A while back, I made a post bitching about pandering in films (it’s here). My take was that it was dumb that people were pumped up about Black Panther or any other Marvel superhero movie that stars a woman or visible minority, because garbage films are not barometer of where society is at. They’re just an indicator of what braindead people will pay money to see — it’s just marketing.
Well, I want to change that take a bit. After giving this some more thought recently, I decided that marketing itself is somewhat of a barometer of where society is at. Like, if people are pumped up about minority superheroes and eager to spend their entire social assistance cheques on those kinds of films, then that says people are at least superficially interested in equality. That’s still just lip service, it’s not actually doing anything concrete to fix the problems society faces, but it’s a baby step in the right direction, and it’s better than nothing, and much better than the opposite.
To be clear though, yes I still believe those films are utter fucking shite and you won’t catch me dead watching one them.
Oh yeah, I think I remember how I got to thinking about this the other day. I was thinking about how I generally feel that words are utterly meaningless, that actions are the only thing that really matter — you know, like quit talking big about racism and the establishment and actually look at how you are personally, actively a part of the racist establishment, and then take real, tangible, measurable, concrete steps to change that — and how, while I do still think actions are like 98% of all that matters, I now think that words matter like 2%, because they shape the thoughts, ideas, and emotions of even unaware dummies, and they will eventually manifest, one day, as real actions.
That’s all.
crimson highway 