Posts Tagged ‘Hollywood’
Cancel Kulture and the tools it uses.
And one of those tools has been Twitter.
Here’s one way that Cancel Kulture can be made to work, and has worked on a number of people, especially in show business.
It’s quite simple: you just reach back into the past of that person, find something that’s “problematic” by today’s standards – problematic is a great word in that it’s not a direct attack but implies that a problem exists with the target of the word – and use that standard combined with a gathering wildfire of outrage on Social Media, followed by the MSM, to force the target into groveling apologies, most of which don’t work, the target gets de-platformed anyway.
This is what happened to Oscars host and comedian, Kevin Hart, three years ago. That was the end of that high profile job, and pretty much his career. The same stunt has been pulled on nobodies as well, like the young woman who lost her university place when a former high school classmate published an old Tweet of her celebrating getting her drivers licence at the age of 16 by repeating the line of a famous rap song (all the rage with her generation at the time) that included The Word That Can Get You In Trouble (unless you’re a rap artist).
Recently it was tried against the famous American comedian Steve Martin, because of a forty year old sketch he’d done on Saturday Night Live. Stephen Green at PJMedia takes up the story:
“Steve Martin” briefly trended on Monday after Silver Age Television tweeted the anniversary of King Tut’s debut on SNL. It trended because some zero-humor wokester forced it to trend. But only briefly. Mediaite did its best to generate heat with this headline yesterday:
Steven Martin’s ‘King Tut’ Sketch from 1978 Sparks Twitter Debate on Cultural Appropriation.
Steven Martin? Anyway, as the story made clear, there wasn’t even so little as a “Twitter debate.” The worst Mediaite could find was two barely-critical tweets by a couple of low-follower Blue Checks.
The Twitter Outrage Machine was cranked to life, then almost immediately ran out of gas. Maybe it’s because Twitter spent Monday outraged about the Elon Musk buyout and didn’t have time to worry about Martin.
Excellent news, but how did that little wokester actually get “Steve Martin” to trend in the first place, lighting a spark as it were?
“They do it,” Dice explained, “to create a self-fulfilling prophesy. Twitter manually inserts a topic on the list. People see the topic and think everyone is tweeting about which “caused” it to trend, so people *start* tweeting about it, and *then* the issue goes viral.”
Easy peasy. Japaneasy.
Oooo. Is that racist? Or culturally inappropriate?
Well anyway, after delving into yet another aspect of the grim, toxic underbelly of the politically correct Left, have a laugh at Steve Martin’s original sketch:
Hats Off to (Roy) Harper
We’re not quite at the point of being able to not talk about the Chinese Lung Rot virus but it’s getting closer.
In the meantime I saw the claim over on Newshub while checking on today’s death count that, “A good rule of thumb is to wear a mask in indoor public settings as we know that mask use halves the risk of spread of COVID-19″
Well, actually it’s 53% according to that British study that Hipkins keeps referring to, which was not a Randomised Control Trial (the gold standard) but yet another observational study that was immediately pointed out as a claim that could not be made based on its own data. To be fair the authors acknowledged that RCT’s would have to be done. To be unfair fourteen RCT’s already have been done over the years, including one during Covid and the conclusions were that masks were useless against such a virus.
You have to wonder if our journalists even read things like the Washington Post, where even they recently concluded that “Mask Mandates Didn’t Make Much of a Difference”, or simply asked how “halving the risk” could be concluded when the case number growth on a chart was almost vertical in NZ, as it was elsewhere. Or looked at something like this:
Perhaps that should have been turned into a t-shirt.
Other data continues to accumulate.
On all aspects of the virus and the vaccination cure. The following is probably just a coincidence, one of those correlation vs. causation questions that pop up all the time in science.
On a different topic this one is a hoot.
