.”
While Murga acknowledges there are “positive notes and negative notes” to his profession, he firmly rejects the notion “that I’m making the little people look bad by doing this.”
Mike Murga, known as Mighty Mike Murga, is in Ottawa to take part in The Nuden’s “little person” toss Thursday night. Murga was photographed outside The Nuden Wednesday Feb. 28, 2018. Ashley Fraser/Postmedia
“The biggest thing in being an artist, if you’re making ten dollars, a thousand dollars, a million dollars, we’re all human and we all sell our soul in a different way to survive being an artist. There’s pluses to it and there’s minuses to it,” said Murga, who entered into the world of dwarf tossing four years ago.
“We don’t go back to a regular job. It’s, ‘I gotta work on this next act, I gotta create this next performance — because we don’t want to go back to an office job, or construction.’”
Murga has diversified as a performer, something he said he first learned when he first left Canada 20 years ago and landed in Los Angeles, then found himself awestruck on the Venice Beach set of Baywatch.
“It was like heaven,” said Murga, who, stricken by the showbiz bug, quickly set himself up with an agent and started carving out his career.
“I’m here to entertain,” he said. “And if we (little people) don’t open ourselves to multiple channels, we’re not going to succeed. … This dwarf act, it is a big thing to people, it’s like ‘We’re gonna throw an effin’ dwarf.’
“I’m here to entertain,” he said. “And if we (little people) don’t open ourselves to multiple channels, we’re not going to succeed. … This dwarf act, it is a big thing to people, it’s like ‘We’re gonna throw an effin’ dwarf.’
“But that hype is what people want. When people watch football, they see football players get mangled, in hockey the fistfights with the guy’s teeth flying, people love that s—.”
Murga said he personally takes no offence to being the centre of such a spectacle. And he disagrees with those who say the “sport” of dwarf-tossing — in which participants pay to hoist the little person, secured with a harness and helmet, and throw him as far as they can, landing (hopefully) on a mattress — is a form of objectification.
“I’m a human being, I’m not an object,” said Murga. “An object is something that doesn’t have a heartbeat. We have to choose for you to pick us up and do this. We’re not doing this randomly on the street.
“I don’t go around the streets in a helmet and a harness asking guys if they wanna throw me. I put myself in that situation to do this professionally and cleanly.
“I know I have dwarfism, but I’ve been doing this almost 20 years and there was a bunch of steps. I struggled for years as an artist, and I could’ve quit and gone on disability, like early retirement from life, but I didn’t.
“I’ve learned to have fun with it, I work out, I keep in good shape. You have to be athletic to do this, because when somebody throws you and you spin four or five ways off the mat, you have to be able to get up. It’s not something that every little person should sign up for.”
Mike Murga
Murga is well-versed in the controversy that has followed dwarf-tossing — a 37-year-old man named Martin Henderson was severely injured, and later died after he was tossed outside an English pub, a tragedy highlighted recently by actor Peter Dinklage.
A 1989 law banning dwarf tossing was enacted in Florida at the urging of Little People of America, but was later overturned. A 2003 private member’s bill sought a similar ban in Ontario, but the proposed law never made it to a second reading.
Murga scoffed at the notion of a law banning dwarf-tossing, calling it “discriminatory.”
“I say two things: Come see it for yourself if you think it’s that bad, instead of talking crap about it. And two, if you really think about it, it is discriminatory. You can’t go and pick up a regular-size person and throw him.
“But if you allow somebody to do it under the right circumstance — I do it professionally, I’m strict about it, wearing a harness, a helmet, air mattresses — I say why not?”
ahelmer@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/helmera
查看原文...
The California-based entertainer says his short stature hasn’t kept him from living the high life, spending the better part of two decades in a showbiz career that has taken him around the world.
He’s toured the globe with Mötley Crüe and Britney Spears, partied with Green Day and Cypress Hill, played dozens of roles in movies, TV shows and music videos, and even carved out a musical career of his own with his “Little Elvis” and “Little Eminem” personas.
