There’s an interesting cultural disconnect occurring between the woke gatekeepers at mainstream media and the populist masses.
Take two recent examples, Ricky Gervais and the Heard/Depp defamation case.
In both cases the woke mainstream media gatekeepers attacked Gervais for his satire and they attacked Depp because all men lie about abuse.
What did the people say though?
Elon Musk has waded in on the debate around Ricky Gervais’ new stand-up special.
Last week, The Office creator released his new special SuperNature, which faced criticism for jokes targeting transgender people. It was then condemned as “dangerous, anti-trans rants masquerading as jokes” by LGBTQ+ advocacy organisation GLAAD.
On Sunday, The Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf tweeted a screenshot from review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes highlighting the disparity between SuperNature’s critic and audience scores. The special has a 14 per cent overall rating with critics, but 92 per cent with audiences.
…this is interesting. The vast, vast, vast majority loved Ricky’s comedy special and saw his commentary about Trans activists as the very sharp satire its was while the mainstream media woke gatekeepers shat all over it.
The same dynamics were at play with the Depp/Heard case. Woke msm gatekeepers have already screamed this is a huge miscarriage of justice and have refused to see it as a backlash to the #MeToo ‘BELIEVE ALL WOMEN’ mantra, yet the people have spoken.
The TikTok hashtag #IStandWithAmberHeard has amassed more than 8 million views, #JusticeForJohnnyDepp is at 15 billion views.
The disconnect between the Puritan Woke media gatekeepers and the masses becomes even more detached than ever before and this means bad faith actors and Facebook hate algorithms will step into the vacuum of news and opinion.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and the rich get richer. Maybe, just maybe, middle class woke micro aggression policing virtue signals aren’t helping.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice going into this pandemic and 2020 election – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
We are seeing the destruction of Western Culture from within. The same happened to the Romans. History repeats.
I thought the exact same thing with the first New Zealand MSM headlines all about how bad the the Depp decision was for women.
But the feedback was resoundingly mocking that angle, comments disabled and hidden.
The media are increasingly disconnected from the public they supposedly serve, by only selling the message of the elites they are beginning to make themselves irrelevant.
That’s going to be important when the next government holds the purse strings.
This has been the case for years for fans of Sci-Fi and Fantasy entertainment albeit in reverse where media gatekeepers rated woke infused content highly while fans did not.
Fans were smeared in the press for rejecting the woke doctrine pushed in franchises such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, Dr Who, Terminator etc. Somehow the Sci-fi fans were sexist, racist istaphobes (wolf, wolf, wolf) despite their love of characters such as Ripley, Sarah Connor, Blade, Leia, Lando, Sisko, Worf, LaForge, Sulu, Uhura, Mike Harrigan, Vasquez etc etc and the wide consumption of Sci-Fi and Fantasy from Japan and S Korea. Indeed the recent Arcane has enjoyed phenomenal success with female leads, diverse characters and a compelling story BUT an absence of ideology, perhaps there is a lesson here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3h6Pszege4
The basic pattern is that cultural elites push woke doctrine in entertainment then blame the fans for rejecting it. With Gervais you see the backlash and the gatekeepers predictably blame the fans again for their lack of critical consciousness. The disconnect between the woke ivory tower and the rest of us is indeed apparent.
Yep Ripley and the female soldier, Sarah Conner; super strong hero female leads. Favourite movies of everyone who likes action… Mostly males?
the thing about ‘whovians’ johnny come lately yanks as opposed to actual ‘Dr Who fans’ on both sides is they misunderstand their role…they are not writers, they are not showrunnners their sole function is to buy action figures…they do have the ultimate power of switching off….but that’s all, their opinions are neither wanted or required save for increasing the media footprint of shows they claim to hate.
Who has always been ‘woke’ the whole thal vs daleks (nazi pepperpots) is a plea for racial tolerance.
@Gagarin show’s like Who and Star Trek etc have always preached inclusion, respect and acceptance. Universalist philosophies such as “IDIC Infinite diversity and infinite combinations”.
To see this as ‘Woke’ is not to distinguish the Woke cuckoo in the progressive next. It is the difference between 2nd and 3rd + 4th wave feminism.
3rd and 4th wave claim to build on 2nd but their underlying philosophies have different origins and are often in opposition to each other.
At the risk of over-simplification 2nd wave is universalist. Objectivity, fairness and equality are key aims. We are different but the same.
3rd and 4th wave equity is the aim. It is relativistic, the optics of representation matter more than fairness. The pursuit of equity necessitates an identity ‘supremacy’ and pretends identity groups are monolithic. We are the all same but we are not equal.
It is the force feeding of this philosophy with the retcon of established narrative and diminishing existing characters than fans are objecting to.
