Other franchises exist than Marvel and Star Wars, vote with you wallet rather than just wishing that Disney didn't own it.
Consolidation of super-conglomerate is a real issue and one that most government in the world fail to tackle.
Emphasis on "support_ed_". As soon as they are bought out, stop supporting them.
At this point we probably differ: As soon as such a buyout happens, I lose my love.
> plus a massive cultural push to consume more of it.
I have a tendency to be rather immune with respect to such cultural pushes. I often tell people to become and how to become resistant in this respect, too.
This might be true, but I see the much larger problem in the fact that many people, who do have such access, tend to ignore it and go with the mainstream.
> But, most everyone has access to advertising that actually promotes us making the wrong decision to make people money.
I have a strong tendency to ignore advertising that is not coherent with my values. In this sense, I believe/hope, that I am a tough nut for advertisers to crack. :-)
More seriously: I do not believe that one can manipulate people into doing/buying things that they are mentally opposed to. For example: If before a Youtube video some Netflix trailer is shown, I immediatelly think: "Not interested in the slightest as long as Netflix uses DRM" etc.
So having strong principles is a good vaccination against advertising - but most people actively do not want to become vaccinatinated against this kind of brainwashing.
If people are not influenced by advertising and marketing why then do governments put fourth propaganda, why is advertising a multi billion dollar industry, why is it an extremely sought after undergraduate degree, why are there advertisements literally everywhere you look? The answer is because it works, and it makes people a lot of money and gives them a lot of power.
We are highly influenced by the mainstream and by culture, I mean culture is what is allowing us to communicate with each other by providing us with a set of symbols (alphabet and English language). In fact we don’t know what we don’t know and therefore can never truly be objective in our view of the world, it’s always built and based off of cultural artifacts and norms.
So it’s not a problem per say that people do the wrong thing at large, it’s simply a fact of life, people tend go with the flow. That means people who don’t go with the flow need to make the flow flow better. Or else you are suggesting we leave normal people behind because they suck. Where I personally think we are as individuals defined by how we help people that are weaker than ourselves.
An atheist would argue: If god does not exist, why is religion a multi billion dollar industry? The answer is: because there are people who believe in its effectiveness and put their money where their mouth is.
The people need to be presented something to believe in before they can pay money for it or else they wouldn’t know it existed and therefore wouldn’t be able to put their money where their mouth is. Getting the word out is the most important thing. missionary work and preaching the gospel is a main tenant of Christian theology for example... because they understand advertising and marketing is important. This is why the Catholic Church covered up the molestations of children, because they understood bad PR would hurt their bottom line.
As far as I know, the last major time ethical consumerism made a difference was against South African apartheid. Which is a cause 10,000x more important than the hegemony of Disney. Smaller issues just don't get the traction.
On the other hand, I trust them to make better Star Wars content than Lucas, and I enjoy the Marvel movies.
They may be evil incarnate but they do know how to tell (and sell) a good story.
There’s a good guy, there’s a bad guy, there’s the struggle and sacrifice of the good guy, which eventually trumps the bad guy leading to a rich life.
They are selling you American mythology 101.
The fact that you enjoy these myths isn’t a problem, they are literally manufactured to have as broad an appeal as possible.
What is a problem is you excusing the dilution of nuance in our culture that is used to perpetuate western hegemony which directly leads to our politicians doing literally whatever they want for themselves.
These are tropes and elements common to almost all storytelling, and certainly to fairy tales and myths. Americans didn't invent any of that, and neither did Disney.
And as far as Star Wars goes, the Empire are the Bad Guys, basically Space Nazis who dress in black and white and hang around starkly brutalist technology which doesn't even have basic OSHA compliance because they're just that evil.
The Jedi are the Good Guys. They dress in earth tones. Or, at least, the two we meet in the OT do. But they must be the Good Guys because they're fighting the Bad Guys.
And the Rebel Alliance are also the Good Guys. No one thinks twice about the morality of blowing up the Death Star and all of the hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people on board, because those are Bad Guys. Luke Skywalker force chokes two Gammorean guards in Jabba's palace, but that's fine, because just look at how ugly they are. They're basically orcs, obviously Bad Guys.
Luke Skywalker and the entire Skywalker clan are an elite bloodline more or less chosen by "God" (The Force) and morality in their universe is based on divine law and destiny. That only changes and really begins to be examined and deconstructed after the franchise leaves Lucas' hands. The whole story is a pastiche of the Hero's Journey.
Does Disney assimilate, homogenize, ruthlessly brand and churn out artifacts of myth and storytelling? Yes.
Are they also capable of telling a good story? Also yes.
Perhaps you need to find a bit more nuance.
Really? I mean, have you seen the last one? I wish I didn't...
Reasonable people can disagree, but I'll take subjectively bad over objectively bad any day. And I happen to be a bit of a fan of deconstructionist narratives, anyway.
Good and bad are inherently subjective. There are objective features of things, but ascribing good or bad to them is a subjective association.
My opinion is the prequels are bad for technical reasons. I think they're just badly written and acted, the plot is incoherent and contrived, the dialogue is terrible, Anakin and Padme's romance is awkward and his fall to the dark side is unconvincing.
And as far as the new movies go, I think they (and The Force Awakens definitely) suffer (as did the prequels) from the need to shoehorn in references to OT characters just for the sake of pandering to fan nostalgia, but they still seem like competently structured movies.
Between the two, I think the post Disney movies are better because they better tell the stories they intend to.