If you assume that having a society that’s increasingly tolerant of LGBTQ+ folks is what’s behind the numbers of such people for Gen Z, you’d have to wonder why it’s not lifting the numbers in other generations as people come out of the closet, especially the next closest in time, Millennials. The reason is that Gen Z has been bombarded with this since they were young. The Jesuits once said “give us a child till he’s 7 and we’ll have him for life”, the Libs of TikTok have documented that trans teachers are fanatical about this stuff and…
Can’t.
Stop.
Talking about it.
Maybe that’s Why American Teens Are So Sad:
The United States is experiencing an extreme teenage mental-health crisis. From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent, according to a new CDC study. This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded
With the Disney-Florida shitstorm there was a sudden outburst of people complaining about the Right calling such teachers and their enablers “groomers”. Apparently it’s hurtful and nasty to compare groomers to people who want to talk to small children about sex while keeping that secret from the parents. I appreciated this response, although you have to be familiar with the theory of White Fragility to get it.
I think Disney have chosen poorly,
Especially given that this fight is coming up again, and this time I wouldn’t bet on GOP Senators and members of Congress being quite so friendly to a corporation.
But perhaps Disney doesn’t care about The Mouse anymore:
Disney isn’t for kids anymore. Its movie business is dominated by Marvel blockbusters. Half of Disney+ subscribers, its big bet on the home streaming future, are adults with no children.
What about the theme parks?
60% of Disneyland visitors were adults with no children. Only 36.7% of Disney World visitors had children under 18. The largest demographic for the theme parks, like the movies, are millennials. They are also members of the fandoms who are likeliest to spend money on licensed merchandise, and on toys and movie tie-ins that are Disney’s bread and butter.
The Happiest Place on Earth?
When I was a little boy one of my TV highlights every week was The Wonderful World of Disney.
An hour long program screened on early Sunday evenings, just as it was in the USA, it had everything from classic Disney cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck (my favourite because of his bad temper) and their mates, to documentaries on nature and science (some of them also animated), some of which were hold-overs from earlier days but didn’t seem to suffer for that.
Here’s a classic example from 1958, The Future of Transport, which I came across in falling down Interwebby rabbit holes because of the opening of Transmission Gully.
I doubt my parents ever had a concern about me watching such stuff while they got on with other things. It was Walt Disney after all.
But in the year 2022 I find that Disney has gone woke and as former President Trump said, everything woke turns to shit.
Just the other day I briefly covered Disney’s opposition to some legislation in Florida that prevents teachers from talking about sexual matters with kids aged 4-7. The MSM jumped in as well because GOP Governor Ron DeSantis headed up the bill and has defended it – and is seen as a huge threat to Democrat hopes in the 2024 election, so has endured endless amounts of MSM hit jobs. However, Disney and the MSM are truly on the wrong side of this issue:
The Florida bill doesn’t influence parents on how they, as parents, can instruct their own kindergartener on gender. Parents are still free to tell a child who can’t keep crayons inside the lines that “There are 20 genders.” The vast majority of parents will leave that discussion for when their child isn’t just starting to read Cat in the Hat.
Also, the majority of even Democrats agree with Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature. The general public, by a wide margin, sees no valid reason for a stranger to teach a six-year-old girl that she’s “in the wrong body” and needs to be called a boy. That polling is for the voting Democrats. If pollsters asked just parents, the percentage in favor of allowing children to remain children would skyrocket.
But that has turned out to be the least of it. Journalist Christopher Rufo – who has led the charge against woke poison across the USA in the last two years (and has thus incurred the wrath of the Far Left, who blame him for “creating” this particular culture war) – was sent a recording of an in-house, all-hands-on-deck video meeting that shows just how far gone the company is in its senior management levels. You can check out some of the videos at this link, plus more on Rufo’s own Twitter account, but here’s just one example:
Christ! Is there anybody there in management that’s not gay or trans, with gay and trans kids? Is there any limit to how far those assholes will go in pushing their Far Left woke agenda on everybody else?
