The last episode of the successful movie – Star Wars – is actually a lot less about the stars in space and much more about culture and class. Most importantly, it reflects the dangerously growing disenfranchisement of the race-and-gender obsessed liberal upper class and everyone else.
The movie finally came out, the money started flowing and eventually the reviews arrived. The result? On the primary review sites Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes the critics loved it, the public did not, which left many wondering why.
Some explanations came out already: the good results are scientific, the bad ones are there because of internet trolls.Nope, there’s nothing scientific about subjective opinions, even if they (allegedly) represent the majority of those who express them. Science is, or should be, objective.
Trolls, more trolls, and finally, Russian interference.
That’s the cue to solving the enigma of the different ratings: the standard profile of the movie critic is a liberal arts graduate, easily identifiable by the verbosity of his writing and by the fact that he is easily impressed by cheap virtue-signalling elements like token ethnic minority leading characters and a strong female lead. As the movie panders (not even that much to be fair) to his ideological preferences, he gives high scores based on diversity and equality. The average-movie goer probably doesn’t care too much about politics. In a country where a “decisive’’ election like the last one, turnout is 55%, the biggest party by far is the one of those who stay at home. In comparison, in Europe important electoral dates easily get an 80% turnout.
So if the audience isn’t into politics, they might not care about the significance of a strong and independent woman outmanoeuvring a straight white male, the evil of mankind, in a duel with lightsabers to eradicate toxic masculinity4).The non-politically biased movie goer wants a nice plot with unpredictable twists, satisfactory fight scenes, and some throwbacks to past episodes; and he didn’t get that. The plot falls flat.
Then there’s the other side of the political spectrum, the underclass who are simply fed up with the increasingly totalitarian tendencies of identity politics by the “liberal” Left and their constant attempts to shove their political beliefs down everyone’s throat. The new fad of the liberal elite, diversity, is being rejected like a bad transplant by the public. Nonetheless, it’s being pursued relentlessly and obnoxiously. The politicization of sports is already causing a haemorrhage of viewers for the NFL (the US football organization). Entertainment is also not immune to these attempts. The calls for the “diversification” of cast actors are regular.
The last two groups represent the “user score” and their review isn’t positive. The most interesting point, however, is another; it’s the reaction of critics to the public having a diverse (the irony!) opinion. That’s where the accusations of trolling or Russian meddling start, but they also reveal the insecurity of critics and especially, their inability to handle an opposite opinion. Just like the liberal political elite can’t accept that the world Obama built in the last 8 years received a negative review by the voters, who opted for the radical (in theory) change by electing Donald Trump, the liberal movie critic can’t accept a negative review of a work that reflects his ideological preference.
We might be seeing now the impact of those infamous participation trophies on the minds of the new generations: they don’t know how to accept defeat, nor any negativity whatsoever. They grew up being told that “everyone is special in their own way”, then Facebook arrived, allowing only likes but not dislikes contributing to the creation of a mindset where negativity is not allowed.
If there is negativity, then it must be from some malign agent… from Russia. One year ago, in one of our articles Russia did it 5)we spotted a trend: every political shortcoming of the Western elite would be blamed on Russia. We were right as the cases of alleged Russian interference have expanded from Trump and Brexit to the Italian referendum last year, and according to Joe Biden6)also the rise (and fall) of Marine Le Pen in the French elections and most recently the Green US politician Jill Stein, which may rank as the most hilarious cases of paranoia.
It turns out, however, that the Russian scapegoating is expanding outside the traditional boundaries of politics, as everything becomes increasingly politicized. Hence, even negative reviews of the Star Wars latest movie are now a result of the Russian sabotage.
As millennials, the generation that was put in a bubble protected from negativity by educators and social media and thus unable to handle it, are now fully settling in the job market, the prospect isn’t promising. If you think that’s bad, remember that the new cohorts in college campuses are now fighting to suppress free speech on the basis that it might offend someone’s feelings. Last year we concluded “expect to see more”. This time, expect to see worse.
