November 13, 2024 • 24 mins
Woke AF Daily producer Andrew Marshello returns to the mic for a discussion about the direction American pop culture has been going ahead of the re-election of Donald Trump.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Me your Girl Danielle Moody pre recording from the Home
Bunker on Long Island. Folks. As I've said, I've taken
a few days off, but have left you with a
few pre recorded episodes, and I'm excited to bring back
(00:32):
to wokfkf's esteemed producer Andrew Marsillo to discuss how the
media has been coming more and more conservative. We've watched
it over the entire election cycle, but we've watched it
over the last nine years and have seen so many
(00:52):
different instances where the lies that we've been told about
the liberal media, the liberal media doesn't exist. The liberal
media is run by a bunch of very wealthy Republicans
who care about access and who care about ads more
than they care about any shred of our democracy. We
(01:13):
saw that with the Washington Post, we saw that with
the La Times, and we will now in a Trump world,
continue to see that more and more. I don't know
how the free press survives Donald Trump, and I don't
know if it will, But what we do know is
that the trends have been going towards the right for
(01:33):
quite some time, so This is a conversation that I
get into with Andrew coming up next, Folks, I am
very happy to welcome back to the front of the
mic ahem, which is my fantastic producer Andrew Marcello, who
you've heard from over the course of the last couple
(01:57):
of months, getting us an insight into how the white
male in cell aggression has been seated and built through
the gaming industry. And now we're turning our attention to
the rise in conservativism in pop culture as kind of
(02:18):
a backlash to representation, to sexual orientation, gender diversity, all
of these things that have grown over the last decade plus.
We are now seeing a considerable pushback, both in policy
(02:39):
and in pop culture. Andrew, talk to us about specifically
what you have been seeing and noticing that kind of
over the last four years, eight years that corresponds in
pop culture to where we are seeing our politics drive
off a cliff towards.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Thanks for that introduction. You're welcome, nobody. I appreciate you
welcoming me back. It's hard for me to find a
place to start, but I think I'll start where we're
talking about pop culture and the thing that really strikes
me when I think about this in my mind is
the movies, and specifically Hollywood and blockbuster movies. The world
(03:22):
of blockbuster films if you look back to the mid
twenty tens and the type of super mainstream movies being released.
The most successful among the most successful films being released,
Star Wars The Force Awakens came out in twenty fifteen
and grossed over two billion dollars worldwide, and I feel
(03:46):
that Star Wars The Force Awakens is notable, not just
because it would have done money anyway because it's Star Wars,
but that's part of the point that I'm going to
get to. Star Wars The Force Awakens introduced a new
blackmail protagonist as well as a new woman protagonists, and
the movie was successful on the back of that. The sequel,
(04:06):
Star Wars The Last Jedi didn't do as well as
a sequel, but it still grossed over a billion dollars
worldwide and peaked at the number nine best selling, like
the highest grossing movie of all time. So there was
a minor backlash, a relatively minor backlash for people who
saw The Force Awakens and went, WHOA, The main character
(04:30):
isn't a white man anymore. It's a black Man and
a White Woman. Oh no, but the majority of people
still like Star Wars. Star Wars is still very popular
and very profitable, and the subsequent movies, while not performing
as well as the first Star Wars movie in ten years,
still did very well and still have very much generated
a profit and landed on the highest grossing films of
(04:52):
all time. Then you look at Marvel and Disney as
a whole, but you really look because Disney also owned
Star Wars, and I think Disney is such a dominant
cultural force, and I think actually a lot of my
argument here is going to come around the Walt Disney Corporation.
And there's a separate discussion to be had as should
one studio and company really be this dominant in our
(05:14):
cultural landscape. But that's not the conversation we're having right
now anyway. Black Panther, remember by Panther twenty eighteen. A
couple of years later. Yes, So we had Wonder Woman
from DC and Warner Brothers, and that was a minor success.
It didn't top a billion dollars, but it did almost
as well as Batman versus Superman, and considering wonder Woman
(05:35):
had never had a movie before, considering it was a
woman led film, which in twenty seventeen, if you remember,
was oh so risky, which is hard to even think about.
You know, that was only six years before Barbie came out.
And I don't think when Barbie came out anyone was
saying like, oh my god, a movie led by a woman.
