A Very Public Suicide

 

Like the media and big tech, Hollywood seems intent on committing suicide. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is reputedly opening to disastrously small audiences; soon after Seth Rogan’s TV series Santa Inc. crashed and burned. Following the Star Wars franchise.

Any reasonable person should have seen this coming. Yet Hollywood is shovelling hundreds of millions of dollars into these projects.

West Side Story apparently features a fair bit of dialogue in Spanish; yet Spielberg refused to allow subtitles. As a result, he intentionally restricted his audience to those who are bilingual in English and Spanish.

He also insisted on casting, as Latinos only actors who were actually Latino. This reduced his talent pool, the film’s star power, and it is a measure rarely taken for other ethnic groups. Brad Pitt, Leonardo Di Caprio, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, for example, have all played Irish leads. The point of being an actor is that you act; you pretend to be somebody else. Of course, a Swede would have trouble being convincing as a Zulu, or an African as Anne Boleyn (ahem), but Latinos are a racially mixed group who do not look different, on average, from Southern Europeans generally.

As for Santa Inc., who could have thought that an animation criticizing the world’s most popular holiday would pull in enthusiastic family audiences at Christmastime? Do adults want to watch a Christmas animation without their kids? Who exactly is the intended audience? Did anyone think of the intended audience?

Similarly, space opera, the Star Wars genre, is most appealing to younger males. As is the concept of Ghostbusters. A great idea, then, to suffuse it with female leads and feminist messages?

The traditional news media are similarly self-immolating by violating all the standards of journalism in order to push a political agenda. And the high-tech oligarchs, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and Google, seem to be forcing customers to competing platforms with censorship of political opinions they disagree with.

What can explain this? Why are hitherto competent and successful businessmen throwing money away like this?

One possible theory is that they are terminally deluded by the postmodern fantasy that one can create one’s own reality. A lot of businessmen buy into the Power of Positive Thinking idea; this is just a few steps further.

Another possibility is that they see their power to influence, such as it is, slipping away, and they are reacting hysterically. Those who covet money are also liable to be people who covet power.

But the clearest element of it all is what looks like deliberate contempt for the possible audience; a contempt for the general public. A contempt so powerful that it cannot be restrained even by obvious self-interest.