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Yeah. I'd say it was a tactical error for them to go all in on "Diversity/Minority Representation is a good in and of itself" but I'd guess by their metric they were getting exactly what they wanted.
You promise studio heads "Swap out the redhead for a POC and make the main character gay, and throw in a sassy girlboss on the side, people will absolutely FLOCK to see this movie!" and then the show or movies gets rave reviews from the usual suspects, tons of social media hype and then... does mediocre to poorly upon release.
How's that go over?
Same for ad campaigns. "Don't put sexy folks, or even normal looking humans in your commercials, make sure the people check as many boxes as possible. Make sure all relationships depicted are interracial. This will both show how socially conscious you are AND drive a new customer base to you!"
And it just doesn't materialize. Worse still, oftentimes it torpedoes an otherwise established, popular brand (here's looking at you, Bud Light) for zero gain. I'm actually mad about what has happened to the Pixar brand.
Its not just empirical reality that caught up, profit-motive finally seems to have reasserted itself. If someone else is footing the bill you can afford to showcase luxury beliefs. But with the Quantitative Easing era over and the government is shutting off the money faucet, suddenly you have to think with your wallet.
Vast oversimplification, but yeah, after 5 solid years of unbridled acceleration into identity politic madness, can you point to ANY particular piece of media, or successful ad campaign, or memorable (in a positive way!) pop culture event that got published/released that had any lasting impact?
My honest recollection of popular songs, TV shows, movies, and books released over the past 5 years, its been almost nothing worth recounting or rewatching. The Dune films did win me over, but those weren't notable for being diverse, really. I hear that Andor is good. Better Call Saul is an excellent series.
The woke aspect does seem to have helped Baldur's Gate 3 a little, and it managed to both have those aspects and be a really good traditional-ish RPG. Though other than budget constraints, I don't see why it couldn't have had the elements it had and a PC option who was a conventionally attractive, more or less straight woman. (Shadowheart is at best an honorable mention in that regard.)
Funny enough, I excluded video games as a class, because a ton of absolute BANGERS have come out in that period.
And there's at least a couple counterpoints to Baldur's Gate, like the Harry Potter game that achieved MASSIVE success despite an attempt to boycott it, and Stellar Blade going all in on the conventionally attractive female PC.
I enjoyed the HELL out of Armored Core VI, and that one didn't try to inculcate me with identity politics or carry any overbearing political message, even as it sort of makes you feel bad for certain decisions you make during the course of the game.
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As a fan of Andor, I would suggest that one of the reasons it got produced is that in some ways it checks all the appropriate boxes: There is a female character (more than one) in fairly big, plot-driving roles. The eponymous character is a man of Mexican heritage. In the show he, as a child, was adopted by a white woman (Petunia Dudley from the Harry Potter films, amusingly) whose own husband was a black man (who has only a very small role before he is basically written out of the storyline.) There is a lesbian couple. An Indian woman who is also an assassin. Many, many of the progressive boxes are ticked--but not at the expense of a story. And that story, which drives two seasons, is compelling. White men are not all seen as bumbling, or evil, or both (though there are both bumbling and evil white men in the show.) One of the most complex characters is, arguably throughout his whole character arc, a white dude whose story is so believable it could be a documentary. You don't have 115 lb. females flipping 250 lb. men through plate glass windows, though true enough the cast is quite diverse.
Yet it works. (At least for me.) Seen from one perspective, the rebellion against the Empire (what drove the first films in 1977) can now be seen as "Le Resistance" à la the Force Awakens trilogy. The Empire is Trumpism. But this is a facile reading. Big government of any sort (including one run by democrats) can just as easily be substituted for the Empire. I know people on both sides of the political spectrum who like the series, both having very different reads on it. And this is what filmed entertainment (it's not a film, after all, it's a TV series) should be. Political, sure, but not propagandistic. The moral messages are complex. Nothing is a clear cut-out for current events unless you really, really stretch. Yes the show does present some behavior some might find grating as unquestionably normal (pre-marital sex, etc.) But it does have a moral core, which I mean in the John Gardner sense.
Ironically this is one universe where that can be justified if the female in question has access to Force powers.
Remember 2 foot 2 Yoda taking on the Emperor.
The Empire has always Aesthetically resembled Nazi Germany, on purpose, but yeah, its a pastiche of many historical dictatorships that revel in creating huge symbolic projects to demonstrate their power or bombastic, overpowered weapons to terrify their enemies, and employ slave labor and conscripted troops and heavy propaganda in lieu of providing material improvements in people's lives.
Soviet Russia did it. North Korea did it and continues to do is. CCCP China actually does it, currently, South American dictatorships did it on a more modest scale.
I haven't watched it, but it sounded like this was also true of at least the first couple seasons of The Mandalorian, which is the ONE other piece of consistently decent Star Wars media to come out since Rogue One. And also catapulted Pedro Pascal's career, in all likelihood.
Mildly ironic that only he and Jason Momoa, whose characters both died after relatively brief screentime, are the only Game of Thrones actors to still have serious careers after that series ended.
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