And yet I'm bouncing around, But like I think you're
(05:56):
starting to get what I'm getting at, which is, you know,
Barbie made almost one and a half billion dollars worldwide,
Black Panther made over a billion dollars worldwide, Captain Marvel
made over a billion dollars worldwide. So these movies released
largely in the late twenty tens. And then you have Barbie,
which is sort of a vestigial production that took a
(06:17):
long time from production to actually getting in theaters. Barbie
started entering production in twenty eighteen. You have all these
movies and productions from the late twenty tens where it's
putting forward more representation for non white people and also
for women, yes, particularly white women, but there was more
(06:40):
than just white men leading the movies, on the posters,
on the big marquee top name, and these things generated money.
So what happened. So what happened?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
You like, I don't I think that you lay out
such a good case. We have all of these films
that you've named that made extraordinary money at the box office.
They also brought in a lot of conversation and controversy
on social media as they were being developed, as people
are watching them. Barbie, I think probably the biggest in
(07:17):
terms of the right wing saying that young men shouldn't
watch this. It's anti man. This is a man hating movie,
kind of spewing the misogyny that they were talking about
me in the movie that was laid out very clearly
in the movie, and then you see it playing out
(07:37):
in real life. And I'm just like, every time that
there is a bit of progress, whether it's for queer people,
for black people, for women, for non binary folks, anytime
there is progress there, it is always met with backlash.
But this backlash that we're experiencing also is connected to
(07:59):
online bulok, which we talked about right The online and
bullying to me is like not even that, it's like
a euphemism to what you actually explained to us has
taken place.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But think about how a bully succeeds a bully succeeds
in an environment where they're acting out their behavior. Everyone
can see them acting out their behavior, and there's not
any sort of firm restriction of that behavior. Bullies only
flourish in an environment where bullies are allowed to flourish
and not in some way suppressed or had their behavior corrected.
(08:37):
And unfortunately, I think we're now living in a sort
of a culture where we're experiencing the consequences of bullies
not being silenced. And it sounds kind of radical as
a person to be like, we need to silence the
bullies in society, but like even just telling someone to
shut the fuck up is silencing them. And I think
enough of these people who whine about out women in
(09:02):
movies and black people in movies and seeing anything but
a white person, like those feel like the dominant voices now,
and that's scary, at least a dominant enough force where
it's harder now to tell one person to shut the
fuck up when there is half the room it seems
to be that person.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
That is the distortion, right, Like, that's the distortion and
the echo chamber that the right wing has created on
social media, on these platforms where we're not like I
was actually saying this earlier today. I was saying, you know,
I feel like I'm not sure if fifty percent of
(09:44):
the population is actually magified and racist and as insane
as the media and social media is telling me, or
if it's just what I'm being fed, if it's just
the algorithm that I'm being fed to distort me from reality.
And so I say the same thing, just like in
(10:06):
terms of what you just offered. It's like, is the
pushback seeming like it's coming from thousands millions, coming from everywhere?
Is that actually true? Or is this like the Wizard
of Oz and the man behind the curtain is fucking
Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, depending on what fucking platform
you're on.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I think there's two things there for me. And I
was already thinking about the summer of twenty twenty three,
because we've talked about this in private, and how the
conservative backlash to things in the summer of twenty twenty three,
the conservative backlash to non white male representation as well
as the backlash to LGBTQ representation, it seemed to really
(10:48):
take hold among corporations. More so in the summer of
twenty twenty three, and you know, something demonstrable to that,
so that people listening aren't just like, well, you feel
that way, like, for example, companies starting to carry less
pride merchandise starting last year and continuing into this year.
You know, as much as we talked about corporate pride it,
I feel that it's very palpable that there's less of
(11:10):
that in the last two years. And I also am
thinking about when Elon Musk took over Twitter. I know,
we still call it Twitter. He has distorted it into
literally a different site, even though it carries the same functions.
And I think that does distort our perception because there
is someone with a lot of money and unfortunately a
(11:31):
lot of power and influence distorting the conversation and amplifying
certain voices over other voices. But then on the flip
side of that, to me, there is the idea that
perception is reality. And I've read reports and again going
back to Disney, Pete Doctor, who has directed some of
Pixar's most successful films and now holds a higher creative
(11:53):
position in Pixar, had said that they want to focus
on quote universal stories, and part of that, apparently, according
to them, came from a same sex kiss in the
movie light Year, which did do poorly at the box office.
