Hollywoke -- A thread for Tinseltown's Tailspin into Televangelism

[devnull]

9 hours ago, Nouseforaname said:

What’s preachy about it?

The "Message"

[Nouseforaname]

3 minutes ago, devnull said:

The "Message"

Which is?

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

30 minutes ago, Nouseforaname said:

Which is?

 

Men bad, women good, trannys and lesbians magical beings, so we must deconstruct everything that came before us, because you all are evil.

[Nouseforaname]

18 minutes ago, Crap Throwing Clavin said:

 

Men bad, women good, trannys and lesbians magical beings, so we must deconstruct everything that came before us, because you all are evil.

Except that it’s not the case if you actually watched it.

[Nouseforaname]

2 hours ago, Crap Throwing Clavin said:

 

If you're judging Star Wars by Episode 1, you've pretty much lost the argument already.

Episode 1, the clone wars, etc…

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

2 minutes ago, Nouseforaname said:

Except that it’s not the case if you actually watched it.

 

Yeah, supplanting "The Force" with "The Thread" to accomplish virgin births in a female-only society isn't deconstructing Star Wars.

[Nouseforaname]

3 hours ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

(Was adding this to the above post but then you responded so adding it here)

 

For added reference: I've never worked on a Star Wars property, but I worked on a show where half the writers in the room came over directly from Clone Wars after it ended. These were die hard Star Wars guys, and really brilliant writers - most of whom wanted to move to + to work on one of the Star Wars shows. These are guys who got Emmy nominations, and whose episodes are lauded by fans still today.

 

Yet, everyone of them was denied even an interview or a chance to submit for the new + shows because they were middle aged white men and + was specifically telling agents and managers not to submit any male, white writers to these shows because they wouldn't be hired. These were guys who wrote some of the best Star Wars IP stuff in the past decade imo - but they weren't even allowed in the room because they didn't fit the "look" Disney wanted for Star Wars going forward. And, at least two of them that I'm friendly with, are as left leaning as it comes politically. Still didn't matter.

 

It's wild.

 

*******************************

 

Let's be clear - I don't think it's "sketchy" to push woke ideology or pro gay ideology. I don't have a moral objection to it. I just think it's bad business to keep pushing any political ideology at the expense of the brand. My objections with Disney's approach is all about making better movies and shows, not politics. They're the ones who are making it political, intentionally so by who they're hiring to carry the flag. And I think that's a mistake from a fan service point of view (which is what these shows should be above all else, fan service). But instead of servicing fans, Kennedy's mandate is actively and intentionally antagonizing wide swaths of their fanbase because they feel a moral obligation to preach to the unenlightened in their eyes. 

 

That's never worked well for Hollywood. The number 1 rule in screenwriting since the medium was born was to "show, don't tell". In the past 10 years that rule has been turned on its head as studios turned to activists to make content for them rather than lovers of film and television. 

 

All that aside, the notion of young kids being taken away from their families to be trained has been a staple of fantasy and sci-fi novels and storytelling since its inception. Even more so in Asian cinema where Lucas took a lot of his original inspiration. From Star Wars, to X-Men, to Ender's Game, to Harry Potter - it's a well worn trope. It's weird, and certainly can be problematic in some forms - but it predates either of our existence on this planet in terms of its usage in fiction.

 

Certainly more so than space witches using the "string" to create life without requiring a stupid, dangerous, and evil man. 

From what I can tell, they are making it political with respect to who they hire but I don’t fully agree that it’s in the actual content of the show or any of the recent shows.

 

So we agree on one point but don’t agree on the other. 

[Nouseforaname]

Just now, Crap Throwing Clavin said:

 

Yeah, supplanting "The Force" with "The Thread" to accomplish virgin births in a female-only society isn't deconstructing Star Wars.

As opposed to a mysterious green energy that flows through people, also known as the force but not to the witches of dathomir… which existed before Disney and was on the clone wars.

 

Everything after the original trilogy is a deconstruction of Star Wars.  

[Nouseforaname]

1 hour ago, Deranged Rhino said:

What's funny about this (to me) is not the story or the notion that this lady is trying to get repped by a Hollywood agent - it's how obvious it is that someone who works at UTA wrote that community note. No one in town thinks of UTA as "Tinseltown's most powerful firm". No one.  

