In our column that takes you inside the world of media: The entertainment industry fights back against wokeness in a bid to stop losing money | Why a comedian shouldn’t have to apologise to Blake Lively over a “controversial” joke | And is the word “hate” a banning offence on social media? Instagram thinks so.
*A video version of this column is available in the player above
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DISNEY GOES CONSERVATIVE
Consultants on a new Disney Pixar film are up in arms after the studio decided to scrap a transgender storyline in the upcoming feature Win or Lose.
The Hollywood Reporter revealed the character will now be portrayed as cisgender (i.e the sex they were at birth).
“It hardly surprised me, but it devastated me,” Sarah Ligatich, a former Pixar assistant editor who consulted on the story, told the outlet.
“For a long time, Disney has not been in the business of making great content. They have been in the business of making great profits. Even as far back as two years ago when I was at Pixar, we had a meeting with (then-CEO) Bob Chapek, and they were clear with us that they see animation as a conservative medium.”
What exactly is the problem here? Businesses are supposed to make money, they won’t exist for much longer if they’re not making profits. And why shouldn’t “family” films be conservative rather than pushing agendas?
You might remember in 2022 Disney ran into major political problems in Florida over the so-called “Don’t say gay” bill.
Under pressure from staff, then-CEO Bob Chapek criticised a legislative effort led by Ron DeSantis in Florida to limit classroom discussion of sexuality and gender issues for younger students.
DeSantis — who was running to be the Republican presidential nominee for the 2024 election — saw this as an issue he could use politically and pounced. That led to the removal of Disney being allowed to self-govern the Orlando area where its Walt Disney World theme park complex is located (a law that had been in place since 1967).
There have since been lawsuits back-and-forth between the two parties and it was only in March this year — two years since the dispute first started — that Disney and Florida reached a settlement.
Why do I bring this up? Well, Disney has learnt its lesson that it is an entertainment company and should avoid being political. As a company it can make progressive films covering any subject it likes, but when it comes to films aimed at kids and families it should be conservative in the subjects it tackles.
Here in Australia, we saw a backlash against companies who were trying to coerce voters in the Indigenous Voice To Parliament referendum to vote yes. Many companies openly advocated for the Yes vote but were seriously out of step with the mood of the public, with the No vote overwhelmingly winning.
Back in 2021 Channel 10 pitched itself to advertisers as a safe place for the woke.
“How can we better promote and employ social justice, equality and inclusion? How can we represent all Australians and their stories? How can we raise the conversation, not lower the bar?” chief sales officer Rod Prosser said at the annual Upfront presentation.
Since then the network has dropped to fourth behind the ABC and now values its television licence at $0. No, that’s not a typo. Furthermore, the Australian network recorded a $322.1 million loss in the 12 months to December 31
They went woke and now they’re broke.
So, while many who work in the media are progressives and left-leaning, they need to make sure they are reflecting the values of the people they want to view their work.
It can often be hard to ignore the noise of the vocal minority, but they are not your viewers and consumers — they are more likely to be the ones saying things like “Oh, I don’t watch free to air TV”.
That’s not to say there’s no place for diversity and inclusion, quite the opposite. But even here in Australia executives and producers need to stop trying to tick boxes and focus more on content and be smarter in how they make that content more diverse (i.e. make it a natural fit rather than forced).
At the end of the day, consumers choose great content over progressive agendas.
NO NEED TO APOLOGISE
Comedian Hannah Berner has faced backlash over a one-line joke in a Netflix comedy special. In “Torching 2024: A Roast of the Year”, Berner was quickly going through events from the year with a humorous take.
“The word ‘c..t’ was trending this year. I don’t think Blake Lively was that bad,” said Berner to a big laugh (you can see the joke in the player above).
Obviously a LOT has happened since that special was recorded and Lively has been making headlines over her claims against director and co-star Justin Baldoni (we covered this in the last edition of INSIDE MEDIA).
As you can imagine, news outlets were on to the ‘mean’ joke straight away with claims “Netflix is in hot water” and “comedian forced to apologise”, but did she?
With the story blowing up, Hannah Berner took to Instagram to note:
“My joke in the Netflix roast was filmed before news of the lawsuit. To be 100 percent clear, I support Blake xoxo.”
That’s not exactly an apology and nor should she apologise. She made a joke about a story of the year — a story which has some validity regarding Lively’s behaviour.
This doesn’t mean Lively doesn’t have a case against Baldoni, but as I said last week, it also doesn’t mean all of her own sins are washed away.
Jokes are subjective, you’re not always expected to laugh at them… but please stop trying to censor other people over what you think can and can’t be the topic of a joke.
IS THE WORD ‘HATE’ A SWEAR WORD?
A very bizarre thing happened while I was scrolling through Instagram recently. A clip came up from the comedy series How I Met Your Mother from when the character Barney met the Karate Kid Ralph Macchio.
There is a line where Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) says “I hate Ralph Macchio” but the onscreen text has blurred out the word ‘hate’. And this isn’t just once, every time Barney uses the word hate, it is blurred out (the clip is available in the player video above).
Has it really come to this?
These social media platforms continue to allow sextortion to take place, allow fake ads featuring celebrities and fake news articles to scam users, but don’t you dare use the word ‘hate’ or you could be banned.
We need a better balance here and a common sense approach. You can use the word ‘hate’ without it being a threat, unfortunately the bots still don’t understand the difference and these companies are happy to keep making big profits but failing to invest in humans to deliver a better product.
Ultimately, while our data is their biggest way of making money, we only end up being the losers.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
This is the final edition of INSIDE MEDIA for 2024, we’ll be back later in the week for our first column for 2025. I hope you all have a terrific New Year and thanks for reading!
Cheers, Rob.
Rob McKnight is a co-owner of TV Blackbox and a television producer.
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