But light Year was not a movie. It was a
(12:13):
buzz light Year movie. It was a buzz light Year
spin off movie starring Chris Evans who has star power
and name pol The same sex kiss was not really
used to promote the film. It was a very brief
scene in the film, and there's no demonstrable evidence that
the public has seen that a brief seconds long fame
sex kiss between two women in the background of an
(12:36):
animated film is what caused audiences to reject that film
and not want to see it in the theater and
latching on to that as well. If you remember, Pixar
had recently released films such as Turning Red, which was
about a Vietnamese Canadian girl, and Soul, which was about
a black man teacher. So Pixar making these comments about
(13:01):
what constitute universal stories when they're promoting a movie about
a white girl, is it struck a lot of people
a certain way? And I think it's this part of it,
is this environment that it struck people in because people
can feel, either consciously or not that representation in the
(13:23):
mainstream media space and the Hollywood space is becoming more regressive.
There was also a report recently about Disney doing test
screenings for some of their films with essentially groups that
I just described in my last two podcast appearances, the
aggrieved white male audience who rejects anything that isn't white
(13:46):
male representation. So when you hold test screenings with this specific,
literal minority group of people and base your editing decisions
and base your production decisions around a bunch of people
in a room going.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Like any it's not late men, I want to see
myself on the screen and nothing else, then.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
That's what you're going to get. And the fact of
the matter is, now we have these studios, and we're
aware of the fact that these studios are catering to
this small, loud minority of people who are boosted by
people like as we previously discussed, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
But what these businesses are going to find, because all
they care about at the end of the day is
making money for their CEOs and their shareholders, right, And
what they're going to find is what every fucking Harvard
Business Review article around diversity has found, which is that
diversity is actually great for your bottom line that targeting
(14:45):
and creating content for one particular group as opposed to
all groups isn't going to serve you in the long term.
So do you see that throughout history? Again, we have
these moments, these touch points where we're seeing progress, right,
whether we see it in you know, in representation, in
(15:07):
our elected officials, you see it, you know on the screen.
There is always pushback, But at the end of the day,
to me, business has always seemed to move forward because
at the end of the day, the money is what's
doing the talking. So their progress continues to move forward.
But are you saying that you don't think that that's
(15:28):
going to be the case.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
That's what's raising the red flag for me. And I
think that's part of why I'm focusing so much on
Disney and why I started with those box office grosses,
because you have these franchises like Star Wars and Marvel,
and I know Pixar isn't a franchise, but at the
same time, when Pixar releases a movie, people regard it
as a Pixar film, so kind of in a way,
like a twenty four, they're a brand. So all these
(15:52):
sub brands for Disney were profitable, demonstrably so with broader
represent and yet somehow these counter cultural forces who are
against representation and are for regression. I do I fear,
(16:15):
I will say, mm hmm. I fear that those voices
have taken hold at those companies. And I don't want
to point fingers because I don't know what's in people's hearts.
I feel like, though there are some people high up
at these companies who are sympathetic to those kind of attitudes,
and that that level of sympathy actually does blindside these
(16:36):
probably men again don't want to assume, but it blindsides
them to their profit making. And I mean that doesn't
scare me because I no longer own stock in Disney
mm hmm. But that scares me because money is power
in this society. And I do remember, like when Wonder
Woman's coming out, there was a lot of from people
(16:58):
who were happy about just the movie's existence of like, oh,
we can have a superhero that isn't a man in movies.
This is where it was at in twenty seventeen if
you don't remember, uh, And it was like you got
to show up for this movie, you got to support
this movie. I think part of why Black Panther did
so well, not just because it had a phenomenal marketing
campaign and a lot of star power behind it, but
(17:20):
there was also a groundswell of like within I observed
as a white person, within the black community, there was
a groundswell of like, well, we got to support this movie.
