That was better than I thought and I’m warming up to Matt. Along the lines of what others said—These writers appear to be playing with fire in an environment where content is abundant.
And they aren’t especially sympathetic because they have jobs where they can exercise a level of creativity many of us would kill for. That’s not to say they don’t deserve it, but it’s easier to feel sympathy for people in unions doing work that doesn’t make people envious.
Yeah the big piece that seems missing from the discussion is an awareness that their method of content creation is simply less competitive in this modern environment with tons of small time creators and video games and porn etc.
There seems a real disconnect in terms of being aware that it may not be that the companies are shit at monetizing content and instead the content is simply not nearly as monetizable as they thought.
Here’s the thing, it’s actually true that many (most) of the “heterodox” or “dark web” people are strange dorks and losers. But the thing is you expect the deeply autistic eugenicist whose visage is so creepy it triggers the “Burn it with Fire” impulse in most people to be a strange dork and loser. That is the trade off for maybe getting one novel idea out of that horrific dork’s lifetime of work. Look at the lives of many prominent people whose ideas live on— not many great people with healthy personal lives, or well balanced personal beliefs among them.
On the other hand it is very concerning that so many of our culture workers are *banal* dorks with *banal* views. The public and “management” are very much complicit in the fact that we produce so much ice cold garbage, but another cause is that so many of the culture workers are un-self aware dorks who are incapable of producing anything but banal ice cold garbage.
Re the strike, I am amused by your friend’s failure to recognize that an industry that has become as tediously boring as the entertainment industry has been long selecting tediously boring people to produce that garbage. There is your systematic failure. The idea that these same people can create some kind of untapped value is…evidence free. Indeed, the greatest thing that has happened in this sphere is the strike as the pipeline of crap has been disrupted by the banal dorks not working, maybe giving space for other stuff or interesting people working in other mediums to gain a foothold.
It's really bizarre when guys like Klinman call other people dorks and losers. It's just one small subgroup of smart but nerdy people mocking a slightly different and even smaller subgroup of smart but nerdy people.
Do writers like Matt understand that the optimal model for streaming would be a 1/4 of the shows and movies being produced, which means less work for him and his colleagues?
Also the talk of the Deftones here made me want to go listen to Around the Fur which I haven’t actively sought out in like 20 years and that album is so choice. Be Quiet and Drive, the tittle track, My Own Summer…so good!
We aren’t striking for more work, we are striking to get paid fairly for the work we do. What you bring up is of course talked about often at meetings and on the line, if these companies wanted to stop commissioning scripted tv shows and movies then thats up to them. But these shows have value to them. How many shows and movies and what they are is entirely their decision.
We are striking so that when we do sell or work on those things then we get paid fairly. This job is very hard, if we aren’t getting paid fairly or being given the conditions required to make what we are being asked to make then what’s the point?
This isn’t a fucking charity. If they can’t pay what is fair based on the revenue their own quartely reports say our IP makes and has made for 100 years then I guess these studios blew the business so bad there wont be good movies and tv anymore. Which I personally think would suck ass.
Hey man, I think I agree for the most part. It does sound like writers are getting screwed in terms of pay rates among other things (I listen to The Ankler podcast every Friday so I think I have a decent grasp of what’s at stake). I just hope the WGA prioritizes wages above trying to make sure some arbitrary number of writers keep getting jobs. I don’t think anyone benefits when shows get commissioned then show up on a streamer and then disappear into the ether.
As a viewer I’m frustrated by the gluttony of choices, so most nights I fall back on a rerun of something like Seinfeld.
My perspective is that social media has fully neutered the ability of ANY independent media to grow. That's the tragedy here. Even the most successful of the people "doing it outside the mainstream" are one man brands. They are mostly unable to build more than the unit the ascendant media ecosystem allows them to thrive as.
This didn't have to be the case, the internet could have enabled the creation of thousands of independently funded institutions that could support whatever type of media from whatever perspective you want but instead we have been driven into this pathetic, anemic atomized version of culture. It's not because culture is better this way, it's because the social media machine's cogs can only fit individuals and that' s because it's the easiest way for Facebook and Google and TikTok to harvest money from the attention we garner.
