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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Could you provide some supporting evidence for why you believe this movie's criticism is due to separate conspiracies by Disney, the State Department, and the CIA?

How does Disney benefit from attacking a movie that, at the time of the rolling stones article, had earned 25% of what Indiana Jones had done at the domestic box office?

Why would the CIA be particularly troubled by this movie showing the cartels involved in human trafficking, but not others?

Why would the State Department's main lever of shutting a movie down to be releasing negative critical reviews after release, as opposed to a myriad of powers it could presumably exercise for a movie by a former DHS employee that was partially filmed in California?

The State Department and the CIA aren't really separable in this context, CIA agents use State Department covers at embassies and they coordinate with State Department staff.

It isn't some formal policy, it's the DC dinner party circuit. DOS/CIA employees have been dropping sly hints about using the cartels to look cool at dinner parties for years. A movie comes out about how their cartel friends are sexually exploiting children. They respond by going on a tear to any reporter who will listen about this evil Q-Anon conspiracy movie.

The movie you linked to doesn't seem to involve the Latin American cartels and only made $20k at the box office, so I imagine there wasn't much discussion.

DHS isn't one of the "cool" agencies. ICE agents don't get invited to the good parties to tell stories.

Disney using their PR staff and entertainment reporter contacts to attack their competitors hardly seems like some far flung conspiracy I need to prove. SOF's success is an embarrassment not just for Disney but for all of the big distributors. The number 2 film for July 14th weekend is distributed by Angel Studios. That undercuts the perceived power of the major distributors.

However Angel Studios lacks the skills and connections to defend the movie.

Arguing about revenue at the time of the article isn't a good metric. Disney has people monitoring other movies and using various metrics to predict their success.

Disney had a whole lot invested in Indy 5. Wikipedia lists it as the 13th most expensive film ever made and there are rumours that Kathleen Kennedy has been playing with the books because the real cost is even higher. It's the first LucasFilm release since Rise of Skywalker in 2019. It was expected to gross over $1B.

And it came in behind Sound of Freedom in it's third week at the box office.

Disney is struggling. They may have to fire Kennedy over that.

Disney attacking the movie out of anger and desperation, not because it's an effective strategy.