That long, weird, winding road through the entertainment industry now brings the 38-year-old to Ottawa, where his starring role in a “Dwarf Tossing Contest,” to be hosted by a local strip club Thursday, has generated some controversy.
Murga, who has dwarfism (he stands four-foot-four, 125 pounds) has heard the criticism before — as most recently made by the Little People of Canada advocacy group, from the father of a little person who first complained when the NuDen cabaret advertised the event, and from Jean Cloutier, councillor for the Alta Vista ward where the club is located, who called the planned event “highly inappropriate, violent and disrespectful.”
While Murga acknowledges there are “positive notes and negative notes” to his profession, he firmly rejects the notion “that I’m making the little people look bad by doing this.”
Mike Murga, known as Mighty Mike Murga, is in Ottawa to take part in The Nuden’s “little person” toss Thursday night. Murga was photographed outside The Nuden Wednesday Feb. 28, 2018. Ashley Fraser/Postmedia
“The biggest thing in being an artist, if you’re making ten dollars, a thousand dollars, a million dollars, we’re all human and we all sell our soul in a different way to survive being an artist. There’s pluses to it and there’s minuses to it,” said Murga, who entered into the world of dwarf tossing four years ago.
“We don’t go back to a regular job. It’s, ‘I gotta work on this next act, I gotta create this next performance — because we don’t want to go back to an office job, or construction.’”
Murga has diversified as a performer, something he said he first learned when he first left Canada 20 years ago and landed in Los Angeles, then found himself awestruck on the Venice Beach set of Baywatch.
“It was like heaven,” said Murga, who, stricken by the showbiz bug, quickly set himself up with an agent and started carving out his career.
“I’m here to entertain,” he said. “And if we (little people) don’t open ourselves to multiple channels, we’re not going to succeed. … This dwarf act, it is a big thing to people, it’s like ‘We’re gonna throw an effin’ dwarf.’
“I’m here to entertain,” he said. “And if we (little people) don’t open ourselves to multiple channels, we’re not going to succeed. … This dwarf act, it is a big thing to people, it’s like ‘We’re gonna throw an effin’ dwarf.’
“But that hype is what people want. When people watch football, they see football players get mangled, in hockey the fistfights with the guy’s teeth flying, people love that s—.”
Murga said he personally takes no offence to being the centre of such a spectacle. And he disagrees with those who say the “sport” of dwarf-tossing — in which participants pay to hoist the little person, secured with a harness and helmet, and throw him as far as they can, landing (hopefully) on a mattress — is a form of objectification.
“I’m a human being, I’m not an object,” said Murga. “An object is something that doesn’t have a heartbeat. We have to choose for you to pick us up and do this. We’re not doing this randomly on the street.
“I don’t go around the streets in a helmet and a harness asking guys if they wanna throw me. I put myself in that situation to do this professionally and cleanly.
“I know I have dwarfism, but I’ve been doing this almost 20 years and there was a bunch of steps. I struggled for years as an artist, and I could’ve quit and gone on disability, like early retirement from life, but I didn’t.
“I’ve learned to have fun with it, I work out, I keep in good shape. You have to be athletic to do this, because when somebody throws you and you spin four or five ways off the mat, you have to be able to get up. It’s not something that every little person should sign up for.”
Mike Murga
Murga is well-versed in the controversy that has followed dwarf-tossing — a 37-year-old man named Martin Henderson was severely injured, and later died after he was tossed outside an English pub, a tragedy highlighted recently by actor Peter Dinklage.
A 1989 law banning dwarf tossing was enacted in Florida at the urging of Little People of America, but was later overturned. A 2003 private member’s bill sought a similar ban in Ontario, but the proposed law never made it to a second reading.
Murga scoffed at the notion of a law banning dwarf-tossing, calling it “discriminatory.”
“I say two things: Come see it for yourself if you think it’s that bad, instead of talking crap about it. And two, if you really think about it, it is discriminatory. You can’t go and pick up a regular-size person and throw him.
“But if you allow somebody to do it under the right circumstance — I do it professionally, I’m strict about it, wearing a harness, a helmet, air mattresses — I say why not?”
ahelmer@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/helmera
查看原文...
