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Notes -
I was reading this article about Amazon Prime's streaming service:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/inside-amazon-studios-jen-salke-vision-shows-1235364913/
Mostly it's not particularly culture war related, talking about how the executives are blowing huge amounts of money on niche shows that don't bring in enough viewers to justify their costs, or paying big salaries to writers and directors that don't end up producing much.
But this part made me chuckle:
I've seen people argue that big companies aren't ideologically woke, they're just doing it for good publicity with the ultimate goal of making money. I think if that was true then Amazon would tell their producers and directors to make the type of content that people want to see: white men with guns (apparently). And if they didn't want to get on board they should take a hike. That's what a company that wants to make money would do. Instead they're trying to change their audience's preferences which is a much harder and less profitable job.
As someone who grew up in an environment where third wave feminism was just taken for granted as the obviously correct thing (well, really 2.5th wave, I suppose, and it was just called "feminism"), I'm reminded of the basic attitude that I noticed there, which I'd sum it up as "feminism can't fail, it can only be failed." I've noticed this sort of attitude being a very strong feature of the downstream cluster of ideologies that have followed since, i.e. "identity politics," "SJW," "woke." There's this strong and constantly reinforced idea that we know that our ideology is the obviously correct one that we only need to present to others whose sole correct response is to agree and submit. Any sort of pushback is necessarily a failure on the part of those pushing back, reflecting their bigotry/stupidity which we have no responsibility to account for. This is the core of a lot of the very popular and influential memes in this space like "sit down and shut up," "white fragility," or "tone policing."
But when you're making products for a business, you run into the issue of actually having to appeal to potential customers so that they give you their money for the product. I think the principal-agent problem is certainly at play here, where the decision makers are motivated to push the kind of media they believe ought to be produced, regardless of their profitability. And if the audience doesn't reward them with their money, then so be it; these people are stupid bigots, and even if our company fails, at least we were morally righteous along the way.
But the reality of the market is that without that income, you eventually run out of people willing to fund your videos. This can take a long time, but most people still understand that it's unlikely to go on forever, which I think leads to a couple of different strategies. One is to use the same bullying tactics referenced above in sociopolitical situations, to try to shame the audience into giving them their money. I believe Amazon's Rings of Power's marketing had some of this with the emphasis on the diverse cast and accusations that believing that the racial diversity of some of the isolated population groups would take away from the immersion was bigotry. And more broadly, it's been a popular tactic in the industry with the creators of films like Bros, the Charlie's Angels reboot, and Terminator: Dark Fate outright saying that supporting their films was what good open-minded people would do. This tactic has worked extremely well in sociopolitical contexts where social or outright coercion are options, but I think in media it has had very little success at all.
The other strategy I see, a much more long-term one, is emphasizing socialism or some similar variant of anti-capitalism as the obviously correct way to move society towards. The idea being that without capitalism, video producers would be free to create whatever without constraints based on the audience and as such the media landscape would be more full of the morally correct kind of media, which would then help to reinforce the morally correct sort of sociopolitical views in society. Whether or not this kind of scenario is realistic, I think many people truly believe it, and that's why someone like, say, Anita Sarkeesian, one of the most famous and influential 3rd wave feminists in media in the past decade, has openly come out against capitalism.
Adding to that, I suspect artists have always been upset at the requirement that their projects be profitable, and when you combine that with woke ideology holding itself out as more important than profits, the results are truly big.
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I avoided seeing Disney’s Moana in theaters because all the marketing was “wow brown gurl much diversity so hype”
When I finally did watch it, I enjoyed it. The glam crab was the only near-woke thing, and that segment was clearly over-the-top and based on the voice actor, and thus fun. The rest was a real treat, and The Rock’s “You’re Welcome” is one of the greatest Disney songs of all time.
I had a very similar experience with Moana myself. And I remember a friend at the time bitching that the movie didn't do very well, despite being super feminist etc etc. And I just wanted to shake him and say yeah, that's because people made the idiotic decision to try to sell the movie based on how feminist it was rather than trying to highlight that it was just a nice story told well.
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