Some More News - SMN: Is Hollywood Actually Woke?

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Hi. There's been a lot of talk about Hollywood going woke and thus going broke. But is this really true? Is Hollywood, perhaps, pretty un-woke? Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dbgpazT9a9MqgJdZ-3W1f0UPOVVhUHjl-bRUCQ0yyp8/edit?usp=sharing Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/  Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews  Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949  SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  Take back your online privacy today and use our link to get 3 extra months free. https://ExpressVPN.com/morenews Bombas makes getting active more comfortable with socks that support your sport, breathable t-shirts that keep you from overheating, and underwear made to move with you. Go to https://Bombas.com/morenews and use code morenews for 20% off your first purchase.

. Greetings news believers and news heretics. This is your news god, Cody Johnston here with the news. And here is that news. Some of it. Oh, Lordy-loo! And Lord again, Lord being me. No time for that news from before

because here's some breaking news. Hollywood wokepocalypse! Oh dear Christ, oh dear sexy, turnt up Christ, it's happening. We here in Hollywood have gone woke, and now all of us Hollywood elites, that's me, are now broke. Why does Hollywood lean so far to the left? Woke Hollywood seems to be eating itself alive. Now that the awards have turned into one big far left protest where self-obsessed celebrities berate the American people and tell them how to think,

well, now the viewership has completely bottomed out. It's been a bad year for Woke Hollywood and it hasn't provided a lot of great entertainment outside of Tom Cruise, but it has provided a lot of great entertainment outside of Tom Cruise, but it has provided a lot of content filled with unintended hilarity. There was a brief moment in time when millions of people were somehow duped into believing that Avatar was a good film, but the fever broke rather suddenly, and most of those who had fallen under its spell quickly realized the whole thing was just Fern Gully as reimagined by the Blue Man Group.

Not exactly a plot twist, therefore, to tell you that the sequel fizzled at the box office on its first weekend of release. On top of that, Cameron happens to be one of the wokest directors currently working in Hollywood. Avatar is, of course, an environmentalism allegory about the perils of colonialism. Oh, dang! I can't believe the new Avatar movie bombed at the box office. I'm definitely going to assume that the thing that Matt Walsh said is true and not easily look it up to see that it was actually one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

Anywho, I guess it's time to pack it in now that myself and all the other Hollywood elites are broke because I'm a Hollywood elite. And we went woke you see, two true things I just said. Or wait, ooh, counterpoint. Maybe I should actually check to see if Hollywood is actually woke and by extension broke, which I guess is the metric we're using

to determine brokenness, because here's some news. Before the pandemic, it seems that the film industry was actually doing very well for itself. Did you know this? That the international film industry putting out billion dollar movies every year is actually not broke? And to claim that it's going broke for any reason is a very silly thing that only a small child would believe.

I'm still a big Wig-a-Lith though, that part was true. But regardless of the brokeness of the situation, these desperate woke obsessed freaks do raise another question that's maybe worth exploring. Is Hollywood actually woke? Right, so here's the thing. Hollywood has in some form or another been accused of being woke or politically correct

for a long time now. The original Avatar, for example, got heat from conservatives for its dastardly environmental message. Same for Wall-E, which was accused of being liberal alarmist propaganda. Even the sum of all fears, a freaking Jack Ryan pro CIA movie

was accused of political correctness. And don't get me started on Disney, too late I'm started. Here's a 1994 article about the Lion King that specifically addresses the quote, "'Culture war around the film.'" Here's an LA Times article from the following year that claims that the film Pocahontas quote, "'Gives new meaning to the phrase politically correct

"'because they dared to hire Native American actors to voice the Native American characters, which seems reasonable. I mean, how could they be so reckless? Grr! Of course, none of that answers the question as to whether Hollywood is actually woke or not. But before we figure that out,

we first have to define what woke actually means. By now, you might've realized that the term is kind of a catch-all for whatever conservatives have decided to hate that week, or day, or minutes, honestly, what are they mad at now? Ah, the woke cranberry sauce, whatever. And like a lot of honky-goings on, this phrase was of course stolen

from people with darker skin. It turns out black Americans have been saying woke for a very long time, since at least the 1920s and 30s. And throughout pretty much the entire 20th century, it had a single standard relatively fixed meaning. Woke was an adjective describing a black person who was aware of anti-blackness as a powerful cultural, social, and political force in the world.

This knowledge prompted them to remain alert and on the lookout for signs of systemic injustice. Many scholars trace the term back to a 1923 collection of sayings and ideas from the social activist, Marcus Garvey, who wrote a call for greater awareness among black people that opened with the rallying cry, wake up Ethiopia, wake up Africa. Soon after the phrase stay woke

also entered African-American vernacular English. It's even featured in a 1938 song from legendary blues musician, Lead Belly, who hopefully will not hit us with a copyright strike because he's been dead since 1949. I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go along through that, but stay woke, keep their eyes open.

Let's do a David Lean style match cut to 2014, when the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner kicked off the Black Lives Matter and related social movements. The concept of wokeness and remaining woke suddenly received national attention in not just editorial headlines, but also popular songs, which were later featured in even more popular movies.

But once mainstream culture got their hands on Woke, as you would expect, everything started to shift and change. We gentrified Woke, and over time, new Woke became basically a catch-all word to stand in for any position to the left of Mussolini instituting a flat tax. Or sometimes it's just like a black person being in something.