Is the point of representation not to be representative? Yet, making 50 percent of [animated] characters some mix of LGBT and minority is not that when looking at the demographics of the country. Rather, it’s purposeful indoctrination that is meant to condition children to certain lifestyle choices these adults approve of and want to promote.
Ironically, in the same meeting, Disney’s “diversity and inclusion manager” then brags about de-gendering all of their theme parks, which is actually erasing representation. In other words, if you are a normal person who embraces the sex you were born with instead of entertaining the delusion it can be changed, you don’t deserve any representation. In fact, you need to be completely erased.
The videos also make it quite clear that their objective is absolutely to condition little kids into LGBT ideology at an age when they still believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy:
Do you know what I’ve never thought about doing? Injecting sexuality into children’s programming in order to reinforce my adult views on the topic. I’ve never thought about that because I’m not a groomer, and I don’t use that word lightly, but really, what else would you call this? “Adding queerness” into shows that small kids watch is the kind of activism that should shock and appall everyone. Children are not pawns to be used in the pushing of adult sexual ideology. Yet, Disney employees like Latoya Raveneau are consumed by the practice.
I’d like to think that Disney is going to take a big hit over this, if not over their ugly, shitty obeisance to the Chinese Communist Party (which didn’t help them financially anyway). What “mother” or “father” will want to take their kids to Disneyland or DisneyWorld now, knowing that it’s less about fun than about ideological sexual indoctrination.
But it’s just another Culture War that can be ignored, correct?
“Celebration Day”
Do we have something to celebrate?
I guess the end of the bullshit vaccine passport or C-19 test checking for Southbound Aucklanders on the Waikato Expressway on Monday this week, counts as something. You have to take your wins where you get them.
I doubt many readers of NM are also on Instagram but for anybody under the age of 30 it’s very much a thing. While working on the agricultural contracting job last year I was astounded at the constant camera-sound from a phone as my Irish workmate “communicated” with friends around the world via an endless stream of selfies while I drove us to our harvesting sites.
Then there are the woman of Instagram, exceeded only in obnoxiousness by those on TikTok. The following captures well what’s really going on with those endless photo streams.
I wonder how many dates and marriages will result from all this, or is it all just hookup culture? I guess we’ll know in a few years via surveys.
Back in the real world, increasingly meaning the old world, there were caches of things more valuable than butt-shots.
Is that stack of $500 notes Confederate money? A DDG search says no, and the same for the Union, so perhaps it’s Mexican? I don’t recognise the dude in the picture. Readers are invited to guess or find out. I suppose whoever planted this stash either died or never found their way back to their hiding place.
Jumping back a century or so is another tale of a hard-living chap.
As Captain Benjamin L. Willard would say: “A Tough Mother Fucker!”
And they’re still around. Looks like Hideaki Akaiwa’s story was real enough for Wikipedia, but I’m surprised I’ve never heard of him despite watching several documentaries on the 2011 Japanese Tsunami, given how often we focus on one person’s story amidst many. The lack of body cam video means it can’t compete with Reality TV!
Then there are these heroes, who managed to be heroes while having fun. MUCH FUN.
I wonder why Ferrari, who I think of as the quintessential Italian sport car, have been beaten out for this role by Lamborghini. Also – given that I doubt even modern developments in automotive technology have changed the Italians that much, in that they still love their manual gear shifts – what must the service costs on these babies be like, given Lamborghini’s history.
More history.
And as a final sop to history there’s the story of the sequel to the semi-famous TV series of the late 1990’s, Sex and The City. I saw glimpses of it from time-to-time because it was truly a chick-flick and I never got what was so great about living the loves and travails of four glamorous mid-30’s White Woman in NYC. Still, a lot of ladies around the world loved the characters and their joys and sorrows, all happening in stunningly fashionable clothes and apartments in the New York City of Rudy Guliani, meaning when it wasn’t a shithole like the 1970’s or today.
