There IS A Way To Measure Success in The Culture War - But Don't Expect One Side To Acknowledge It Soon

In an article I published last month I wrote that the so-called culture war, like all the war that we wage against wars is as foolish a concept as the War on Terror or the War On Drugs. What I left out was that, unlike all of these other ‘wars’ where so many of the goals are unachievable as well as what victory is, there are at least some metrics to measure whether one side is winning or losing. They are imperfect and subject to interpretation, but they at least exist in a way that almost none of the other political wars can be measured.

As I’ve mentioned countless times before and apparently will have to drive into the ground, Hollywood is a business first and anything else second. The reason this should be a positive when it comes to the culture wars is because business has a very simple standard to consider whether something is a success: whether or not it makes money.

By some standards this should be the way to truly determine whether so many of the battles in the culture war are being won in Hollywood: the bottom line. Success in Hollywood is dependent on the traditional model of New Deal liberalism: if what you do is a profit to your industry, it leads to the success of everyone around you. The rest of the problems are resolved by that success. This has been how almost everyone who becomes successful in Hollywood works: if your film/TV show/album/etc. is a huge success then you are allowed to make another. The bigger the success, the more risks you are allowed to take and the people who were in your orbit – collaborators in the process – are given my proximity to that a chance to work on projects of their own. By that metric, the people who help you with that project are allowed to go on their own, and so on.

This has been the tradition of how successful people in the industry get their career started. Martin Scorsese becomes a successful director and his screenwriter Paul Schrader is allowed to direct and write films of his own. Matthew Weiner works as a writer on The Sopranos and is allowed to make Mad Men. George Harrison success as a Beatle allows him to become a solo artist and Ravi Shankar, one of his collaborators gets his own career. And so on. The tide of success lifts up all individuals. Work is done and you are allowed to work on other projects. At  a certain point you may be able to coast based on institutional memory as you have work that isn’t as successful but as long as you make money for someone you’re allowed to work.

The problems have really become clear when the new model of the left – always predominant in Hollywood – has begun to increasingly drive the train. Much of this has been built in the same argument that drives so much of the left when it comes to any institution: the idea that it is irrevocably tainted by white supremacy, misogyny and homophobia and that it is time for the minorities to take their rightful place. This has always been something of a flawed metric as it basically argues that every successful creative force in any industry was given an in simply because they were a white male. Anyone who knows the history of Hollywood knows the blatant lie in this: being a white actor/ director/screenwriter/ or any other creative profession in the studio system didn’t make you any less an indentured servant to the studios than women or anyone else. And this system is still basically in play no matter what. Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola could not just walk up to studio boss with their first script and be handed millions of dollars to make their movie with no limitations, simply because they were white men. They had to earn their success like everyone else. In Hollywood you’re only as good as your next project and that’s been true of everybody.

I don’t pretend that there isn’t toxic masculinity or  white bias in Hollywood. But I’m not naïve enough to believe that the solution to the problem comes by simply removing all of the white male bosses and putting in female bosses, African-American bosses, Latin X Bosses, LGBTQ+ bosses et al. I’ve seen enough about the behavior of certain showrunners on set to other members of their cast – including the ones of their own identification – to know that’s not the case. For my first witness I call Ellen DeGeneres, who for all the ceilings she knocked down is  now very much considered an unpleasant person to run a show. This isn’t a white, male problem, it’s a wealth and power problem and they have the ability to reveal a person’s true nature. She was allowed to get away with it for the same reason that the Harvey Weinstein’s and Les Moonves were: she was making money for her industry and that covered up any number of sins. You could argue, I suppose, that’s a sign of true equality: a lesbian was able to prove that given the opportunity she could be as horrible a boss and colleague as her white male counterparts.

Indeed I’d argue the true measure of success in any industry is if someone who is a minority is given a position of power and influence and is just as much a failure and a monster as any white male studio boss. The problem, however, has come from the sides of the constituencies of the left who consistently argue differently that they want to define it. By those standards accusations of abuses are naturally done out of sexism, racism, homophobia et al. usually led with that battle cry: “If they were a white man…” That statement in their minds ends the argument. The fact that they have been arguing that this bad behavior in white men is something they should be held accountable for somehow doesn’t enter the equation.

This brings us to the more basic issue about numbers. I have frequently heard over the years from conservative colleagues and websites such tropes as ‘people are saying’ about certain projects that involve ‘woke’ characters for known intellectual properties involving basically any reboot of an old property. I dismiss that term out right because I know that’s hearsay. The other argument about box office or ratings being inflated for certain projects is more grounded in reality because I know studios do inflate numbers in ads or official announcements to make projects sound like they are more successful then they actually are. But by and large I dismiss these arguments because I am more inclined to believe numbers don’t lie.

The larger issue is one that has become more striking particularly when it comes to movie remakes of properties with gender/race swaps; ‘modernization’ of older properties or live action remakes of animated films and they fail. To be clear – and I always have been – I find all of these kinds of things done with any property, film or television, mostly unnecessary if unsurprising. As I’ve said before Hollywood, like all business, is concerned with making a profit. In the entertainment industry, particular film and television where revenues are shrinking across the board, the best way to do is to make a product that is appealing to the widest possible audience causing the least possible controversy.

And over the last decade in particular this has run in to the stonewall of so much of the left that is driving Hollywood in particular, demanding that the studio makes projects where they are at the center of them front and center and in the case of remakes either swapping the genders or races regardless of the flak that is drawn for doing so. It is here we clearly see the politics in play in which the institution must address these actions because they are the moral thing and not out of any other consideration. This has been clear numerous times in the 21^st century but the furor seems to have started in movies with the all-female remake of Ghostbusters.

