The side-by-side of Film Twitter simultaneously trying to crash Scream 7 while also having one massive, loud temper tantrum about Netflix backing out of the deal to buy Warner Bros. is one for the ages. On the one hand, they were BIG MAD about the politics of Scream 7 and many of them review-bombed it. You can read about that here.
Matt Neglia of Next Best Picture joins the pile-on:
And Erik Anderson has now vowed to boycott all Paramount films for review on AwardsWatch.
Here is Linda Marric pretending to be a film critic:
On the other hand, it was the Doomsday Clock’s alarm that made Paramount consider buying Warner Bros. instead. For the life of movies, for movie theaters, and for ideological liberation from the clutches of fanaticism, this is a good day. For the survival of utopia, or Woketopia, it is a very, very bad, no good day.
Film criticism as a hive mind should have become yet another way to stick it to the enemies of film critics. Since everyone has a social media platform, they care about their online reputations, lest all their good fortune and subscriber base vanish in an instant if they break the rules.
Not all of them participate. Not all of them are ideologically compliant. But in general, if you want to play ball, you have to go along with whatever the current thing is.
The worst and most obvious partisan warfare was the Melania documentary. Nothing showcases what happened to film coverage more than this. The scary part is they all feel satisfied with how this went down. They are rewarded for it. There was no turning this thing around. It had to be wrestled from their grasp.
Now, they want to call upon the Democrats to rise up and stop the deal. And then what? Sell it to Netflix anyway? Is that the only thing that will make them happy? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to be bossed around by people who get to see movies for free and whose only real problem in life is anger at Trump.
The side you want to win this stupid war is not the side that believes cancel culture is justified, demands ideological compliance in art, films, award shows, advertising, TikTok videos, influencer culture, etc. It is not the side that will throw massive temper tantrums if the porridge is not just right. It is not the side that would review bomb a movie as “justice for Palestine” or because WAAAA Trump. No. The side you want to win is the side that still believes in free speech and tolerance of our differences.
I know on the Left, they think the Trump side is the “fascist” side, but that’s only because they don’t know what fascism actually means. Fascism is “conform or else.” It is about all sticks of wood bound together as one, a “fasci.” That is what the Left became with the rise of the internet, and they amassed more power than any movement or political party in American history. I was part of it. I was then a victim of it when I was booted out of Utopia for wrongthink.
The level of mass psychosis on the Left is what killed Hollywood. The totalitarian impulses are what turned a once-thriving industry that used to have one foot in the real world – where box office mattered — into a fetid Doomsday Cult where every day is the end of the world if they can’t purge utopia of the bad people. They kill movies that aren’t 100% in compliance. They cancel people who dare to step out of line or hold the wrong opinion. Just look at what happened to me.
I’ve watched it over the past ten years with so much under the complete control of what they called “the resistance.” Except it never was. It was always the empire. Trump’s side was the side of abandoned and discarded Americans who were not only left behind but were then further demonized by the Good People of the Left. It was all done to save face after the mighty Democrats, the Obama Coalition, lost to Trump in 2016. To cover up their failures to address the people’s needs, they went to war against the people, saying, “You’re with us, or you’re against us.”
The alignment of politics and culture fused under Barack Obama as he had his fingers in multiple pies – and why he now has a deal on Netflix. For Netflix to buy Warner Bros., as it’s a major donor for one political party (who also gets glazed by them at every turn), is to create an ideological monopoly that might as well be a dome out in the Arizona desert called Biosphere 2. Power and control are one thing. It’s what they did with that power that brought us to this moment. It was ideological capture at its very worst.
This “conform or else” idea we see among Oscar bloggers like Erik Anderson and Matt Neglia is terrifying. There is no way for any kind of honest expression of art to survive that. They are only playing the game. They didn’t make the rules. But the rules must be dismantled if Hollywood is to survive, to help bring it back to its former glory, before it becomes just one more tool of political influence, aka propaganda.
It should not have had to come to this. It should not have been left up to the former host of Celebrity Apprentice to challenge that massive oligopoly, but here we are. To the Left, Trump represents all of their named evils contained in one man. They’ve finally worked their way around to “pedophile” after they chewed up and spit out other words that used to have meaning, like “dictator,” “fascist,” “racist,” and “rapist.” They have to find the next worst word, and they adopt it casually and comfortably to dehumanize him and his supporters. Nothing has led to the demise of the Left’s Empire more than that.
Look at where it ended up:
Hollywood, the legacy media, and most of our culture cannot survive that level of delusion. Trump is not Hitler. That anyone ever thought he was, and that mandated everyone else to agree with that, was the beginning of the end. The Gold Medal-winning Hockey team had every right to celebrate with America at the State of the Union. That they were commanded and demanded not to tell you everything about what the Left has become. Is that what we’re all expected to vote for? Do what we want, or we’ll destroy you? That’s the alternative?
There is very little courage in Hollywood. Guys like Mark Ruffalo, Robert De Niro, and Adam McKay speak out against only safe targets. Guys like Jimmy Kimmel play the martyr for free speech, but all that happened to him is that he got a tiny taste of his own medicine. You will hear them all out there barking about “authoritarianism” this and “tyranny” that. But you will never hear them talk about what has happened to the industry. You will never hear them challenge the real oppressive forces that led to its demise.
I’ll never forget these past ten years of what I helped build, then what I am hoping to help destroy. At the root of it for me was the destruction of the culture I so dearly loved. And all for what? To force America to escape into the insulated, isolated utopia we all built online all those years ago? There is a real world out there. Yes, much of it is part of the insanity that has overtaken the Left, but not all of it. It is a story for the ages, and I hope there will be brave writers to tell it. Someday.
The worst thing that happened to Hollywood was getting in bed with the Democratic Party. There is a problem with a company like Netflix that not only has a deal with the Obamas, but also pushes Democratic Party propaganda, and not only heavily donates to the party, but also attempts to help them win. That kind of monopoly would not be so bad if they did not see millions of Americans as Nazis. You can’t be the side with all of the power and then throw away the less powerful half like human garbage, no matter what you think of them.
So now, the Left is having fits of hysteria, thinking the Paramount deal is a win for Trump. And to them, the side that has all of the power and has no problem being in bed with the Democrats, that is tantamount to the bombing of Hiroshima. That’s how disconnected from reality they have become. They only know that power has been taken from them, and they aren’t handling it well.
And anyway, the Doomsday Cult has 90% of the culture. Maybe Paramount will give the other half of America the other 10%. Even that is better than a fascist-like ideological alignment that has turned the film business into skit night at the Scientology Center.
As I’ve been saying for a while now, the only way through this is all the way through. It’s the Truman Show. Come out of the simulation and join the rest of us in the real world. Power is intoxicating, I know.
The hive mind mass hysteria mob on the Left has done everything they could to destroy me and this website, yet here it still stands, thanks to the bravery and kindness of one studio, Focus Features, whose ads you see displayed on this website. They never bought into the cancel culture madness and mass psychosis. They did the much harder thing. When the worm turns, and it will because it always does, they will be among those who resisted and will be remembered well. The rest will have to take their place alongside those who went along with blacklists and McCarthyism.
Power means you can order people to do what you want and have your world ordered and defined exactly the way you want it. It feels great to have it. It feels terrible to lose it. But if you want movies and storytelling to survive, you have to leave it up to people who are comfortable moving fast and breaking things.