This is we've got a movie, this is our time,
We've got to go support it. So people are talking
with their money. Marginalized people who are getting represented talk
with their money, and white people who like the properties
(17:40):
and the majority of audiences are not. I really do
believe the majority of white audiences are not this regressive
minded and are happy to watch movies that aren't just
themselves reflected because at their core, they still love good
stories and all that other stuff that you see at
the movies and spectacle and every anything else. So I
(18:01):
hate to like counter your optimism, but the part of
why I wanted to have this conversation is because I
am pessimistic about it. I'm pessimist, and maybe it'll change
when when the box office results come in, and if
an entire slate of all white Marvel movies and all
white Star Wars movies and all white Pixar movies come
back in two three years, because that's how long stuff
(18:24):
moves in Hollywood. And we see that that didn't do well,
and that, you know, Captain America, Brave New World with
Anthony Mackie did better than whatever thing they dredge back
up Robert Downey Junior from because to replace Jonathan Majors,
who should have been replaced. But like that, just look
(18:44):
at that alone. They were building up Jonathan Majors to
be their next big villain. He gets canceled again, rightfully,
so and they say, well, you know what, we'll just
go back to the style here. Yeah, yep, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I like to have optimism around this because I think
that there have been, you know, all of the films
that you've named, and there are more that have centered
the stories and lived experiences of people of color. And
you see that whenever that happens, this small set of
white folks like lose their mind. Right. I can remember
(19:24):
the Cheerios commercial with the interracial couple several years ago
that caused like a fucking frenzy, do you know.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
And so there was that beer commercial with oh my god,
I forget her name, but like that was part I
think of the backlash in the summer of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Right, So I think that it's what is important. I
think the message that you say that you're sending is
that people need to show up to support these films
that feature diverse characters, people of color as like the
main characters, in order to continue to send the message,
(20:02):
because without that, the default will always be white men.
The default will always be to return to what has
always that, what has always been. And I don't understand
how you do that when the demographics of this country
and like the world continue to get increasingly black and browner.
(20:23):
So I'm not I'm not quite sure like how that
ends up being good for your bottom line. Like taking
something like it would have been one thing, I guess,
and this is and I want to give you your
your final thoughts. It would be one thing if you
had just continued on the same kind of white supremacist
path of there being no disruption at all in the
(20:45):
content that we see on television on streaming with introductions
of people of characters and stories focused on communities of color.
If that had always been the case, it's just been white.
But to inject it and then to go back I
don't know if people still show up, even if they
(21:06):
are huge fans of a particular franchise, because I think
that you're signaling to them that you don't see them
and you don't care about them. Those are my thoughts,
what say you?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And thinking about that, I had been looking at, you
know again, the highest grossing movies and the number two
highest grossing movie of all time, which was number one
until they put Avatar back in theaters was Avengers Endgame,
And part of the whole hype cycle around the final
Avengers movie was the release of movies such as Black
(21:39):
Panther and Captain Marvel. So you watch those movies as
a fan with the knowledge in your mind that, Okay,
the next Avengers movie, Black Panther's going to have a
big role, Captain Marvel's going to have a big role.
And so at least a percentage of the people who
went to see Avengers Endgame went to see it because
they were that they were going to see Black Panther
(22:02):
again and see Captain Marvel again. So you regress from
that and you release an Avengers movie that's whitey whitey
white again. We'll see what happens. Will the same amount
of people show up. I don't know, will Disney go,
oh crap, we were making more money when we were
putting out diverse productions. I guess we'll see. One more
(22:25):
thing that I want to just consider thinking about when
this is going to air, is I do have a
concern in my mind that some of this is going
to be influenced by the election. I think some of
the people who hold power and wealth and influence at
the top may see an election of Kamala Harris. A
(22:49):
nation electing Kamala Harris may take that differently than a
nation affirming Donald Trump and affirming the legitimacy and continue
political existence and continued lack of criminal consequence for Donald Trump.
