The origins of the modern culture war are hard to pinpoint, but to me Occupy Wall Street was a significant milestone. In 2011 America was still dealing with fallout of the Bush presidency. The destruction of the World Trade center, endless wars, the weaponization of the mainstream media, increasing amounts of paranoia, the financial crisis and out in the open corporate corruption. You name it. Meanwhile the growing influence of Social Media had been a significant factor in terms of getting Barack Obama elected. All that jazz about Hope and Change, him winning a Nobel Peace Prize and then... nothing. The wars kept on going and Wall Street kept on making profits. Unethically so.
Mind you, the idea of actually changing things was still fresh and so a bunch of activists set out to take some those lofty campaign promises at face value. Obviously they weren't actually true and ultimately the protests collapsed underneath their own weight. No clear goals, purity spirals, and the emergence of the modern social justice warrior. Then people moved on, the police took control and that was that. A failed revolution, but a significant one. Why? Despite Occupy falling apart it was still a fairly successful grassroots movement addressing a significant issues. Questions about big finance and its influence in politics, lobbyism and so on. Less so questions about preferred pronounts and empty virtue signaling. Most importantly, it was bound to happen again eventually.
So what does that have to do with pop culture? It seems like one of the conclusions corporate America drew from Occupy Wall Street was to start virtue signaling themselves. Obviously Nestle, Monsanto, and Halliburton didn't actually want to change, instead they settled for adopting rainbow flags, pronouns and diversity representatives. None of that matters in terms of getting food on the table, nonetheless it sounds nice and keeps people from burning your buildings down. Well, generally speaking. Now you've got the military industrial complex doing pride parades and everybody is busy discussing pronouns instead of you stealing ground water. Nobody cares! Even better, the activists are now attacking whoever is attacking YOU! Perfect!
Enter Disney. Eventually the Mouse started adopting the same approach, alongside other media companies including Netflix. I think the latter might been a little earlier in that regard, either way it started to gain traction. I suppose partially because hiring practices also started to shift and there being an increasing amount of "activists" ending up in positions of power themselves. Or creative control for that matter, which lead to some kind of runaway effect of increasing amounts of activism. The first lesbian to do this, the first person of color in a wheelchair doing that, the first trans writer to direct a straight to video sequel. That stuff.
As an afterthought: The whole escalation of the last recent few years seems like logical conclusion to the events that were set in motion decades earlier. The rise of Trump, MAGA, the backlash against that. It all seems like some kind of vicious feedback loop. Both sides are feeding on eachother and the more emotions people invest the worse it will get.
RE: How people collectively destroyed the discussion about culture... / Jak ludzie wspólnie zniszczyli dyskusję o kulturze...