Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Me your Girl Danielle Moody pre recording from the Home
Speaker 1: Bunker on Long Island. Folks. As I've said, I've taken
Speaker 1: a few days off, but have left you with a
Speaker 1: few pre recorded episodes, and I'm excited to bring back
Speaker 1: to wokfkf's esteemed producer Andrew Marsillo to discuss how the
Speaker 1: media has been coming more and more conservative. We've watched
Speaker 1: it over the entire election cycle, but we've watched it
Speaker 1: over the last nine years and have seen so many
Speaker 1: different instances where the lies that we've been told about
Speaker 1: the liberal media, the liberal media doesn't exist. The liberal
Speaker 1: media is run by a bunch of very wealthy Republicans
Speaker 1: who care about access and who care about ads more
Speaker 1: than they care about any shred of our democracy. We
Speaker 1: saw that with the Washington Post, we saw that with
Speaker 1: the La Times, and we will now in a Trump world,
Speaker 1: continue to see that more and more. I don't know
Speaker 1: how the free press survives Donald Trump, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if it will, But what we do know is
Speaker 1: that the trends have been going towards the right for
Speaker 1: quite some time, so This is a conversation that I
Speaker 1: get into with Andrew coming up next, Folks, I am
Speaker 1: very happy to welcome back to the front of the
Speaker 1: mic ahem, which is my fantastic producer Andrew Marcello, who
Speaker 1: you've heard from over the course of the last couple
Speaker 1: of months, getting us an insight into how the white
Speaker 1: male in cell aggression has been seated and built through
Speaker 1: the gaming industry. And now we're turning our attention to
Speaker 1: the rise in conservativism in pop culture as kind of
Speaker 1: a backlash to representation, to sexual orientation, gender diversity, all
Speaker 1: of these things that have grown over the last decade plus.
Speaker 1: We are now seeing a considerable pushback, both in policy
Speaker 1: and in pop culture. Andrew, talk to us about specifically
Speaker 1: what you have been seeing and noticing that kind of
Speaker 1: over the last four years, eight years that corresponds in
Speaker 1: pop culture to where we are seeing our politics drive
Speaker 1: off a cliff towards.
Speaker 2: Thanks for that introduction. You're welcome, nobody. I appreciate you
Speaker 2: welcoming me back. It's hard for me to find a
Speaker 2: place to start, but I think I'll start where we're
Speaker 2: talking about pop culture and the thing that really strikes
Speaker 2: me when I think about this in my mind is
Speaker 2: the movies, and specifically Hollywood and blockbuster movies. The world
Speaker 2: of blockbuster films if you look back to the mid
Speaker 2: twenty tens and the type of super mainstream movies being released.
Speaker 2: The most successful among the most successful films being released,
Speaker 2: Star Wars The Force Awakens came out in twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: and grossed over two billion dollars worldwide, and I feel
Speaker 2: that Star Wars The Force Awakens is notable, not just
Speaker 2: because it would have done money anyway because it's Star Wars,
Speaker 2: but that's part of the point that I'm going to
Speaker 2: get to. Star Wars The Force Awakens introduced a new
Speaker 2: blackmail protagonist as well as a new woman protagonists, and
Speaker 2: the movie was successful on the back of that. The sequel,
Speaker 2: Star Wars The Last Jedi didn't do as well as
Speaker 2: a sequel, but it still grossed over a billion dollars
Speaker 2: worldwide and peaked at the number nine best selling, like
Speaker 2: the highest grossing movie of all time. So there was
Speaker 2: a minor backlash, a relatively minor backlash for people who
Speaker 2: saw The Force Awakens and went, WHOA, The main character
Speaker 2: isn't a white man anymore. It's a black Man and
Speaker 2: a White Woman. Oh no, but the majority of people
Speaker 2: still like Star Wars. Star Wars is still very popular
Speaker 2: and very profitable, and the subsequent movies, while not performing
Speaker 2: as well as the first Star Wars movie in ten years,
Speaker 2: still did very well and still have very much generated
Speaker 2: a profit and landed on the highest grossing films of
Speaker 2: all time. Then you look at Marvel and Disney as
Speaker 2: a whole, but you really look because Disney also owned
Speaker 2: Star Wars, and I think Disney is such a dominant
Speaker 2: cultural force, and I think actually a lot of my
Speaker 2: argument here is going to come around the Walt Disney Corporation.
