While some of the access media is lamenting the long-overdue cancellation of Amazon’s The Wheel of Time, everyone else is asking: “What took you so long?”
Every era has seen garbage programming pushed out by clueless studios, but the remarkable folly of our time is that these shows are hideously expensive and they keep being renewed.
It wasn’t that long ago that Hollywood executives were symbolized by the crass, rude and ruthlessly greedy Les Grossman, memorably played by Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder. Mister, we could sure use a guy like him now.
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!
Oh, yes, I’m going there again, but only to point out that the 1978 premiere hauled in 60 million viewers and yet the show was canceled at the end of the season. Some of this was due to network infighting, clever counter-programming by rival networks but the key factor was the show was very expensive and viewership wasn’t measuring up to it.
Indeed, getting a full season was often out of reach. One need only look back at Firefly, a gem of a show and the last hurrah of Joss Whedon’s casting couch. Due to bungled scheduling, the innovative sci-fi show never got good ratings, though it oddly built up a fan base after it appeared on DVD, which led to a film.
Back when the need for money drove Hollywood to make products people wanted to see, there were these things called “mid-season replacements.” Wikipedia has a page of them, and a surprising number of hit shows were picked up after the fall selection crashed and burned.
While tragic for the canceled show, the end result was better programming. Both The Simpsons and The Office – iconic shows in their own right – were mid-season replacements.
Imagine a world where a few episodes in, The Rings of Power or The Wheel of Time was given the heave-ho and something better plugged in!
The Monoculture That Failed
It’s clear that these shows were allowed to continue because they were there to carry the woke message. The idea was that if all major media sang off the same sheet, people would get used to – and eventually adopt – their satanic gospel. The funny thing is that this sort of thing has been tried before, on a much larger scale, and it still failed.
Current Hollywood executives seem to think history began when they turned 13 or something, and that everything before that was the product of racist white men, and therefore best ignored. However, for everyone else who knows to how read books, history is much more complex, and many of us remember a thing called the Cold War.
During that time, the entirety of Russia and Eastern Europe writhed under the heel of Communism, an all-encompassing ideology that outlawed religion and independent thought. All entertainment was state-approved, and usually terrible. Amazon Prime’s Comrade Detective was a hilarious sendup of just how bad this could be. (Yes, there are good Amazon originals out there.)
The thing is, even with the Berlin Wall, the KGB and the Red Army, the Soviets could not keep western entertainment away. Some years ago I served with an officer who was born in Romania, and he told me the story how a very degraded copy of Purple Rain was smuggled into his apartment complex, where it was shown on the only VCR in the area. Imagine a grimy concrete tenement, with a bunch of swarthy, chain-smoking men squinting at the screen. Their reaction went something like this:
“What is this sh*t? Do all blacks dress like that?”
“No, just him. He’s a prince or something.”
“Is he homosexual? He looks homosexual.”
“No, he’s into chicks. See he is making her get naked. She will have sex with him.”
“This music is strange.”
And so on. But they did watch the whole thing.
What’s funny is that we also have access to other media, and it is far easier to obtain. I mentioned buying Moonlighting on DVD, which was (wait for it) a mid-season replacement. And yes, I’m enjoying it tremendously. The characters are very strident in their genders, and there is plenty of joking about the battle between the sexes. Very refreshing in this genderqueer day and age.
Follow the Money
I have a strong sense that in a lot of ways, Hollywood isn’t playing with its own money. The revelations that the US government is funding just about every one of our adversaries leads me to believe that if one digs deep enough, the woke is being enabled by some covert cash. Even a flatworm recoils from pain, and I doubt Hollywood executives suddenly became interested in charity projects for talentless hacks.
Maybe that is why Jennifer Salke got the sack, and further reorganizations are under way.
Whatever the case, we need to get back to a more ruthless entertainment industry, one fixated on pure greed and profit and less interested in sending messages carried by ugly women.
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English (US) · 