As a result these fans, now aged twenty more years, were filled with anticipation for the sequel. Had they known any Star Wars fans they’d have guessed what they were in for.
The show is fucking awful, it’s even getting panned by woke Leftie fans who were wanting more than the original four White-girls world. One writer summed it up pretty well by saying that “the writers clearly hate the characters, hate the show and hate the fans”. They even hated the original name and called this one, And Just Like That, which is hopeless. Who could have done this? Fans investigated and…
Yep. The lead writer is someone who hates the characters, hates the show and hates the fans.
So not a celebration then.
Hollywood’s ugly cost of catering to China
on Maverick’s Jacket for Top Gun II
A terrific article about Hollywood’s pathetic sucking up to China over the last few years.
There’s plenty of evidence in terms of reporting on all the machinations that have been pulled between China and Hollywood over the years at the management level.
But it can be seen on the screen itself: things like modifying Maverick’s jacket to remove the patches for Taiwan and Japan, or Disney’s removal of the Black guy in their Star Wars billboards for China.
The ultimate joke is that it’s started to fail Hollywood anyway as the returns on all this “investment” begin to dry up:
Just two years ago, Disney’s “Avengers Endgame” earned a whopping $629 million at Chinese theaters during its theatrical run.
The far-Left Hollywood Reporter says “Jungle Cruise,” a splashy Disney film with a massive budget, bombed during its opening weekend in China. The film earned a mere $3.3 million during its initial release.
That’s part of a new pattern for U.S.-made films, notes Breitbart News. Other 2021 U.S. titles which significantly under-performed in China include “Snake Eyes,” “Luca” and “Wonder Woman 1984.”
Meanwhile, many films that expected to earn serious coin in China have yet to snag an official release in the country, including “Black Widow,” “The Eternals” and “Shang-Chi,” all Disney titles.
Also aiding this fail is that China has started to get pretty good at churning out big blockbuster movies themselves – and they’re patriotic about China. As a result they’re making a lot of the money Hollywood used to make from Chinese audiences.
The article also links to a short documentary about this, The Iron (Movie) Curtain. As the old Russian soviets once said: The West will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.
See also:
OH DEAR, OH DEAR, OH DEARIE ALEC.
During the Trump Presidency woke Hollywood and its partners in the Media often attempted humour to attack the elected President and right out there were some cringe worthy efforts by one Alec Baldwin who had been largely sliding under my radar until then.
Karma or just further stupid but it was reported yesterday that the man who should have faced court for his inanity was on a set of a film he was co-producing in New Mexico when he shot dead a director of cinematography with a “Prop Weapon” and wounded another director.
The lengths media went to yesterday in reporting the tragic outcome were in themselves pure comedy. One source quoted on NZ State TV went along with “a weapon in his hand discharged and someone was fatally wounded”. Crikey just as well the stupid fuck didn’t point a weapon at another person in total contravention of every safety measure this silly old coot has observed and enforced since he first held the old single shot Stevens lever action .22 at around age five following its use to dispatch a pig for the larder.
The dumb bastard was reported as distraught following the death but he made a remarkable recovery when seen in a photo in a Canadian publication said to be of Baldwin leaving a sheriff’s office after making a statement on the shooting shortly after. Clutching his beautiful designer sunglasses and appearing absolutely nothing resembling distraught in any way. Then again it is suggested he makes his way in the world portraying false images of persons I guess.
nb it is also reported “No charges are involved in the tragedy”, well blow me away such a tragedy should require a serious investigative process as a person, clearly nowhere near as prominent or notable as Mr Baldwin is no longer breathing and somewhere there are people more than a little upset surely. Perhaps ‘careless use of a firearm’ is not a part of the firearms laws in New Mexico but it could be suggested that a prima facie case of that or similar might just be a go.
More Insanity for your delight
Well you may not be delighted at the first item, especially if you have kids looking for a house in New Zealand.