Speaker 2: And there's a separate discussion to be had as should
Speaker 2: one studio and company really be this dominant in our
Speaker 2: cultural landscape. But that's not the conversation we're having right
Speaker 2: now anyway. Black Panther, remember by Panther twenty eighteen. A
Speaker 2: couple of years later. Yes, So we had Wonder Woman
Speaker 2: from DC and Warner Brothers, and that was a minor success.
Speaker 2: It didn't top a billion dollars, but it did almost
Speaker 2: as well as Batman versus Superman, and considering wonder Woman
Speaker 2: had never had a movie before, considering it was a
Speaker 2: woman led film, which in twenty seventeen, if you remember,
Speaker 2: was oh so risky, which is hard to even think about.
Speaker 2: You know, that was only six years before Barbie came out.
Speaker 2: And I don't think when Barbie came out anyone was
Speaker 2: saying like, oh my god, a movie led by a woman.
Speaker 2: And yet I'm bouncing around, But like I think you're
Speaker 2: starting to get what I'm getting at, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: Barbie made almost one and a half billion dollars worldwide,
Speaker 2: Black Panther made over a billion dollars worldwide, Captain Marvel
Speaker 2: made over a billion dollars worldwide. So these movies released
Speaker 2: largely in the late twenty tens. And then you have Barbie,
Speaker 2: which is sort of a vestigial production that took a
Speaker 2: long time from production to actually getting in theaters. Barbie
Speaker 2: started entering production in twenty eighteen. You have all these
Speaker 2: movies and productions from the late twenty tens where it's
Speaker 2: putting forward more representation for non white people and also
Speaker 2: for women, yes, particularly white women, but there was more
Speaker 2: than just white men leading the movies, on the posters,
Speaker 2: on the big marquee top name, and these things generated money.
Speaker 2: So what happened. So what happened?
Speaker 1: You like, I don't I think that you lay out
Speaker 1: such a good case. We have all of these films
Speaker 1: that you've named that made extraordinary money at the box office.
Speaker 1: They also brought in a lot of conversation and controversy
Speaker 1: on social media as they were being developed, as people
Speaker 1: are watching them. Barbie, I think probably the biggest in
Speaker 1: terms of the right wing saying that young men shouldn't
Speaker 1: watch this. It's anti man. This is a man hating movie,
Speaker 1: kind of spewing the misogyny that they were talking about
Speaker 1: me in the movie that was laid out very clearly
Speaker 1: in the movie, and then you see it playing out
Speaker 1: in real life. And I'm just like, every time that
Speaker 1: there is a bit of progress, whether it's for queer people,
Speaker 1: for black people, for women, for non binary folks, anytime
Speaker 1: there is progress there, it is always met with backlash.
Speaker 1: But this backlash that we're experiencing also is connected to
Speaker 1: online bulok, which we talked about right The online and
Speaker 1: bullying to me is like not even that, it's like
Speaker 1: a euphemism to what you actually explained to us has
Speaker 1: taken place.
Speaker 2: But think about how a bully succeeds a bully succeeds
Speaker 2: in an environment where they're acting out their behavior. Everyone
Speaker 2: can see them acting out their behavior, and there's not
Speaker 2: any sort of firm restriction of that behavior. Bullies only
Speaker 2: flourish in an environment where bullies are allowed to flourish
Speaker 2: and not in some way suppressed or had their behavior corrected.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, I think we're now living in a sort
Speaker 2: of a culture where we're experiencing the consequences of bullies
Speaker 2: not being silenced. And it sounds kind of radical as
Speaker 2: a person to be like, we need to silence the
Speaker 2: bullies in society, but like even just telling someone to
Speaker 2: shut the fuck up is silencing them. And I think
Speaker 2: enough of these people who whine about out women in
Speaker 2: movies and black people in movies and seeing anything but
Speaker 2: a white person, like those feel like the dominant voices now,
Speaker 2: and that's scary, at least a dominant enough force where
Speaker 2: it's harder now to tell one person to shut the
Speaker 2: fuck up when there is half the room it seems
Speaker 2: to be that person.
Speaker 1: That is the distortion, right, Like, that's the distortion and
Speaker 1: the echo chamber that the right wing has created on
Speaker 1: social media, on these platforms where we're not like I
Speaker 1: was actually saying this earlier today. I was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm not sure if fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the population is actually magified and racist and as insane
Speaker 1: as the media and social media is telling me, or
Speaker 1: if it's just what I'm being fed, if it's just
Speaker 1: the algorithm that I'm being fed to distort me from reality.
