This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Inside Disney and internal corporate boardroom drama. Iger appointed Chapek as his successor but ended up decided coming back. It touches on the fight with Desantis, the prior generation deciding not to retire, internal power struggles, managing a business where no one has the skillset for all of the businesses (creative, running parks, international, finance, sports, launching a streaming business). About a 15-20 min. Iger seems more interested in the Desantis fight than Chapek who just wanted to play nice.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/09/06/disney-succession-mess-iger-chapek.html
Interesting article, but I'm surprised they didn't mention the large payment Disney is contractually obligated to make for Hulu. Even at the floor valuation $9 billion is a mountain of cash for a company saddled with an enormous debt load from the Fox acquisition and whose net cash flow hasn't been great over the last 7 quarters and has had all the cash they've generated going into debt repayments.
Not to defend Chapek, but seems to me most of Disney’s problems were Iger problems.
Iger did the disastrous Fox deal.
Iger pushed into the disastrous streaming business.
Iger forced a fight with DeSantis over culture war issues that have soiled the Disney brand.
I don’t know why an activist investors hasn’t put two and two together that Iger is the one who needs the boot.
Is there evidence that Disney suffered O($10B) from the DeSantis fight? I don't think it's really penetrated among the biggest Disney consumers (children and women obsessed with princess fantasies). Even the fact that it's in a rut putting out boring, derivative content is probably a bigger factor.
If that's the core market, or an important part, then the decisions they've made recently have not helped. Look at the controversy over the recent Snow White live-action remake, which hasn't even been released yet. The leads giving interviews about scrapping the love story, dumping the prince, and the struggle between Snow White and the Evil Queen being over who is the "fairest" (read: most just) ruler is going to fundamentally change the story beyond just updating it for 2023. They're also getting rid of the Seven Dwarfs and bringing in seven 'magical creatures' instead, a move that has been roundly mocked due to the set photos that got released. Disney at first denied these were real, but were eventually forced to admit that yes, they were real, they just weren't official.
Revamp the princesses too much, and you lose the audience.
More options
Context Copy link
The rut is related to woke programming. Without DeSantis the programming still would’ve been woke and bad, but it fit the narrative that DeSantis helped create.
Disney was family; not necessarily women and kids obsessed with princesses (though of course they offered that). They need to try to rebuild that family brand.
I’m not sure how easy it is to rebuild a family reputation. It’s a matter of the broken trust. Disney is not longer the “it’s okay to let my kids see this movie or TV show without worrying about it” company. And without that level of trust, that parents can really be sure that content they’re putting out won’t be full of woke propaganda, sexual content, rude and obnoxious behavior, parents are not going to feel safe letting their kids watch Disney. Basically, especially as it concerns kids, watching the content is the same as trusting an adult with those values around your kid. Everyone knows that kids pick that stuff up.
The only reason that it’s a slow loss is that most of the rest of Hollywood TV and movies are equally bad in content. Even though I’m not Christian, about the only content I’d feel safe plopping a 5 year old in front of made after the 1969s is evangelical stuff. At least that way I can know that they won’t be subjected to propaganda, sexual content, or rude and obnoxious behavior in their TV and movie choices.
This leaves the question of how Christian entertainment goes mainstream for kids stuff. It’s kids stuff, it doesn’t have to be good, and lots of people are trying to pick the twenty dollar bill up off the sidewalk.
I think it would be much better if it didn’t feel like it has to preach at you or overtly quote the Bible. The biggest problem they have, for me is that they come off preaching at the audience all the time. You can show faith by actions and make good moral characters and show them doing good moral things without having to tell the audience. The best examples I can give off the top of my head are 7th Heaven and Little House on the Prarrie. In both, it was pretty obvious that the families were Christians, but the producers and writers didn’t feel the need to have everything boil down to “the message” and related Bible citations.
More options
Context Copy link
VeggieTales seems to have been the one that cracked the conundrum, but nobody managed to replicate it since.
The recipe is one part captive audience (this was always 'Churches looking for Sunday school material' or other Christian parents looking for something that was, well, Christian), one part strangely competent 3D animation team (cartoons don't need to be complex re: industry dominated by low-cost CalArts style for the last 10 years, they just need to not look outright bad- simple objects that bend, thus "veggies", were arguably the ideal way to do this in the late '90s), one part sane storyboarders who can keep the message in their pants for more than 5 minutes, and one part parents that won't get a bug up their ass about it being a chocolate bunny instead of a golden idol even though the message works better (especially with that age group) if you use the former.
It is my opinion that you need all 4 of those things to make that kind of media work, and to a point it's why that group persisted. The other medias of this type were just... boring, like so fucking boring- they might have meant well but you can only do so much with kid's choir, puppet shows, and a host that's totally not going to be dealing with rape allegations in 20 years.
More options
Context Copy link
Prince of Egypt was also pretty mainstream wasn't it? Granted 1997 is a long time ago. And there were the Narnia movies, but they flubbed the sequel and stopped making them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Agreed. But that’s why you need a public reputation. Sure LGBT aligned NGOs will bellyache but they aren’t really Disney’s core audience.
Chapek was right to want to stay out of politics and it seems like the biggest problem was his board support was a lesbian.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The Fox price seems like the worst decision, by a significant gap. I suspect Nelson Peltz is biding his time to do just that. Better to strike when the executives and board are weaker, when the target is this big.
Think peltz is on deaths door last I heard.
More options
Context Copy link
This sounds interesting, could you explain more? I'm very unaware.