It's insane to me to watch people defend a system that so horribly underserves them and most of the time burns out and destroys the talent they claim to love. Stand ups can at least fall back on and be reinvigorated by the institution of the comedy club but most digital-only media personalities flame out under the relentless cadence of unambitious work the economics of social-based media forces them into. There is a reason Rogan got so fucking huge and then the biggest thing he could do was... make a comedy club? Fucking Pauly Shore runs two.
Schulz, Gillis et al have done an admirable job navigating this (both, by the way, have specials on Netflix, the most mainstream streaming platform). But neither will ever be able to make something bigger than their own personal brand until we destroy the surveillance advertising-based monopoly the tech companies have on our culture.
There is this illusion that social media is breaking down the gates and allowing anyone to be successful. As anyone who has tried that will tell you, without something sustaining (and substack is a small version of that!) you cannot BUILD anything on social media and, as Ethan and I talked about with the throttling issue, you cannot even build something adjacent to it. This is the cancer.
I lament the death of the free web because it could have grown into something that supported careers and professions in media. That is what I fear we are now losing with the collapse of the much more massive movie and tv industry. Every show, from the lame ones to the ones you fucking love and wish there were more like are union productions that support thousands upon thousands of union workers, the majority being blue collar crew members. That's where most of the budgets of these shows and movies go. That's what even the most briefly rich and popular twitch streamer doesn't have. A giant talented union workforce built to fucking make culture. It's a miracle America built this industry and it will be a historical tragedy if we destroy it.
"It's insane to me to watch people defend a system that so horribly underserves them"
What are you basing this on? How could you possibly say something like with confidence? I listen to Ethan Strauss and I fucking love it. I can turn over to Joe Rogan for a steady flow of solid guests and cherry pick episodes by authors that gives me 80% of a recent book in 1/500th of the time it would take to read it. The Ringer is awesome. I love the The Free Press. I enjoy Bill Maher. Netflix puts out more shit than I can possibly keep up with and while I don't watch most of it I can toggle between HBO, Netflix, Prime, etc and find something entertaining. Movies? I could rattle off 20+ active directors who put movies out consistently and I am excited to watch them. Sure I don't care for Marvel and the rehashing of existing brands, and even with that there is still an absolute plethora of amazing content to choose from. This media hellscape you talk about is hyperbolic and wildly out of touch.
I don’t think we really disagree much at all to be honest. I am desperate for there to be new ways, I’m trying to express the frustration with there not being nearly as many as there should be and it’s because of these stupid fucking tech monopolies and their shitty products. Believe me I get as stoked as anyone about seeing people try new shit, when nick mullen decided to take his swing on the new talk show I subbed right away.
There was a window where we were making cool ambitious shit independently online outside the studios and not beholden to tech giants. I was there man. It rocked. I guess we were all non-union tho.
I like Matt, but he’s often arguing against himself through different topics. Tech enabled many content creators to reap huge rewards through no gatekeepers and minimal layers. I was at a local festival last weekend where a Twtich streamer had fans lined up around several blocks to get a photo with him. He is likely making $3-5M/year from an area of Canada with a small media footprint.
The legacy entertainment supply chain that the writers are striking from is not as lucrative as it once was and it’s not going back. Structurally it had to fail because the model was bilking customers through a de facto monopoly that’s been toppled. But perhaps more importantly, scripted studio content lately hasn’t been ‘high quality’ as Matt wants to promise us, rather it’s mostly been compromised by too much forced woke garbage.
Since the great awokening (say 2015), Hollywood produced media has been mostly awful. I can’t think of many films or TV shows since that don’t succumb to injection a preachy political signalling. Disney’s troubles --as much as anything else -- is caused by there commitment to producing content with lefty ideals infecting its story telling. There is a growing audience that’s not interested and their pictures have become box office failures. This is not exclusive to a Disney culture war either. Amazon has admitted their prime video ranking algorithm was not good for their ‘woke’ shows. And if you look at Netflix’s top 10 you’ll find older programming like Suits and Ballers.
If writers want to earn a good living, then write for all audiences not just Hollywood liberals.