Speaker 1: And so I say the same thing, just like in
Speaker 1: terms of what you just offered. It's like, is the
Speaker 1: pushback seeming like it's coming from thousands millions, coming from everywhere?
Speaker 1: Is that actually true? Or is this like the Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz and the man behind the curtain is fucking
Speaker 1: Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, depending on what fucking platform
Speaker 1: you're on.
Speaker 2: I think there's two things there for me. And I
Speaker 2: was already thinking about the summer of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: because we've talked about this in private, and how the
Speaker 2: conservative backlash to things in the summer of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: the conservative backlash to non white male representation as well
Speaker 2: as the backlash to LGBTQ representation, it seemed to really
Speaker 2: take hold among corporations. More so in the summer of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, and you know, something demonstrable to that,
Speaker 2: so that people listening aren't just like, well, you feel
Speaker 2: that way, like, for example, companies starting to carry less
Speaker 2: pride merchandise starting last year and continuing into this year.
Speaker 2: You know, as much as we talked about corporate pride it,
Speaker 2: I feel that it's very palpable that there's less of
Speaker 2: that in the last two years. And I also am
Speaker 2: thinking about when Elon Musk took over Twitter. I know,
Speaker 2: we still call it Twitter. He has distorted it into
Speaker 2: literally a different site, even though it carries the same functions.
Speaker 2: And I think that does distort our perception because there
Speaker 2: is someone with a lot of money and unfortunately a
Speaker 2: lot of power and influence distorting the conversation and amplifying
Speaker 2: certain voices over other voices. But then on the flip
Speaker 2: side of that, to me, there is the idea that
Speaker 2: perception is reality. And I've read reports and again going
Speaker 2: back to Disney, Pete Doctor, who has directed some of
Speaker 2: Pixar's most successful films and now holds a higher creative
Speaker 2: position in Pixar, had said that they want to focus
Speaker 2: on quote universal stories, and part of that, apparently, according
Speaker 2: to them, came from a same sex kiss in the
Speaker 2: movie light Year, which did do poorly at the box office.
Speaker 2: But light Year was not a movie. It was a
Speaker 2: buzz light Year movie. It was a buzz light Year
Speaker 2: spin off movie starring Chris Evans who has star power
Speaker 2: and name pol The same sex kiss was not really
Speaker 2: used to promote the film. It was a very brief
Speaker 2: scene in the film, and there's no demonstrable evidence that
Speaker 2: the public has seen that a brief seconds long fame
Speaker 2: sex kiss between two women in the background of an
Speaker 2: animated film is what caused audiences to reject that film
Speaker 2: and not want to see it in the theater and
Speaker 2: latching on to that as well. If you remember, Pixar
Speaker 2: had recently released films such as Turning Red, which was
Speaker 2: about a Vietnamese Canadian girl, and Soul, which was about
Speaker 2: a black man teacher. So Pixar making these comments about
Speaker 2: what constitute universal stories when they're promoting a movie about
Speaker 2: a white girl, is it struck a lot of people
Speaker 2: a certain way? And I think it's this part of it,
Speaker 2: is this environment that it struck people in because people
Speaker 2: can feel, either consciously or not that representation in the
Speaker 2: mainstream media space and the Hollywood space is becoming more regressive.
Speaker 2: There was also a report recently about Disney doing test
Speaker 2: screenings for some of their films with essentially groups that
Speaker 2: I just described in my last two podcast appearances, the
Speaker 2: aggrieved white male audience who rejects anything that isn't white
Speaker 2: male representation. So when you hold test screenings with this specific,
Speaker 2: literal minority group of people and base your editing decisions
Speaker 2: and base your production decisions around a bunch of people
Speaker 2: in a room going.
Speaker 1: Like any it's not late men, I want to see
Speaker 1: myself on the screen and nothing else, then.
Speaker 2: That's what you're going to get. And the fact of
Speaker 2: the matter is, now we have these studios, and we're
Speaker 2: aware of the fact that these studios are catering to
Speaker 2: this small, loud minority of people who are boosted by
Speaker 2: people like as we previously discussed, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: But what these businesses are going to find, because all
Speaker 1: they care about at the end of the day is
Speaker 1: making money for their CEOs and their shareholders, right, And
Speaker 1: what they're going to find is what every fucking Harvard
Speaker 1: Business Review article around diversity has found, which is that
Speaker 1: diversity is actually great for your bottom line that targeting
Speaker 1: and creating content for one particular group as opposed to
Speaker 1: all groups isn't going to serve you in the long term.
