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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35417 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I'm still wondering what got Amazon hooked to a billion dollar disaster. After all initial (imo misplaced) optimism, analysts are finally coming out and saying the quiet part out loud: it is not the ground breaking masterpiece they need it to be. Even HoD is performing better and is better received. Both are prequels to very popular IPs, but Rings of Power should be pulling enormous numbers given how expensive it is, and how extensive its marketing was. Despite worsening performance with every episode, they just renewed it for season 2. This wasn't a small and calculated risk, they literally staked the future of their whole studio on this show. What made them think hiring subpar writers, rewriting lore, rewriting characters of one of the most popular fantasy IPs while simultaneously drafting off of the brand was a good idea? It feels like the motive isn't even to make money but solely to push an agenda, but who would do that? Given the sheer scale of the project, I just cannot believe any studio would be so careless as to commit such a serious misfire.

What made them think hiring subpar writers, rewriting lore, rewriting characters of one of the most popular fantasy IPs while simultaneously drafting off of the brand was a good idea? It feels like the motive isn't even to make money but solely to push an agenda, but who would do that? Given the sheer scale of the project, I just cannot believe any studio would be so careless as to commit such a serious misfire.

I've posted this video before but I'll post it again because it's an interesting explanation of the reason:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gFxu3Q71NvE

This guy calls it "parasitic storytelling", which is basically latching onto popular franchises to repurpose them for ideological reproduction, similar to a parasitic relationship, and then discarding it and moving onto the next thing when the franchise has been drained. I can't help but think that this matches the pattern of woke remakes, prequels, sequels, etc. quite well.

I think you've posted it in reply to me the last time I talked about the show, I remember this!

There was a very similar article on this months ago.

Bundling is precisely what is happening with woke politics, and why it is so insidious: It is regularly bundled with things that have particular value and are not easily replaced, in order to force it upon unwilling buyers. If you offered people the choice to buy a visit to Disney World with or without the company’s woke politics, most people would choose “without.” The same would be true if you offered them a Harvard education, a pair of Nike sneakers, a job at J. P. Morgan, a can of Coca-Cola, a coffee at Starbucks, or a ticket to the NBA playoffs.

In almost none of these cases did wokeness build the valuable product.

I think this is giving too much credit to the ideologues, RoP is getting crappy numbers but only amazon knows exactly how crappy, and it may be the case that they believe the IP will be a money maker in the long term or at least a good enough subscriber magnet that they want to continue production.

I just don't buy that Amazon wants to make propaganda more than they want to make money.

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