What's an example of "woke garbage" or "preachy political signalling?" Whenever I pose this question or see it answered, it's often hand wringing over too much LGBTQ+ representation, racial diversity, or anything that doesn't cater to the white, christian male experience. I'm not saying this is you and I am almost certain this isn't your point-of-view but this is the common refrain held by most (or the loudest) who present themselves as "anti-woke." I'd be curious to hear you define it or provide examples.
The movie industry is struggling (for mostly lifestyle and technological reasons) but we've never had a higher volume of good, high quality TV shows. In fact, the main issue seems to be that there's too much good TV and much of it falls through the cracks because it's near impossible to market them in a way that cuts through the noise.
I am glad you asked. I watched Last of Us of the summer after hearing many good things and being in a place with HBO. The show was good but there were wasted episodes and scenes that seemed to serve no other intent but to signal they (studio/show runners/casting/ directors) are woke.
There was an entire episode devoted to the little girl having a lesbian interracial relationship that moved the story no where and just was weird and forced.
Then were many casting decisions in the spirit of representation that removed form the world the story was building. The most egregious was the malita leader in KC. The hefty woman cast was a Karen who would ask to see the manager if her fries were cold. Yet she was cast as a leader of a ruthless/blood thirsty group of renegades with a Brooklyn hipster doofus as her lieutenant. Why be so obtuse other then trying to ‘change the narrative’ DEI nonsense.
Okay, I watched and really liked the Last of Us and couldn't disagree more with your two examples. I don't understand why a teenage girl having "a lesbian interracial relationship" is "woke" or a wasted piece of character development. These people exist (my son is in hs and, trust me, it's all happening!) and we've had countless white, heterosexual relationships portrayed on screen. We all understand the emotions of being a teenager and having a relationship/love/crush and the gender/race/orientation is immaterial in expressing those feelings. Plus, it helped us to understand her character and motivations more while also adding some much needed context to the different political factions of the universe.
As for the "hefty woman" (plus sized for Hollywood's ridiculous standards but pretty normal and healthy for a woman her age) that was great casting because, not only is she an awesome actress, but the juxtaposition of her sweet and soft voice to her being this ruthless and violent dictator subverts the cliche of the evil, physically dominant alpha male and made it even more creepy and unsettling.
Again, I appreciate you answering the question. We may just have to agree to disagree on this one.
There is a lot of ‘body positive’ castings for a world where food has been a scarcity for 20 years. It’s a little distracting. And I don’t fault the actors or actresses -- I liked Lynskey in ‘I Don’t Feel at Home in this World’ where she was believable in the role. But I cannot buy a soft voiced and soft bodied woman rising to command of militia that relied on violence to achieve its objectives. It’s a tough sell in a high-minded civil society we have today, but ridiculous in the circumstances of survival and anarchy.
As for show over indexing charters being gay, it’s similar to the recent study finding 25% of HS students identifying as LBGTQA+. Why are these kids doing so? It’s because these signals are being rewarded -- either through the TV critics or university administrators -- under the guise of bravery.
Was there a lot of "body positive" casting on that show? Melanie Lynskey is maybe 20 lbs overweight... is it that unbelievable that the lady in charge might have more access to food than others or that maybe the metabolism of a middle-aged woman who's had multiple kids might be a little different than men in similar circumstances? Should the show only cast burly, bearded, loud mouthed meat heads because those are the only people who could have conceivably survived and led in such a world?
More kids identifying as LBGTQ+ is akin to the rise of left handed people in the past 100 or so years. They've always been here, it's just safer to come out now. Also, why do people think faking orientation/gender is something that's even possible? Assuming you're a straight man, do you think you could all of a sudden decide to be physically attracted to men and everything that goes along with that? Of course not, it's ridiculous. I can understand gay people pretending to be straight back in the day and even now in some places because their lives literally depended on it but why/how would a kid fake that?
And what exactly are these rewards you're talking about? Do you think life is easier being LGBTQ+? Do you think it's easy for them to come out to elder family members who may not be as accepting?
I'm trying to understand your pov but all your "anti-woke" talking points sound the same as anything I could read on any alt-right blog or twitter feed.
