“Gaslighting” is a popular propagandist technique with the modern media-political class. It involves presenting a false narrative to others, in order to mislead and manipulate opinion. Consider, for instance, the Ardern government and its pet media, relentlessly presenting a narrative of the Parliament Village protesters as violent extremists.
Gaslighting takes its name from the 1944 Hitchcock film, Gaslight, in which a man uses trickery to try and convince his wife she is insane. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that a particularly nasty form of gaslighting has become Hollywood’s new go-to marketing technique.
“Fan-baiting” is a form of marketing used by producers, film studios, and actors, with the intent of exciting artificial controversy, garnering publicity, and explaining away the negative reviews of a new and often highly anticipated production.
Fan-baiting first emerged as an obvious marketing strategy in 2016-17, when fans of the Ghostbusters and Star Wars films took collective umbrage at new iterations of their beloved franchises which were notably awful. The fans pointed out the dumb stories, atrocious characters and hack writing and directing.
Luckily for the studios, though, some also pointed out the cheap, forced diversity. That was all the out that Hollywood needed.
Studios seized the opportunity to discredit criticism of poor writing & acting, insinuating that these, too, were motivated by bigotry. What used to be accepted as standard critiques were increasingly dismissed as part of the ignorant commentary of a “toxic fandom.”
Suddenly “diversity” was the bullet-proof vest that studios could use to pre-emptively dismiss any and all criticism of the shoddy crud they were churning out.
Soon, it became standard practice before release to issue announcements specifying diverse casting choices, coupled with pre-emptive declarations of solidarity with the cast whom they now counted on to receive disparaging and harassing comments.
It got worse. In an industry-wide case of Jussie Smollett syndrome, studios were caught out manufacturing controversy. The media eagerly regurgitated studio press releases supposedly exposing “racist abuse” of “diverse” cast members — yet, on investigation, the “abuse” consisted of at best a handful of tweets. All from obvious sock-puppet accounts.
The conclusion was obvious: studio marketing departments were using sock-puppet accounts to racially abuse their own stars so that they could publicise the “abuse” as a marketing tool.
Actors who are women and/or BIPOC became props & shields for craven corporate laziness and opportunism. The studios save money both by avoiding expensive veteran writers as well as by offloading publicity to news outlets and social media covering the artificial controversy.
“Fan-baiting” works. It brings in a new sympathetic audience whose endorsement is more about taking a public stance against prejudice than any real interest in the art. “Fan-baiting” also permits studios to cultivate public skepticism over the legitimacy of poor reviews.
Fan-baiting is also a chilling mechanism. Legitimate reviewers are cowed into tempering their criticism, lest they be outed as “racist”. As writer Bret Easton Ellis has said, “There is no one out here in La La Land I’ve met who thinks ‘Black Panther’ is that good as a movie. Yet… the entertainment press and the studio is selling the notion that ‘Black Panther’ is a grand piece of cinematic art that cannot be ignored. And this notion is being shoved down our throats and we can only smile in disbelief.”
Or go along with the lie. Because to do otherwise is to invite denunciation.
The worst of fan-baiting, though, is its revolting cynicism. Studios don’t really care about “diversity”, they only care about money — witness Disney’s deliberate erasure of a black Star Wars actor in Chinese marketing material. In fact, Hollywood is exploiting “BIPOC” actors just as cynically as they did with the 1940s “race movies”.
Put another way, media corporations have found a way to monetize the racism that they set their actors up to receive.
The problem is not diversity in and of itself, nor any supposed “racism” from fans.
As evidenced by the success and great reviews of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” in comparison to Amazon’s Rings of Power, both of which feature a diverse cast, the problem is the quality of writing, not the complexions of the actors.
Twitter/Dr Thala Siren
