The new entertainment industry will be even more woke.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Peak TV, a stunning era during which Big Tech and traditional studios entered into a furious competition to make a bewildering amount of content, is dead. The 559 scripted shows from last year represent a historic hubris that everyone, especially investors, is recovering from.
That was the year that Netflix announced that it was spending $18 billion on content.
In the aftermath, Netflix lost subscribers for the first time and expects to lose millions more as its stock fell 35%. The dot com giant lost, but so did its rivals. Disney+ lost billions, HBO Max is cutting back programming, and so are most others, including the ‘N’ in the FAANG oligarchy.
Netflix has been humbled, and is shedding woke programming and exploring an ad-supported tier, but the push by Hollywood studios to build rival streaming platforms to those of Netflix and Amazon by investing heavily in original content gated by subscriptions has set a lot of money on fire without achieving platform independence. Everyone lost, but Big Tech still runs the show.
Streaming subscriptions are replacing movie theaters and television networks. And that also means that Silicon Valley is replacing Hollywood. Netflix, Amazon, and Apple demonstrated that they had the capital to dominate the entertainment industry. This isn’t good news for the culture.
While old Hollywood had a reputation for being liberal, many studio bosses and producers were actually fairly conservative and movies were the products of a tug-of-war with more liberal writers, actors and directors. Movies had to be able to play in theaters across the country and serve as broad an audience as possible. Movies of that era might be homogenized, but they were less likely to openly offend or antagonize audiences. Movie stars were expected to at least pretend to lead moral lives and keep industry decadence locked away behind closed doors.
The partnership between Eastern European Jewish immigrant studio bosses who had started out, like Samuel Goldwyn, as a glove salesman, William Fox, a garment industry foreman, the Warner brothers, the children of a shoe repairman, and the much more urbane British and American talent turned the film industry into a cultural touchstone and made its products part of our national identity. Critics rightly pointed to the cultural impoverishment of making movie theaters into the hub of our culture, but they could not have imagined what was to come.
The fall of the studio system overturned the industry’s innate conservatism and while it ended many abuses and unleashed the talent, the end result was that movies became increasingly at odds with the values and morals of the American public. The decline of the networks likewise unleashed cable and then streaming programming that was oriented culturally leftward..
Rather than open up a range of programming targeting untapped segments of the public, Peak TV aimed for the same upscale urban multicultural audiences that the entire industry is aimed at. If the ideal wisdom of the marketplace existed, a world in which untold billions were spent to produce 559 scripted shows, should have produced a wave of conservative programming.
It did not.
The entertainment industry’s programming has been most conservative when control was consolidated by studios and networks. It is least conservative when it is driven by “talent”. Consolidated entertainment has at least tried to make programming for a broader country while industry disintegration has made programming more woke, more radical, and more hateful.
The Netflix revolution, in which endless amounts of investor cash were burned to lure talent, made for some of the some ‘woke’ programming imaginable. At the peak of Peak TV, Netflix had not only successfully mainstreamed radical sexual and gender identity, but was actively pushing sexual content involving children from Cuties to Big Mouth. Freed from a business model other than the dream of endless growth, Netflix burned billions of dollars and our culture.
Wokeness precedes broke-ness. But the story of Peak TV is also one of cultural brokenness.
Netflix pursued original programming by trying to make it as edgy as possible. In response, Hollywood studios revived old intellectual properties and tried to make them edgier with racial recasting, gender-swapping, sexual politics, and general social justice themes. The giant dumpster fire of Netflix was met with a social justice Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, and DC. Anything with a known brand or IP was brushed off and given a social justice makeover.
Ghostbusters was rebooted as all-female, Doogie Howser, M.D. was reborn as an Asian girl, The Wonder Years was reimagined with a black family, Magnum P.I. with a Latino star, Party of Five with illegal aliens, and these and countless other examples showed that underneath all the fake wokeness, the industry had run out of original ideas. All Hollywood could do was try to make the old tired ones seem fresh and new with identity politics remakes.
And as Hollywood’s popular culture has become American culture, and for some the quasi-faith of fandom, the decay of the entertainment industry into wokeness has devastated society.
Hollywood has come to consist of the culture championed and consumed by boomers. Succeeding generations have reworked those “intellectual properties” to make them edgier and more political, but have produced few of their own franchises. Of the top ten media franchises dominant in America, only one, Harry Potter, was created by anyone born after 1964. And J.K. Rowling is not American and was predictably canceled for insufficient wokeness.
Hollywood is Joe Biden making TikTok videos. It’s an industry that was once creatively revolutionary, but now only puts on an appearance of aspiring to a political revolution. As long as the revolution doesn’t interfere with its tax credits and Chinese box office. Behind the wokeness is a brutal war between agents, producers, writers, directors, and the new dot com masters of the universe, over fortunes that are both astronomical and on the verge of vanishing.
