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The evidence doesn't back you up here. The Rise of Skywalker made half as much money as The Force Awakens. Rey and Rose Tico merchandise didn't sell. Viewing fi

The evidence doesn't back you up here. The Rise of Skywalker made half as much money as The Force Awakens. Rey and Rose Tico merchandise didn't sell. Viewing figures for recent Disney Marvel TV shows have been extremely low. Star Trek Discovery can't be viewed in many countries because no network broadcasts it. Netflix's attempts at woke series tend to get cancelled after the first season. And so on. The poor performance of woke entertainment products is visible for all to see.

Bakary 4y ago
Alienating fans doesn't mean you can't also alienate and bore the general audience as well. It's definitely true that wokeness heavily contributes to some of these failures, but the alienation of fans is not exclusively about wokeness to begin with, nor is wokeness always the main driver of mediocrity. Consider boxing matches that now revolve around YouTube stars, and the most recent Diablo's financial success. The point is that vocal fans who demonstrate their wrath or joy online are a very minor part of what makes a production succesful or unsuccessful.
vintermann 4y ago
I think it's best explained not by ideology as such, but by self-handicapping. If you're facing a hard exam that you have no idea if you can pass no matter how hard you try, you can study hard, and risk the humiliation of failing... or you can kick back, relax, do a little partying, do a little mildly illegal drugs. Then if you fail, you can say you weren't really trying, you didn't really care that much. And who knows, you might even still succeed, and then you get the satifaction of being so good you didn't even have to work hard! For a modern Hollywood director, if you put in just a little obnoxiously "woke" stuff, just a pointless gender or race swap, or maybe make someone gay or trans who wasn't in the source material... Now if it fails just for being bad, you can claim it failed because of those handful of people who complained about it online. So it's not that the "woke lobby" has that much power to force directors to "cast diversely" or something, it's just that it's a convenient excuse for everyone involved. Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, and nobody ever got fired for making a film look a bit more like affluent modern America.
deleted 4y ago
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nibbleshifter 4y ago
It has fuck all to do with "wokeness", and a lot more to do with current production values just not resonating. Most media today looks the same, over-reliant on digital postprod and fuck all practical effects. It also tends to just keep recycling the same properties ad nauseum, getting worse each time. People are, frankly, bored of it.
- motogpjimbo 4y ago
  I would argue that the problem is less due to franchise fatigue than it is to low quality and needlessly confrontational writing. Classic drama tends to have a universal quality to it that transcends any particular time, place and culture, and it's this quality that has been lacking in woke entertainments from the last five or so years. Take Squid Game for example. I don't speak Korean and know next to nothing about Korean society, yet its core story about a group of people in desperate circumstances being forced to constantly reevaluate what they're willing to do to survive resonates with me just as well as if the show had been set in any other country. Compare that with The Rings of Power, where Galadriel is portrayed as a perfect warrior woman whose biggest source of antagonism is the weak and unprincipled men around her. Or She-Hulk, who has to explain to Bruce Banner that men telling her how to do her job makes her a better Hulk than him. Young progressives lap this stuff up but it leaves everyone else cold, including many women. In years to come, these stories are not going to be loved. These films and TV shows are not going to top any polls. The characters are rotten, unlikable and will not live on in anyone's hearts.

Bakary 4y ago

Alienating fans doesn't mean you can't also alienate and bore the general audience as well. It's definitely true that wokeness heavily contributes to some of these failures, but the alienation of fans is not exclusively about wokeness to begin with, nor is wokeness always the main driver of mediocrity. Consider boxing matches that now revolve around YouTube stars, and the most recent Diablo's financial success. The point is that vocal fans who demonstrate their wrath or joy online are a very minor part of what makes a production succesful or unsuccessful.

vintermann 4y ago

I think it's best explained not by ideology as such, but by self-handicapping. If you're facing a hard exam that you have no idea if you can pass no matter how hard you try, you can study hard, and risk the humiliation of failing... or you can kick back, relax, do a little partying, do a little mildly illegal drugs. Then if you fail, you can say you weren't really trying, you didn't really care that much. And who knows, you might even still succeed, and then you get the satifaction of being so good you didn't even have to work hard! For a modern Hollywood director, if you put in just a little obnoxiously "woke" stuff, just a pointless gender or race swap, or maybe make someone gay or trans who wasn't in the source material... Now if it fails just for being bad, you can claim it failed because of those handful of people who complained about it online. So it's not that the "woke lobby" has that much power to force directors to "cast diversely" or something, it's just that it's a convenient excuse for everyone involved. Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM, and nobody ever got fired for making a film look a bit more like affluent modern America.

deleted 4y ago

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nibbleshifter 4y ago

It has fuck all to do with "wokeness", and a lot more to do with current production values just not resonating. Most media today looks the same, over-reliant on digital postprod and fuck all practical effects. It also tends to just keep recycling the same properties ad nauseum, getting worse each time. People are, frankly, bored of it.

motogpjimbo 4y ago
I would argue that the problem is less due to franchise fatigue than it is to low quality and needlessly confrontational writing. Classic drama tends to have a universal quality to it that transcends any particular time, place and culture, and it's this quality that has been lacking in woke entertainments from the last five or so years. Take Squid Game for example. I don't speak Korean and know next to nothing about Korean society, yet its core story about a group of people in desperate circumstances being forced to constantly reevaluate what they're willing to do to survive resonates with me just as well as if the show had been set in any other country. Compare that with The Rings of Power, where Galadriel is portrayed as a perfect warrior woman whose biggest source of antagonism is the weak and unprincipled men around her. Or She-Hulk, who has to explain to Bruce Banner that men telling her how to do her job makes her a better Hulk than him. Young progressives lap this stuff up but it leaves everyone else cold, including many women. In years to come, these stories are not going to be loved. These films and TV shows are not going to top any polls. The characters are rotten, unlikable and will not live on in anyone's hearts.