And so since it was hijacked by the right wing, for the sake of this accusation of woke Hollywood, we're going to define it based on their parameters. And if you want an official definition from a conservative, well, it just so happens that the leathery Ronald DeSantis was actually forced to give an official definition during a recent trial. And the definition given by his lawyers was, quote,

"'The belief there are systemic injustices "'in American society and the need to address them.'" DeSantis' communications director would add that wokeness was also quote, "'A slang term for progressive activism.'" To you, sure. And so there you have it. When conservatives complain about woke culture,

they are apparently complaining about the belief that there are systemic injustices in American society that need to be addressed. Wow, they really are just racist, huh? But we're not here to talk about wokeness as a concept. This is about Hollywood and what specifically Hollywood is accused of being, starting of course, with diverse casting.

With the Little Mermaid, can we also just mention that from a scientific perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean. I mean, if anything, I mean, not only should the Little Mermaid be pale, she should actually be translucent. If you look at deep sea creatures, they're like translucent. They have no kind of pigmentation whatsoever. Thanks for that science lesson about mermaids, Beardo. It's cool for me to call him that because I also have a beard. Now, this is something we have seen for a while now,

the complaint that films are recasting characters with more diversity in mind, because after decades of white-centric kids films, it's bad, according to, let's call them racists, to give non-white kids someone to look up to. Since 2011, leading roles for non-whites in major Hollywood films have nearly quadrupled. As a result, we've now seen a number of these kinds

of controversial casting decisions in which Hollywood productions have experimented with more diverse international ensembles in tentpole releases. In several cases, actors from underrepresented communities have even appeared in what were once considered conventionally straight white person kinds of roles, only to receive pushback from particularly vocal pockets of online fandom.

Amazon's Lord of the Rings prequel series, which cast black actors as members of JRR Tokens' entirely fictional fantasy races, gave guys who own at least three swords such a frenzied meltdown that the company had to temporarily shut down user reviews. Disney's Lightyear and Strange World each featured LGBTQ main characters,

prompting this heated response from one extremely concerned nine-year-old fan. So you have to screen everything right now. That's why one of our goals here at Daily Wire Plus is we'll do the screening for it. We'll just make the content. And then you can trust because we share your values that we are not going to cram down

all the values of the progressive left, the transgressive left on your kids. Disney has no such qualms. In fact, this is their goal. They've openly stated this is not by accident. They're doing this because this is part of an agenda. It wasn't even a main character in Lightyear. It was a side character.

But yes, let's let Ben Shapiro screen your movies for you. For he is definitely someone who understands what makes movies good and is not in any way a bitter and failed screenwriter who also happens to get offended when there's a two second same sex kiss in a movie about a fake movie that a toy character from a real movie is based on

within the universe of that movie. Though for a fair and balanced look, here's a contrasting review from one of Ben Shapiro's peers. I think a two second kiss scene between two girls is nothing. Well, everybody has an opinion. Indeed, this angry young lad is not alone.

There are large internet communities dedicated entirely to tracking and decrying all of this super woke, extremely radical Hollywood content. It's become such a fixation for so many, it seems undeniable that we're talking about a real trend. Look how many examples they have! And those are just the films and shows that actually get produced.

There's also an entire genre of theoretical complaints about classic concepts that today's Hollywood would never touch because of the disgrace of wokeness. You know, you could never make Blazing Saddles today, Gate. And yet, and yet, it's kind of not really true at all. None of it. Of course you could make Blazing Saddles today.

Most of the people claiming you couldn't seem to completely misunderstand what the movie was about. I mean, except for Mel Brooks himself, who also claimed this. But like, it's not about how racism is good and funny. You know, why wouldn't they be able to make that? Because white people say the N-word? I mean, Quentin Tarantino seems to have a minimum quota

for white people saying the N- N word and he's doing fine. Robert Downey Jr. did blackface in a film the same year he played Iron Man and became the biggest star in the world. Not to mention that the people saying this seem to forget a pretty important detail, which is that Mel Brooks couldn't make "'Blazing Saddles' then either.

In the same interview that he claims the film couldn't be made today, he also notes that, quote, "'They wanted to bury me and the film. "'The head of distribution told the owners "'not to release the picture, but they only did "'because it was already booked in theaters "'and they didn't have a picture "'they could replace it with.'"

One of the studio notes he describes is that they wanted him to recast the black sheriff as a white actor because they were afraid of all the racial jokes. In other words, not only did he struggle to make it at the time, but he struggled because it was tackling the concept of racism, something the modern film industry satirizes

all the damn time, meaning that not only could you make Blazing Saddles today, but you might even have an easier time making it today. So make the damn film. It's fucking fine. I mean, it wouldn't actually be fine because I don't wanna see a remake of Blazing Saddles, but you get the point.

I mean, I would be great for the Gene Wilder part, but that's, you know, maybe if Mel was doing it himself, I'd be interested, but generally, no thank you, but thank you for the offer regarding my talents. Very gracious. So besides the accusations of forced diversity and movies that couldn't exist today because of edginess or whatever,

there's also the sorbo of it all. What I mean is that Hollywood wokeness goes hand in hand with Hollywood cancel culture, specifically aimed at conservatives seemingly blacklisted for their politics. Although it's funny how the people who complain about this are always artists like Rob Schneider and not say Adam Sandler,

who's also a conservative but gets plenty of work. Tim Allen is another brave conservative, once claiming that being so in Hollywood was like being in Nazi Germany. You know, like how the Jews all got hit shows on the Fox network that lasted nine seasons before moving on to a Disney Plus show. Woke Disney and their Tim Allen shows.