I’ve removed the name of the real estate company as I see no reason to give them free advertising after they dropped this through our mailbox the other day.
A 71% increase above the CV. Obviously the house and other structures on the site are worth nothing.
This is not a flash area, even by the moderate standards of Glenn Innes in Auckland, yet this is what’s happening even there. They’re also quite open about land banking and development, as if things like the “brightline test” and no longer being able to deduct expenses as a renter just don’t amount to a speed bump.
That’s because these are companies with teams of lawyers and accountants, and there is no limit to how “money” can be shuffled around to avoid the prescriptive revenge of Leftist governments.
Friends of ours, a Russian immigrant family we met twenty years ago when they landed in NZ at the same time we did, lived in this very street until last year and after years of scrimping and penny pinching, did well enough out of this insanity to be able to buy a section not far away and build a new house. Given the racism from their neighbours that they had to put up with for years they were glad to go.
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The second item is something we all try to avoid, getting tangled up in government bureaucracy – and death.
Many years ago I laughed at one of the crazy stories from the book Catch 22. One of the characters, Doc Daneeka, is gaming extra income by getting flight pay via signing up to fly on standard shakedown flights of bombers that have been repaired. A quick flight around the base and it’s all good, but Daneeka doesn’t even want to do that and the pilots let it slide. Then one of these bomber flights – with his name on the roster – crashes into a nearby mountain in full view of the base. “Poor Doc Daneeka” says one man, even as the Doc, standing beside him, is saying, “but I’m right here”. He ends up living in a ripped up tent on the edge of the base, stealing food wherever he can. Even the amoral capitalist genius of Milo Minderbinder and the evil bureaucratic genius of PFC Wintergreen, cannot resurrect him. It gets to the point that people ignore him when he speaks to them. He also just vanishes from the story eventually, his true fate unknown.
Meet the modern French version of the Doc, Jeanne Pouchain, and marvel at real-life insanity.
‘They said I don’t exist. But I am here’ – one woman’s battle to prove she isn’t dead.
The letter informed her that a lawyer in a court case relating to her cleaning business had told the court that she had died, aged 53, in February 2016. Somehow, this unverified claim – there was no official death certificate, how could there be? – was allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged.
The thing that really gets me is that a relatively minor court could let this happen, but somehow higher courts and supposed authorities can’t seem to reverse the process:
Several courts, including the Cour de Cassation, the highest in the French judicial system, have examined the case and conceded there appeared to be “irregularities”, but deemed it was beyond their competence to bring Pouchain back from the dead. So who can? Pouchain’s local MP’s office tells me they have taken up her case. The MP, Valéria Faure-Muntian, told Pouchain she has spoken to the justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti, who is a member of the French bar and will keep a close eye on the case.
Aside from frozen bank accounts and not being able to access the French healthcare system, there’s also ordinary things like not having a passport and a driver’s licence, which crimp your lifestyle to say they least, although when I read this bit …
Then [the gendarme] looked on the central database and he said, ‘I wouldn’t drive if I were you, because you don’t exist. You don’t have a licence.’”
Ok. So what happens if they arrest her for that? Or for anything really? How can you charge a dead person with a crime, convict them and send them to jail? Perhaps she should have tried getting the system to fight itself to a resolution.
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The last concerns the hopeless story creation in Hollywood in the last twenty years, with a seemingly endless line of re-boots, sequels and super-hero movies being made – and starting to sag in box-office returns.
Somebody on social media decided to spark some ideas using merely the photos of two actresses.
In the future everybody will be cancelled for 15 minutes
Even scientists with a great pedigree of credentials and research papers.
Like Robert Malone.
But when he began to speak up about the potential downsides of the mRNA-“spike protein” approach to vaccines, that was not acceptable to TPTB, even though it’s his field of expertise.
First he found podcasts involving him getting pulled from YouTube, and then even the supposed business-connecting site LinkedIn took their shot:
Malone pays for the premium version of LinkedIn for the biotech and government consulting business he runs, Just the News reports. That page remains intact, but its last post is three weeks old.
