The Random Thread of Random Randomness

then we can approach the debate from a wider angle…

 

I remember a Fox news clip years ago saying that Marvel should get back to apolitical comics like before. There example of an apolitical comic panel was Captain American punching Hitler in the face.

As many pointed out, that was very political. Captain America was punching Hitler because he disagreed with Hitler's politics rather than because he disagreed with Hitler's style of mustache.

While Stan Lee has been belittled by people after his death, included Brie Larson, Lee was supportive of the Civil Rights movement and the gay rights movement and the comics often reflected this. A lot of the political stuff they included in the 60s through 90s spoke directly to alienated teenagers.

DC got that too. i remember reading about the Superman radio show had Superman fight against the Ku Klux Klan and how this caused a decline in Klan membership as parents saw their kids appropriately treating Klansmen as villains.

Even today, comic book readers are mostly male. A lot of readers project themselves in the roles of the heroes and that's why even as the politics varied they usually displayed positive displays where masculinity is used to serve the common good: bravery, self-sacrifice, protecting others, etc.

That's not to say that women cannot do these things too, but if a vast majority of your customer base is male, you shouldn't constantly say "Women good, Men bad." After the infamous misandrist ad, Gillette has now been force to write the value of their brand down 8 billion dollars. "You stink you filthy evil pig. Feel terrible! Now buy our razors!"


The other way to look at things is that comic book sales have been declining steadily well before DC and Marvel got woke. The Internet age means there is more entertainment media than ever. DC and Marvel aren't just competing against themselves they are competing against novels, TV, Youtube, Netflix, movie theaters, even the radio. There is only so much media one person can consume. Also the birth rate is declining so there are fewer young people to buy comics. In some ways, going woke is a last ditch effort to get new customers, but unfortuantely it seems to annoy two old customers for every new customer brought in. It's not working in implementation, but in theory if your product is mostly being consumed by males, the best way to bring in new growth is to bring in females and visa versa.

I think the best way to handle this is to add new characters without supplanting the old ones. Batwoman has an interesting series of comics because in the comics she is aiding Batman, not replacing him, unlike the CW show. Instead of doing all the things Batman does but in a red wig, in the comics she does thing Batman isn't big on doing like trekking through jungles and chasing drug cartels around the world rather than staking out one urban sprawl.

The movie industry is going to be going through some changes. While we continue to see record breaking blockbuster, on the whole movie tickets are dropping. China and other developing nations are becoming a growing movie market but I don't believe they are growing as fast as the western world's ticket sales are shrinking.

Also the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is leaning heavily on Hollywood. Independence Day 2 went out out of their way to lick the CCP boots. The novel of World War Z had the zombie outbreak begin as a resutl of the CCP's internatlional trafficking of human organs (which is actually real minus the zombies) but the movie adaptation had it come from North Korean organ trafficking instead so the CCP would allow World War Z to play in China.

They are also attemtping to make their own big budget movies but their first attempts have been expensive flops. The CCP's desire to control all media and thought in their country and abroad is hurting them. A few years back 19 of the top 20 most popular Chinese television shows were cancelled by the CCP for being too Western or too subversive. None of the shows they produced the replace them attract viewers. I guess that's an extreme example of "If you put propaganda ahead of entertaining the audience, no wants to watch it."

Or maybe media creators are just running out of new ideas, that's why Disney keeps repackaging their old movies. I am hard pressed to think of anything new and original I like movie wise in the past ten years. Mortal Engines and Jupiter Descending were very fresh and new but they were fresh garbage.

 

Hahaha, that's hilarious!

Absolutely!

I cannot find the primary source, but Ian McKellen said in an interview that

and that the X-Men franchise is very politically motivated, and I talked to a few guys who have been avid X-Men readers for a long time, they basically confirmed that, too.

Related source:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ian-...fhkKQt3W2bNrm70e4a2Q4IiPoz4wDBk2U7i-G3TjgWSnU

And then of course this famous Stan Lee quote from 1970:

Pretty much, yeah.

That really bothers me. In fact it bothers me a lot.
Also visible for example in the new Top Gun 2 movie trailer btw. Maverick's jacket has been altered.
Top Gun is one of my guilty movie pleasures (I love military planes, you know) so I was all over that trailer and instantly noticed it. A short time later Kotaku made an article about it:
https://kotaku.com/japanese-and-taiwanese-flag-removed-from-mavericks-jack-1836625162

Sure in this case it is just a jacket, many people won't even notice, and there is a slim chance it might not be related to politics, still....
It leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

That, too.
We live in a time in which it is rare for producers to take a financial risk and try starting a new franchise, and the more new ideas are publicly "destroyed" as utter garbage the less likely it is that the big players in Hollywood or elsewhere will spend more money in new stuff. They do stuff that sells because of nostalgia. In the 2000s it was a LOT of 1980s stuff, now it is a lot of the 1990s stuff getting remade.
That's just economics. The people with the fond memories of watching Lion King as kids when it was released in 1994 are now in their thirties, so they are the demographic group that spends the most money for movies. Movies are made for those people.

 

@Scalenex I largely agree.

It is because you have to use the licenses you own every few years or you no longer own them.

 

They didn't even dare to use that ad here in Germany, I only saw it on the Internet, but even I thought it was really... blunt and exaggerated.
Many of the reactions on it made me facepalm even more though. People are weird.

 

That is awesome. I had never heard of it before.

 

Incredible. I really didn't know that existed.