Sorry... after re-reading, that sounded way more combative than I meant it to be. As you can tell, I get just as annoyed by anti-woke rhetoric as you probably do by woke stuff. I'm just trying to find some common ground here because you're obviously a reasonably intelligent person and I'm just trying to understand.
Exactly. I had an SVP mandate a DEI hire for a high status finance job. He effectively reduced our candidate pool by 90% in doing so. While he was the loudest to extol the virtues of DEI hiring, he was the also the person who most valued yes men/women and those who thought like him. It was always about optics. It’s ironic that the group that preaches tolerance and diversity really value compliance and groupthink.
The modern version of “diversity casting” is a good example of woke signaling. You know it when you see. My wife and some friends were recently talking about “And Just Like That” which is the “Sex and the City” reboot from HBO. I mentioned how the card for it on the HBO Max app was comical given how apparently a bunch of white women in their 50s and 60s were now hanging out with a Diverse set of younger women who look like they came out of Hollywood’s 2023 version of central casting. Just a weird uncanny valley effect.
I would like to nominate invasion, and for all mankind ok AppleTV as good examples. Or the garbage recent star wars movies.
Stuff where it was clear hitting certain casting and storytelling diversity boxes was the main concern in the writers room, and actually making a story that was good and made sense was a distant second or third.
It everything needs to cater to white males. But when every third astronaut is a lesbian woman and the whit male characters are mainly there to be assholes, well, you are going to alienate a lot of people.
Especially and this is the most important thing, when the story is garbage.
For all mankind sort of salvages all its preaching with a decent show, but a lot of stuff does not.
It just hurts the believability when your hard nosed marine squad in a post apocalyptic hellscape is led by a 105 nerdy girl. That just isn’t how the world actually works.
Not that older versions of tv didn’t have their garbage tropes, but a lot of people hated those and made fun of those too. And now the tropes not only are annoying they come with a very special message.
Matt is probably fun to hang out with but he's hard to listen to because we can't bust his balls or push back when he trolls the heterodox podcast/substack world.
Must have been some years ago, I'm 39 and I've never seen a 5 card stud game in person. I do enjoy The Cincinatti Kid though, and think maybe they play some 5 card stud in California Split?
Enjoy the dynamic of friends, though I believe Matt likely despises non-elite types given his dismissiveness of certain people, thoughts, and ideas. If he did not know you I believe he would hate you Ethan.
I suspect that the only reason y’all are friends is that y’all have been friends. *This is a point that sounds stupid in plain text, but I have a number of friends in my life that if I met them now we would be unlikely to strike up a friendship let alone a long-standing one with lots of investment. I’m glad I have those friendships as I am sure the two of you really enjoy your friendship. Having and being friends rocks.
Anyways, fun listen. I enjoy when the two of you pod. That’s just the thing that struck me the most during the pod.
They're the class of people who create, control, and dictate culture. I always feel like I have to explain to a fish what water is when people ask this question.
Feels like most people who shake their fists at the elite are, indeed, also part of that elite culture. Of course the educated and creatives who live in our biggest cities and amongst the most diverse communities set our culture. Who else would/should?
Come on, man, it's not "giving" [your copyright &c] when you're getting something in return, it's "selling". Nothing is being *given* here, and it makes me suspect Matt's whole position.
It wouldn't bother me as a slip of the tongue, but he said "give"/"giving" over, and over, and over. This is the kind of dissembling you use at the negotiating table because both sides know both sides will do it as hard as they can; it's not part of an honest explanation.
Thank god for Matt. Throwing this woke, NPC substack subscriber a bone!
That was better than I thought and I’m warming up to Matt. Along the lines of what others said—These writers appear to be playing with fire in an environment where content is abundant.
And they aren’t especially sympathetic because they have jobs where they can exercise a level of creativity many of us would kill for. That’s not to say they don’t deserve it, but it’s easier to feel sympathy for people in unions doing work that doesn’t make people envious.
Yeah the big piece that seems missing from the discussion is an awareness that their method of content creation is simply less competitive in this modern environment with tons of small time creators and video games and porn etc.
There seems a real disconnect in terms of being aware that it may not be that the companies are shit at monetizing content and instead the content is simply not nearly as monetizable as they thought.