It's almost as if the people making this claim aren't being blacklisted for their politics so much as they have careers they're not satisfied with and can't cope with the fact that they might be the problem. Scott Baio and Dean Cain and Christy Swanson, people we haven't thought about for decades are now claiming that the real reason for that is because they're right-leaning.

Meanwhile, we have hardcore Republicans like Kelsey Grammer getting entire revival shows. And while he has said that it does make him a target, he's also said multiple times that being a Republican hasn't really been a big problem in Hollywood, and generally he jokes about it when asked. It is a funny thing. You spend a lot of time racking your brain about it. And I finally, I did think part of me thought, you know, maybe this, you know, this being an openly

Republican guy in Hollywood might have something to do with it. I don't know if it does. I mean, I do know that there is a there's a hallmark of tolerance in my community out there that may or may not be true. I don't know. It's so strange because the idea is that being a Republican is a dirty secret when half of the country is. It is the worst thing you could be there. But you know what? It's also in my nature.

The thing is I have always been a rebel. If you ever tell me the way to think, I'm bound to think the other way. So I live in Hollywood. So what else would I be? Hey now, what a charming guy. He should be a successful comedic actor or something. The idea that Hollywood is somehow blacklisting conservatives is a big silly pill

that's very hard to swallow considering that right now in 2023, a giant superhero film is coming out starring a vocal anti-vaxxer, Jordan Peterson loving right wing weirdo. Mel Gibson, a man who has gone on record saying horrible shit about Jews and minorities, has been making mainstream movies for decades after saying those things. He was up for a best director Oscar in 2017.

So I don't know, it doesn't really seem like Hollywood is all that woke in the hyperbolic way that conservatives treat it. It still makes edgy movies and cast tons of conservative actors. And really, I guess the only woke sin is that they have more diverse casts now, which I would argue is only a thing to be mad at

if you don't like other races. But of course, we're not even at our first ad break, which means that we have more to say about this. And in fact, when you look at how often Hollywood continues to cast people like Mel Gibson, you kind of have to wonder if it's even woke at all. Perhaps it's actually pretty fucking conservative leaning. How's that for a pre-ad hook, huh?

Stick around, suckers. Hello, it's Dr. Cody Johnston here. Are you suffering from phonitis? You can't stay away from your phone, even though you know that your mobile carrier is collecting your data. Sadly, the only way to cure this is through expensive brain surgery

that only I can perform. But in the meantime, you can use ExpressVPN. That's an app that prevents your phone carrier from seeing which sites you visit and sell it to third parties. That's why I use ExpressVPN. Plus, my medical practice isn't exactly legal, so it helps to limit who gets my information.

And it's not just your phone. ExpressVPN works on all of your devices too. So don't let some big corporation steal your data. Go to expressvpn.com slash more news to get three extra months free. Tell them your doctor sent you. Don't tell them it's me though. Then mail me $5 because that referral isn't free,

but don't tell them it was me. Please don't, but still send me the $5. That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n.com slash more news. One more time, expressvpn.com slash more news. Hey, welcome back woke moralists. That's of course what we're talking about here, wokeness. And the accusations that Hollywood is filled with woke lefties brainwashing our children

into having big Satan lovingloving abortion orgies. Aborgies, as we call them in the biz, because I'm in the biz, I'm available and in the biz. But as I teased before the break, what if, perhaps, not only is Hollywood not that woke, but what if they're actually kind of unwoke? Let's start with the idea of diversity being shoved down our throats.

Having a diverse movie actually, according to nerds, makes that movie more successful. But that's of course an oversimplification of what makes a movie a hit. Marvel, for example, is the current baseline for the Hollywood blockbuster. People will see a Marvel movie no matter how diverse or undiverse the cast is or how shitty the plot is,

it seems. It's a tri-yearly blockbuster event. And while I'm not gonna deny that they've been mindful to include a lot of walks of life, those movies are, to be gentle, an Alaskan cracker factory. Alaska because of the snow, you get it. Let's take a look.

Phase one was five movies starring white men leading to a final film starring all of those white people plus a token white woman. Phase two was five movies starring white men, but got really woke by adding a black man and black woman as side characters. Age of Ultron would then add three more white characters, although I guess in fairness, one of them was red,

but Gamora is green. So does that cancel it out? I don't, I don't know. I don't think it's a healthy way to view this. So let's move on to phase three, which finally, after 10 years, introduced a leading person of color with Black Panther, but only after adding two more white characters.

I'm not knocking any of those movies for having white heroes. I'm laying out no opinion on the goodness or badness of this but it's not exactly a beacon of diversity, is it? And in fact, it doesn't seem very diverse at all. Hey, remember how after 20 freaking movies, Marvel boasted having their first gay character only for it to be a three second cameo

by one of the film's directors? But at least that was the Avengers director who wasn't the shitty and abusive asshole. So there's that. And it's not just Marvel. Look at the 10 highest grossing films of 2022. Yes, Wakanda Forever is right there. Fun movie too.