The entertainment industry was slow to adapt to the internet because it is not inventive and is incapable of innovation. Even its response to Netflix consisted of old studios trying to build their own Netflix. Political radicalism makes dinosaurs seem like they are on the cutting edge. That’s why corporate broke-ness so often follows corporate wokeness. It’s not just that wokeness is bad for business, but it often disguises a much more broken business model underneath.
Hollywood is as tied down by guilds and painstaking rules as any medieval kingdom. All it really has anymore are the intellectual properties mined by greatest generation creators marketing to baby boomers (and in some cases, boomers reworking the pop culture of past generations) that have been passed down to newer generations and laboriously reworked to be more woke.
The internet killed Hollywood, as it did so many other industries, and streaming has become its slow death, accelerated by the boom and bust economics of an unstable country and world.
Cinema made a national propaganda machine possible. The Nazis and Communists both seized on it for that very reason and regime figures like Leni Riefenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein were brilliant, revolutionary, and quite evil. But it was American movies that conquered the world because they fused creative talent with American values. Hollywood is still the only national industry with the production capacity and know-how for a true worldwide reach, but its cultural impact is swiftly becoming negligible as it churns out reworked versions of the same thing.
As Hollywood dies, America and the world will be poorer for it, not for the billion-dollar woke digital cartoon factory that it has become, but for a time when a centralized entertainment industry did not have to be a mass propaganda machine feigning popular support for a regime.
That is exactly what it is now.
Hollywood’s biggest production of the pandemic year was the 2020 Democratic convention which abandoned working-class and riot-scarred Milwaukee for an entertainment industry stream. Stars in a streaming convention propping up a senile reactionary who had outsourced his future to radicals while sidelining the party’s old working-class constituency proved to be the perfect metaphor and epitaph for both the Democrats and for Hollywood.
Don McKellar says
Interesting article.
Here’s how motion pictures recover and how comics recover and probably some other media: Go bricks and mortar.
Hollywood and comics (which are such a big part of Hollywood now) really blew it the moment they decided to go digital. They had no idea what was going to happen. What they need to do is very simple (and likely very difficult because it would take courage — in very short supply amongst creative industry executives these days). They need to get physical. Then Big Tech has the bone taken away on them.
Hollywood needs to make fresh and original and exciting motion pictures and they need to only show them in movie theaters and only on film. Period. After they’ve done a run in the theaters, and only then, do they get any sort of digital release.
As for comic books, they need to go inexpensive, printed on newsprint floppies. Only. No digital comics available. And they need to be marketed the old fashioned way: in every gas station store and Walmart and drug store on a million comic book rotating racks. And cheap. Real cheap. And in comic shops, too, of course.
And in both cases they’re going to have to drop all the woke garbage. Nobody wants it. Nobody who will go to a movie theater to see a movie or buy a real comic book off the stands. Not those millions of people.
They could just take it all away from Big Tech in no time. But they won’t.
gravenimage says
Don, with all respect, I don’t think the main problem with the content of films is the use of digital as a platform.
And I don’t think that the problem with comics is that they are generally printed on better stock these days.
Then, I don’t think that barring people from producing digital comics will improve things–generally censorship does not improve things.
But you are right that few people are much attracted to this “woke” stuff. The audience for this stuff is way down. I don’t think most of it is even supposed to be entertaining.
Don McKellar says
Nothing in your post reflects or represents anything I said in my comment. In fact it’s a bizarre response.
gravenimage says
No, it’s not, Don. You say that Hollywood blew it when they decided to go digital, and that comics have to be printed on newsprint. I’m not sure how you could enforce these things, nor that anyone should be able to.
ElderlyZionist says
Everything physical is more and more expensive. Everything digital is infinitely replicable, and therefore, infinitesimally cheap, but requires huge investment in digital infrastructure. You can’t make a cheap physical comic book anymore, newsprint costs too much. Digital is all we can afford.
Don McKellar says
Infinitate in the ability to steal and pirate, and in the ability of Big Tech to control. Music artists make their real money these days from live concerts. Film needs to go “live” too. It used to be.
It’s easy to make high volume comics cost a dollar. You have no idea.
James Lincoln says
Don,
To your point, the richest artists in the world make most of their money from live concerts.
