It's not very surprising in the current political climate, especially taking into account how heavily Hollywood seems to be slanted towards the extreme left, that time and again some big-budget blockbuster movie is being marketed as a "feminist" movie, using all the buzzwords in the book, with a hefty amount of misandry, accusations and insults towards men. And, of course, if the movie fails to meet profit expectations, men are always blamed for it, and more insults are hurled at them.
But the thing is, I would say that in the vast majority of these cases 99% of all this feminist social justice activism is happening in the marketing of the movie, rather than the movie itself. In most cases when you actually watch the movie, it might have some SJW elements to them, but they tend to be an extremely minor part of the movie (often with a feeling of having been artificially shoved in, in an otherwise unrelated movie).
As a quintessential example, the 2019 Captain Marvel movie was heavily promoted (and criticized) as a feminist movie, how the main character is a feminist icon, and how this empowers women and how this is a slap in the face of patriarchy and yada yada, and anti-SJW critics went for months criticizing and slamming the movie for it. Yet, when you actually watch the movie, which is 2 hours long, the SJW rhetoric literally only takes like less than a minute in total, from the 2 hours. There are a couple of short segments that allude to sexism and misogyny... but that's about it. These segments have little to no impact on the rest of the story or the characters in it. It's not like it's some kind of overarching plot point, where the main character fights the entire movie against sexist stereotypes and by the end of the movie gets her comeuppance and proves herself worthy, shaming the doubters and misogynists... No, nothing like that. The SJW parts are very brief, there are just a few of them, and they have little to no relevance to the rest of the story. (They could perfectly well be cut from the movie, making it perhaps a minute shorter, and nothing would really change. Nobody would even notice that something is missing. I'm not exaggerating.)
This is not a unique case. Pretty much all of these recent "SJW" movies repeat the same pattern: They are marketed as "feminist" movies with a strong "feminist" message... yet in reality their "feminist" portions are small, brief and mostly insignificant, usually artificially shoved in. Overall the movies tend to be ok (usually your typical bland forgettable blockbuster painted-by-the-numbers Hollywood trash, but semi-enjoyable nevertheless), just marred by this marketing, by this meta-rhetoric surrounding the movie.
I don't really understand why Hollywood wants to market these few movies like this. Time and again they see how it causes a controversy, and how it demonstrably hurts ticket sales. They could just stay out of this whole politics thing, and just market the movie as usual, in a politically neutral manner, and there would be no controversy, and the movie would probably be better off and perhaps even make a bigger profit. But I suppose the urge to virtue-signal is too strong. (I just have to wonder how happy investors are when the product they invested in is deliberately marketed in a manner that's known to cause controversy and backlash. Investors usually just want profit, they don't care about politics.)
Ironically, these "feminist messages" could go more under the radar, and be seen by more people, if they didn't poison the well in advance, warning people of what's coming. (In this sense the urge to virtue-signal is actually a good thing.)
But the thing is, I would say that in the vast majority of these cases 99% of all this feminist social justice activism is happening in the marketing of the movie, rather than the movie itself. In most cases when you actually watch the movie, it might have some SJW elements to them, but they tend to be an extremely minor part of the movie (often with a feeling of having been artificially shoved in, in an otherwise unrelated movie).
As a quintessential example, the 2019 Captain Marvel movie was heavily promoted (and criticized) as a feminist movie, how the main character is a feminist icon, and how this empowers women and how this is a slap in the face of patriarchy and yada yada, and anti-SJW critics went for months criticizing and slamming the movie for it. Yet, when you actually watch the movie, which is 2 hours long, the SJW rhetoric literally only takes like less than a minute in total, from the 2 hours. There are a couple of short segments that allude to sexism and misogyny... but that's about it. These segments have little to no impact on the rest of the story or the characters in it. It's not like it's some kind of overarching plot point, where the main character fights the entire movie against sexist stereotypes and by the end of the movie gets her comeuppance and proves herself worthy, shaming the doubters and misogynists... No, nothing like that. The SJW parts are very brief, there are just a few of them, and they have little to no relevance to the rest of the story. (They could perfectly well be cut from the movie, making it perhaps a minute shorter, and nothing would really change. Nobody would even notice that something is missing. I'm not exaggerating.)
This is not a unique case. Pretty much all of these recent "SJW" movies repeat the same pattern: They are marketed as "feminist" movies with a strong "feminist" message... yet in reality their "feminist" portions are small, brief and mostly insignificant, usually artificially shoved in. Overall the movies tend to be ok (usually your typical bland forgettable blockbuster painted-by-the-numbers Hollywood trash, but semi-enjoyable nevertheless), just marred by this marketing, by this meta-rhetoric surrounding the movie.
I don't really understand why Hollywood wants to market these few movies like this. Time and again they see how it causes a controversy, and how it demonstrably hurts ticket sales. They could just stay out of this whole politics thing, and just market the movie as usual, in a politically neutral manner, and there would be no controversy, and the movie would probably be better off and perhaps even make a bigger profit. But I suppose the urge to virtue-signal is too strong. (I just have to wonder how happy investors are when the product they invested in is deliberately marketed in a manner that's known to cause controversy and backlash. Investors usually just want profit, they don't care about politics.)
Ironically, these "feminist messages" could go more under the radar, and be seen by more people, if they didn't poison the well in advance, warning people of what's coming. (In this sense the urge to virtue-signal is actually a good thing.)
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