Disney’s Strange World, a cartoon flick featuring a gay teenager, belly-flopped hard at the box office Thanksgiving weekend, doing so very poorly, and costing so very much to make, that it is now expected to lose something like $147 million when it’s all done.
Naturally, the right-wing press is over the moon. “Woke = Broke: America Says ‘No Thanks’ To Disney Cartoon With Gay Teenage Hero,” crowed the Daily Wire. “Disney’s latest attempt to go woke has them going broke,” cried the equally imaginative Louder With Crowder. “Americans Slam Demonic Disney for Trying to Teach Kids About Sexual Preferences in Its First Cartoon With Homosexual Main Character,” read a headline on the Liberty Daily news aggregation site feed.
But no one was quite so excited about the film’s box office failure as Breitbart’s John Nolte, who bashed out a column bashing the “gay groomers” at Disney and their “predatory embrace” of “the sicko trans movement.” (There are no trans characters in the film.)
Over Thanksgiving, the child groomers at Disney again sought to groom your child, which cost them a loss of up to $147 million.
With rhetoric like this prevalent on the right, it’s no wonder someone went and shot up a gay club.
Strange World, Disney’s latest … animated feature, is all about spreading environmental propaganda and exposing your child to adult sexuality. One of Strange World’s lead characters is a gay teenage boy in love with another boy. This plot point has nothing to do with teaching children tolerance for people who might be different and everything to do with shattering your child’s innocence.
I’m pretty sure no one in the family-friendly film is having explicit gay sex, but whatever.
Disney’s predatory embrace of child grooming, drag queens, and advocating the mutilation of children on the altar of the sicko trans movement is no longer a secret. The Disney brand is forever damaged. Decent parents no longer trust Disney, nor should they.
He equated Disney with a creepy child predator luring kids into his van.
Maybe turning your $250 million investment into the equivalent of a guy in a van holding candy and a camera is a poor way to do business?
But, Nolte insists, straight people aren’t being bigots because they reject a cartoon movie with a gay character. It’s just that.
homosexuality makes straight people uncomfortable. We don’t go to the movies to be uncomfortable. Mainstreaming it to children is unconscionable. Suddenly, instead of thinking about love, they are thinking about the complicated world of sexuality long before they are ready. Decent people don’t do that to children.
Meanwhile, the New York Post is celebrating a British dad who took his 9-year-old son to Hooters.
Somehow Nolte didn’t feel moved to write about this example of premature sexualization.
So why did Strange World flop, anyway? It may not be the gay subplot so much as the fact that no one has heard about it; as the Mary Sue points out, Disney fumbled publicity for the film. And those who did hear about it may have decided to wait a couple of months for it to start streaming on Disney+. Of course, by then, the right will have moved onto railing hysterically about something else too woke for their tastes.
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GSS ex-noob:
Good point. I guess there is a difference between “this inspired 100 people to write fanfics” and “This inspired 1 person to write 100 fanfics.”
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) has a surprising 29 fics on Ao3, but they’re nearly all by the same two authors.
@Mediocrites, Longtime Lurker:
*laughs* Actually, she probably would… he’s no weirder than some of the other members of the cast. The series doesn’t have a ‘harem’ so much as it has a ‘collection of strays picked up along the way’, but that includes dragons from feuding clans, a high-ranking demoness, slime spirits that took on human form, a ghost, a moody kemono bard who dislikes being considered cute and is trying to play metal, and an elf that invented energy drinks.
Posted without comment.
@Allandrel: Sabotage by new management cost my aforementioned producer friends their jobs. Perhaps sabotage by the guy who just got tossed out of Disney added to the failure of this movie — did he decide not to advertise it?
@Alan: Before my time out here. If it had been around a few more years, I would have taken the cat born in 1986 there, he’d have loved it! I could only take him on-leash to our city park, but he loved riding in the car (unless we turned down the street to his vet). I got him from a friend who had Unexpected Kittens arrive in the garage, and we used to occasionally take him back there for a weekend. It was a 2+ hour drive each way, but he liked it. The first time he went back, both his parents were still alive (and together) and they had a lovely visit. Having food and vet care, he was bigger than they, and we swore they looked proud to see how their baby grew up to be such a big strapping lad. I still have the photos, and they are adorable.
