Commentary
“Wake up and break” is a Western phenomenon in which companies only step into activist waters and find their radical ideologies unrepresentative of their customer base.
As a result, customers stop buying your product, all ending in awkward apologies and a shiny new marketing campaign. “I’m not good for men, but please buy me a Gillette razor…”
Streaming services Amazon and Netflix have similar problems. They were created to combat the pirated downloads that were beating competing DVD sales and structured TV releases.
The studio delayed the eagerly anticipated show only to find it had already been ripped and uploaded to the internet, and by making an unofficial global release half an hour earlier, while also making the studio seem petty. thought it wise.
In the on-demand digital age, streaming services should be the winners.
Amazon has already lost $3.8 billion in revenue by April 2022, with 1.2 million Netflix customers leaving at the beginning of the year. Even pirate sites have lost their luster and adventurous geeks no longer care.
It’s as if the value of the content has been lost.
character lacks character
Creative executives in charge of expensive productions have launched an era of ideologically driven entertainment that is “born to fail.” The era wraps around minimal characters and stories, whatever the favored political topic of the day, and viewers hate it.
The $53 billion Marvel brand placed itself in the Sacrificial Temple of the Walk a few years ago to “empower” male heroes for a generation lacking a few essentials: personality, story, and acting skills. was replaced by a female protagonist.
Film critics tried to fawn across these colorful yet ultimately hollow installments, but they only halved at the box office.
Viewers hoped a handsome man would save a beautiful woman, but what they got was “Fat Thor,” “She-Hulk,” and the coronation of a new athletic industry executive in “Woke Rush.” was called.
Netflix hit a turning point last year when it aired the French coming-of-age film Cuties. The scantily-clad girls twirling in front of the camera for a long time give off a unique atmosphere of pedophilia. As a result, #CancelNetflix trended for months.
Amazon has always been the more active of the two streaming services, eager to engage with its customers. This may be due to the adoption of content (sci-fi, comics, fantasy, etc.) that has an active fanbase.
In any case, Amazon frequently joked with viewers of “The Grand Tour” (the new Top Gear) and used its social media accounts to speak directly to subscribers.
This works when everyone is excited about the new show. When fans of much-loved source material are outraged, it’s far more dangerous as a marketing effort.
The BBC proved this when they replaced Doctor Who, a straight white man, with a queer-leaning woman. They went into damage control saying, “People who don’t like this are sexists!” motion. But when the showrunners took that extra step and completely rewrote the lore about the Time Lords, social media outrage turned into commercial devastation.
It didn’t matter how many interviews the stars and writers gave about “diversity,” “inclusivity,” and bringing Doctor Who into the modern era. Constant propaganda alienated viewers. Not for the season—eternally.
The BBC is a taxpayer-funded service. Destroying valuable intellectual property is a luxury they can afford.
Amazon is a commercial product, and the future of the streaming service is in question after running the exact same Kamikaze, except for a more expensive sword.
check the diversity box
Based on JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings intellectual property, you can’t help but hear about Amazon’s billion-dollar flagship show, “Rings of Power.”
This should be the biggest show in the world. It has a huge, loving fan base that only wants to throw money into a network that brings them back to Middle-earth.
And Amazon started releasing promotional materials.
It soon became clear that Rings of Power was created as a nostalgic shell to house the ideological desires of the painfully awakened immature writers and creators. , talked about how “representation” and “updating the content” were done by filling it with diverse original characters.
The Lord of the Rings and related material is not made as random fiction, but specifically as a work of Norse fantasy. Its characters represent the appearance and mythology of these ancient cultures.
A black-painted Lord of the Rings is no different from a white-washed African mythology from an intellectual point of view.
This is why things like black dwarfs and elves have received collective attention from the fandom. . However, wanting to maintain a character that is true to Tolkien’s image is “racist”.
This is all happening in an environment where viewers see intellectual vandalism everywhere. Suddenly, Queen Anne Boleyn of England is black. Joan of Arc is not a woman, it is “them”. Old white toxic man James Bond faces replacement therapy.
Not just the problem of racism, but also the mediocrity
The Amazons knew their “change” to serve personal politics would be unpopular. They talked about it months before its release, leading to headlines like “The Rings of Power Has People Of Color, Get Over It” (The Gamer).
The most interesting comment is probably from “Lord of the Rings: Revealing Backlash Against Non-White Actors in Amazon’s New Adaptation” (The Conversation).
“Why not stick with actors of color playing the dark-skinned characters in Tolkien’s texts? But that would perpetuate and reinforce radical views of good and evil in Middle-earth.” Despite Tolkien’s overall message of friendship and cooperation, and despite his outrage against the Nazis, the evil face of Middle-earth has always been non-white/non-European.
“Tolkien’s portrayal of the Orcs and their minions allied with Sauron uses many of the stereotypes associated with Orientalism and the language of prejudices often found in the literature of the period of British imperialism.”
In other words, how a European writer creates a fantasy world to transcribe the very real wars and threats his civilization faced.
Would the same stick be swung against a fantasy work that serves as an allegory for the colonization of Africa, where the “evil forces” were white? Recast as black? These are questions audiences can’t help but ask in the face of blatant industry racism against their customers.
A media storm allowed Amazon to blame “racism” for the commercial failure of Rings of Power. It was a safety net for mediocrity and they certainly needed it.
The show, hailed by Amazon as the final test of expensive original content, is a disaster.
And it’s not because of racism. It’s not because of the painful stars gushing about how “special” they are, nor because Amazon attacked their audience.
Rings of Power is boring. This is the greatest sin of all.
Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Epoch Times.
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Alexandra Marshall is the online editor of The Spectator Australia, a contributor to various publications and a political commentator for GB News and Sky News Australia. She is a young ambassador for Australians in the Constitutional Monarchy and the English-speaking Union, political adviser and former AI database designer.