 

 

 

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

27 minutes ago, Nouseforaname said:

 

Everything after the original trilogy is a deconstruction of Star Wars.  

 

Yep.

[devnull]

44 minutes ago, Nouseforaname said:

As opposed to a mysterious green energy that flows through people

 

Sounds like the premise of Killjoys

[devnull]

46 minutes ago, Nouseforaname said:

Everything after the original trilogy is a deconstruction of Star Wars.  

 

17 minutes ago, Crap Throwing Clavin said:

 

Yep.

 

 

 

 

 

[Nouseforaname]

@Deranged Rhino

 

 

[Deranged Rhino]

15 minutes ago, Nouseforaname said:

From what I can tell, they are making it political with respect to who they hire but I don’t fully agree that it’s in the actual content of the show or any of the recent shows.

 

So we agree on one point but don’t agree on the other. 

 

TLDR: I'm a nerd.

 

I'm not trying to make it argumentative, and am enjoying the discussion so I hope I didn't come across as combative... 

 

Here's the thing about all movies/shows/books that I think we can both agree on: two different people can watch or read a piece of entertainment and come away with two completely different understandings or opinions on what the creator was "really trying to say". Every side of any given issue or ideological dispute has always tried to find validation of their views in the entertainment they consume. That's just human nature - we want to read/watch/be entertained by things that affirm our beliefs and opinions (especially if those beliefs and opinions are challenged then validated during the course of the narrative). But in our current, highly divided and partisan reality, that's been weaponized by all the studios to chase diminishing profits as their industry models have all shifted or outright collapsed in the past decade - with Disney being the biggest offender. 

 

Hollywood has always leaned left. And their products have always been laced with progressive messages that challenged the status quo of the day. It was an industry created by immigrants looking to fit in with the "old money" in the 20s and 30s. In the '60s and '70s it was an industry fueled by "rebels" and "outcasts" who wanted to expose the cracks in the system - not to sink the American Dream but to warn that it's in danger of vanishing. By the time the Blockbuster movie model rolled around in the 80s, Hollywood had become all about bigger, louder, better. Like the decade itself, the industry was about nobodies becoming very rich somebodies overnight by telling stories that spoke to the "regular" American who wanted to see bigger, louder, better as an escape. That continued into the 90s and early 2000s, true, but in that span there was a rise in "indie" hits made outside of the studio system that offered the more sophisticated, nuanced narratives that tried to shine a light on our society and culture for better and worse. Some of those films from that category I would argue are among some of the best films ever made - and they were definitely pushing a message that was considered (then) to be progressive and/or left leaning.

 

Then 2007-2008 happened. The economic meltdown, paired with the WGA strike, forced Hollywood to once again reinvent itself. It got rid of the "indie" system, absorbing those studios and producers into the corporate studio world. This resulted in a Hollywood that was much more risk adverse. Hollywood has always been about the money first, but post 2008 that was the only driving force behind most of their creative decisions. It's why existing IP, remakes, and Super Heroes became the only thing the industry churned out. The studios figured out they could guarantee a "hit" (+$150m return) on a movie if their advertising and marketing budgets matched the films'. That meant a $200 blockbuster budget was really a $400 million dollar budget, and would have to make at least $1b to net a return). Which meant less movies got made and more money than ever was spent on marketing existing IP rather than creating new IP.

 

One of the (very) intended consequences of the 2008 studio reshuffle during the WGA strike, was to reduce the number of creatives (directors and writers) who were "approved" to make movies. From 2000-2008, over 30% of all the films made were written by first time writers (WGA stats - defined as writers who had no prior credits). To put that in perspective, between 2008-2015, <1% of the films made were written by first time writers. Why? Hollywood only wanted to use writers with previous credits who they could then include in the marketing campaigns. Makes sense from an advertising perspective, but from a creative perspective that was cutting off your nose to spite your face. All that did was guarantee that eventually, the movies would become stale and repetitive because no new voices were getting into the system - which is where we've been the past four years I'd argue as consumers.  