“He was given no notice, no warnings” before he was removed on Tuesday, his wife Jill said. “He has a 10-15 year old account – has never even had a warning. 6,000 followers.”
…
“The historic record of what I have done, stated, figured out (and when) etc. over time is a key part of establishing my credibility and track record as a professional,” Robert Malone tweeted Wednesday. “And that has been erased completely and arbitrarily without warning or explanation.”
Well at least he can still Tweet!
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There was one piece of cancellation news that was funny. There’s an outfit called Right Wing Watch, which is dedicated to posting clips of conservatives saying things in an effort to get those conservatives de-platformed. Unfortunately they were a little too good at their job of pushing YouTube on those rules:
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
My, how schadenfreudialicious that is. Something, something reaping.… something something sowing…
But now that they’ve been kicked off of YouTube, they can simply go start their own multi-billion dollar video platform, right? I mean, that’s what the Left has continually told conservatives who complain about censorship online.
I think they’ll be fine. Once YouTube realises the political and ideological mistake of taking out one of their own, RWW will be allowed back.
===========================
The same might also be true for actor Tom Hanks. Early in June, Tom decided to sheer his experience and feelings about racism in American by publishing an op ed in the New York Times entitled “You Should Learn the Truth About the Tulsa Race Massacre,”, in which he confessed that he’d never heard of this during his 1950’s/60’s Whitebread schooling. Hanks has been activist (a quiet one) and a donor to many Democrat Party candidates and causes over the years.
But none of that was good enough for one Eric Deggans’, who used his platform on none other than NPR (National Public Radio, basically the equivalent of the NZR’s National Program) to unload in response, “Tom Hanks Is A Non-Racist. It’s Time For Him To Be Anti-Racist”. Because you can never be good enough, especially in the eyes of a 55 year old Black man who specialises in “issues of race and social justice”:
“The toughest thing for some white Americans … is to admit how they were personally and specifically connected to the elevation of white culture over other cultures,
…
His work, so often focused on the achievements of virtuous white, male Americans, may have made it tougher for tales about atrocities such as Tulsa to find space.”
The revolution, like Saturn, devours its children.
Perhaps the best response to Deggan’s bullshit is this article from Frontpage by Danusha Goska. It’s lengthy but you should read it. She makes several important points but it was this one that struck me, based on her experience teaching and living in Africa and the reality of limited good:
An insight into why villagers resisted change, including change that might save their own lives, was provided by the fate of one villager, a man I knew personally. When development workers advised the locals on how to improve their agricultural output, he carefully applied every suggestion. His farm prospered and he enjoyed a much higher yield than any of his neighbors.
His neighbors burned his farm down. That’s limited good. This man, by increasing his yield, had monopolized all the good to be had in that village, and his action would result, his neighbors believed, in their farms doing poorly.
It applied to other things in the village too, even beauty. That’s what Deggan is actually putting forward for the US and other Western societies:
Deggans is back to that limited good, zero-sum worldview that insists, falsely, that one man’s success equates to the next man’s failure. If Tom Hanks has two cows, Eric Deggans can’t have any cows. If Hanks’ farm is doing well, Deggans’ farm will wither. If Hanks’ baby is attractive, Deggans’ baby must be ugly.
The “solutions” offered also amount to the same thing; burning the farm to the ground:
For Hanks to atone, he must lower himself, and elevate black people in the place he previously occupied. That’s being an anti-racist. That’s Ibram X. Kendi. That’s the “8 White Identities” chart that says that the only good white is a white who participates in the abolishment of whiteness. And it is a Maoist struggle session. Deggans calls for “Hanks and other stars to talk specifically about how their work has contributed to these problems and how they will change.” This is the self-accusation that occurred during Maoist struggle sessions. The less successful, fueled by their envy, publicly humiliate the more successful.
