I'm watching the newest Netflix show, Shadow and Bone. It's YA fantasy, based on books. I read most of them and I have an opinion on them. Basically, the author used to have some nice ideas, but then it all devolved into typical teen girl fare.
But what Netflix does is so typical of what happens with shows and movies now. The main character in the books goes through this long period of being a fish out of water. An orphan girl suddenly becoming a powerful person, living in the royal palace. Everyone is superficial and a total backstabber, they make fun of her. They have gone through the same kind of rigorous training through abuse, but nobody tells her, so she feels she is worse than them.
Then in time she finds her place, and it turns out everyone else also felt those things.
In the show everyone, except like one girl, automatically accepts and loves her, but then mean people are... RACIST, because she is half their world's equivalent of Asian in the show (she was 100% white in the books).
Why do these people always, always trade universally understandable human emotions for in-your-face, comical Muh Racism? It's not like she would have suffered any less if they went with everyone being a catty bitch to her.
It almost feels like the creators don't understand human beings have feelings other than oppression. Like you can be lonely even if you are not coloured. You can be an outsider without having the gays. You can have limited opportunities without having a vagina.
But that's too complex for them. Too much thinking.
Say what you want about the Middle Ages, but the religious artists who weaved Christian themes into their work at least managed to make beautiful works of art.
These people can only make a parody of Stalin-era 'socialist art'.
Now with statistically unlikely gays and random blacks in every white group.
Those old timey, Christian artists were seriously educated about the technical aspects of their art form and they weren't allowed to settle for lower standards. Now every girl with that lesbo combover hairstyle gets hired.
The good thing about their work being so awful is that it will die with their ideology, rather than being appreciated centuries or millennia from now, like Notre Dame or the Parthenon.
This is core to the two main reasons most media now sucks:
Things made now are the equivalent of processed foods, and they’re now laced with cyanide because people have been convinced that’s a virtuous pursuit. This is a far cry from how things used to be, which was a celebration of successful ideals and a championing of the human experience. Now it’s toxic ideas and a degradation of the human experience. China’s currently positioning itself to try to do the opposite. We’ll see how that goes for them since it’d lead to the CCP being overthrown.
This is one of the biggest lies constantly being spread in supposed anti-Leftist groups.
This idea that corporations are stupid enough to keep making products for this non-existent demographic to make "mad money" has always been a lie, because none of their junk sells, and it's been that way since 2014.
People are still spouting this lie even while the comic book industry -- in all its Progressive degeneracy -- continues to lose money hand over foot, while manga (which hasn't been completely co-opted yet) continues to grow hand over foot by comparison.
Marvel's been in this slump for nearly a decade and people are still saying "lol the execs keep listening to Twitter spergs who don't buy their product." No, that's the excuse people are fed so the corps can keep producing propaganda with the express purpose of indoctrinating people and normalizing the Liberal Progressive ideology.
After a decade of seeing no ROIs on these abominations shareholders SHOULD have had all the board ejected for gross incompetence, but they haven't. Why?
Because it's not about the money it's about the message.
Look at Remedy Entertainment, it took them nearly TWO YEARS to sell 2 million copies of Control across SEVEN platforms.
https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/09/control-has-sold-over-2-million-copies/
They consider that good, though, even though during seventh gen AAA titles used to sell 2 million copies over the course of three days (or less). That was back when they used to make games for gamers.
Some products still sell like that, though. Look at Valheim. It's a game made for actual gamers, and it isn't littered with Liberal Progressive nonsense.
That indie title had no marketing budget but sold 2 million copies in under FIVE DAYS: https://olhardigital.com.br/en/2021/02/15/games-e-consoles/valheim-feito-por-cinco-pessoas-jogo-vende-2-milhoes-de-copias-na-steam/
But it has nothing to do with the quality of the product, it's about making sure that they're hammering home the message.
Even the processed food analogy is wrong, because at least some processed foods are enjoyable, the dreck they're producing isn't enjoyable in the least bit, it's not made to be. It's made to normalize their ideas for the current and next generation, and with almost no one offering push back, it's going to work.
An entire generation of kids will grow up with this nonsense and end up finding themselves convinced that all this Liberal Progressive dreadfulness is "normal".
I’ll disagree on many points here because I’ve worked with many of the companies people are complaining about that are spewing out leftist garbage, and I’ve been party to many wide-reaching decisions made in the following way:
This may be true but in a true capitalistic market place, you don't get to keep making these bad calls. It's not just "Hey, a few billion here, a few billion there. We'll write it off on our taxes."
These consistent losses over the span of years has to be propped up by something other than poor management. Shareholders wouldn't put up with it. There is something driving the money that's not greed or ineptitude, even if that's what they want you to believe.
That's a fine example of when it happens the first or second time.
But you completely skipped over my examples of Marvel, DC and gaming companies who have been doing it for the past decade now and have only saw profit margins shrink drastically on new products, especially the comic book industry.
In gaming, the only major profit movers are digital recurring spend (i.e., cash shop or loot box items). Product sales (other than Nintendo) are in the absolute gutter, and they're trying desperately to hook people on subscription based models.
As I said in my previous comment, the whole "dumb execs, lol, they don't know any better" works the first couple of times as an excuse, but when this has persisted for nearly a decade and the results are mass amounts of people either tuning out, dropping your product, canceling the subscription, or boycotting to the point where the revenue keeps dropping, and eventually profits follow suit, you can no longer use the "dumb execs just don't know, lol" excuse.
Another perfect example is WWE. All their SJW pandering has not resulted in more engaged fans, it's resulted in less. Fewer and fewer people are tuning into their weekly shows. Idiots keep using the excuse "b-but muh streaming WWE Network" which also has an abysmally low amount of subscribers. In fact, if you combine WWE Network subscribers and their weekly TV show ratings it's still LESS than what they were getting during the Ruthless Aggression era.
Even before the Plandemic, ticket sales were WAY down compared to previous eras. Back in the day you used to find normal folk walking around and about town with Austin 3:16 or The Rock t-shirts. Heck you would even occasionally see some 619 or Cena t-shirts during the mid-aughts. These days? Despite the WWE pushing people like Becky Lynch to the moon, you'll be lucky to find a non-wrestling fan who even knows who she is, much less will you spot average people around and about with a shirt on.
Long story short, the "they're doing it for the money" excuse doesn't hold water when you actually compare the quarterly finances of any of these woke companies. No one who has jumped into that poisonous pool has actually come out of it bustling with profits.
You can take a look at most publicly available financial sheets and compare the quarters from before a company went woke to after they went woke, and the numbers usually speak for themselves.
They should fire those kids if they loose that much money on a 200 million dollar film or video game that is being created and being told we need Transgenders and gays because of diversity it sounds like a sex cult robots came up with these ideas then actually knowing.
Hell, I felt the same when they made Warrior Nun Areala TV series based on the indie comic by Ben Dunn on Netflix and they turn that show into shit. They made Shot Gun Marry into a Black woman but at the same time the actress did alright but that whole show wasn't good enough which was cancel.
The progressives' relgious degeneracy is appropriately reflected in their art.
Hell, even the soviets made decent music.
Hard bass!
Post-soviet.
Correction: garbage that resembles a parody of Stalin-era 'socialist art'.