Wednesday Morning Rant

A few days ago, Ace mentioned some of the kerfuffle over a new entry in the long list of heavy-handed leftist remakes of old properties, this time the English folktale Robin Hood (reminder: don't comment on old threads). I had heard of this new Robyn Hood show and rolled my eyes, but that was about it. After learning of the kerfuffle, I decided to go see for myself. It's as bad as you think, but that's not what this word hole is about.

In response to the show being "review bombed," the show-runner waded in to rack up some views by calling those who dislike the show a bunch of inveterate racist haters who can't score with chicks and have miserable lives. That show-runner is a man named Julien Christian Lutz, but he goes by the professional name "Director X." After engaging in an X and Instagram shoutfest with his detractors, he took his X account private - but not before some of his posts were archived. One of those replies stood out to me.

@DirectorX
I will come on your show and you can tell me face to face... and trust me, don't tell a girl you 1⭐ a young adult tv show.

Why is quality irrelevant so long as the program is aimed at youth? Why is it okay to pump out trash so long as the intended market is under the age of 21 or so? Do kids and teenagers not also deserve good stories? Just because the audience might not be sophisticated enough to articulate why something is bad, the members of that audience can often detect that it is bad. But not all of them will detect it, and so some will receive The Message.

Young people are generally inexperienced, poor at long-term planning and willing to take risks that older people often view as reckless, but they aren't actually stupid as a rule. The attitude of "this is for teenagers, so it doesn't matter if it's any good" is nonsense and some of those who espouse this crap know it. Young people can handle - and should get - real stories. But it isn't useful, from a culture war standpoint, to give them good stories. It is better to exploit their relative inability to detect what's happening so the producers can push The Message in a way so heavy-handed that they couldn't get away with it in other venues.

That's what they mean when they say that, for young adults or kids, "quality doesn't matter." It doesn't mean that quality doesn't matter to the audience, it means that they will have better luck shoving low quality propaganda down the throats of an unsophisticated audience.

It means contempt and nothing more.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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