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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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I was reading this article and made a possible connection to the culture war.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-05-11/disney-star-wars-writers-of-royalties

It details a series of conflicts between writers of various properties and Disney, but I suspect the basic phenomenon (trying to avoid paying creators of IPs) is industry-wide.

It made me wonder how much of the specific Hollywood brand of "wokeness", radically altering or combining characters etc. is more about avoiding royalty payments to the established authors, shifting the writing to a writers room, where the product is the property of the corporation. Were these dumb fucking writers so happy to be allowed to doll up their creations with the latest political fashions that they were overjoyed to participate in the destruction of both the IP itself, and also the legacy authors, and for a lot less money than real writers cost? Ironic if true!

How much of this push to "diversify" is being run by the companies themselves to get cheaper creative labor? I don't know the answer to this question, but it would be enlightening to find out who actually owns the intellectual property of a lot of these "woke" shows/movies, and whether that differs structurally from the "classic" or just better made shows.

As the media model of television shifted to the streaming age, I would theorize there was a lot of structural changes that needed to happen. The companies didn't want to pay people on the old model, but young people, new people, cheap people from good colleges would work for relatively little money (well paid staff positions are far cheaper than royalties if your show hits it big). Because they're taking a shotgun approach to content, they need a lot of cheap writers. And if you doll it up in social justice, the kids will cheer for and demand their own economic subjugation.

How much of this push to "diversify" is being run by the companies themselves to get cheaper creative labor?

Zero. You could do it without hamfisting diversity, and it doesn't explain cases where diversity is hamfisted in, and they have to pay the original IP owner anyway.

I'm certainly not claiming much at all, less that this phenomenon is the whole story. But zero? You got any more meat on the bones of that argument? I can answer the one criticism easily. An incentive structure doesn't work 100% of the time, that's what makes it an incentive.

The incentive structure you pointed at might explain why Hollywood tends towards 'suck', but hiring cheap labor does not explain tending towards woke. The two are completely orthogonal. In fact, I'm pretty sure you could hire a conservative writer/consultant for even less than the woke ones get paid.

You could do it without hamfisting diversity

I doubt it. Who else will work for prestige alone other than cliqueish clout-chasers? And what do people like that always believe in? It's the same reason the press is saddled with the only people who have the ressources to rent in a big city with a garbage tier paycheck but no better options.

Granted they could have landed themselves with another group signifier if this particular one wasn't ascendant in the cultural moment, but it would have been something.

I do doubt it being in any way intentional though.

I doubt it. Who else will work for prestige alone other than cliqueish clout-chasers?

People who love the source material.

There was a rumor / anecdote going around regarding the production of the new Star Trek shows, how the producers would ask potential writers if they like the old Star Trek shows, and then not hire them if they said yes.

Iron Law of Institutions?

Doesn't shifting the process to a writing room dramatically change the incentive structure? If it's your name on it, I imagine you want to do something bold to catch the attention of the audience and critics. However, if your name isn't to go on it...what's your game? I would think it would be to build status and reputation INSIDE the writing room. You're angling for the next job. And in that case, I do think that's where all the signaling politics could certainly come to the forefront in the right kind of environment. As well as creating something..well...bland.

What form of writing/show running doesn’t include angling for the next job?

I don’t think you make it to “major motion picture” without building some sort of reputation. Even if that reputation is just playing well with others.

But like you said, it's a different kind of game.

It's sort of like the difference between yes men directors like Ron Howard who execute what the producer wants competently and filmmakers like Dennis Villeneuve who have an expectation of control over the vision.

One isn't necessarily better than the other, and reputation is a part of both, but it's not the same job.

This is just the tip of the iceberg too, the illegal part. Consider how Disney canned the entire expanded universe and then complained about not having any stories to crib from whilst still cribbing from them poorly (they were so out of ideas TROS is literally the bargain bin version of Dark Empire).

My understanding at the time was that they did that not to have to pay the writers royalties. It might not even have been ideological in the first place, but then they inevitably saddled themselves with political up and comers instead of people selected on the quality of their writing.

Some of the new Disney canon is hinting at Thrawn being a major antagonist for the upcoming Ashoka show. In Star Wars Rebels cartoon show, Thrawn is a major antagonist. Wouldn't that mean royalties for Zahn?

He's already getting some on account of them using the character in Rebels and later shows and writing books for nucanon. And even then it's technically a different Thrawn.

Stackpole and the other EU writers got a big load of nothing so far as I know.

Yeah, I imagine Lucasfilm's modern execs sleep easier if they don't have to pay royalties to Zahn or Stackpole.

yeah, Disney gets cheap diverse talent, so kill two birds with one stone. but it's been this way even before wokeness, like the prequels Star Wars franchise. Movies that appeal to younger audiences, like superhero movies or other franchises, do not need A-list stars all the time. But there are exceptions, like Dwayne Johnson (who earns a lot) and also The Avengers franchise (e.g. Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, and Robert Downey Jr.)