So I think that is something that's going to have
(23:10):
influence over things as well. And again I've remarked, Hollywood
moves slowly. We won't see the results from this manifest
for another two three years, I believe, but I'm hoping
my the best I can hope for is that this
is a rut in our road toward progress, at least
(23:32):
in the mainstream media space, at least in the Hollywood space,
because the last two years have been very disheartening.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, yeah, Well, we will leave it there today. Andrew,
thank you so much for making the time to kind
of walk us through this on Woke AF because the
reverberations of like this, anti DEI, anti diversity, anti blackness,
anti queerness doesn't just stay in our poll's see. It
(24:00):
spills over into everything and it's really important for us
to keep an eye.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Out on it. So we appreciate you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
That is it for me today, dear friends on woke
a f as always, Power to the people and to
all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Me your Girl Danielle Moody pre recording from the Home
Bunker on Long Island. Folks. As I've said, I've taken
a few days off, but have left you with a
few pre recorded episodes, and I'm excited to bring back
(00:32):
to wokfkf's esteemed producer Andrew Marsillo to discuss how the
media has been coming more and more conservative. We've watched
it over the entire election cycle, but we've watched it
over the last nine years and have seen so many
(00:52):
different instances where the lies that we've been told about
the liberal media, the liberal media doesn't exist. The liberal
media is run by a bunch of very wealthy Republicans
who care about access and who care about ads more
than they care about any shred of our democracy. We
(01:13):
saw that with the Washington Post, we saw that with
the La Times, and we will now in a Trump world,
continue to see that more and more. I don't know
how the free press survives Donald Trump, and I don't
know if it will, But what we do know is
that the trends have been going towards the right for
(01:33):
quite some time, so This is a conversation that I
get into with Andrew coming up next, Folks, I am
very happy to welcome back to the front of the
mic ahem, which is my fantastic producer Andrew Marcello, who
you've heard from over the course of the last couple
(01:57):
of months, getting us an insight into how the white
male in cell aggression has been seated and built through
the gaming industry. And now we're turning our attention to
the rise in conservativism in pop culture as kind of
(02:18):
a backlash to representation, to sexual orientation, gender diversity, all
of these things that have grown over the last decade plus.
We are now seeing a considerable pushback, both in policy
(02:39):
and in pop culture. Andrew, talk to us about specifically
what you have been seeing and noticing that kind of
over the last four years, eight years that corresponds in
pop culture to where we are seeing our politics drive
off a cliff towards.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Thanks for that introduction. You're welcome, nobody. I appreciate you
welcoming me back. It's hard for me to find a
place to start, but I think I'll start where we're
talking about pop culture and the thing that really strikes
me when I think about this in my mind is
the movies, and specifically Hollywood and blockbuster movies. The world
(03:22):
of blockbuster films if you look back to the mid
twenty tens and the type of super mainstream movies being released.
The most successful among the most successful films being released,
Star Wars The Force Awakens came out in twenty fifteen
and grossed over two billion dollars worldwide, and I feel
(03:46):
that Star Wars The Force Awakens is notable, not just
because it would have done money anyway because it's Star Wars,
but that's part of the point that I'm going to
get to. Star Wars The Force Awakens introduced a new
blackmail protagonist as well as a new woman protagonists, and
the movie was successful on the back of that. The sequel,
(04:06):
Star Wars The Last Jedi didn't do as well as
a sequel, but it still grossed over a billion dollars
worldwide and peaked at the number nine best selling, like
the highest grossing movie of all time. So there was
a minor backlash, a relatively minor backlash for people who
saw The Force Awakens and went, WHOA, The main character
(04:30):
isn't a white man anymore. It's a black Man and
a White Woman. Oh no, but the majority of people
still like Star Wars. Star Wars is still very popular
and very profitable, and the subsequent movies, while not performing
as well as the first Star Wars movie in ten years,
still did very well and still have very much generated
a profit and landed on the highest grossing films of
(04:52):
all time. Then you look at Marvel and Disney as
a whole, but you really look because Disney also owned
Star Wars, and I think Disney is such a dominant
cultural force, and I think actually a lot of my
argument here is going to come around the Walt Disney Corporation.
And there's a separate discussion to be had as should
one studio and company really be this dominant in our
(05:14):
cultural landscape. But that's not the conversation we're having right
now anyway. Black Panther, remember by Panther twenty eighteen. A
couple of years later. Yes, So we had Wonder Woman
from DC and Warner Brothers, and that was a minor success.
It didn't top a billion dollars, but it did almost
as well as Batman versus Superman, and considering wonder Woman
(05:35):
had never had a movie before, considering it was a
woman led film, which in twenty seventeen, if you remember,
was oh so risky, which is hard to even think about.
You know, that was only six years before Barbie came out.
And I don't think when Barbie came out anyone was
saying like, oh my god, a movie led by a woman.