(all internet threads invariably become about cats)
@ gss ex-noob
I’ll see your cats and raise you an, initially misidentified, emu.
This is so Yorkshire.
@ Alan Robertshaw
Reminds me of the time I was walking through a local green space with my dog and passed someone carrying a falcon. In Sheffield – not the leafy side either, this was Intake. Whereas round here the only slightly odd pet I’ve seen being walked was a Shetland pony, led by a bloke, followed by two very, very small girls. There is a livery stable nearby, but this family was keeping the pony in their garden. I imagined the “Dad can we have a pony?” “oh pleeeeease Dad can we have a pony” had just got too much for him and he’d gone out and bought a pony without really knowing much about equine care, but I may be being unfair.
@ jazzlet
In fairness there is a bit of Yorkshire precedent for that sort of thing.
I like the fact that owls are the only bird of prey that can’t be trained; because they’re too thick. They just have good marketing.
As for unusual pets, I lived next to a farm with a very friendly bull, called Thomas, and he used to play football with us and tag along on walks.
@Alan Robertshaw; @GSS ex-noob; @Jazzlet:
I don’t know where Great and Small, (http://www.tumblr.com/great-and-small), a novice veterinarian and zoologist on Tumblr, lives—but this stack of books comprising a found poem strikes me as a quintessential snapshot of Florida:
http://64.media.tumblr.com/a9f195843515678e5477dd6d11710ee0/cc309778bdb6e464-ec/s1280x1920/0f0f8866e08bde4b447b193123664598650c14e1.jpg
When I was a kid, and my sister was a smaller kid (maybe 4 or so), we went to a zoo and saw an emu paddock. My sister noticed a heap of emu dung and delightedly pointed it out: “Mom, look, okritch poop!”
(This was originally said in Finnish; the translation is mine)
@GSS ex-noob
I think that it is probably not the new head, since the change came fairly recently and Strange World’s lack of promotion has been a constant, rather than drastically dropping off.
Compare how long and how much Wakanda Forever was marketed: teasers started pretty much as soon as they had any footage to use, before production was even finished. But for Strange World (same company, release date just a few weeks later, also in the 9-figure budget range), almost nothing during the same period.
If it was the new (old) guy, we probably would have seen similar promotion between the two and then Strange World marketing suddenly drying up when he came on.
@Alan: Yep, they just sit there. I was once at a birds of prey demo where the smarter lot flew over the audience (we were indoors, so much oooh and ahhh; having a bird like that go over your head under an 8 foot ceiling is impressive) and the owl simply sat on an arm, blinking like “Why am I here in this fluorescent-lit place?”
Although it was very impressive when the falconer had both birds flap their wings directly into the mike. Small falcon went *slight flutter*. Owl went ” “.
@FMOx: Perfect!
@Allandrel: Good point. They must have decided to dump it months ago, maybe even a year. Gave it the token ads right at the end, and not many of those. Weird decision, but okay. But at least they released it instead of destroying it like WB did to Batgirl. Grrr.
WF technically started marketing when it had a title, of course, then 30 seconds of random footage.
@Full Metal Ox:
The bit that troubled me about the second Doctor Strange film was that
@Surplus to Requirements,
If you haven’t already, look up the Netflix (?) series WandaVision (six episodes, I think). It’s set almost right after the events of Endgame, and gives some reasons for Wanda’s actions in Multiverse of Madness. Stereotypical reasons to be sure, but still reasons.
@Surplus: There were like 10 seconds at the end of the TV show, but that doesn’t count for character development and it wasn’t in the movies.
Anyway, if Strange listened to Wong, the multiverse would be so much better off. It’d be great if everybody listened to Wong.