There's no post credit scene about the next five movies, which is very avant-garde. But the other nine movies are all starring white actors. In some cases, white actors in very uncomfortable costumes and makeup situations. Yeah, way to rock the dreadlocks and Native American style war paint, Jake Sully. Is it woke diversity to take several white actors

and dress them up like obvious allegories for native tribes? Again, not talking about quality here, but just pointing out that this forced diversity is like a drop in a very white bucket. Nothing against the films themselves. I mean, except for Jurassic World Dominion, otherwise known as Jurassic Park 6, Jurassic World 3. Film finds a way to be terrible.

So while it's true that black Americans are approaching more proportional on-screen representation, most non-white males continue to be underrepresented on every single level of the entertainment industry. According to UCLA, between 2020 and 2021, only around 25% of the leads on scripted broadcast series were non-white. Latinos make up 19% of the US population

and accounted for nearly 29% of total movie tickets sold in 2020. And yet Latino actors played just 5.4% of the country's lead characters in movies that year. Considering how much we Hollywood elites love money, you'd think we'd at least want to pander to a group that makes up 30% of the audience. And while we're starting to see a very small shift,

Native Americans were represented in fewer than 1% of lead roles on TV shows, and in fewer than 2% of lead roles on TV shows and in fewer than 2% of acting roles overall. According to GLAAD, only 16 out of the 77 films released to US theaters in 2021 featured LGBTQ characters at all, and 70% of those characters were gay men. Just two films from that year featured bi characters.

And Steven Spielberg's West Side Story was the lone example of a transgender character in a major theatrical release. It was worth noting that we're not talking about how these people were depicted, mind you. Historically, roles for gang members and thugs in films disproportionately go to black actors and also Jeff Goldblum for some reason.

Not to mention that if you're a Native American in a movie, you're probably super fucking magical. Although there's also a chance you might fight a predator, so that's pretty great, honestly. And even when they mean well, there's a long trend of every gay character having the average lifespan of a Crystal Lake counselor. My point is, just a higher number of diverse roles

doesn't mean the film itself is especially progressive. In fact, one thing people seem to ignore in this conversation about wokeness is that while Hollywood might do a lot of skin deep changes toward diversity, the plots and content of their films remain pretty fucking un-woke. And I think the fact that conservatives have managed to paint Hollywood

as a super left-leaning woke haven really speaks to how much they've hijacked this debate. Because the woke morals described in these films are actually moderate at best. And by focusing on casting alone, it's easy to completely ignore this. Like for both sides, it's troubling that the pass fail is often based only on who is represented in these films

and not what the films are representing. So like, I'll give you some examples and you tell me how woke these examples are. And remember, for the moment, that means the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them according to Leather Ron. Let's start with Marvel and how a great deal

of their woke messages about systemic injustices always seem to come from the villains. Erik Killmonger makes a lot of good points about historical double standards and using Wakandan technology to help others around the world. And Hela calls out Asgard's ugly history of colonialism for the first time.

But in every case, their arguments are undermined when the characters inevitably go too far in the pursuit of their goals, turn violent, and must be stopped by superheroes who explicitly defend the status quo. The Flag Smashers of Falcon and Winter Soldier are the only characters in the entire MCU to date who have expressed genuine concern

about the post-Blip refugee crisis. If only they weren't going to kill that van full of innocent people, we might almost have to listen to them. Darn it. It's interesting how in every event they present a real systemic injustice and then almost entirely skip over

the need to actually fix or address it. And what I think is absolutely amazing is that while that still feels progressive, it's actually the same tactic that superhero fiction has been using for decades. It's not beautiful, it's wrong. Wrong, Wendy, it's right. You know the old proverb, money is the root of all evil?

We're doing the world a favor by destroying gold. That's from a 1973 episode of Super Friends where two villains simply named Hank and Ben are destroying the world's gold because they feel that the pursuit of wealth is ruining the world. Welcome to the fight, comrades Hank and Ben. But in the end, they're stopped by the superheroes

who condemn their actions as noble but misguided. And this is actually a running theme of that show. Villains who take drastic measures like shrinking people or moving stars or terraforming the planet, all in the specific interest of helping the world with things like resource management and wealth inequality. It's actually a real bummer how this 70s show seems consumed with the exact same issues

we haven't solved today. And the lesson is always the same. It's not what the villains want to do that's wrong, it's how they're doing it. And so ultimately, it's a cowardly tactic used by writers who don't want to appear politically extreme. You're right, Thanos, resources are limited. If only you weren't a genocidal asshole.

Oh well, back to the status quo. After all, the main goal of these films and shows isn't to shift political attitudes in any single direction, it's to sell tickets. Plus Disney Plus subscriptions, Funko Pops, and a wristband that gets you in line for a ticket to buy the pass to get the exclusive merch from the exit line of Disney World's

new 3D VR Zootopia experience. And you don't make money by pointing out systemic injustices in American society and then proposing a dramatic way to address them. Again, their words, systemic injustices. Some examples of that would be police brutality, economic inequality, gun violence, corporate wage theft, that one Waffle House that doesn't let me eat there anymore,

climate inaction, and the white Christian nationalism baked into our government. And yet, not only do we rarely see those types of injustices renounced in this woke Hollywood, but actually supported and celebrated with films about how corporations and rich people are worthy of reverence, or how vigilante justice is cool, or how heroes are special people

who are often predetermined from birth while other people really gotta pull themselves up by their bootstraps or better yet, find a rich person to impress and or bone. Films about the good old days and how they were rough but also super great. Oh, and you gotta have cars and guns. We love those cars and guns and America

and our founders were really cool and hid a lot of treasure for some reason. Hey, how about the fact that one of the highest grossing film series is balls deep in Christian and family values? It's actually pretty wild how Western, specifically Christian religion, is casually baked into most major films.