And yet I'm bouncing around, But like I think you're
(05:56):
starting to get what I'm getting at, which is, you know,
Barbie made almost one and a half billion dollars worldwide,
Black Panther made over a billion dollars worldwide, Captain Marvel
made over a billion dollars worldwide. So these movies released
largely in the late twenty tens. And then you have Barbie,
which is sort of a vestigial production that took a
(06:17):
long time from production to actually getting in theaters. Barbie
started entering production in twenty eighteen. You have all these
movies and productions from the late twenty tens where it's
putting forward more representation for non white people and also
for women, yes, particularly white women, but there was more
(06:40):
than just white men leading the movies, on the posters,
on the big marquee top name, and these things generated money.
So what happened. So what happened?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
You like, I don't I think that you lay out
such a good case. We have all of these films
that you've named that made extraordinary money at the box office.
They also brought in a lot of conversation and controversy
on social media as they were being developed, as people
are watching them. Barbie, I think probably the biggest in
(07:17):
terms of the right wing saying that young men shouldn't
watch this. It's anti man. This is a man hating movie,
kind of spewing the misogyny that they were talking about
me in the movie that was laid out very clearly
in the movie, and then you see it playing out
(07:37):
in real life. And I'm just like, every time that
there is a bit of progress, whether it's for queer people,
for black people, for women, for non binary folks, anytime
there is progress there, it is always met with backlash.
But this backlash that we're experiencing also is connected to
(07:59):
online bulok, which we talked about right The online and
bullying to me is like not even that, it's like
a euphemism to what you actually explained to us has
taken place.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
But think about how a bully succeeds a bully succeeds
in an environment where they're acting out their behavior. Everyone
can see them acting out their behavior, and there's not
any sort of firm restriction of that behavior. Bullies only
flourish in an environment where bullies are allowed to flourish
and not in some way suppressed or had their behavior corrected.
(08:37):
And unfortunately, I think we're now living in a sort
of a culture where we're experiencing the consequences of bullies
not being silenced. And it sounds kind of radical as
a person to be like, we need to silence the
bullies in society, but like even just telling someone to
shut the fuck up is silencing them. And I think
enough of these people who whine about out women in
(09:02):
movies and black people in movies and seeing anything but
a white person, like those feel like the dominant voices now,
and that's scary, at least a dominant enough force where
it's harder now to tell one person to shut the
fuck up when there is half the room it seems
to be that person.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
That is the distortion, right, Like, that's the distortion and
the echo chamber that the right wing has created on
social media, on these platforms where we're not like I
was actually saying this earlier today. I was saying, you know,
I feel like I'm not sure if fifty percent of
(09:44):
the population is actually magified and racist and as insane
as the media and social media is telling me, or
if it's just what I'm being fed, if it's just
the algorithm that I'm being fed to distort me from reality.
And so I say the same thing, just like in
(10:06):
terms of what you just offered. It's like, is the
pushback seeming like it's coming from thousands millions, coming from everywhere?
Is that actually true? Or is this like the Wizard
of Oz and the man behind the curtain is fucking
Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, depending on what fucking platform
you're on.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I think there's two things there for me. And I
was already thinking about the summer of twenty twenty three,
because we've talked about this in private, and how the
conservative backlash to things in the summer of twenty twenty three,
the conservative backlash to non white male representation as well
as the backlash to LGBTQ representation, it seemed to really
(10:48):
take hold among corporations. More so in the summer of
twenty twenty three, and you know, something demonstrable to that,
so that people listening aren't just like, well, you feel
that way, like, for example, companies starting to carry less
pride merchandise starting last year and continuing into this year.
You know, as much as we talked about corporate pride it,
I feel that it's very palpable that there's less of
(11:10):
that in the last two years. And I also am
thinking about when Elon Musk took over Twitter. I know,
we still call it Twitter. He has distorted it into
literally a different site, even though it carries the same functions.
And I think that does distort our perception because there
is someone with a lot of money and unfortunately a
(11:31):
lot of power and influence distorting the conversation and amplifying
certain voices over other voices. But then on the flip
side of that, to me, there is the idea that
perception is reality. And I've read reports and again going
back to Disney, Pete Doctor, who has directed some of
Pixar's most successful films and now holds a higher creative
(11:53):
position in Pixar, had said that they want to focus
on quote universal stories, and part of that, apparently, according
to them, came from a same sex kiss in the
movie light Year, which did do poorly at the box office.