TV show? What TV show? Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D? I don’t recall Scarlet Witch being in that (or, really, any of the big-name stars except Coulson). Ditto Agent Carter. If there were any other MCU tie-in TV shows, neither the normal TV stations nor the nominally* sci-fi-themed cable channel here ever saw fit to air them. Just the two I named.
* It has all the Star Trek reruns and similar material, but it’s strayed far from its roots when it would air “commercials” for extraterrestrial energy drinks and do a bit of Rifftraxy commentary through B-movies like Time Runners. Last night it aired a whole string of heist movies and other non-SF action flicks, while Showcase was back to back aliens, spaceships, and at least one zombie virus … at least there’s no wrestling.
Yet.
GSS was probably referring to Wandavision.
@ surplus
I liked your analysis.
I’ve seen though some plausible arguments that suggest the idea of a sort of ‘cold’ civil war.
The basic premise: The country may be split 50/50ish in terms of party support; and of course there’s all the electoral manipulation that favours red states. But 60% of US wealth is currently concentrated in blue states; and 75% of college graduates live in blue areas.
So the theory is that that wealth and education will continue to concentrate in blue areas. All the big ‘future proof’ industries are moving to those areas. The heavy industries that provided a lot of income in red states will continue to decline as automation, and outsourcing abroad becomes more prevalent.
So there is a growing trend for wealth to accumulate in blue states. They’re more geared up for where the US is heading economically.
Eventually then you’ll end up with two societies; an expanding one that can adapt to the future; and one in decline clinging to an outmoded past.
“Wandavision” … Can’t say I recall ever seeing that when scrolling through the listings here, local or cable. Nor any ads for it. Either it was on a channel I don’t get with my cable package, or it wasn’t imported at all, or there’s no such TV show, as near as I can figure.
@Surplus to Requirements:
“Wandavision” … Can’t say I recall ever seeing that when scrolling through the listings here, local or cable. Nor any ads for it. Either it was on a channel I don’t get with my cable package, or it wasn’t imported at all, or there’s no such TV show, as near as I can figure.
@surplus
It’s on Disney +
That’s not, to my knowledge, a TV network. If it’s a cable channel I don’t seem to get it here.
And it was excellent. I think Strange mentioned it in passing in MoM, but with no explanation, just the name of the town. Wiki is your friend before seeing the movies.
I adored “She-Hulk” just in and of itself, but also how much it pissed off the incels/MRAs.
(Also, everyone should still listen to Wong.)
I try to avoid likely places to encounter spoilers before seeing the movies!
Especially now that I have to wait for the
torrentBlu-Ray, since there’s no way I’m spending 2 hours in a poorly ventilated cramped box with 200 random people, mask or no mask, shots or no shots, until COVID is officially declared dead.Besides, my finances are not particularly good these days. It’s not just the *@&! inflation, it’s the ongoing stamina problems forcing me to spend on taxis, and now some complete idiot in the city works department has wrecked the streets nearby, which is forcing detours that add another five dollars plus to those same taxi fares. Of course there’s no mention anywhere of compensation for people financially impacted by this stupidity; just a promise that it would be done by “the end of November”, which apparently actually means sometime around Christmas. The road they ripped up wasn’t even that bad for bumps and potholes, with several elsewhere in town that are in far worse condition that they’ve not dug up and repaved in decades. It seems the primary criterion used to decide which road to repave next wasn’t “which one is the worst to drive on” but “which one will be the most inconvenient for Surplus”. Because of course it was.
I do need to thank whoever here suggested getting generic FloNase, though. I’m not sure if it’s actually cheaper than the Allegra, but, get this, it actually fucking works. Of course, so did the Allegra at first, before this pseudo-allergy-thing-whatever evolved resistance (and thus proved itself to be no ordinary allergy).
@ surplus
I’m the same. There is though a convincing body of research that shows people actually enjoy media more if they do know how it ends. Something about your brain being more intrigued by a journey than a destination.
That’s probably just as well when I have friends who hand over DVDs with “You’ll enjoy this. Turns out Bruce Willis is a ghost.”