Nelson Peltz is a fairly famous activist investor. The article mentions him, and he bought about a billion dollars of the stock last year, and currently owns about 6.4 million shares both amounts are less than 1% of the company. However it is enough to show a credible interest and to threaten proxy fights which he did earlier this year.
He definitely wanted a board seat and with the stock down as much as it is, he's in a better position for a proxy fight next year should be wish to try again. He was open about thinking Iger was not doing well with Disney.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Streaming and that as a platform turned out to be a tough business. WBD who I think has some awesome content trades at 50 billion in debt plus 30 billion in equity value which is really cheap compared to the valuations Netflix has achieved in the past.
More options
Context Copy link
You're forgetting the most important aspect for an entertainment company. Disney under Iger produced good content. Disney under Chapek didn't.
Except Iger was responsible for some horrible content like Star Wars, which he rushed into production - which caused a cascade of production issues and failures. Which then basically killed the movie side
I’m kinda wondering why Disney didn’t look at the cash cow they acquired and turn the actually good parts of the EU(which are after all known quantities) into GoT like series- HBO’s success was about the same time. It seems like an obstinate refusal to do the boring, safe thing made Disney blow what should have been a sure bet.
I think it's a combination of arrogance and general "Prequels PTSD"'.
The arrogance is not just in Iger rushing it to have it out in his time. It's also in the fact that the people on the A-side - the movies - just didn't give a shit about any of this. Joss Whedon admitted as much about the original MCU shows like Agents of Shield. They're lower budget fanfiction that just interfere with their canon (which is the real canon) and may confuse fans but they have to pretend to indulge because some nerds buy the tie-ins. In that way, they treat it much like Lucas did. They just didn't care. Especially since there's just so much you can point to to shit on the EU.
The second thing is that basically everyone old enough to work on these films either hates the Prequels or remembers the absolute, wall-to-wall hate the Prequels got. Simon Pegg is a friend of Abrams and look how he talks about them in an otherwise diplomatic industry.
But people disagree on what exactly was bad about the Prequels. As someone who grew up with them I hated the dialogue and characterization. I was not only fine with but loved the Republic era - plenty of us found some quality in the games, books or The Clone Wars show even if we agreed with the criticisms of the mainline films.
The message Disney apparently took was that they were bad in their essence: people didn't just hate the prequels cause of bad execution, they hated the idea. What everyone wanted more OT-like stuff, fewer Jedi, less of a Republic, more Empire v. Rebels, less shiny CGI Coruscant so give them a ton of that, at least at the start. Well, that led to the derivative mess we got and the insistence on movies like Rogue One and Solo which all stayed in the very safe "post-Revenge of the Sith, pre-A New Hope" space.
Which would have perhaps been survivable (The Force Awakens made too much money) but the rush meant no ability to plan for a coherent trilogy and each movie not only pissed off fans of anything original, it even pissed off fans of the previous movie.
The prequels were bloated movies with a decent concept and terrible execution. A strong editor and better action would’ve led to a great set of movies.
The sequels lacked even the decent concept.
A better editor would have helped, yes, but IMO the critical flaw in the Prequels was that George Lucas originally intended for the Big Bad Guy to be Darth Jar Jar Binks. The theory is that he chickened out when he saw the overwhelmingly bad fan reaction to the character in The Phantom Menace. But ironically the only thing that would have redeemed the character and the whole trilogy is if this bumbling idiot was just a Kaiser Soze-esque mask for Palpatine's master. Cowardly scrapping that left Episode II without a memorable villain.
For those who haven't seen it already: https://old.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/3qvj6w/theory_jar_jar_binks_was_a_trained_force_user/
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The stupid part is that for all intents and purposes, the EU draft for star wars sequels in the Zahn trilogy is very much "more of the OT" (not least because that's how Lucas told Zahn to write it). Unlike the chaos they got with total improvisation, the structure would have guaranteed some story coherence. And when I reread the books recently I was struck at how naturally they flow with the OT and how well they maintain the characterization. Luke doesn't feel like a completely different person, which is apparently not something to be taken for granted.
And as much as you can tax the EU of being bad or at least not good enough to fit on the silver screen (a debatable proposition given what we got instead), the Zahn trilogy is pretty universally beloved. I haven't met a prequel hater that doesn't at least recognize Thrawn as a memorable character. And I've actually met many who prefer the more mystic, weird and scruffy continuity of the Zahn sequels to the cleaner, sanitized and mighty setting the prequels had to depict.
They could even have had their cake and eaten it too, by just cribbing the narrative structure and characters and done a free adaptation of the EU, which is what they ended up having to do as a crutch anyways. TLJ being a midwit version of Kotor 2 and ROS being bargain bin Dark Empire.
It's different in many ways. "More OT"' in the case of the Sequel Trilogy is literally "no, everything we can possibly roll back to then we will", in some sort of childlike desire to relive things exactly as they were, regardless of how it distorts the story. Republic? Gone despite what it does to the heroes' sacrifices. Han's character development? Gone. Leia's Jedi nature? Meh. The Jedi..come on.
This is silly because people want growth, but if it was rational I wouldn't call it PTSD.
More options
Context Copy link
Kotor was such an amazing game. I for one would love to see a Revan series.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Early Iger or late? Disney don't have much good content since the great wokisation began in the mid 2010-s
It is clear from the article that Iger is very much a social creature. So when the environment went woke so did Iger.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is that really true? Sure the stuff Disney has put out is garbage. But it’s because of the people Iger put in charge.
Also Disney is unique. They make a lot from parks. Chapek didn’t do a great job there though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link