Here’s the thing, it’s actually true that many (most) of the “heterodox” or “dark web” people are strange dorks and losers. But the thing is you expect the deeply autistic eugenicist whose visage is so creepy it triggers the “Burn it with Fire” impulse in most people to be a strange dork and loser. That is the trade off for maybe getting one novel idea out of that horrific dork’s lifetime of work. Look at the lives of many prominent people whose ideas live on— not many great people with healthy personal lives, or well balanced personal beliefs among them.
On the other hand it is very concerning that so many of our culture workers are *banal* dorks with *banal* views. The public and “management” are very much complicit in the fact that we produce so much ice cold garbage, but another cause is that so many of the culture workers are un-self aware dorks who are incapable of producing anything but banal ice cold garbage.
Re the strike, I am amused by your friend’s failure to recognize that an industry that has become as tediously boring as the entertainment industry has been long selecting tediously boring people to produce that garbage. There is your systematic failure. The idea that these same people can create some kind of untapped value is…evidence free. Indeed, the greatest thing that has happened in this sphere is the strike as the pipeline of crap has been disrupted by the banal dorks not working, maybe giving space for other stuff or interesting people working in other mediums to gain a foothold.
It's really bizarre when guys like Klinman call other people dorks and losers. It's just one small subgroup of smart but nerdy people mocking a slightly different and even smaller subgroup of smart but nerdy people.
Do writers like Matt understand that the optimal model for streaming would be a 1/4 of the shows and movies being produced, which means less work for him and his colleagues?
Also the talk of the Deftones here made me want to go listen to Around the Fur which I haven’t actively sought out in like 20 years and that album is so choice. Be Quiet and Drive, the tittle track, My Own Summer…so good!
We aren’t striking for more work, we are striking to get paid fairly for the work we do. What you bring up is of course talked about often at meetings and on the line, if these companies wanted to stop commissioning scripted tv shows and movies then thats up to them. But these shows have value to them. How many shows and movies and what they are is entirely their decision.
We are striking so that when we do sell or work on those things then we get paid fairly. This job is very hard, if we aren’t getting paid fairly or being given the conditions required to make what we are being asked to make then what’s the point?
This isn’t a fucking charity. If they can’t pay what is fair based on the revenue their own quartely reports say our IP makes and has made for 100 years then I guess these studios blew the business so bad there wont be good movies and tv anymore. Which I personally think would suck ass.
Oh, hit reply too soon but hell yea, Be Quiet and Drive is my favorite on Around The Fur. Killer album
Hey man, I think I agree for the most part. It does sound like writers are getting screwed in terms of pay rates among other things (I listen to The Ankler podcast every Friday so I think I have a decent grasp of what’s at stake). I just hope the WGA prioritizes wages above trying to make sure some arbitrary number of writers keep getting jobs. I don’t think anyone benefits when shows get commissioned then show up on a streamer and then disappear into the ether.
As a viewer I’m frustrated by the gluttony of choices, so most nights I fall back on a rerun of something like Seinfeld.
My perspective is that social media has fully neutered the ability of ANY independent media to grow. That's the tragedy here. Even the most successful of the people "doing it outside the mainstream" are one man brands. They are mostly unable to build more than the unit the ascendant media ecosystem allows them to thrive as.
This didn't have to be the case, the internet could have enabled the creation of thousands of independently funded institutions that could support whatever type of media from whatever perspective you want but instead we have been driven into this pathetic, anemic atomized version of culture. It's not because culture is better this way, it's because the social media machine's cogs can only fit individuals and that' s because it's the easiest way for Facebook and Google and TikTok to harvest money from the attention we garner.
It's insane to me to watch people defend a system that so horribly underserves them and most of the time burns out and destroys the talent they claim to love. Stand ups can at least fall back on and be reinvigorated by the institution of the comedy club but most digital-only media personalities flame out under the relentless cadence of unambitious work the economics of social-based media forces them into. There is a reason Rogan got so fucking huge and then the biggest thing he could do was... make a comedy club? Fucking Pauly Shore runs two.
Schulz, Gillis et al have done an admirable job navigating this (both, by the way, have specials on Netflix, the most mainstream streaming platform). But neither will ever be able to make something bigger than their own personal brand until we destroy the surveillance advertising-based monopoly the tech companies have on our culture.