Just as with Star Wars, comic books and really everything else, I never understood why the internet got so angry about a 1980s comedy hit that was nowhere near the funniest movie of the decade. This was not a movie that deserved a remake of any kind in my opinion mainly because it was a product of its time. This was a film that worked because of the era – in 1980s New York was such a shithole you could believe ghosts could inhabit the city and we’d just walk it off. New York is not the same place in 2016 as it was in 1984 or 1989. Flipping the genders wasn’t going to change the situation. People didn’t take Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd seriously because the subject is ridiculous. If the argument is that no one will take a supernatural threat seriously because  Kate McKinnon and Melissa McCarthy are telling me that, I can assure you I wouldn’t believe it if Adam Sandler and Chris Rock were.

Yet this film essentially became the cause celebre for the worst aspects of male bullying on the internet, which sadly is to be expected. This could have been overcome, however, had there been in a surplus of female or LGBTQ+ audience coming out to see in the theaters. That did not happen. Nor was the critical response  - legitimate critics, not internet trolls – any kinder. Ghostbusters failed because not because of toxic masculinity but because no one went to see it.

That should have been a lesson to all concerned that doing this kind of gender or race swapping on iconic properties to Hollywood was not worth the economic reward for the furor it caused. And yet, perhaps in result to the election of 2016 more than anything else, the studio system seemed more willing than it should have been to double down on this. In some cases it clearly worked, particularly for films such as Black Panther, Wonder Woman and Crazy Rich Asians. As entertainments they were very rewarding I’ll grant you.

The problem seems to have come when this new breed of filmmakers – and in some cases TV showrunners, began to take the increasing position that films based on other properties that did not work – particularly in franchises in comic book movies that were badly underperforming at the box office – were not, in fact, failing. They increasingly took the argument that many of these films –  particularly ones such as Captain Marvel or Blue Beetle that were increasingly underperforming at the box office – were somehow victims of this white misogyny of the internet. As someone who saw – unwillingly in some cases – many of these films I can tell you Captain Marvel was as good as Ant-Man: Quantumania. Which is to say it was terrible. It didn’t underperform at the box office because there was a vast conspiracy by studio heads or the industry to tank their own movie: Hollywood doesn’t want to lose money on anything. The free market ruled. They were given a wide release and the audiences hated them. You can’t get fairer than that.

If anything services like Amazon, Marvel and so many other streaming services have been ridiculous patient with so many of the streaming shows that have come from Lord of the Rings; the Star Wars franchise; comic books, et al. They have been willing to stick their necks out for so many projects and are willing to give diversity to so many of these fantasy projects, knowing that they will take a shit-ton of abuse for doing so. But at a certain point, they are a business and they have to cut their losses. Columnists may whine all they want about studios giving into the vitriol of the internet by cancelling certain shows or with films but if those people choose not to watch those shows or not go to the movies, well, are they supposed to just keep making these projects and losing money solely to please a relative few? In the binary moral thinking of the left, the answer is obvious. In the real world, it’s just as obvious. And as we know those two worlds rarely, if ever, overlap.

What’s the reward for Hollywood if they make movies with an African-American Captain America and it underperforms as badly as those with white leads? What’s the point of trying to do a revisionist version of Snow White – a fairy tale collected originally in the 19^th century, as a reminder – and no one bothers to attend? If these were films that, as those on the left will argue, people actually were crying out for then by any definition the box office would have been through the roof. Instead, its clear both films are primed to be the kind of box office bombs that can kill the careers everyone associated with it – and in the past have brought down studios themselves. Yet even now there are writers – to call them a critic is a disservice to the term – who look at the failure of these big budget films that were massively promoted and say they failed because of ‘the system’. The system allowed those projects to get greenlit and produced in the first place. But in the corkscrew logic of the left, that is never the point.

I should remind everybody involved that I say this as someone who doesn’t like any of these projects to begin with and speaks of it with what I would like to think is objectivity. I’ve made my position on many of these franchises very clear over time. I don’t have a dog in this fight as a fan. As a critic, however, I do judge because by making every single film or TV show a battle for the soul of America, reviewing certain shows seems to mean that you are making a political statement. That’s funnier, frankly, than any joke in the remake of Ghostbusters and  about sixty percent of the 1984 film

So for those of you who want to argue that The Acolyte failed because of the homophobia of society, that Shang-Chi failed because America is racist, that Mrs. Marvel got canceled because of bigotry, I won’t stop you. (Mainly because I know you will anyway). You want to argue that the corporate overlords should have promoted the project, stood up for it more, and that they weren’t supportive, you will anyway. I could argue that probably even ten years ago they wouldn’t even have been greenlit. And I would argue that if these had been huge successes the corporations would have no doubt kept fighting for it.

But I can assure you that when I choose not to watch your precious film or TV show, it’s not because I’m a racist or a homophobe or a sexist but because I don’t particularly want to see it. I have free will and I can decide not to see your film or TV show. If I do see it and, like far too many films based on these properties, I find it lacking I will give you the same treatment I do if I hate a film done written or directed by white men. Believe me, I’ve seen more than enough of their projects to know they can suck as badly as yours.

And for the record, if your film bombs or your TV show gets canceled and you decide to blame the industry or any part of society for it failing, that’s your right. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get to handle another project any time soon. Your failures are not society’s failures or the industry’s failures. You were given a chance. Many people in your position – and I speak about white men as much as any group of identity politics – never get one at all. That’s how a fair society works. You want to argue it should work differently, well, that’s what the internet’s for after all.