As the digital-native Millennials enter the workforce, frictions are emerging.
Their loose arrangement with time-keeping, insistence that their jobs must have “meaning”, and their desire for mentoring is proving a challenge for their Gen X bosses, who just wanted someone who would turn up on time and get on with it without whinging.
But in the content industries, the Gen X bosses tend to be deluded liberals too.
Which is leading to some interesting problems.
For example, you will now find mainstream media website front pages are littered with spelling and grammatical errors – Simon Heffer famously left the Telegraph under a cloud because he could no longer bear it any more.
Peter Oborne encountered related difficulties.
And in Hollywood, it is starting to result in the politicisation of film-making.
But is it deliberate? Are the next generation of filmmakers determined to brainwash us all into the Cult of Progressiveness with their films?
I don’t think so.
I think they aren’t even aware they are doing it. And if I’m right, Jennifer Lawrence will not be the last Millennial to ruin their career with progressive grandstanding.
As the biases on the Left have become more obvious to the rest of us, so they have remained stubbornly obscure to their victims – the echo chambers in which social media has trapped them have left digital natives of the Left unable to perceive their own prejudices, leaving them stupefied when the real world fails to bow to them.
So they are baffled by Brexit, terrified by Trump, and will be bewildered by box office failures.
Which brings us to the Alita Challenge.
Now, I’ve seen Alita – it’s a moderately-exciting CGI fest with some pleasing set pieces, but it’s also quite feminist.
Alita is a young girl to all intents and purposes, with little understanding of how the world works and no maturity in any aspect of life. And yet she triumphs over all the evil men. Almost all of whom are white – these days Hollywood prefers its villains white and its heroes not.
But the feminism is relatively subtle – there are no grand speeches about how great women are, and the men may be evil but they are not also shallow and incompetent bumblers. We should be grateful for small mercies.
Early indications are that Captain Marvel is less subtle and contains strident feminist preaching.
And critics who work within the industry (and increasingly tend to be Millennials) are having trouble with this – it’s now common to see a big gap between the critic and the audience views on Rotten Tomatoes, and these days if the critics like a film a lot more than the audience, it’s a sure sign it’s a problem with political correctness.
Statisticians use 15% as a threshold for non-chance events – if an event takes place more than 15% more than it should have by chance alone, they start looking for external drivers. So if critics like a film by more than 15% more than the audience……….
We need a name for this variance.
I’m suggesting we call it Sycofantasy – the delusion experienced by politically-correct critics whose political views are too aligned with the political biases of the content.
Last Jedi – Sycofantasy Score of 47 (91% and 44%)
Black Panther – Sycofantasy Score of 18 (97% and 79%)
Captain Marvel? 80% from the critics, but only 59% from the audience so far.
Oops – Sycofantasy Score of 21.
And the flip side? Alita gets only 60% from the critics (not feminist enough!), but 94% from the fans. Baywatch got 18% from the critics for being insufficiently woke, but audiences gave it 55%. That’s the mirror of sycofantasy right there.
And here’s the problem for Hollywood – they don’t even seem to be aware that their political views are seeping into their content.
In spoonfeeding the audience their student Marxism, they have taken their eye off the bottom line.
Even after Jennifer Lawrence ruined her career by mounting various leftie soap boxes, the young filmmakers in Hollywood continue to fumble at our political brastrap as they try to clumsily indoctrinate us into their cult.
Well, filmgoers can seemingly spot the encroaching politicisation of their films, and are not happy with the Left trying to tell them what the world should look like. Will the next generation of perverted Hollywood Svengalis go back to making films that the audiences like, or are they going to make more and more progressive propaganda?
Because if their politics is to triumph over the bottom line, the hard-nosed bankrollers of movies will need to be replaced by government money, and then we can all look forward to the advent of the Cinema of the Soviet Hollywood Union.