There is this illusion that social media is breaking down the gates and allowing anyone to be successful. As anyone who has tried that will tell you, without something sustaining (and substack is a small version of that!) you cannot BUILD anything on social media and, as Ethan and I talked about with the throttling issue, you cannot even build something adjacent to it. This is the cancer.
I lament the death of the free web because it could have grown into something that supported careers and professions in media. That is what I fear we are now losing with the collapse of the much more massive movie and tv industry. Every show, from the lame ones to the ones you fucking love and wish there were more like are union productions that support thousands upon thousands of union workers, the majority being blue collar crew members. That's where most of the budgets of these shows and movies go. That's what even the most briefly rich and popular twitch streamer doesn't have. A giant talented union workforce built to fucking make culture. It's a miracle America built this industry and it will be a historical tragedy if we destroy it.
"It's insane to me to watch people defend a system that so horribly underserves them"
What are you basing this on? How could you possibly say something like with confidence? I listen to Ethan Strauss and I fucking love it. I can turn over to Joe Rogan for a steady flow of solid guests and cherry pick episodes by authors that gives me 80% of a recent book in 1/500th of the time it would take to read it. The Ringer is awesome. I love the The Free Press. I enjoy Bill Maher. Netflix puts out more shit than I can possibly keep up with and while I don't watch most of it I can toggle between HBO, Netflix, Prime, etc and find something entertaining. Movies? I could rattle off 20+ active directors who put movies out consistently and I am excited to watch them. Sure I don't care for Marvel and the rehashing of existing brands, and even with that there is still an absolute plethora of amazing content to choose from. This media hellscape you talk about is hyperbolic and wildly out of touch.
I mean the free web is still there. People don’t have to sit on Facebook and Twitter all day.
But generally good points.
That said, the union workforce though is doing what unions always do. Kill the industries they dominate.
I don’t think we really disagree much at all to be honest. I am desperate for there to be new ways, I’m trying to express the frustration with there not being nearly as many as there should be and it’s because of these stupid fucking tech monopolies and their shitty products. Believe me I get as stoked as anyone about seeing people try new shit, when nick mullen decided to take his swing on the new talk show I subbed right away.
There was a window where we were making cool ambitious shit independently online outside the studios and not beholden to tech giants. I was there man. It rocked. I guess we were all non-union tho.
I mean the onion YouTube videos were amazing. I would pay $100/year for a service that just sent me a new one each week.
Be the change you want to see in the world. Abandon the tech companies when they abuse you.
Barbie is not funny.
Matt’s arguments for the strike make me even more pro studio. These dorks playing make believe think their thoughts are undervalued.
I like Matt, but he’s often arguing against himself through different topics. Tech enabled many content creators to reap huge rewards through no gatekeepers and minimal layers. I was at a local festival last weekend where a Twtich streamer had fans lined up around several blocks to get a photo with him. He is likely making $3-5M/year from an area of Canada with a small media footprint.
The legacy entertainment supply chain that the writers are striking from is not as lucrative as it once was and it’s not going back. Structurally it had to fail because the model was bilking customers through a de facto monopoly that’s been toppled. But perhaps more importantly, scripted studio content lately hasn’t been ‘high quality’ as Matt wants to promise us, rather it’s mostly been compromised by too much forced woke garbage.
Since the great awokening (say 2015), Hollywood produced media has been mostly awful. I can’t think of many films or TV shows since that don’t succumb to injection a preachy political signalling. Disney’s troubles --as much as anything else -- is caused by there commitment to producing content with lefty ideals infecting its story telling. There is a growing audience that’s not interested and their pictures have become box office failures. This is not exclusive to a Disney culture war either. Amazon has admitted their prime video ranking algorithm was not good for their ‘woke’ shows. And if you look at Netflix’s top 10 you’ll find older programming like Suits and Ballers.
If writers want to earn a good living, then write for all audiences not just Hollywood liberals.
What's an example of "woke garbage" or "preachy political signalling?" Whenever I pose this question or see it answered, it's often hand wringing over too much LGBTQ+ representation, racial diversity, or anything that doesn't cater to the white, christian male experience. I'm not saying this is you and I am almost certain this isn't your point-of-view but this is the common refrain held by most (or the loudest) who present themselves as "anti-woke." I'd be curious to hear you define it or provide examples.