It'll be interesting to see how the sides play out here. On the one hand, SF writers (especially those of earlier, established IPs) are perceived as being predominantly white males. On the other hand, small-time creatives are being screwed over by a large corporation. On the gripping hand, Disney is under attack be Desantis.

My prediction is that it's too complicated and not cut-and-dry sides, and therefore will be mostly ignored by the internet.

It could very well be that a part of the Hollywood "wokeness" is wresting away controll of profitable IP:s or kill them off while trying. Hollywood accounting tricks are well known and it is prominent in other creative industries like the recording industry. But then there is also an aspect of Hollywood wokeness is just old fashioned nepotism and using woke shibboleths to signal being part of the group. A while ago read an article (which for some reason google is not finding, suspicius) that analyzed the ties of woke Hollywood writers on Twitter with their public interactions on there. No surpise that they all knew each other and went to the same colleges and so on.

That's definitely a thing, but elites are always clannish and nepotistic. It's how they become and remain elites.

With my fasting of culture war topics have given me a little distance and reinforcement that a big part of the culture war is just the elites talking down on us plebs and the plebs going "what do you mean that you don't know what a woman is?"!

They get to pick the topic. Trans people are a tiny fraction of a percent of the population. Whatever issues there are with them, whichever side you are on, it doesn't matter to national politics one single bit. So why is this the prime political topic?

With just a sprinkling of tinfoil, it's not hard to see the utility of winding people up about inconsequential bullshit while, say a european land war is being escalated, or the Chinese and Saudis make moves on the dollar as the world reserve currency, or inflation is killing everyone's (well, everyone with jobs) savings and wages.

Conservatives got baited into boycotting Bud Light with another InBev product so they can all rage about some troon influencer, and the policies we're talking about is building a prison next to Disney to own the libs. The establishment, the joint party of the permanent parties, is engaging in its usual controlled-opposition hijinks, distracting us with idiocy while they vote in bipartisan lockstep about the important stuff.

However cynical you are, it's not nearly cynical enough. We're gonna have to become russian about this stuff.

Well my tinfoil hat days are over now. Now I only believe in incompetence theories(as per my new online persona) with a heavy dose of corruption. But a big part why I'm trying to be less involved is because I'm not American. Conservatives boycotting piss-water is not worthy my time and I'm trying(fairly unsuccessfully since I'm aware of it) to stop in caring about it. My only goal here is to adjust my worldview towards something more accurate, testing it and/or share my findings hoping that someone else might find them useful.

You might be on something. In another message in this CW thread, someone implies that companies want their sector to be as lightly regulated as possible. However, it seems to me it is not always true. Think about children toys: if the regulations remain light, then there is no or less incentive to buy new toys compared to re-use older ones. If the regulations become heavier, then old children toys become dangerous. You should not re-use them. You should buy new ones. Why would the toy industry oppose it? In this case, it might be a win-win situation (children get safer toys, and toy companies get more money).

But you can also have the exact same phenomenon with "social regulation" or with authorship. It might be expensive to compete with the best works of the past. You have to hire talented people, to give them money, and even then you have a high failure risk. So what about lowering the bar? Just use whatever social trend to make the older works worse, out of fashion. And if it makes you free of the authors and their IP, even better, right?

This is well known as an economic phenomenon. Capitalists are not capitalistic. They can make more money as a more-regulated semi-monopoly than they can as a less regulated large company with many more competitors because of the lower barrier to entry.

In the industry I work in, holster manufacturing is crazy, there's thousands of companies, many of them one-man shops, because the regulations are very low. It's not a gun, there's no paperwork, no explosives, no hazardous shipping, etc. You get a very vigorous and responsive industry, but cutthroat. The firearms side is the opposite, there's a few conglomerates that own most of the smaller brands, new companies have a hell of a time getting off the ground and if they do, they get bought by the big companies and shelved or run into the ground. This is because the regulatory burden keeps most of the competition out.

This is well known as an economic phenomenon. Capitalists are not capitalistic. They can make more money as a more-regulated semi-monopoly than they can as a less regulated large company with many more competitors because of the lower barrier to entry.

As Milton Friedman put it, the two greatest enemies of capitalism are intellectuals and businessmen: the latter because they tend to push for regulation and government intervention for their own industry, even if they support a tough free market in general; the former, because they tend to push for regulation and government intervention for everyone else's industry, even if they support free speech rights for themselves.

Of course, that claim doesn't rule out non-liberal progressive intellectuals, who also oppose free speech rights for intellectuals...

Yeah, kids stuff being recalled is no joke. Nearly everything we bought for our infant was recalled inside a year, and replaced with a near identical "updated" model. My "this is a racket" alarm went off hard at that. With as much as infant carseats, swings, rockers, sleepers, etc are recalled you'd think we have an uncontrollable epidemic of dead infants. But its probably just regulatory capture and/or planned obsolescence.

I recall hearing that nobody is more in favor of (certain types of) burdensome regulation than large airlines... because it raises the burden of entry (and therefore competition). I'd imagine it's the same in most other industries.