Woke Fan-Baiting: How Hollywood Provokes Fan Backlash and Then Attempts to Monetize Hate

This twitter commenter defined the corporate media practice of "fan-baiting" -- pushing a divisive, alienating SJW message into an IP that never before had it in order to deliberately cultivate a backlash.

This backlash could then be used to claim that anyone who didn't like the new, woke regurgitation of the IP is a racist, sexist, homophobe, etc.

And then leftwing movie critics will be forced to give the crap reboot a positive review -- or otherwise, they'll be On The Wrong Side of History (TM).

Dr. Thala Siren @DrThalaSiren

"Fan-baiting" is a form of marketing used by producers, film studios, and actors, with the intent of exciting artificial controversy, garnering publicity, and explaining away the negative reviews of a new and often highly anticipated production. 1/10

Fan-baiting emerged as a marketing strategy in 2016/17, after fans of beloved franchises such as Ghostbusters and Star Wars objected to what they saw as poor writing choices, sloppy scripts, and cheap alterations to plot lines and characters for the sake of shock value. 2/10

Along side these critics, there was a small group of bigoted but vociferous commentators who objected to the inclusion of black and female actors in roles traditionally held by white male actors. Some of these individuals began publicly harassing actors. 3/10

Bigots have always attacked diversity on screen, but in a highly polarized political climate, instances of harassment on garnered disproportionately massive media coverage, which provided production studios with both free publicity and a new defence against actual critics. 4/10

Studios seized the opportunity to discredit criticism of poor writing & acting, insinuating that these, too, were motivated by bigotry. What used to be accepted as standard critiques were increasingly dismissed as part of the ignorant commentary of a "toxic fandom." 5/10

Soon, it became standard practice before release to issue announcements specifying diverse casting choices, coupled with pre-emptive declarations of solidarity with the cast whom they now counted on to receive disparaging and harassing comments.

Actors who are women and/or BIPOC became props & shields for craven corporate laziness and opportunism. The studios save money both by avoiding expensive veteran writers as well as by offloading publicity to news outlets and social media covering the artificial controversy. 7/10

"Fan-baiting" works. It brings in a new sympathetic audience whose endorsement is more about taking a public stance against prejudice than any real interest in the art. "Fan-baiting" also permits studios to cultivate public skepticism over the legitimacy of poor reviews. 8/10

"Fan-baiting" also compels reviewers to temper their criticism, for fear of becoming associated with the "toxic fandom" and losing their professional credibly, resulting in telling discrepancies between critic and audience review scores. 9/10

The true nature of "fan-baiting" is never so clear as when a script is well-crafted and audience reviews are accordingly positive, exposing the announcements, declarations of solidarity, & grooming of skepticism for what they really are: cynical corporate marketing tactics. 10/10

Put another way, media corporations have found a way to monetize the racism that they set their actors up to receive. 11/10

"Dr. Siren" continued:

Amazon knows exactly what it's doing. One of the first images released was of Disa [the heavyset black woman playin a dwarf]. On cue, a couple bigots said the predictable, allowing a giddy Amazon to release its pre-prepared scripted statement denouncing the "pushback". It's the new business model.

Fan-baiting isn't "black people getting cast". Rather, it's corporations banking on black people getting harassed to inflate publicity. Hence, diversity casting is in part motivated by the hope that the corporation can maximize harassment and, consequently, $$$.

Racism and sexism are the main issues. A secondary issue - one that is being overlooked - is corporate monetization of bigotry. Even while a studio purports to be "challenging bigotry" it is also counting on bigots being bigoted, and doing its best to direct them to the actors.

Solution: Media corporations should (a) hire experienced writers and give them the time required to write great characterization and plots for these actors, (unlike Amazon and Disney) and (b) accept critique rather than suggest all critique is motivated by bigotry.

As evidenced by the success and great reviews of HBO's "House of the Dragon" in comparison to Amazon's Rings of Power, both of which feature a diverse cast, the problem is the quality of writing, not the complexions of the actors.

For those of you who like this thread on #fanbaiting, know that it is an example of structural racism: the individuals involved may not be personally racist, but the profit motive of the corporations who employ them orients them to make decisions that harm racialized peoples.

I don't know about that "structural racism" thing.

I also don't know if this is the main reason for all of this Virtue Casting. (And I'll point out that Diversity doesn't seem like such a pressing concern when casting the Black Panther movies -- audiences aren't expected to clap at having random white actors playing African tribesmen there. It's only white people whose "assumptions must be challenged" about black people popping up in European historical film and series, or fantasies based on European history and mythology.)

If you ever watch a documentary about comic books, I'll tell you the comic book stories they all highlight. The brave choice to make the X-Men symbols for anyone oppressed or discriminated against. The brave choice to make the Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy a drug addict to both highlight the Then-Current Year issue, and to also defy the Comics Code Authority. The equally brave choice to tell a Spider-Man story about one of his classmates taking LSD and dying, the first comic since the fifties to be published without the Comics Code seal of approval. (The Comics Code banned all references to drug use, even if the story was obviously a "pro-social" message about the dangers of using drugs.)