(sure there are also trolls jumping on the bandwagon).
This has been the case for years for fans of Sci-Fi and Fantasy entertainment albeit in reverse where media gatekeepers rated woke infused content highly while fans did not.
Fans were smeared in the press for rejecting the woke doctrine (and bad writing) injected into franchises such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, Dr Who, Terminator etc. Somehow the Sci-fi fans were sexist, racist istaphobes (wolf, wolf, wolf) despite their love of characters such as Ripley, Sarah Connor, Blade, Leia, Lando, Sisko, Worf, LaForge, Sulu, Uhura, Mike Harrigan, Vasquez etc etc and the wide consumption of Sci-Fi and Fantasy from Japan and S Korea.
You see the same media spin in the criticism of Reva (Star Wars – Kenobi) as sexist and racist. There are always dicks and Moses Ingram has received unacceptable harassment (criticise the character not the actor), however Hayden Christian also received unacceptable harassment and no one suggests it’s because of his identity. The media spin is mainly a tactic to delegitimise criticism and deflect blame from the studios and writing back onto fans (while the enduring harassment of someone like JK Rowling goes largely unreported).
In contrast the recent Arcane has enjoyed phenomenal success with female leads, diverse characters and a compelling story BUT an absence of ideology, perhaps there is a lesson here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3h6Pszege4
The basic pattern is that cultural elites push woke doctrine (and lazy script writing) in entertainment then blame the masses for rejecting it. With Chapelle and Gervais you see a backlash and the gatekeepers predictably blame the masses again for their lack of critical consciousness.
Buckle up for Rings of Power, Amazon’s woke take on Lord of the Rings. Critical Drinker, MauLer, Doomcock, That Star Wars Girl, Nerdrotic, and many others on YouTube – there are a lot of people calling out this nonsense on the deconstruction of our western myths and attempting to replace them with what they consider “progressive” 2022 values.
it’ll be shit but not because of ‘woke’ but because it’s a shit idea in the first place…
draw a line under the trilogy let it be great, leave it at that and write something original..let’s be honest even the hobbit was a desperate grab at squeezing the franchise.
True but I won’t be buckling up because I won’t be watching. I think most people are ‘over it’ and there’s gems like Arcane, The Expanse and a whole host of shows coming out of S Korea which are a far better use of precious free time.
Noone forces you to watch- or worse, pay for- Hollyweird filth.
@John White, I didn’t say I was being forced and I don’t anymore.
Just pointing out a pattern in the woke cultural take over of legacy entertainment brands. There are plenty of good programs and movies that don’t blame, preach, patronise or infantilise.
And I’ll say it again, Woke is NOT progressive it just pretends to be.
Cancel culture did not come of of the ether…it may have gone too far in ignoring context and removing degrees…but it has a solid basis. Perhaps more solid than Gervais’s comedy.
control of ideas isn’t possible society can only proscribe actions.
Control of ideas are not only possible but altogether easy…
Not only is it possible it is altogether rather easy..
the nature and content of posts on this blog would suggest otherwise lex
This blog is tiny. Look at society as a whole. There are some things people just can’t say today. The Left controls the narrative and has done for decades
Cancel culture has been around forever in different times, places and intensities (Stalinism, McCarthyism, Witch trials, Reformation etc, etc) it’s a means by which an elite group leverages a morality play (partly or wholly fictional) to acquire or maintain power by mobilising and directing elite and public opinion against their political, social, ideological or religious opponents.
It’s just another form of Manufacturing Consent.
You will see this iteration of ‘cancel culture’ evaporate when it no longer serves the sensibilities or the needs of the cultural elite.
I think you’re on the money, Tui.
McCarthyism was NOT a elite phenomenon. It was a peasant revolt against the leftist elite and it only lasted a couple of years and it ultimately failed. The term “Manufacturing Consent” was actually coined by Walter Lippman in 1922 and he meant it to be a positove thing, whereby the enlightened lefty elites would gatekeep public opinion for the dumb reactionasy masses
McCathyism was not an elite phenomenon, really? Sure there was a bedrock of right wing support, but like anything else it was leveraged. Any kernel of a truth often exaggerated, exploited, mischaracterised and used as cover for political and power advantages within a subset of the American elite (at the expense of another subset of the American elite).
Yes I’m aware of Walter Lipman (and Creel, Bernay’s and Wilson’s CPI etc) and that Chomsky didn’t invent the term. What’s your point? As part of the art of rhetoric, the idea goes back to antiquity. You could argue that Alcibiades “manufactured consent” among Athenians to invade Syracuse.
Ours is the cause for fairness. I don’t understand your major idea of ‘wokeness’ but if you can square that with that I’m fine.