Fan-Baiting as a Movie Marketing Strategy?
lastmovieoutpost.com
lastmovieoutpost.com
Recent examples of this are Rings of Power, Ariel, Pinocchio, She-Hulk, and several other shows and movies. Look beyond the racism, which is a vocal minority, and look at how they use these said vocal minorities, to counter valid criticism. Look at how Hollywood utilized Moses Ingram (Reva Sevander) from Kenobi as a shield, to dismiss the very valid criticism of how her character was written and directed, by grasping on to the few racist comments. Suddenly, if you criticized her character, you were a racist.
Think about every single time a show comes out, and a handful of tweets, screenshots from places like 4chan, or some Discord servers, are used as excuses to invalidated any and all criticism a show is getting. All the while the controversy generates buzz, with the media acting like ravenous dogs putting out article after article for weeks and months (look at Batgirl's cancellation and how they milked it for a month without knowing if it was a good movie or not), all the while having the actors take a stand as shields, and the fans who act like knights in shining armor, come to their defense, oblivious to the exploitation by the Hollywood executives.
Again, is there "isms"? Without a shadow of a doubt. Is it the majority of the criticism these shows and movies get? Not even close.
Now think about the professional critics, and Youtubers and such, and how they walk on egg-shells. Look at how shows are getting perfect scores because of their diverse cast, all the while being panned by the fans who are actually consuming the shows. You can't voice your criticism without fear of getting cancelled, getting your access revoke, or worse, people actively going after your job.
And how they made him out to be a sexist piece of shit because of it?
You can't even say "I'm choosing not to participate because it's literally 'not for me.'"
If people did that, the thing might flop. They need your lack of critical thinking and compliance.
Everyone over a certain age has concerns for the future rooted in disappointment about the present, and this is one of mine. I grew up thinking that we were making progress on racism, sexism, etc. and that these things would slowly die out over my lifetime. However, people won't be able to make money off of these things if that happens. Hence, there is a direct monetary incentive for media moghuls, politicians, etc. to keep breathing new life into old hatreds. It actually seems like society is backsliding in some areas, and there are people who are gaining money and influence as a direct result.
Worse yet, you can know you're being played and still wind up being played. This stuff can really get your emotions roiling and influence your behaviour even if you know that's being done deliberately for someone else's gain.
BLM just became the political issue du jour for a month, some people protested while some journalists talked about it, and then interest fizzled out. In fact, police brutality is still just as much an issue today. It seems trans rights is more talked about nowadays, though. Looking at their racial breakdown and it's not surprising that they have more political capital.
My very quick digest from skim-reading that:
1) Some recent franchise films have altered the demographic of the previously presumed cast
2) This was received very badly by a minority of the public
3) Who acted like complete and utter cunts and started whipping up controversy and abusing all people involved BUT!! (and this is the important revelation here)
4) This was all deliberate by the movie studios, so they're the bad people, not those covered in #3 as we'd all assumed (based on the self-incriminating evidence they love to push out under their own names)
I can only hope some sort of class-action suit is launched to provide restitution to all those innocents who've damaged their throats after being forced to spew so much bile against their will for so long.
I'm not sure if any of these decisions in film are actually cynical in this way or if they've all been genuine - but outside of film political outrage-marketing has been used again and again in the past decade.
If you get whipped up into a rage at the other people whipped up into a rage by X corporation pushing Y hot-button agenda (eg Gillette and their foray into gender politics) it's important to remember that you're both getting played by a cynical capitalist machine.
X company doesn't actually care about about Y issue - but they care a lot about the publicity and new loyal fans they can generate by cynically whipping up outrage.
1. Some recent franchises have altered the demographic of the cast
2. Some portion of the public doesn’t like the film, for various reasons
3. Accuse the haters of an -ism, push the narrative hard, and build the controversy through it
4. Find the worst behaving people in the new controversy, and give them a speakerphone. Construct a toxic controversy
5. Accuse everyone with a negative opinion of being part of the toxic controversy, and shut them down
This was my take as well.
The amplification of toxicity is notable across forums, and yes it does impact and shutdown valid discussions.
Sad to see such an openly divisive strategy pays off.
I’m surprised their wasn’t uproar about Will Smith playing a blue genie.
I only hear white people defending the casting decisions.
If the answer is no, you're almost surely being advertised to.
To be honest, the write-up on the same site about the Little Mermaid[1] and how what the studio did was hypocritical "virtue signalling" makes me think maybe they're more of the latter.
And I write this as someone who concluded from the trailer and the noise that female Ghostbusters suuucked, and to have it confirmed from this[2] analysis.
[1] https://www.lastmovieoutpost.com/little-mermaid-reverse-race... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsxa2tOWs6w
Captain Marvel had a different problem. The character is so overpowered as to be unreasonable. Jump in the air and do interstellar travel?
[1] https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/08/ghostbusters-bo...
It felt like everytime the film/show was a lazy one, it was suddenly 'feminist' or 'an antiracist take on XXX'. When was a Del Toro movie last depicted as antiracist?
A libertarian (not the US libertarian kind) told me when I was a young libdem (I'm not anymore) that while liberals were their objective allies in intersectional struggles, their motives were so opposite to each other that he felt they lost.
My rule of thumb is that a movie's quality is inversely proportional to the amount of marketing. Lots of Marketing == Shit Movie.