Speaker 1: So do you see that throughout history? Again, we have
Speaker 1: these moments, these touch points where we're seeing progress, right,
Speaker 1: whether we see it in you know, in representation, in
Speaker 1: our elected officials, you see it, you know on the screen.
Speaker 1: There is always pushback, But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: to me, business has always seemed to move forward because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, the money is what's
Speaker 1: doing the talking. So their progress continues to move forward.
Speaker 1: But are you saying that you don't think that that's
Speaker 1: going to be the case.
Speaker 2: That's what's raising the red flag for me. And I
Speaker 2: think that's part of why I'm focusing so much on
Speaker 2: Disney and why I started with those box office grosses,
Speaker 2: because you have these franchises like Star Wars and Marvel,
Speaker 2: and I know Pixar isn't a franchise, but at the
Speaker 2: same time, when Pixar releases a movie, people regard it
Speaker 2: as a Pixar film, so kind of in a way,
Speaker 2: like a twenty four, they're a brand. So all these
Speaker 2: sub brands for Disney were profitable, demonstrably so with broader
Speaker 2: represent and yet somehow these counter cultural forces who are
Speaker 2: against representation and are for regression. I do I fear,
Speaker 2: I will say, mm hmm. I fear that those voices
Speaker 2: have taken hold at those companies. And I don't want
Speaker 2: to point fingers because I don't know what's in people's hearts.
Speaker 2: I feel like, though there are some people high up
Speaker 2: at these companies who are sympathetic to those kind of attitudes,
Speaker 2: and that that level of sympathy actually does blindside these
Speaker 2: probably men again don't want to assume, but it blindsides
Speaker 2: them to their profit making. And I mean that doesn't
Speaker 2: scare me because I no longer own stock in Disney
Speaker 2: mm hmm. But that scares me because money is power
Speaker 2: in this society. And I do remember, like when Wonder
Speaker 2: Woman's coming out, there was a lot of from people
Speaker 2: who were happy about just the movie's existence of like, oh,
Speaker 2: we can have a superhero that isn't a man in movies.
Speaker 2: This is where it was at in twenty seventeen if
Speaker 2: you don't remember, uh, And it was like you got
Speaker 2: to show up for this movie, you got to support
Speaker 2: this movie. I think part of why Black Panther did
Speaker 2: so well, not just because it had a phenomenal marketing
Speaker 2: campaign and a lot of star power behind it, but
Speaker 2: there was also a groundswell of like within I observed
Speaker 2: as a white person, within the black community, there was
Speaker 2: a groundswell of like, well, we got to support this movie.
Speaker 2: This is we've got a movie, this is our time,
Speaker 2: We've got to go support it. So people are talking
Speaker 2: with their money. Marginalized people who are getting represented talk
Speaker 2: with their money, and white people who like the properties
Speaker 2: and the majority of audiences are not. I really do
Speaker 2: believe the majority of white audiences are not this regressive
Speaker 2: minded and are happy to watch movies that aren't just
Speaker 2: themselves reflected because at their core, they still love good
Speaker 2: stories and all that other stuff that you see at
Speaker 2: the movies and spectacle and every anything else. So I
Speaker 2: hate to like counter your optimism, but the part of
Speaker 2: why I wanted to have this conversation is because I
Speaker 2: am pessimistic about it. I'm pessimist, and maybe it'll change
Speaker 2: when when the box office results come in, and if
Speaker 2: an entire slate of all white Marvel movies and all
Speaker 2: white Star Wars movies and all white Pixar movies come
Speaker 2: back in two three years, because that's how long stuff
Speaker 2: moves in Hollywood. And we see that that didn't do well,
Speaker 2: and that, you know, Captain America, Brave New World with
Speaker 2: Anthony Mackie did better than whatever thing they dredge back
Speaker 2: up Robert Downey Junior from because to replace Jonathan Majors,
Speaker 2: who should have been replaced. But like that, just look
Speaker 2: at that alone. They were building up Jonathan Majors to
Speaker 2: be their next big villain. He gets canceled again, rightfully,
Speaker 2: so and they say, well, you know what, we'll just
Speaker 2: go back to the style here. Yeah, yep, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I like to have optimism around this because I think
Speaker 1: that there have been, you know, all of the films
Speaker 1: that you've named, and there are more that have centered
Speaker 1: the stories and lived experiences of people of color. And
Speaker 1: you see that whenever that happens, this small set of
Speaker 1: white folks like lose their mind. Right. I can remember
Speaker 1: the Cheerios commercial with the interracial couple several years ago
Speaker 1: that caused like a fucking frenzy, do you know.
