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PaperclipPerfector  28d ago (text post)   34843 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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A big part of it, I think, is that SocJus mentality, of all of reality being dominated by power differentials, and as such, each individual of [demographic] is necessarily disadvantaged compared to each individual of [some other demographic]. This means that if that individual of [demographic] fails or just doesn't succeed as much as they imagine an individual of [some other demographic] would have, then their failure is due to the bigoted society that created these power dynamics that made them disadvantaged, rather than due to that individual's own flaws. This, of course, is how millionaire stars can claim to be lacking in "privilege" - the claim isn't that they're not wildly successful, but rather that they aren't as wildly successful as an equivalent person of [some other demographic] would have been. Also of course, this is completely unfalsifiable.

It's not actually clear that "the oppressed" succeed less in the industry. They succeed at different things because groups are different. Barbie dragged up Oppenheimer's numbers, not vice versa. It's just a naive form of blank slateism at play.

AFAIK Marvel movies usually skew at least 60% male* . Is it a shock that it takes them longer to have a female lead? Is that oppression?

The blank slateism is what convinces them that a boy brand like Star Wars is just as equally marketable and valuable if turned into a space princess brand. Hell, moreso. Since boys and girls both want to watch the exact same things you can just keep all of the legacy male fans from when the fandom skewed male and gain new fans who have the same autistic fixation on just how the hell Han did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs when that is a unit of distance not time. You can swap in a five foot woman for a scarred John Connor and who but a bigot could feel their suspension of disbelief straining?

This might even be viable; these brands skew in one direction but have plenty of fans of both genders. But they can't sell it because they're in an echo chamber that validates their contempt for the audience. Claiming oppression is not just a way to try to create jobs for themselves, it allows objectively privileged people to "punch down" without that term ever being applied.

EDIT: apparently this is worse in the opening weekends, might even out more later as some sources claim. The Marvels was apparently 65% male, funnily enough

The blank slateism is what convinces them that a boy brand like Star Wars is just as equally marketable and valuable if turned into a space princess brand.

I'm not sure it's blank-slate-ism; it could equally-well be pure greed in the form of "Undecided Whale"-chasing frantically casting around for a moral-sounding justification post hoc after flops.

Post hoc justification might explain some of it, but given how much this idea of "overwhelmingly male hobbies like scifi, comic books, and video games are leaving money on the table by designing products to cater to them, and they could make unalloyed gains just by making changes in accordance with my ideology" was in vogue in the 00s well before Star Wars was even bought by Disney, I think the pre hoc justification makes more sense.

I think part of it is that they are looking at data that shows that young women are increasingly the primary spenders on consumer goods and entertainment, and they’re trying to grab that new market share whether the intellectual property is fit for purpose or not.

The problem is these arguments have been applied before the movie flopped (see Ghostbusters 2016) and even for ones that didn't flop (like Captain Marvel)

In the specific case of the Captain Marvel movie, there are two reasons why it was successful that I would like to bring to light:

One was reports of empty theaters showing the movie circulating in social media at the time, not confirmed or anything (just photos of empty theaters) so it remains a theory at best. The second and more credible reason was that, as part of the run up to the wildly popular conclusion to the Infinity Gauntlet saga, the movie felt like required viewing to fans and thus it accrued an audience independently if it was good or not (it wasn't) just due to its release timing.

It's not actually clear that "the oppressed" succeed less in the industry. They succeed at different things because groups are different. Barbie dragged up Oppenheimer's numbers, not vice versa. It's just a naive form of blank slateism at play.

The rest of your comment explains the blank state-ism causing these issues well, I think. But this part, I don't think it even goes that far. Oppression and privilege, as used and defined by SocJus/idpol/progressive left/woke/whatever the fuck they refuse to be called on this particular day, are fundamentally faith-based. There's a veneer of science based on academic literature, but even the most cursory look at the primary documents shows that it's all just made up ad hoc, with essentially infinite degrees of freedom. And when you have that many degrees of freedom, you can always position [person you like] into [position that will allow them to extract resources from others] and vice versa. The underlying facts simply don't matter, since you can always add more epicycles as needed in order to land at the correct conclusion.

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