There is an entire genre just around Christmas. Heck, almost every horror movie about demons or vampires out there is supposing a world where the Catholic views on God and the devil are 100% accurate, except for the Babadook. He was actually a Mormon. That explains why he's dressed so nice. Ah, that Babadook.

You know, everyone's always saying that I could be a Babadook if there was like another Babadook film. I got that Duke energy. Anyway, the fact of the matter is that we're so used to an industry designed to accommodate white Christian men that anything slightly deviating from that is deemed woke.

The result being that even the fiction we traditionally see as progressive is way closer to being centrist. Like we all had a laugh when Fox News complained that Star Trek got woke because most people would agree that that show has always been progressive. And yet even that show is about a military fleet conquering and assimilating other cultures.

And also that one baseball episode from DS9. So think about that baseball episode from Deep Space Nine. Also on that subject, I've just been talking about that one definition of wokeness and not all the other ways Hollywood is actually pretty conservative. Like, did you notice that when I showed the top grossing films of 2022, the film at number one was Top Gun Maverick.

If you don't recall, that is a movie about how being in war is fun and cool. And don't get me wrong, that film was objectively amazing to watch, perhaps after eating mushrooms, but also. I'm gonna go. Copy that. Team Hyrman. Damn, so cool.

Wish I could have watched that after eating mushrooms, but alas, I didn't do that. That's an ad for the US Air Force that ran in movie theaters before the new Top Gun film, the highest grossing film of last year. And this is pretty unsurprising. After all, the original Top Gun film, the highest grossing film of last year. And this is pretty unsurprising. After all, the original Top Gun, also awesome, famously led to a surge in Navy recruitment rates,

and this new one was aiming to be no different. But what might be surprising is that it doesn't stop at that one franchise. The US Department of Defense and military have worked hand in hand with the American film industry since its inception over a century ago. In fact, the very first Best Picture Oscar winner, 1927's Wings, centers on combat pilots in World War I

and was produced with help from the US War Department, which had been initially consulted by screenwriter John Monk Saunders before they'd even started filming. By the end of World War II, the army had an entire office dedicated to collaborations with Hollywood, sometimes even producing their own films.

And this continues to today. The US military sometimes even providing their own weapons to use in the film under the specific requirements that the movie in question will quote, "'uphold the integrity of the men and women in uniform "'and the ability to do their job. That's a direct quote from the defense department branch chief for entertainment media, a job that exists.

Super woke stuff is the point, woker than Captain Marvel of all things, a film that was especially attacked for having a woke message. Do you remember that? Do you remember how woke Captain Marvel was with their direct partnership with the US Air Force? The Air Force is such a huge part of this movie.

We wanted to take a moment to spend some time with some real service men and women who are joining us here tonight at the premiere. Patooy! Disgusting, woke garbage the military is. No, really, they think the military is woke now, which really gives you an idea of either how far to the right conservatives have moved

or how nonsense the word woke has become. When Captain Marvel teamed with the US Air Force on that movie's 2019 release, the military went all in, purchasing pre-show recruitment ads in 3,600 theaters nationwide, space on nerd-friendly internet sites and videos, and even sponsoring the film's red carpet premiere. See, this is why these films punt the extreme politics

to the villains, or always blame government misdeeds on a group of bad apples. These movies are never going to speak out against the military-industrial complex or the larger system itself as a problem, because they can't. Like literally can't under contracts with the government. It's the same with spy movies

or films about the surveillance state, most of which are produced with the direct involvement of US intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA. Again, this goes back to the earliest days of American cinema. But in the mid 1990s, the CIA took a more active interest in these collaborations and formally opened up an office to liaison with the entertainment industry.

In the years since, they've worked closely with the creators of dozens of films and TV shows from Black Hawk Down to The Americans to Zero Dark Thirty to Homeland. In 1996, clandestine officer Chase Brandon was engaged to work directly with Hollywood studios and media companies to improve the agency's image. A big part of his strategy, big budget,

very visible adaptations of Tom Clancy's books about daring yet brilliant CIA analyst Jack Ryan. That's weird. Amazon has a new Jack Ryan TV series on TV right now starring the allegedly charming news show thief, John Krasinski. Chase Brandon, by the way, covertly ghost wrote the 2003 Hollywood film, The Recruit,

and ultimately inspired the Robert De Niro spook character in the Barry Levinson satire, Wag the Dog. He was also a fixture on the set of TV's Alias, which coincidentally debuted in September of 2001. In the real world, the CIA serves as our country's first line of defense in the ongoing war against international terrorism. CIA's mission is clear and direct,

safeguard America and its people. Wow, a woman in a video? That is so woke. Speaking of TV, we could probably do an entire episode just on how television shows treat law enforcement. Law & Order franchise creator Dick Wolf famously has a close relationship with the NYPD, especially after years of employing officers as consultants

on his many cop shows. He's fairly outspoken about which side of the defund the police argument his shows come down on. In 2002, Wolf boasted to the Houston Chronicle, "'Before Law and Order came along, "'it was unthinkable to have a prosecutor "'as a lead character. "'But as far as I'm concerned, they are doing God's work.'"