The movie industry is struggling (for mostly lifestyle and technological reasons) but we've never had a higher volume of good, high quality TV shows. In fact, the main issue seems to be that there's too much good TV and much of it falls through the cracks because it's near impossible to market them in a way that cuts through the noise.
I am glad you asked. I watched Last of Us of the summer after hearing many good things and being in a place with HBO. The show was good but there were wasted episodes and scenes that seemed to serve no other intent but to signal they (studio/show runners/casting/ directors) are woke.
There was an entire episode devoted to the little girl having a lesbian interracial relationship that moved the story no where and just was weird and forced.
Then were many casting decisions in the spirit of representation that removed form the world the story was building. The most egregious was the malita leader in KC. The hefty woman cast was a Karen who would ask to see the manager if her fries were cold. Yet she was cast as a leader of a ruthless/blood thirsty group of renegades with a Brooklyn hipster doofus as her lieutenant. Why be so obtuse other then trying to ‘change the narrative’ DEI nonsense.
Okay, I watched and really liked the Last of Us and couldn't disagree more with your two examples. I don't understand why a teenage girl having "a lesbian interracial relationship" is "woke" or a wasted piece of character development. These people exist (my son is in hs and, trust me, it's all happening!) and we've had countless white, heterosexual relationships portrayed on screen. We all understand the emotions of being a teenager and having a relationship/love/crush and the gender/race/orientation is immaterial in expressing those feelings. Plus, it helped us to understand her character and motivations more while also adding some much needed context to the different political factions of the universe.
As for the "hefty woman" (plus sized for Hollywood's ridiculous standards but pretty normal and healthy for a woman her age) that was great casting because, not only is she an awesome actress, but the juxtaposition of her sweet and soft voice to her being this ruthless and violent dictator subverts the cliche of the evil, physically dominant alpha male and made it even more creepy and unsettling.
Again, I appreciate you answering the question. We may just have to agree to disagree on this one.
There is a lot of ‘body positive’ castings for a world where food has been a scarcity for 20 years. It’s a little distracting. And I don’t fault the actors or actresses -- I liked Lynskey in ‘I Don’t Feel at Home in this World’ where she was believable in the role. But I cannot buy a soft voiced and soft bodied woman rising to command of militia that relied on violence to achieve its objectives. It’s a tough sell in a high-minded civil society we have today, but ridiculous in the circumstances of survival and anarchy.
As for show over indexing charters being gay, it’s similar to the recent study finding 25% of HS students identifying as LBGTQA+. Why are these kids doing so? It’s because these signals are being rewarded -- either through the TV critics or university administrators -- under the guise of bravery.
Was there a lot of "body positive" casting on that show? Melanie Lynskey is maybe 20 lbs overweight... is it that unbelievable that the lady in charge might have more access to food than others or that maybe the metabolism of a middle-aged woman who's had multiple kids might be a little different than men in similar circumstances? Should the show only cast burly, bearded, loud mouthed meat heads because those are the only people who could have conceivably survived and led in such a world?
More kids identifying as LBGTQ+ is akin to the rise of left handed people in the past 100 or so years. They've always been here, it's just safer to come out now. Also, why do people think faking orientation/gender is something that's even possible? Assuming you're a straight man, do you think you could all of a sudden decide to be physically attracted to men and everything that goes along with that? Of course not, it's ridiculous. I can understand gay people pretending to be straight back in the day and even now in some places because their lives literally depended on it but why/how would a kid fake that?
And what exactly are these rewards you're talking about? Do you think life is easier being LGBTQ+? Do you think it's easy for them to come out to elder family members who may not be as accepting?
I'm trying to understand your pov but all your "anti-woke" talking points sound the same as anything I could read on any alt-right blog or twitter feed.
Sorry... after re-reading, that sounded way more combative than I meant it to be. As you can tell, I get just as annoyed by anti-woke rhetoric as you probably do by woke stuff. I'm just trying to find some common ground here because you're obviously a reasonably intelligent person and I'm just trying to understand.
