So there is this thing going on around twitter that says that what is sinking Disney is not wokness, it's bad story telling.
Of course, my immediate reaction was:
But yeah. Indeed, it's the storytelling. Or it's mostly the storytelling.
Look, partly it's that they used to have much better story telling skills, which means that we'd swallow more.
As some of you know, I've been re-reading a series, which I just realized must have been published in the eighties. I read other stuff in between, but go back to the next book when I'm depressed or out of it. It's been that type of week. The series is great, if you ignore the initial dubious premise for how the war started/is set up. It's not -- quite -- mil sf, in that while in the military, it's a small detachment given special missions, outside the hierarchy. I.e. the kind of "mil sf" I could write myself. And there's righteous fights, an evil villain, misguided support stuff, etc. etc. etc. Just... fun.
Except on book 9 I came across a long long long screed on how both the US and the USSR wanted the best for their peoples and maybe the 'true way' lay between their approaches. There was much handwaving about Unions and evil capitalists and "just as bad."
Now, what's miraculous? I didn't remember this AT ALL. And it's one of the books I read before, because I came across it while unpacking the fiction library. But I had no memory of that.
I also had no memory of several pages and pages and pages talking about how terrible global warming was, and hydro carbons and -- stomp stomp, panic panic -- nuclear power, because of Chernobyl.
No memory of any of that either. Though if we're going to consider which one is more outrageous is my forgetting the "The USSR and the US are trying to do the same" which I call the "both sides" fallacy. I've always despised that with such a white-hot rage that I once almost punched a close friend (and he was a close and true friend) for casually saying that.
But I'd read that at one time, and completely forgot it. What this tells me is two things: it was so pervasive in everything that I just ignored it/skipped over it, like graphic sex in romance novels. (Not because I'm prudish but because most of it is unnecessary and tedious.) And that the series was still good enough to be fondly remembered.
This combination worked. See my friend, not a stupid person, parroting that line at me of all people. Because it was so pervasive you assimilated it, even if you only read it a couple of times per year. And you repeated it either because you believed it or because you assumed everyone else did.
This way was the overtton window moved.
It had help. Unless you really trusted someone, you didn't talk about your real beliefs/politics. Because thing is, with the media, and art and everything controlled by them, you (we) thought you (we) were alone. Or a very tiny minority. A lot of people on the right who are more respectable than us (coff) and rely on the MSM still believe this. It's part of the reason for so many RINOS. They think they're fighting a rear guard.
But the left knows they aren't. In fact, as reality came out to smack the left again and again, starting with the fall of the USSR and moving on to the internet giving us a forum and us realizing we were far from alone, and might be (are, trust me) the overwhelming majority, they've grown more hysterical and desperate.
Part of that desperation has translated into more and more esoteric involvement in things like Gramscian ideas about races that are natural communists, and therefore attempts to create a for-real racist class system in the US. Just reversed from what the democrats supported 100 years ago, but just as evil, made up, and dividing people in "what now?" categories then treating those as absolutes.
The other part has been how rapidly their focus on "what must be said/done" today shifts.
I told here before that when I first broke in, early oughts, I believed staying quiet was enough not to be blacklisted/cancelled. Turned out either it already wasn't, or ten years later, you needed to be VOCAL in your support for the VERY LATEST crazy, or you'd be at best sidelined, at worst suspected of being the enemy and driven off.
The problem with demanding "affirmative support" is that it does something to the creative brain. No, seriously.
I started hitting editors asking me what the "thesis" of my novel was. This would shut me down hard. Even when it was from a friendly on-my-side editor, it shut me down hard. Because that's not how my brain works. Sure, my beliefs and ideas come through -- mumbles again in "I wanted to write a space regency, WTF it's all about individual liberty, suddenly?" -- but the story is the story. Sometimes I figure out what it's about half way through -- cough A Few Good Men -- and sometimes I figure what it's about as people start emailing me to tell me they loved x. Because to me the story is about the story, and making the story satisfying and GOOD.
I think the pressures of "you must affirm all our principles, and the story must be shaped by our" -- increasingly crazy -- "ideas" is shutting down the true creatives.
All they have left are the people who can write to the last yota to speck. Now, mind you some of those are competent. But when you demand they cram in a whole bale of insane, even the competent ones will buckle.
I bailed from everyone but Baen 21 year ago, and so am not sure how bad it is, but the tearful comment from a young writer on a panel saying this had hurt her novel that "You're not allowed to have women have defects or weaknesses. It makes them so boring as characters" is a clue to how far the crazy has gotten. She worked for a big house. Rhymes with bore. So, you know....
I think it's literally impossible to tell good stories in those circumstances.
Fortunately we have indie and reissued old stuff. And the reissued old stuff is not going to sell "both sides" crap to most of us now. And the global warming... well, those with memories aren't going to panic, either. (I think right now, where I type this, I'm supposed to be under a mile of ice or so, if you go by the 70s established science.) And that I know -- I only follow a few authors -- most of Baen is still quite readable.
And I have gone indie and freed myself to write what I need to write. Even the stuff that's a wee bit nuts. Because hey, someone has to and I can.
Anyway, the good news is that the more crap they produce the more people find the alternatives. And the harder it becomes to sell their communist week-old-fish.
Movies... well, my husband has been playing with AI. Yes, I know, but honestly, if I had the time, I'd do it myself. (No, he doesn't have the time either, but we're trying to work at finding him time.)
We are actually and for real winning the culture war. Because they thought it was a top down thing. And it was for a while. However, the table is about to flip if it hasn't already.
Which means in the end we win, because culture goes before politics.
Much better than 40 years ago when we assumed only the left could create and therefore swallowed the sewage with the wine by default.
Be not afraid. We got this.
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