 

Still, in all those various eras, even though the industry was filled with progressive minded folk, the writers (and directors and studios) would go out of their way to at least try to be subtle with the messaging. If you wanted to do a "think piece" movie, it had better at least try to be honest in its portrayal of the opposing view or it wasn't going to get made. Not because studios didn't believe in the message being pushed, hell Kennedy's been around since the 90s making those kinds of decisions for Lucas Film, but because they knew the audiences didn't want to be preached to and money was, and still is, king in the eyes of the studio. It was Jordan's "Republicans buy sneakers too" ethos in action. 

 

Then between 2012-2015, social media took off in terms of its ability to sink a movie's opening weekend just through targeted campaigns - either organic or inorganic. Suddenly, individual studio heads, producers, actors, directors were being attacked and maligned daily by the online mob crying for films to have more of "The Message" (communism masked as socialism, masked as social justice, masked as confronting America's past sins). And these Hollywood people, some of the most vain and narcissistic people you could ever meet, took that shit personally. They didn't want to be canceled, they wanted to be lauded. To be seen as better than everyone else. That's a big reason why they came to Hollywood in the first place after all. Before long, even the creators who didn't believe in "The Message" were forced to get in line or be shunned and out of work. By 2016, the studios started to play by the mob's rules. Not because the corporations believed in "The Message" (that's irrelevant), but because they saw the opportunity to make money by enraging segments of the population and fellating others. It allowed them to shave millions off their advertising budgets, because they could get Twitter and Instagram to do the heavy lifting for them just by dropping the right amount of chum into the rage-filled waters of the internet. 

 

But they still had an image problem - because they hadn't let many new voices into the system in almost a decade, their bench was largely white, male, and middle age or above. Which meant, the studios suddenly needed to start having their writers, directors, and producers look and think the way "The Message" demanded.

 

So they opened the floodgates to activists with follower numbers, rather than writers with talent (I know that runs the risk of sounding like sour grapes, and maybe it is on some level, but it doesn't make it any less true). Hollywood wasn't looking for the next great script or the next great director, they were looking for the next activist with the largest social media reach to guarantee whatever they work on had a built in audience. Which meant Hollywood was suddenly drawing in creatives who were driven to do this work, not out of a love for movies or television, but a sense of importance. They're "changing the world for the better" with their messages, and the best part - thanks to the echo chambers they live in - if what they make doesn't work, it's not because they created a bad product, but because the audience is problematic and should be ignored. In other words, an industry that was built on reacting and adapting to the marketplace has now insulated itself from self reflection and course correction because their creatives' main drive is no longer money, but activism. 

 

The thing with Hollywood is, the production pipeline is always 2-3 years ahead of what's being released (and Covid and the last round of strikes slowed that down even more). So we're only just starting to see the effect of this most recent change in Hollywood's thinking. If you want to sell a show or movie today, you not only have to look the right way, you have to think and pledge your fealty to the social media mob. Which encourages writers/directors/actors to create pieces of entertainment that validate those views rather than challenge them. And because there is no room for subtly or satire on social media or the internet - that means the movies can't be subtle or satirical in how they present those messages. They must be blatant. And repeated over and over enough times that no one on the internet could ever accuse the creative minds behind any given project of not being on the "right side of history". 

 

All that is my long way of saying this: if you really don't see the shift in how "The Message" is being presented in modern shows and cinema (especially Star Wars) compared to even 10 years ago, let alone 30, it might be because you're a frog in a boiling pot. The messaging has slowly become so ubiquitous in Hollywood and media in general over the past 5-7 years that you haven't even noticed. But I promise, if you go back and look at some of the other movies and shows of decades past, especially the ones that were seen as "groundbreaking" or "socially important", and see how they got their message across compared to the ham fisted, in-your-face way of today's creator, you'll see what I'm saying. 

[Nouseforaname]

@Deranged Rhino didn’t want to quote that long post but I see the point from that perspective.  I also in no way see this discussion as combative.

 

I wasn’t sure what to think of all the discussions around the show but Red Letter Media put out a review about but really was more of a commentary of all the noise around the show.  
 

Watch if you have an hour:

 

 

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

 

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[bdutton]

 

[Ann]

...
 

 

[bdutton]

The replies are gold.

 

 

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

But...why?

 

@Deranged Rhino Any inside info on this ill-conceived idea?