Credit – The Cartoon Network
Hollywood’s “consequence” culture, as the esteemed LeVar Burton coined it, is starting to bite Hollywood in the posterior. With the announcements that NBC would not be airing the Golden Globes next year, The Venture Brothers getting their own movie, and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and The Eternals being potentially banned in China, I would say Hollywood is having a tough go of it this week. In addition, it was announced that late night’s first woman, bisexual, person of color, Lilly Singh’s show ‘A Little Late With Lilly Singh’ would be canceled after just two seasons. Her show took over for Carson Daly when he left after 20 seasons on his show ‘Last Call’. According to ‘The Wrap’ ‘A Little Late With Lilly Sing’ ratings dropped 25% compared to Carson Daly’s show in the same time slot of 1:30am. Also, ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ will be ending after 19 years. Some say the controversy surrounding the toxic work ethic revelations in 2018, helped fuel the decision to end the show. But, it seems Hollywood is showing signs that it is imploding from within as we see different factions of Hollywood start to fight back against the hypocrisy.
The HFPA Claims Hypocrisy as NBC Cancels the Golden Globes
NBC announced that it would not be broadcasting the Golden Globes anymore due to the revelation from a Feb. 21st article in the LA Times
that exposed a lack of diversity among its members in the HFPA(Hollywood Foreign Press Association). The controversy surrounds the fact that none of its 90 members are black. But, members of the HFPA are pushing back. Some members are pointing out the hypocrisy of Hollywood as it has been public knowledge that none of the members of the HFPA have been black since 2013. From ‘Variety’: “In their view, much of the criticism has been opportunistic. The most resonant detail from the Times’ report was the revelation that none of the HFPA’s nearly 90 members are Black, a fact which has been public information since at least 2013.”
“They have known us for 30, 40, 50 years,” one member told Variety this week. “How could this have been a surprise?”
‘Variety’ continued with this: “Many HFPA members contacted by Variety declined to comment or referred calls to Sunshine Sachs, the organization’s PR firm, as they had been instructed to do during an all-members meeting on Monday afternoon. But the half dozen who did comment argued that the organization — which is made up of entertainment correspondents, many representing European outlets and some semi- or fully retired — is being scapegoated for America’s racial issues.”
With one member essentially blaming America for its hypocrisy on race and even calling us a racist country:
“Maybe as an organization we were self-absorbed, and not thinking about the political correctness and the climate in this country,” said the member, who asked not to be identified. “We are not a racist organization. This is a racist country. Pointing fingers at us now — and saying you should have 13% Black members — it’s ridiculous.”
‘Variety’ also pointed out that the coalition of 100 PR firms that have led the charge against the HFPA don’t have diverse staffs as well.
“Several also noted that a coalition of over 100 Hollywood publicity firms — which have led the charge against the HFPA — do not have particularly diverse staffs either.”
“Shame on the publicists, to be so hypocritical,” the member said. Judy Solomon, who is from Israel and has been an HFPA member since 1956 said this:
“We have Chinese. We have Japanese. We have different things,” she said. “We don’t have people who are Black-skinned for a very simple reason — because nobody applied.”
Hollywood is Beginning to Suffer the Consequences of Their Own “Consequence” Culture
Hollywood is starting to suffer the consequences of the very cancel culture they purport. It is coming to the point where Hollywood and the left have become so emboldened to diversify that that is their only focus. They are so narrow minded in their approach to entertainment that they don’t realize that it’s not going to matter in the end because no one is going to watch their woke entertainment. You’re sacrificing your stories for a statistic instead of focusing on who the best person for the job is. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, yellow, brown, or polka dotted. If you can write a well crafted story and relate that to a movie or TV show then you’ve won with your customers and fans. You can read the Variety article here.
Disney Has been having a Tough Week
In a win for the fans, The Venture Brothers, which was canceled after season 7 in 2018 is getting a direct to video movie to conclude the events at the end of season 7. The fans are excited as we will finally get to see the Venture Brothers one more time. Disney has been having a tough week as well with two of their slated MCU movies being potentially banned in China. The Eternals directed by Chloe Zhao will most definitely be banned from China. Zhao had made remarks to news.com.au, while promoting ‘Nomadland’ in 2020 that were incorrectly stated as her saying that “the U.S. was now her country”. It was later corrected as her saying the “U.S. was not her country” but ultimately the damage was done. With that and the comments she had made back in 2013 that China was a land of lies, and the China state controlled media failing to mention Zhao’s Oscar win and basically censor her across their web, makes it easy to assume that the Chinese government will not allow ‘The Eternals’ to be played in Chinese movie theaters. Shang-Chi poses a different problem in that China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong feel like Shang- Chi will be a slight on their heritage. From an article in Variety on May 11th, according to Weibo users(one of China’s biggest social media platforms)the changing of the Fu Manchu character to the Mandarin is an insult to the Chinese people.
“This week, many Weibo users echoed the sentiment. “So you change the name and it’s not Fu Manchu anymore? The Mandarin is inherently a character that blackens the image of the Chinese people,” one wrote. “I hope China Film and the [censorship authorities] won’t be bought out by this; this kind of film is not worthy of coming to China to make money off us while calling us fools.”
In a twist, that I’m sure Disney and Marvel didn’t see coming, people in China are seeing this as discrimination against the Chinese people.
“Another of the most common complaints will certainly surprise American fans excited about the film as a landmark for Asian representation. Many online commenters have slammed Liu and Awkwafina for not meeting the typical thin-chinned, high-nosed, pale-skinned, double eye-lidded standards of ideal Chinese beauty. In one of the most toxic arguments of all, many say Marvel cast them in lead roles because the studio “discriminates against Chinese people’s appearance.”
In Disney’s infinite wisdom to be diverse and inclusive to the Asian community, they have managed to insult one of its biggest markets in the entertainment industry…this is just too good! Variety’s article goes on to describe the frustrations of the Asian communities in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong with fans claiming that Shang-Chi is being very stereotypical to the Chinese population and that Disney just makes these stereo types to get a big piece of China’s enormous box office. You can read the article from Variety here. With Disney being condemned for its filming of Mulan in the Chinese territory of Xinjiang that alleged human rights abuses, and ESPN basically being banned from talking about the relationship between the NBA and China, I would say Disney is a company that is entertainingly lost. To top that off, the documents that surfaced this week, requiring that cast members go through critical race theory training, is certainly making 2021 a less than desirable year for Disney on the PR front. Actions have consequences and it seems Hollywood is starting to reap the results of a “consequence” culture that has boomeranged onto itself and is starting to show signs of weakness.