They'll also talk about Batwoman, the first lesbian heroine, and Northstar, the first gay hero.

They'll also talk about when Steve Rogers resigned from his position as Captain America because Nixon was president, and maybe even talk about when Steve Rogers tracked down the head of the Serpent Society and found out... the head of the Serpent Society was an actual mutant snake-man who wore a mask to appear human and who was in fact the President of the United States at the time, Ronald Reagan.*

No seriously, look it up. They don't outright say it's Reagan but everyone leaves the issue understanding that Reagan is a mutant snake-creature super-criminal.

What they will not talk about is... the literally hundreds of classic comic book stories that comic book fans and professionals talk about and credit as classic and foundational. They won't talk about the X-Men vs. the Hellfire Club and "Wolverine Alone." They won't talk about the "If This Be My Destiny..." issue of Spider-Man. They won't talk about "The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man." They won't talk about the Sin-Eater, or the Hobgoblin, or Bane, or "Breaking the Bat-man."

Sorry, I mostly just read Spider-Man and Batman.

All they talk about is the comic book issues that pushed some kind of leftwing social message.

The people making these documentaries -- all of them; they're all exactly the same -- think that comic books are stupid and childish and toxically masculine and also, paradoxically, pretty gay.

So when they think of ways to make this insipid, embarrassing material interesting to a general audience, they all think the same thing: We'll emphasize the leftwing political messaging in comic books!

You know, the stuff that happened in 150 superhero comic books in the 75,000 superhero comic books that have been published since 1938!

And we'll only talk about those!

I bring this up because this is what non-fans of any IP think is the key to making the IP acceptable and worthy. They don't think Wolverine fighting Hulk is a worthy story; that's just stupid geek shit.

No, they think that gender-bending Wolverine into Girl Wolverine is worthy.

They think all of this shit is stupid, undignified, unworthy, and for man-children.

And the only way they can work on these properties and retain their (massive) self-regard is to infuse them with something that will make them worthy... such as incredibly blatant leftwing political and social messaging.

It's embarrassing to work on a Lord of the Rings derivative cash-in series. But what if you introduce black elves, black dwarves, and male elves who seem obviously "coded" as gay?

And what if you make the series' hero -- hold on to your seats; this is going to rock your world -- a mighty #GirlBoss warrior who can easily defeat opponents who outweigh her by 100 or even 400 pounds?

Now that makes working on a Lord of the Rings derivate cash-in series worthy and respectable. Now you're not just selling dwarves and elves and magic rings -- nah, son, now you're selling enlightenment and empowerment.

But I definitely do think the "fan-baiting" is real. I think everything the poster said is accurate, except for this being the original driving reason for the race-bending and infinite number of virtually-identical BadAss 90 Pound #Girlboss Action Heroines they've churned out the past eight years.

I think the original driving motivation for that is to make these properties palatable to "creatives" who absolutely despise and loathe these properties, and have no appreciation whatsoever for them or any feel for what made them popular in the first place.

And, of course: who therefore also hate the kind of people who like these properties.

Which raises the question:

Seems kind of obvious but... instead of changing these properties so that leftwing "creatives" who would rather be writing culturally-edgy leftwing HBO soap operas do not feel embarrassed to be associated with them, why not just change the "creatives" and hire people who actually like the material in the first place?

Below, Critical Drinker and Andrej from Midnight's Edge talk about fan-baiting.

Bonus: Overlord DVD claims he's gotten a leak about the ratings for Amazon's Rings of Power, and they're terrible.

I believe that. I watched the first episode of She-Hulk. Terrible, but I watched it to hate-watch it.

I just cannot even gin up the energy to hate-watch Rings of Power. It's not even a real thing. It's some made-up bullshit loosely (very loosely) based on the appendices at the back of Return of the King.

It's literally fan fiction with a billion dollar budget.

So I can't even hate-watch it. It's nothing. It's not even worth being mad about.

* Here's a Captain America story the leftwing geeks don't talk about: Captain America, just in his civilian garb, is captured down in some South American country by some guerrillas or narco bandits or something. He's thrown into a cell full of trash, and then his jailers also throw in a poisonous snake.

They shut the door and wait for him to die.

Captain America snaps the snake's neck. Then he finds a straw or something like that in the garbage in the cell. He sticks it into the snake's poison glands and withdraws some of the poison into the straw.

Then he plays dead, pretending he'd been bitten by the snake and died from the poison.

When the guerrillas (or whatever) come into the room, he blows the poison out of the straw into one guard's eyes, blinding him with the acidic venom. The other guy he just bashes up.

That's some cool stuff, but the geeks don't talk about that.

No, for them, the only Captain America stories that exist are the ones where he told Richard Nixon he was quitting, and where he exposed Ronald Reagan as a mutated snake-man.

posted by Ace at 04:29 PM

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