Month: June 2024

It’s Wednesday night and I’ve been watching some YouTube videos by right-wing Hollywood types; Nick Searcy, Andrew Klavan, Steve Deace.  These guys have made the transition from Hollywood actors and writers to conservatives who want to create content that doesn’t outrage their convictions.

And listening to them talk about the blacklisting and the gatekeeping you can’t help but feel discouraged.  And look at Disney where they’ve lost more than a billion dollars in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars series in the last year or two.  Even the remakes of the legacy Disney fairy tales are scaring away the parents.  Would these losses make them reconsider what they’re doing?  Nope.  Doubling down doesn’t even begin to describe their behavior.  It’s pretty depressing.

But I think I detect a hint of desperation.  It seems the strategy is to monopolize the entertainment choices utterly.  It’s almost as if they’re afraid people will find out that movies that are entertaining can actually exist.  And it makes sense.  Even they must know that their stuff is for the most part unwatchable.  So, all they can do is blockade anyone else trying to get funding and book theaters.  And so far, that’s worked.  But slowly, slowly, even glacially some stuff is leaking by.  So far, it’s all been Christian movies.  But the definition of what’s a Christian movie is being stretched.  Last year a “Christian horror movie;” Nefarious made $12 million from box office and streaming off of a $1 million total cost.  That’s a very nice return on investment.  Compare that to Disney spending $3 billion and getting back $2 billion.  Negative return on investment, not so great.

Then there was Netflix putting out the comedy specials by Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais.  Netflix’s own employees attempted to block the showing of these specials.  They saw these comedy routines as transphobic and hateful.  But Netflix decided that they need money more than they needed virtue signaling to their employees.  Another good sign.

Now conservative social media outlets are trying their hand at making movies.  The Daily Wire has made a couple of forays into comedy.  I don’t think they’ve succeeded yet but I give them full marks for trying.  Eventually somebody is going to make a stab at it and hit pay dirt.  And when that happens there will be a lot more.  Netflix is already one foot in the door.  All they’ll need is for a non-woke film maker to figure out the formula and they’ll be setting up shop and pumping stuff out.  There hasn’t been a decent comedy in a decade and if one studio starts putting them out, they’ll end up printing money.

So, I think we will get some alternatives to Hollywood.  And we’ll get it by supporting it ourselves.  What was that stupid Obama mantra?  “You are the change you’ve been waiting for?”  It’s horrible to realize but it’s actually true for our side.  We will have to stand up all these new platforms ourselves.  We’ll have to buy the tickets and take out subscriptions and buy books and go to plays just to make sure there actually is a non-woke alternative to all this awful crap they keep pumping out.

But finally, one fine day, Disney and Time Warner and NBC-Universal and whatever other woke behemoths there are will wither away all together and we’ll look out over a landscape where girl-boss jedi and Captain Marvel have been relegated to senior living facilities with a maximum of three cats and one bottle of wine a night.  And nobody declares their pronouns and spiderman is a man.

And on that day, I’ll bring my first great-grandson to the movies without wincing.