However, when asked about engaging with the George Floyd protests and the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, Wolf responded, "'We have always adapted to current events "'in a non-political way. "'Prosecuting next to godliness. "'Should police kill people?

"'Oh, we gotta stay non-political. "'No comment.'" In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter's Top Five podcast, SVU showrunner, Warren Light, noted that Wolf won't allow any law and order shows to feature scenes in which police officers do anything illegal. Pretty fucked up.

Also not exactly woke of him to be named Dick Wolf. Super problematic name, my guy. We're getting into the behind the scenes bit here, which is actually an entirely different can of worms. Two cans even. So let's take a break, maybe eat some more mushrooms and then more show. You love more show.

Hi, if there's one thing everyone definitely knows about me, it's that I'm very big into playing sports. That's why I invented my own sport called Putty Wacky. That's where you whack slabs of putty at each other until one of you passes out. And as a sports star, I'm here to endorse Bombas and their active wear designed to support whatever fast paced putty related activity you are doing.

Their lightweight t-shirts are designed to feel cool against your skin. They have socks that both cushion and increase airflow and their underwear is so breathable, it's like you aren't even wearing them, which is good since there's no underwear allowed for putty wacky. Oh, hey, and since they have a 100% happiness guarantee,

you can reach out to their team anytime for returns, exchanges, or replacements. So go to bombas.com slash more news and use code more news for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com slash more news and use code MORENEWS at checkout. Be a sports star like me, putty champion, Cody the Puds Johnston.

Oh man, I ate so much spinach mushroom strata during that break. Love eating mushrooms, also mescaline. Okay, so we've talked about what's on the screen. Now it's time to talk about what's happening behind the scenes. After all, if Hollywood was some kind of woke dungeon blacklisting Republicans and jamming diversity

down our throats, studio boardrooms would probably look like a Black Lives Matter rally fucked in Against Me concert. Diverse and wealthy liberals talking down to the heartland of America and et cetera. Except it turns out that despite a push for diversity in front of the camera, behind that camera, the film industry is rotten with honkies, swarms of them.

Roland Emmerich could make a disaster movie about all of the white people. That'd be fun. I'd have to check with my people, but I think I'm available to be in that. Give me a call, Roland. 2020 research from UCLA confirmed that 92% of TV network CEOs and chair people were white

and 68% were men. Among senior executives, that total drops to 84% white people and 60% men. And sure, that's an improvement over UCLA's 2015 numbers when 96% of senior TV executives were white and 71% of them were guys. But that's still pretty darn weak. And the numbers are even worse in film.

The lack of behind the scenes diversity seeps into creative suites and writers rooms as well. People of color represented less than a quarter of credited writers and directors on TV shows in the 2018 to 2019 season. Although it should be noted that this number is going up. Meanwhile, only about 30% of TV shows are created by women. On the film side, white male writers got an estimated 80%

of all film jobs in 2019, while just 5.6% went to black writers. According to numbers from a San Diego State University study, just 11% of 2022's 100 top grossing American films were directed by women. That's down 1% from 2021. Overall, women comprised just 24% of all directors, writers, executive producers, editors,

and cinematographers on the year's 250 top grossing films, also slightly down from 2021's numbers. A similar survey from USC found that just 2.7% of the top 100 highest grossing directors were women of color in 2022. If you look at the last 16 years collectively, women of color made just 1.3% of the big budget mainstream Hollywood films.

USC also found that films made by directors from underrepresented communities perform comparably on review sites to films from their white guy counterparts. It's not that these movies do worse at the box office or find fewer fans. These are good movies, and yet we still see these people underrepresented.

And to be fair and handsome, and have a lot of appeal to the 18 to 34 demo, incremental changes have been happening, but it's easy to see a small trend and get lulled into the sense that larger scale problems have been solved. In some ways, despite its reputation as a hotbed for radical progressivism,

Hollywood remains particularly resistant to these kinds of changes. It's an industry that's long been dominated by connections, legacy, and of course nepotism, which keeps power centralized and entrenched even across generations. Real woke stuff. But it's not a nepo baby's thing, okay?

Tom Hanks made that clear. It's a family business that still relies on hard work. I mean, come on, do you think Chet Hanks is only famous because of his dad? Come on, just look at the natural charisma. Big up, big up the whole island, massive. It's your boy Chet and I, coming straight from the Golden Globes, your words here.

Thanks, Chet. Woke Hollywood darling, Chet Hanks, who had a speaking role in the fourth Indiana Jones, which I'm sure he worked really hard to get. Anyway, not so great on the representation side of things, but it doesn't stop there. Remember that whole hashtag Me Too movement? How time was apparently up for predators

in the entertainment industry. Anyone check on how that went? Because according to the New York Times, Hollywood's business culture has already regressed back to the pre Harvey Weinstein expose era. Anecdotally, women working on Hollywood film and TV sets report that not a whole lot has actually changed in the day to day way.

Many who spoke anonymously with the Hollywood Reporter last year alleged that either they or a female colleague had been verbally or physically harassed in the workplace within the last five years. And most agreed that Hollywood's old guard has not actually amended their behavior. Reporting bad behavior to HR also remains an uncertain and potentially dangerous remedy

due to the possibility of blowback from colleagues. More than 70% of respondents to an October THR survey said the culture of abuse, harassment, and misconduct in Hollywood had improved somewhat, but 69% still said they'd personally experienced it in the last five years. It's very clear by all accounts that the main concern isn't stopping harassment, but looking like they stopped it.