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/07/17/artists-touring-revenue/
CogitoErgoSum says
Hollywood started out making movies for its main audience which was white Christian Americans. However, somewhere around the mid-60’s it turned against white Christian Americans and began to hold them in contempt. Today Hollywood simply outright hates white Christian Americans and the movies Hollywood now makes are mainly for people living outside of America who hate not only white Christian Americans but the idea and the ideals of America itself. If Hollywood is now dying it’s because it rejected the audience that loved it most . It’s a bit of a shame but it won’t be missed by me. In the few years I have remaining on this planet there is still a large number of movies I didn’t see the first time around and those that I did see are still good the second time around. There are lots of books I still need to read also and I still have a good imagination – so Hollywood can go to Hell. Oh, that’s right; it already has.
James Lincoln says
CogitoErgoSum,
To your point, all music / movies, etc., that I intentionally watch / listen to is pre-woke.
gravenimage says
What the Death of Hollywood Means for America
………………………..
I find this all terribly depressing.
I used to watch the Academy Awards every year, and one main reason was to seek out films I might have missed the previous year that sounded worth seeing. This year I realized that I hadn’t heard of any movies I’d missed that sounded even vaguely entertaining over the past several years. So I just skipped the Oscars all together, and so missed the grotesque spectacle of the Best Actor winner physically assaulting the MC over a joke.
If I hadn’t already stopped watching, this would have put me off–especially since many of those in the audience actually applauded this disgusting violence.
And I am hardly alone–tv audience for the Oscars has cratered over the past few years, and sadly for good reason.
There have certainly been some good films, but most of this stuff is more political posturing that actual cinematic storytelling. I’ve seen a few depressing remakes of great films recently, including David Copperfield, where among other anomalies a nine-year-old boy is played by a 29-year-old actor, and the character of Agnes is implausibly a sassy black woman; and Little Women, where the formerly loveable character Marmee says things like “I have always been scared of my country”, claims that her impoverished northern family has somehow “of course benefitted from slavery”, and when one of her daughters praises her for being wise and even-tempered in the face of troubles, she asserts that she has been in a state of constant rage every day of her life.
These films are not outliers, but big budget mainstream studio films with casts of famous actors.
And much of television is as bad.
I watched the Supergirl series, and in a few years it went from a generally entertaining if lightweight superhero show to a grim slog where one of the storylines was about the title character’s sister’s black gay girlfriend pushing her to read Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”. I just wish I wasn’t serious here.
One of the few series I’ve really enjoyed recently is the generally fine adaptation of Game of Thrones. It is not likely in this current climate to see many more like it.
I find that I’m generally just watching vintage films now.
Dan says
Been watching old films for years now.
What they lack in “presentation” they more than make up for in great stories.
Here’s a couple for you.
5 Fingers, starring James Mason, 1952. about a British butler selling government secrets
And “The Fallen Idol” 1948, about a young boy who thinks the butler – the boy’s idol, has killed his wife.
gravenimage says
I love old films, Dan. My husband and I watch Turner Classic Movies regularly, and he has written about Film Noir. But I want to enjoy classic movies for their own virtues, and not just because there’s nothing decent being created now.
PMK says
TCM is a goldmine of great movies. People want stories, not lectures or sermons. Film noir has some of the best movies, many starring people like Raymond Burr, who then went on to TV. TCM’s weekly Noir Alley shows a great variety of movies.
Dan says
Even cheesy B-grade science fiction movies are better to watch than the junk put out these days.
I’ve been writing for years and Un-Holywood actually TOLD me, “You got great stories. Great stories. But… They’re too complex for younger audiences. Unless you put in sex AND ….inject any liberal p.c. agenda point you care to mention… they won’t appeal to adults.
They were too agenda driven to even say, “Your work sucks. Don’t quit your day job.”
I figured they could all go to a “Significantly Warmer Supernatural Clime,” and now am starting to make headway because conservative film makers are forming their own companies.
gravenimage says
Dan, good luck to you! I do believe there is a market for these stories. And I actually like a lot of B-movies, including those sci fi “classics”. Most of them are a lot of fun at least.
gravenimage says
PMK, my husband knows Eddie Muller who hosts Noir Alley–which is a great feature of the network. Muller also does live showings of films at theaters.
Nodisneyfan says
Hollywood can all go out of business and it would make the US and the world and better place
gravenimage says
Maybe now–that certainly hasn’t been the case, though. There were always some duds, but in general Hollywood has made many excellent films for over a hundred years. That so many are sabotaging this now is heartbreaking.
James Lincoln says
gravenimage,
To your point, even pre-woke B movies are much better than what’s being put out now.
gravenimage says
Very much agree, James. And not all B movies are poorly made, in any case–they were just the secondary films on the ticket, and often had lower budgets. Movies like Psycho and The Killing, now considered classics, were originally B movies.
somehistory says
OT, but most likely very entertaining…in a new memoir: including stuff about Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (real name elmi)
“GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert writes that Omar “not only doesn’t speak out against terrorism; she condones it.”
