'I'm Not Racist, But...' And Other Ways To Recommend A Movie
How fan-baiting is killing movies and TV shows.
Over the years I've adopted a mood of resigned acceptance when it comes to deciding what to watch — trust me, I've scrolled that Netflix feed so deep I should've found an oil deposit down there by now — but I'm not about to fly to Cannes, France just to get a bunch of film recommendations, so I have to make do with algorithmic-driven decision fatigue.
Nothing is, however, more obnoxious in movie marketing than what connoisseurs have been calling “fan-baiting” lately:
They trace this phenomenon back to that female Ghostbusters reboot. The studio announced the cast and a bunch of armchair lunatics came out of their quarantined subreddits to hate on women (with special bigotry towards Leslie Jones, who at the time was, and I presume she still is, a black woman).
And man was that movie a disservice to all things paranormal. There’s no way in hell that every positive reviewer didn’t come from a Ouija board at Melissa McCarthy’s house, cause that was a rotten tomato — but of course, no matter how obvious a humourless nostalgia cash grab you're trying to pull off, no one deserves to be harassed online by a mob of angry incels, so the drama made the news cycle, and I mean... look at all this free media coverage!
I suspect that was the exact moment some pothead intern at Hollywood's PR department had the galaxy-brain idea of turning all future outrage into a marketing strategy.
And thus fan-baiting was born.
There's your reason why unnecessary female reboots and race swaps have reached terminal velocity in recent years. Take the upcoming live-action The Little Mermaid, which will be portrayed by a black actress. Isn't it peculiar how all of the other Disney remakes got ethnically-accurate princesses but only now have they decided to take creative licenses on what a redhead is supposed to look like?
And I'm not much of a Tolkienite myself — more of a "season 4 bloopers of The Office" kinda guy — but even I know that dwarves and elves are supposed to be whiter than a C major scale on a piano. So naturally, when Amazon announced the cast for that Rings of Power reboot, "toxic fans" charmed the algorithm by being mad about it.
I guess you don't need a Facebook Ads budget when you can rally a horde of angry internauts in the midst of an attention economy.
But that's the thing, though. Excluding the three or four actual mouth-breathers who were spitting troglodyte insults and racist tweets, fans don't give a flying shit about the race or gender of these characters.
They're mad at the fact that these movies and shows are hot, moist pieces of garbage.
J.J. Abrams' Star Wars movies were about as fun as a rectovaginal fistula, but the promotions department tried to make us believe we hated the movies because we can't stand a strong, female protagonist and a black sidekick.
See what I mean by "avoiding legitimate criticism"?
Another way to avoid criticism would be to make good movies and shows, but they're not trying to make good movies and shows. If they were, they would still be hiring screenwriters who know how to pen a blockbuster. But they aren't hiring them anymore, as most of them happen to look like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas — that is, oppressingly average-looking white males with vanilla pronouns and hairdos.
I'm not saying you need XY chromosomes and a melanin deficiency to make it in Hollywood (E.T. would not exist without Melissa Mathison after all), but since the Academy forced their "representation and inclusion standards" back in 2020, it'd be best if you cisgender white males sent your resumes without a photo — movies that don't meet the diversity quotas across all departments can't even qualify for Best Picture.
The consequence? Most writers' rooms now have the racial diversity of a college brochure. But some people in there can't tell a good story from a steamy fart.
Whatever happen to hiring "talent"?
Don't be fooled though; movie execs aren't going through this woke phase because they want to help launch humanity into a cultural utopia of good vibes and tolerance where everyone is walking grass barefoot, carrying yoga mats and eating whenever trees give consent by dropping stuff on the ground. Studios are here to make money, and they will reboot, redo, remake, rebuild, rework and revamp every franchise in history that can make them turn a quick profit.
So prepare for the inevitable makeover of The Bible I guess, starring strong, independent Virgin Mary who queens across Jerusalem needing no man to whip up a Chosen One.
What I’m saying is, I miss old-school movie marketing. Back when Independence Day came out and Fox released a 10-minute-long, fake-live broadcast pretending aliens were invading for real. When 7-Elevens across the US were made over into Kwik-E-Marts to promote The Simpsons Movie. Or when Pizza Planet job flyers were posted across school campuses to promote the screening of Toy Story 3.
It's as if the marketing writes itself when the movie is fun on its own, does it?
But some movies aren't made for fun anymore. They feel like political rallies. And something tells me no one would give a shit if they didn't blow the occasional racist comment way out of proportion for media attention.
But hey, at least I'm still browsing, right? It means I somehow remain hopeful.
I think I'm gonna keep swiping past Sophie's Choice though.
I get her struggle already.
Isn't it crazy that the most recent movie I really liked was "The Wandering Earth" which was produced in the People's Republic of China? I actually preferred a commie film to anything out of Hollywood!