Movie magic! The studios even brought in a number of diversity and inclusion experts in order to performatively embrace Me Too. Those experts would go on to tell the Hollywood Reporter that they were largely used as a scapegoat or shield to defend upper management from criticism. Some complained about facing pushback

when they tried to institute meaningful changes or being siloed in human resources departments without access to primary decision makers. Many discussed a sense of fatigue or frustration at the inability to actually make the changes they were hired to oversee. That's funny, people always say that I look fatigued. So, you know, if there's ever a film about this,

that might be a good project for someone like myself. Just a thought, fatigued headshots available upon request. Even the most immediate and visible impact of Me Too, as in the removal of men credibly accused of assault or sexual misconduct for major Hollywood productions was never an actual certainty or even particularly likely to happen. You don't need an article to know that David O. Russell

has a police report against him for molesting his 19 year old niece, as well as a long history of abusing his actors. If that name doesn't ring a bell, maybe the star studded 2022 film, Amsterdam will, a film that happened to be directed by David O. Russell. The O stands for, oh my God, why is this guy still allowed to make movies?

That film featured Margot Robbie, who was also in the recent film Babylon, which stars Brad Pitt, a man currently accused of spousal abuse by Angelina Jolie. Roman Polanski and Woody Allen still making movies. Jared Leto is by all accounts a pedophile cult leader and he is still getting major acting work

and starring in the highest grossing film ever made. And that's just assault and misconduct. There are also the many canceled people who seem to be doing just fine. As I mentioned before, Mel Gibson is still getting work and is slated to appear in the John Wick TV show. J.K. Rowling is still getting her work adapted. Alec Baldwin is currently on trial

for involuntary manslaughter due to his grotesque disinterest in safety protocol that resulted in him shooting and killing someone. And he has nine films in production right now, including the film that he shot someone making. And this is all still just the film industry. I haven't mentioned musicians or comedians, but it's almost like a single hashtag wasn't enough

to solve the systemic problem with a billion dollar industry run by rich white men. I mean, don't get me wrong, it is a start, but it's pretty wild that from this entire movement, we were able to kind of just nail the one guy and not much else. Oh right, and the wubba dub guy too, I guess. So, bah bah.

Speaking of hashtags, it's been eight years since activist April Reign first coined the hashtag OscarSoWhite in response to 2015's nomination of a lineup of 20 all-white nominees in the acting categories. It actually happened again in 2016, twice in a row. Double good job. This campaign did lead to attempts to diversify

the Film Academy's voting membership and has seemingly started to impact some of the results. In 2019, a record seven black artists took home awards on Oscar night. But it's hard to deny that in 2023, the Oscars are still pretty freaking light. Of the 20 major acting nominees this year, six went to People of Color

and three of those nominations are from a single film. This year's Best Actor category is Five White Guys, and Michelle Yeoh is the very first Asian woman nominated for Best Actress since Merle Oberon's nod for The Dark Angel in 1935. She actually hid her Asian ancestry in order to pursue an acting career at all. So they're sometimes calling Yeo the first openly Asian

Best Actress nominee, how depressing that is. And there's a whole lot more to say about Asian representation specifically in Hollywood, but it's probably best exemplified by the fact that the first Asian ensemble cast to win the SAG Award was presented by this guy. It's Mark Wahlberg. He did a hate crime against an Asian man.

Cancel culture, run a mock-eye, say. In terms of best picture, extremely well-reviewed films like The Woman King and Till were completely passed up, but I guess, you know, they had to make room for Avatar the Way of Water. Look, nothing against James Cameron and his super compelling story about CGI people sinking a whaling boat,

but that film is not a best picture. I'm sorry, James, please don't be mad. You're a great director and those avatars are very fun and I'd love to sit down and talk about where I could fit into that world. Like maybe there's a Navi who's really fatigued about tail bonding with the soul tree or whatever. Fatigued blue headshots available upon request.

See, what's important to note is that the reason films like Till and The Woman King didn't get nominated isn't because those films weren't as good. Like objectively, that's not how the Oscars work. Studio executives collectively choose which films of theirs to campaign for and then spend a bunch of money pushing for that nomination. So while technically speaking, anyone can be nominated,

it's almost always the people who could afford a big expensive ad campaign. It's not a meritocracy and anyone pretending it is very clearly has no idea what they're talking about. Because of how this system works, the nominations are basically handpicked by the executives. That's why you might've heard about the controversy around Andrea Riseborough's Best Actress nomination

and how some people wanted it taken away. What was her big crime? Doing her own grassroots nomination campaign. In other words, it's so expected that nominations stem from million dollar studio campaigns that people were outraged the one time it didn't happen. And that's the reason any of this matters. While the Oscars aren't important to most people,

the nominations themselves serve as a bit of a microcosm for the entire system. They're essentially a list of the films that the executives have deemed award worthy. And so when people are saying that the Oscars are so white, what they're saying is that the movie executives are ignoring non-white artists. And no matter how diverse films get,

that's kind of the root of the problem. All of this can actually be put a lot more succinctly by simply quoting the founder of the Academy and former head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer. I found that the best way to handle movie makers was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards, they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted.

