By David Glenn Cox
In this day of modern sensibilities, it is truly unusual to anger everyone at once. It is easy enough to piss off one side or the other. But to piss off everyone at once is truly a unique accomplishment. (Kudos!) From Catholic Bishops to California gurus and from a generation of grown children to pseudo-intellectuals studying the “lore!”
I don’t generally follow popped culture. It moves too fast to try and keep up and doesn’t generally involve me. But when the news includes big trouble at Disney, I’m all ears. Disney to me is as evil a corporation as they come who remind me a lot of AT&T. Big, famous and loaded. But they buy their business by purchasing other businesses and living on their name. Disney is the company who invented Imagineering and can’t come up with a successful original idea without buying one or regurgitating a “NEW” version of an old classic!
You only thought you liked the OLD Snow White! How about this? In this version Snow White is actually an undercover agent. And the seven physically challenged people are actually a motorcycle gang selling cocaine on the mean city streets of Philadelphia and that’s her code name…Snow White. Sort of a Sons of Anarchy meets the brothers Grimm! In Disney’s actual new version, Disney has spent the Gross National Product of Bolivia on a live action version, and they aren’t finished yet. Rumors say Disney might just chuck the whole venture and just write it off. “My bad. Whoops!”
George Orwell said, “All media is propaganda.” From Aesop’s Fables to “Young Sheldon,” if there is no message, it isn’t a production; it’s just hanging out. It’s Happy Days and Ritchie has a pimple and asks Fonzie what to do about it.
In the recent Disney production of “The Acolyte” The mouse that bored takes up yet another original Disney production of “STAR WARS!” The purists hate it. The Conservatives hate it, and the LBGTQ community isn’t crazy about it. People liked Ritchie Cunningham, and that’s important. Pronouns! They included Pronouns! Let us all now lose our minds. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, badly done. It’s like murder, if you can still see the body when it’s all over, it’s badly done.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” was about racism and societal unfairness told in a sympathetic story. It wasn’t tacked on later; it was the theme. Atticus Finch didn’t need to shout, “Look out Jem! Here comes a racist! It isn’t a question of DEI really; it’s a case of B-A-D. Shane came to a fork in the road. One way led to town and all he was trying to escape. The other way led to the sodbusters. Today that would be filmed with a crawl, “A long time ago in a frontier far, far away. A lonely gun fighter must decide his fate.” Spoon feeding to the audience, lest they don’t get it. You know how they are, bag of hammers! Am I right?
Now suppose you’d just sold the King millions and millions of dollars of a NEW invisible wardrobe. How would you answer your critics pointing out the obvious? Peasant’s! Ill bred and contemptible! Besides the money in your hand, what do you know about fine haberdashery? People liked Richie Cunningham.
Disney execs and the show’s star tell fans they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Stupid racists and ignoramuses, if you don’t like my 180-million-dollar version of Star Wars, you’re all fucked in the head! Disney claims the show is being ratings bombed. Because the show is so bad, it motivates even a small audience to rate it poorly on social media, rather than just ignore it. No, it couldn’t be that way. It just has to be people picking on us because they’re either racist or don’t like DEI!
The customer isn’t always right, but they are always the customer. If you strike out you say, “Sorry, I’ll try and do better.” Instead, they blame the umpire because what does he know anyway? But money talks and bullshit works at Disney. Criticizing the fans? Hollywood is littered with the corpses of writers, executives and starlets who knew better what the audience really wanted! Why the audience is just stupid! An argument they will never win, even if correct.
There is only one answer, and the longer Disney dallies to do it. The deeper the thorn will get pushed into the audience’s flesh and heart. The show’s starlet wrote a little Rapp ditty about making white people cry. (Genius! Pure Genius!) You know, those same white people putting all those zeros in her paycheck. I don’t even write about popped culture, but this thing is everywhere and growing. And if Disney isn’t careful, it will soon jump the firewall into streaming cancellations.
Fatty Arbuckle had to be fired! It was the only way to make the Hollywood scandal go away. Only a wave of firings will calm these waters. They have called YOUR audience stupid and worse. They have spit on YOUR bread-and-butter Disney! Because they thought they were all important and thought they were talented enough to tell ALL the critics and the fans, You’re all wrong, go to hell! This is my Art! (The hubris is strong in this one!)
But art meets accounting, doesn’t it? No bucks, no Buck Rogers! “But this is about MY life experience!” No, this about STAR Wars and if those two Wookie’s don’t have a Light sabre fight soon. People are going to start to get pissed off. The secret of good story telling is good story telling. Of including your agenda inside of a good story where it’s hardly noticeable. Rather telling an agenda and including a story.
“I wrote the story myself. It’s about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it.” ― Mae West
This Carbon Based Life 