Goska also makes the point that should be obvious:
Deggans can read white people’s minds. White people all think alike. And Deggans can speak for them. Any similar set of statements by a white man about black people would be taboo.
===========================
Lastly, there are places where the reverse is happening, with opposition ideologues taking over their opponent’s world, as Daniel Greenfield points out:
When Sultan Doughan signed a hateful letter falsely claiming that Israel and Zionism were based on “Jewish Supremacy”, a term popularized by Neo-Nazi leader David Duke, that ugly rhetoric wouldn’t have attracted much attention in an antisemitic time… except for one thing.
Doughan is a Muslim postdoctoral associate at Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Always Scotch. Always drunk. Always critical. Always brilliant.
A few days ago I put up a post about the catastrophic collapse of TV viewership ratings for Hollywood’s annual, ritual orgasm of self celebration, The Oscars: Die Hollywood, Die.
Once again here are the figures for yet another industry that’s destroyed itself by going full Woke (and New Left).
But as an update on this I thought I would throw in this wonderful piece from The Critical Drinker, drunken Scottish movie critic par excellence. Watch, laugh, and then check out his reviews of individual movies.
My only difference of opinion with him is that I’d be quite happy for Hollywood to burn to the ground. Fortunately, they’re apparently determined to make the wishes of Right-Wingers like me come true.
And I say that as someone who loves the movies.
A free bag of Chocolate Fish for anybody in the comments who can identify even 50% of the movies whose clips he shows: WARNING: they’re fast.
Die Hollywood, Die 🤣
So apparently the annual Hollywood movie awards show, known as “The Oscars”, has just happened.
What? You didn’t know about this? It’s not a topic for discussion in the shops or at work? What movie won Best Picture? Which man won Best Actor? Which woman won Best Actress?
Well I’m glad to inform you that you’re not alone in not knowing.
As Oscar Wilde once remarked, regarding a key character in Dicken’s novel, The Old Curiosity Shop:
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.
MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Or perhaps we should paraphrase a more modern saying:
The Oscars have gone full woke. You never go full woke.
Ironically the original line came from a movie character who would never make it on-screen nowadays, Robert Downey Jnr’s brilliant piss-take of an actor so high on his own skill (“five-time Academy Award-winning Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus”) that he’s willing to try and portray a Black soldier in a Vietnam War movie in the satire, Tropic Thunder.
Even funnier is the fact that this 2008 role by Downey was nominated for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
As those declining viewer numbers show this has been coming for a long time:
The Oscars always had problems but in the last decade they’ve become turgid, sanctimonious, predictable, joyless, and boring, not to mention bitter and negative about the country that has created so much splendor and wealth for the lucky few who get to appear onstage at the ceremony.
But I have to admit that even I’m shocked by the collapse from just last year:
Ratings crashed 58 percent off last year’s abysmal viewership, down to 9.85 million Americans. Let that sink in: In a nation of 330 million, not even ten million Americans watched the Oscars. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ strategy of embracing diversity as a supposed means to bring in younger viewers has proven a complete failure: Ratings were down even more for young adults. In the 18–49 demographic, ratings crashed 64 percent. The star power is gone. The glamour is gone. The public interest is gone.
That article finishes on the usual pathetically hopeful note I’ve come to expect the likes of National Review, basically from the Bush wing of the Republican Party, but the following comment is closer to the reality:
When you break up with someone — or break up with an industry, or a hobby — at first you’re angry about the alienating direction the industry or hobby is taking, and you complain about it.
The more intensely you complain, however, the more you show that you still care.
At some point, you stop complaining.
That doesn’t mean you’ve accepted the industry turning woke.
That means that you now don’t even care that it’s turned woke — it’s out of your life, and you care about it as much as the person you broke up with four break-ups ago.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
adolffinkensen
Gravedodger
Nick K
pdm1946
Psycho Milt
The Veteran
Tom Hunter
No Minister 