That's why the Academy Award was created. And going all the way back to the claim from Tim Allen and Kelsey Grammer about how conservatives are a minority in the film industry. They technically aren't wrong, but as noted by a professor of history at USC who wrote a book entirely about Hollywood politics, corporate Hollywood tends to be much more conservative

and Republican. Corporate, as in executives. It's the thing they always gloss over when talking about the conservative minority in Hollywood, which is that this minority just so happens to be the people at the very top making the actual decisions. NBC Universal's former CEO Steve Burke, Jerry Bruckheimer, fucking Steven Mnuchin, who was both a successful producer

and Trump's treasury secretary. It's why, despite this woke push for diversity on screen, Hollywood remains mostly white dudes behind the screen. That's why it's so fucking funny whenever some silly asshole proclaims that they're starting their own conservative studio, unlike the other studios. But yesterday there was a secret screening of the film and Hollywood conservatives came out, some Hollywood conservative insiders came out, but they had to keep it on the down low. Funny, when they did

those hit films on Reagan, on Bush, and on Trump, Hollywood, I don't remember these left-wing insiders having to hide their faces or their identities. In the absence of conservative actors and a perspective, do you think that's why Hollywood just can't seem to make a film that has broad appeal in the United States anymore? Well, I think there's a myopic vision in Hollywood that's speaking to a certain cultural Marxist agenda. Thank you, Robert Davi, actor from the Marxist woke Hollywood films, Die Hard and The Expendables,

for answering the question as to why Hollywood can't make a film with broad appeal anymore. You know, because blockbusters are doing really bad right now, my goodness. Breitbart's hit film, My Son Hunter, released as a retaliation against woke Hollywood, had a screening that was attended by multiple Hollywood bigwigs,

one of which has been a producer for Game of Thrones, Moneyball, and at least one of the Bourne films. But as they noted in that clip, many of these people didn't wanna give their names because while Hollywood is absolutely run by rich white conservatives, they don't want it to seem that way because the thing these ghouls complaining about woke Hollywood almost get right

is that there is absolutely hypocrisy going on. A-list actors are paid incredible amounts of money to play dress up. They're ridiculously fortunate and they know it and they feel guilty about it. That guilt must be assuaged. And what better way to assuage it than to speak up for the less fortunate?

No one should own guns, but they have private security. Nobody should have an SUV, but they are chauffeured around in Suburbans. CO2 emissions are destroying the planet, but they fly to Cannes or just across town in their private jets. That's from the first video I showed you, courtesy of woke experts PragerU, not a university.

And while I'm not about to say that video is in any way correct, they're circling the same point here. That while Hollywood loves to do performative wokeness, it is in fact very rich, very white, and very conservative behind the scenes. Disney loves to push their first gay characters appearing in recent films.

At various times, Disney has identified between eight and 17 different individuals as the company or a subdivision's first openly gay character, including Artie, the dressmaker from Cruella, Fastos, the Eternal, Officer Spector from Onward, Josh Gad's LeFou from the live action Beauty and the Beast, and almost every time,

they're a background or side character that can be easily trimmed for international releases. In fact, whistleblowers from within Pixar told Variety back in March of 2022 that Disney executives demand the studio cut nearly every moment of overtly gay affection from its films so as to not scare away the straights.

Because at the end of the day, it's just about money and pandering to whoever has that money. If Republican values were popular, which they aren't, but if they were, then that's what we would be seeing on the screen. So is Hollywood woke? Not only is the answer no, but also that Hollywood should actually be more woke

considering the pro-military, pro-cop, pro-gun, pro-corporate messages they put out, considering all the monsters still getting work, the lack of diversity behind the scenes. Well, in my opinion, they need to crank that woke meter to 11. That said, it's worth noting that even performative wokeness is better than nothing at all.

I sort of glossed over this, but we've absolutely seen that representation in film matters, it matters to kids watching these movies, finally seeing a hero with the same skin color as them. It matters to LGBTQ people who might feel a little more included by even the side characters representing them. It's something.

It's not much, but it's something. And if Hollywood, an industry only concerned about pandering to the most popular ideas, actually finds itself leaning into progressive stories and characters, well, at least that means those ideas are popular. They've been market tested and approved by soulless money ghouls.

Neat, neat for us. So there you have it, not woke and by extension, not broke, which is weird because I have no money. And as a Hollywood elite myself, you'd think that I would, right? The hell is that about? Is there like a webpage where I register and then they mail me a check?

If like Kevin Feige or whoever is watching, can you shoot me an email about that? Thank you, Kevin Feige. Also, I do a great Groot voice if you, I don't know, if you need a second actor for that. Or like if Rian Johnson's watching, you may know me for my old Looper sketch that you've seen. You tweeted about it.

Rian, remember the sketch that you liked? Well, Rian, maybe I could be one of the poker faces or whatever. I haven't seen it yet, but I have range is my point. Please. Please, I need a win. I am Groot. Ah!

Ah, Jafar, I'm Groot! Ah! Ah, Jafar, I'm Groot! Ah! Pretty good. This is my impression of a hot dog. I'm Groot. Somebody Groot me. Hi, I'm Groot. Thanks for watching.

Make sure to like and subscribe the video and to the channel. Leave a comment that says whatever you want, because you are in control. We've got a patreon.com slash some more news. We've got a podcast called even more news and this show, some more news as a podcast called some more news where all the podcasts are go where the podcasts are,

go to them and find us. We'll be there. Um, we got merch. Stuff us. We'll be there. We got merch, stuffs on the merch and dice. And I'm Groot, you know? I am.