But light Year was not a movie. It was a
(12:13):
buzz light Year movie. It was a buzz light Year
spin off movie starring Chris Evans who has star power
and name pol The same sex kiss was not really
used to promote the film. It was a very brief
scene in the film, and there's no demonstrable evidence that
the public has seen that a brief seconds long fame
sex kiss between two women in the background of an
(12:36):
animated film is what caused audiences to reject that film
and not want to see it in the theater and
latching on to that as well. If you remember, Pixar
had recently released films such as Turning Red, which was
about a Vietnamese Canadian girl, and Soul, which was about
a black man teacher. So Pixar making these comments about
(13:01):
what constitute universal stories when they're promoting a movie about
a white girl, is it struck a lot of people
a certain way? And I think it's this part of it,
is this environment that it struck people in because people
can feel, either consciously or not that representation in the
(13:23):
mainstream media space and the Hollywood space is becoming more regressive.
There was also a report recently about Disney doing test
screenings for some of their films with essentially groups that
I just described in my last two podcast appearances, the
aggrieved white male audience who rejects anything that isn't white
(13:46):
male representation. So when you hold test screenings with this specific,
literal minority group of people and base your editing decisions
and base your production decisions around a bunch of people
in a room going.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Like any it's not late men, I want to see
myself on the screen and nothing else, then.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
That's what you're going to get. And the fact of
the matter is, now we have these studios, and we're
aware of the fact that these studios are catering to
this small, loud minority of people who are boosted by
people like as we previously discussed, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
But what these businesses are going to find, because all
they care about at the end of the day is
making money for their CEOs and their shareholders, right, And
what they're going to find is what every fucking Harvard
Business Review article around diversity has found, which is that
diversity is actually great for your bottom line that targeting
(14:45):
and creating content for one particular group as opposed to
all groups isn't going to serve you in the long term.
So do you see that throughout history? Again, we have
these moments, these touch points where we're seeing progress, right,
whether we see it in you know, in representation, in
(15:07):
our elected officials, you see it, you know on the screen.
There is always pushback, But at the end of the day,
to me, business has always seemed to move forward because
at the end of the day, the money is what's
doing the talking. So their progress continues to move forward.
But are you saying that you don't think that that's
(15:28):
going to be the case.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
That's what's raising the red flag for me. And I
think that's part of why I'm focusing so much on
Disney and why I started with those box office grosses,
because you have these franchises like Star Wars and Marvel,
and I know Pixar isn't a franchise, but at the
same time, when Pixar releases a movie, people regard it
as a Pixar film, so kind of in a way,
like a twenty four, they're a brand. So all these
(15:52):
sub brands for Disney were profitable, demonstrably so with broader
represent and yet somehow these counter cultural forces who are
against representation and are for regression. I do I fear,
(16:15):
I will say, mm hmm. I fear that those voices
have taken hold at those companies. And I don't want
to point fingers because I don't know what's in people's hearts.
I feel like, though there are some people high up
at these companies who are sympathetic to those kind of attitudes,
and that that level of sympathy actually does blindside these
(16:36):
probably men again don't want to assume, but it blindsides
them to their profit making. And I mean that doesn't
scare me because I no longer own stock in Disney
mm hmm. But that scares me because money is power
in this society. And I do remember, like when Wonder
Woman's coming out, there was a lot of from people
(16:58):
who were happy about just the movie's existence of like, oh,
we can have a superhero that isn't a man in movies.
This is where it was at in twenty seventeen if
you don't remember, uh, And it was like you got
to show up for this movie, you got to support
this movie. I think part of why Black Panther did
so well, not just because it had a phenomenal marketing
campaign and a lot of star power behind it, but
(17:20):
there was also a groundswell of like within I observed
as a white person, within the black community, there was
a groundswell of like, well, we got to support this movie.