Boebert compared Omar to a suicide bomber in 2021 and tweeted regrets, but never resolved anything.
Boebert has repeatedly attacked both Omar and Tlaib, calling her two colleagues “black-hearted evil women” and calling Omar a member of the “jihad squad.” ‘
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lauren-boebert-calls-rep-ilhan-omar-a-terrorist-sympathizer-doubling-down-on-attacking-her-muslim-colleague-in-a-new-memoir/ar-AAZxVuY?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=f0659b8a6f80497f8e3001a
Glynnda J White says
Very interesting and well written ….and very true. I personally like the fact that Helly-wood has taken the fall and is dying….all the streaming channels, and there are a a lot out there, are finding that people are not watching their woke crap. They are as I am opting for classic movies on demand, classic TV where morality is considered a positive virtue. These woke people will learn just as the old Hollywood perverts had to that most people do not share their perverted value systems. Most of their series last no more than one season, their “imaginative” movies are not watched…etc. It was hilarious to watch the failure of the Obama and Big Mike…..the fact is these people do not have a creative bone in their body, they are “dogs returning to their own vomit”. They cannot come up with a decent storyline without copying from the era where people had to use their imagination or doing remakes…so sad
Gregory D says
What a wonderfully-written analysis.
Thank you.
There might be something just as alarming also accompanying this collapse. Perhaps in the cinematic medium, every story that could be told has been told, every variation of human character already presented.
Although inclined to think this way, I console myself with the thought that there is a vast landscape of existent film and television material through which I have barely made any inroads.
gravenimage says
Gregory D wrote:
Perhaps in the cinematic medium, every story that could be told has been told, every variation of human character already presented.
…………………………….
Gregory, people have been making this claim for centuries now–during the silent film era some people were saying that it was impossible to make any really new films, during the 18th century some people were saying that no one could write an original novel, and in ancient Greece some people said there are no new stories.
I actually think there are many stories still to be told, and told well. I’m just not a fan of the thuddingly didactic leftist propaganda that so often passes for entertainment the past few years.
PMK says
Hollywood committed suicide when it turned its back on the public. It once broadened our horizons but now it only talks down to us. Even in the turbulent sixties and early seventies, it was able to create ‘message’ movies that people could enjoy. One that stands out is “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’
Political correctness today probably keeps many potential blockbuster movies from being made. Would we ever again see the likes of “Fort Apache: the Bronx” or “Death Wish”? Everything today is a remake or a sequel. It’s said that most family businesses don’t survive more than two generations. Hollywood had a good run but now it’s over.
James Lincoln says
PMK,
Some of my favorite movies could not be made today in today’s woke Hollywood.
somehistory says
Remember Twelve Angry Men? Henry Fonda couldn’t find anyone who was interested in that project, so he did it himself. One of the best ever.
If made today: It would likely include a group of ‘poc trans’ discussing a straight White, and finding him guilty because there wouldn’t be even one person arguing for ‘reasonable doubt.”
gravenimage says
Good exchange, PMK, James, and Somehistory.
And it is true that “message films” *can* be done well–Shindler’s List (which I consider a masterpiece), Twelve Years a Slave (one of the few really recent films), 12 Angry Men, On the Waterfront, Les Misérables, Judgement at Nuremberg, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Chaplin’s Modern Times (whose politics I don’t even agree with, but still a fine and engaging film) are just a few examples off the top of my head.
somehistory says
Worth watching
“Paul Watson Video: Good News Out of Hollywood For a Change
Top Gun: Maverick — an entertaining movie that doesn’t genuflect to the Woke agenda.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/paul-watson-video-good-news-out-hollywood-change-paul-joseph-watson/
gravenimage says
Thanks for that link.
Kepha says
“Ghostbusters was rebooted as all-female, Doogie Howser, M.D. was reborn as an Asian girl, The Wonder Years was reimagined with a black family, Magnum P.I. with a Latino star, Party of Five with illegal aliens, and these and countless other examples showed that underneath all the fake wokeness, the industry had run out of original ideas. All Hollywood could do was try to make the old tired ones seem fresh and new with identity politics remakes.”
This tells me that Hollywood has ceased being creative.
I’ll also posit that while there may be a lot of conservative talent out there, it more often than not gives up and settles for something more sure to pay the bills.
gravenimage says
Sadly likely, Kepha. And then there are actors and others who lean conservative, but know that it would probably ruin their careers if they were to let on. It is mostly just established stars who dare to acknowledge their conservative or even just middle-of-the-road politics, and even then it often hurts their chances at getting work.