Speaker 2: And so there was that beer commercial with oh my god,
Speaker 2: I forget her name, but like that was part I
Speaker 2: think of the backlash in the summer of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Right, So I think that it's what is important. I
Speaker 1: think the message that you say that you're sending is
Speaker 1: that people need to show up to support these films
Speaker 1: that feature diverse characters, people of color as like the
Speaker 1: main characters, in order to continue to send the message,
Speaker 1: because without that, the default will always be white men.
Speaker 1: The default will always be to return to what has
Speaker 1: always that, what has always been. And I don't understand
Speaker 1: how you do that when the demographics of this country
Speaker 1: and like the world continue to get increasingly black and browner.
Speaker 1: So I'm not I'm not quite sure like how that
Speaker 1: ends up being good for your bottom line. Like taking
Speaker 1: something like it would have been one thing, I guess,
Speaker 1: and this is and I want to give you your
Speaker 1: your final thoughts. It would be one thing if you
Speaker 1: had just continued on the same kind of white supremacist
Speaker 1: path of there being no disruption at all in the
Speaker 1: content that we see on television on streaming with introductions
Speaker 1: of people of characters and stories focused on communities of color.
Speaker 1: If that had always been the case, it's just been white.
Speaker 1: But to inject it and then to go back I
Speaker 1: don't know if people still show up, even if they
Speaker 1: are huge fans of a particular franchise, because I think
Speaker 1: that you're signaling to them that you don't see them
Speaker 1: and you don't care about them. Those are my thoughts,
Speaker 1: what say you?
Speaker 2: And thinking about that, I had been looking at, you
Speaker 2: know again, the highest grossing movies and the number two
Speaker 2: highest grossing movie of all time, which was number one
Speaker 2: until they put Avatar back in theaters was Avengers Endgame,
Speaker 2: And part of the whole hype cycle around the final
Speaker 2: Avengers movie was the release of movies such as Black
Speaker 2: Panther and Captain Marvel. So you watch those movies as
Speaker 2: a fan with the knowledge in your mind that, Okay,
Speaker 2: the next Avengers movie, Black Panther's going to have a
Speaker 2: big role, Captain Marvel's going to have a big role.
Speaker 2: And so at least a percentage of the people who
Speaker 2: went to see Avengers Endgame went to see it because
Speaker 2: they were that they were going to see Black Panther
Speaker 2: again and see Captain Marvel again. So you regress from
Speaker 2: that and you release an Avengers movie that's whitey whitey
Speaker 2: white again. We'll see what happens. Will the same amount
Speaker 2: of people show up. I don't know, will Disney go,
Speaker 2: oh crap, we were making more money when we were
Speaker 2: putting out diverse productions. I guess we'll see. One more
Speaker 2: thing that I want to just consider thinking about when
Speaker 2: this is going to air, is I do have a
Speaker 2: concern in my mind that some of this is going
Speaker 2: to be influenced by the election. I think some of
Speaker 2: the people who hold power and wealth and influence at
Speaker 2: the top may see an election of Kamala Harris. A
Speaker 2: nation electing Kamala Harris may take that differently than a
Speaker 2: nation affirming Donald Trump and affirming the legitimacy and continue
Speaker 2: political existence and continued lack of criminal consequence for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: So I think that is something that's going to have
Speaker 2: influence over things as well. And again I've remarked, Hollywood
Speaker 2: moves slowly. We won't see the results from this manifest
Speaker 2: for another two three years, I believe, but I'm hoping
Speaker 2: my the best I can hope for is that this
Speaker 2: is a rut in our road toward progress, at least
Speaker 2: in the mainstream media space, at least in the Hollywood space,
Speaker 2: because the last two years have been very disheartening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Well, we will leave it there today. Andrew,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for making the time to kind
Speaker 1: of walk us through this on Woke AF because the
Speaker 1: reverberations of like this, anti DEI, anti diversity, anti blackness,
Speaker 1: anti queerness doesn't just stay in our poll's see. It
Speaker 1: spills over into everything and it's really important for us
Speaker 1: to keep an eye.
Speaker 2: Out on it. So we appreciate you. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, dear friends on woke
Speaker 1: a f as always, Power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.