This is we've got a movie, this is our time,
We've got to go support it. So people are talking
with their money. Marginalized people who are getting represented talk
with their money, and white people who like the properties
(17:40):
and the majority of audiences are not. I really do
believe the majority of white audiences are not this regressive
minded and are happy to watch movies that aren't just
themselves reflected because at their core, they still love good
stories and all that other stuff that you see at
the movies and spectacle and every anything else. So I
(18:01):
hate to like counter your optimism, but the part of
why I wanted to have this conversation is because I
am pessimistic about it. I'm pessimist, and maybe it'll change
when when the box office results come in, and if
an entire slate of all white Marvel movies and all
white Star Wars movies and all white Pixar movies come
back in two three years, because that's how long stuff
(18:24):
moves in Hollywood. And we see that that didn't do well,
and that, you know, Captain America, Brave New World with
Anthony Mackie did better than whatever thing they dredge back
up Robert Downey Junior from because to replace Jonathan Majors,
who should have been replaced. But like that, just look
(18:44):
at that alone. They were building up Jonathan Majors to
be their next big villain. He gets canceled again, rightfully,
so and they say, well, you know what, we'll just
go back to the style here. Yeah, yep, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
I like to have optimism around this because I think
that there have been, you know, all of the films
that you've named, and there are more that have centered
the stories and lived experiences of people of color. And
you see that whenever that happens, this small set of
white folks like lose their mind. Right. I can remember
(19:24):
the Cheerios commercial with the interracial couple several years ago
that caused like a fucking frenzy, do you know.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
And so there was that beer commercial with oh my god,
I forget her name, but like that was part I
think of the backlash in the summer of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Right, So I think that it's what is important. I
think the message that you say that you're sending is
that people need to show up to support these films
that feature diverse characters, people of color as like the
main characters, in order to continue to send the message,
(20:02):
because without that, the default will always be white men.
The default will always be to return to what has
always that, what has always been. And I don't understand
how you do that when the demographics of this country
and like the world continue to get increasingly black and browner.
(20:23):
So I'm not I'm not quite sure like how that
ends up being good for your bottom line. Like taking
something like it would have been one thing, I guess,
and this is and I want to give you your
your final thoughts. It would be one thing if you
had just continued on the same kind of white supremacist
path of there being no disruption at all in the
(20:45):
content that we see on television on streaming with introductions
of people of characters and stories focused on communities of color.
If that had always been the case, it's just been white.
But to inject it and then to go back I
don't know if people still show up, even if they
(21:06):
are huge fans of a particular franchise, because I think
that you're signaling to them that you don't see them
and you don't care about them. Those are my thoughts,
what say you?
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And thinking about that, I had been looking at, you
know again, the highest grossing movies and the number two
highest grossing movie of all time, which was number one
until they put Avatar back in theaters was Avengers Endgame,
And part of the whole hype cycle around the final
Avengers movie was the release of movies such as Black
(21:39):
Panther and Captain Marvel. So you watch those movies as
a fan with the knowledge in your mind that, Okay,
the next Avengers movie, Black Panther's going to have a
big role, Captain Marvel's going to have a big role.
And so at least a percentage of the people who
went to see Avengers Endgame went to see it because
they were that they were going to see Black Panther
(22:02):
again and see Captain Marvel again. So you regress from
that and you release an Avengers movie that's whitey whitey
white again. We'll see what happens. Will the same amount
of people show up. I don't know, will Disney go,
oh crap, we were making more money when we were
putting out diverse productions. I guess we'll see. One more
(22:25):
thing that I want to just consider thinking about when
this is going to air, is I do have a
concern in my mind that some of this is going
to be influenced by the election. I think some of
the people who hold power and wealth and influence at
the top may see an election of Kamala Harris. A
(22:49):
nation electing Kamala Harris may take that differently than a
nation affirming Donald Trump and affirming the legitimacy and continue
political existence and continued lack of criminal consequence for Donald Trump.
So I think that is something that's going to have
(23:10):
influence over things as well. And again I've remarked, Hollywood
moves slowly. We won't see the results from this manifest
for another two three years, I believe, but I'm hoping
my the best I can hope for is that this
is a rut in our road toward progress, at least
(23:32):
in the mainstream media space, at least in the Hollywood space,
because the last two years have been very disheartening.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, yeah, Well, we will leave it there today. Andrew,
thank you so much for making the time to kind
of walk us through this on Woke AF because the
reverberations of like this, anti DEI, anti diversity, anti blackness,
anti queerness doesn't just stay in our poll's see. It
(24:00):
spills over into everything and it's really important for us
to keep an eye.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Out on it. So we appreciate you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
That is it for me today, dear friends on woke
a f as always, Power to the people and to
all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Host
Danielle Moodie
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