According to Ethan, the preferred nomenclature is “zagtif”
Exactly. I had an SVP mandate a DEI hire for a high status finance job. He effectively reduced our candidate pool by 90% in doing so. While he was the loudest to extol the virtues of DEI hiring, he was the also the person who most valued yes men/women and those who thought like him. It was always about optics. It’s ironic that the group that preaches tolerance and diversity really value compliance and groupthink.
The modern version of “diversity casting” is a good example of woke signaling. You know it when you see. My wife and some friends were recently talking about “And Just Like That” which is the “Sex and the City” reboot from HBO. I mentioned how the card for it on the HBO Max app was comical given how apparently a bunch of white women in their 50s and 60s were now hanging out with a Diverse set of younger women who look like they came out of Hollywood’s 2023 version of central casting. Just a weird uncanny valley effect.
I would like to nominate invasion, and for all mankind ok AppleTV as good examples. Or the garbage recent star wars movies.
Stuff where it was clear hitting certain casting and storytelling diversity boxes was the main concern in the writers room, and actually making a story that was good and made sense was a distant second or third.
It everything needs to cater to white males. But when every third astronaut is a lesbian woman and the whit male characters are mainly there to be assholes, well, you are going to alienate a lot of people.
Especially and this is the most important thing, when the story is garbage.
For all mankind sort of salvages all its preaching with a decent show, but a lot of stuff does not.
It just hurts the believability when your hard nosed marine squad in a post apocalyptic hellscape is led by a 105 nerdy girl. That just isn’t how the world actually works.
Not that older versions of tv didn’t have their garbage tropes, but a lot of people hated those and made fun of those too. And now the tropes not only are annoying they come with a very special message.
Matt is probably fun to hang out with but he's hard to listen to because we can't bust his balls or push back when he trolls the heterodox podcast/substack world.
Every time you have this guy on I hate him a little less
Melanie Morgan, a reporter on KGO years ago was very public about her gambling addiction. Her game was 5 card stud I believe.
Must have been some years ago, I'm 39 and I've never seen a 5 card stud game in person. I do enjoy The Cincinatti Kid though, and think maybe they play some 5 card stud in California Split?
It must have been 20 yrs ago. She was very public about it.
I thought this was a great podcast. Lots of fun.
The industry has been broken for many years and the writers strike can’t be evaluated in a vacuum. I would strongly suggest Ethan and others read this from 2019: https://open.substack.com/pub/mattstoller/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywood?r=2gsooz&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Enjoy the dynamic of friends, though I believe Matt likely despises non-elite types given his dismissiveness of certain people, thoughts, and ideas. If he did not know you I believe he would hate you Ethan.
I suspect that the only reason y’all are friends is that y’all have been friends. *This is a point that sounds stupid in plain text, but I have a number of friends in my life that if I met them now we would be unlikely to strike up a friendship let alone a long-standing one with lots of investment. I’m glad I have those friendships as I am sure the two of you really enjoy your friendship. Having and being friends rocks.
Anyways, fun listen. I enjoy when the two of you pod. That’s just the thing that struck me the most during the pod.
When people shake their fists at "elites," what does that even mean? What/who exactly is an "elite" in this context?
They're the class of people who create, control, and dictate culture. I always feel like I have to explain to a fish what water is when people ask this question.
Feels like most people who shake their fists at the elite are, indeed, also part of that elite culture. Of course the educated and creatives who live in our biggest cities and amongst the most diverse communities set our culture. Who else would/should?
Thought all the responses from the first one to the last one were respectful and fair. Nice change of pace from other online public spaces.
Come on, man, it's not "giving" [your copyright &c] when you're getting something in return, it's "selling". Nothing is being *given* here, and it makes me suspect Matt's whole position.
It wouldn't bother me as a slip of the tongue, but he said "give"/"giving" over, and over, and over. This is the kind of dissembling you use at the negotiating table because both sides know both sides will do it as hard as they can; it's not part of an honest explanation.
Found out I have two female coworkers that are degenerate gamblers
This guest sure likes to mention pornography a lot, huh?
Jeepers Creepers! We’ve got actress Gina Davis! The Regis and Kelly clip is completely insane.