Posted on 04/09/2022 6:42:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Very often, when companies go woke, it turns out that the wokeness is a cover for changing market forces. That is, they're not alienating traditional demographics; they're reflecting that their money is coming from new demographics. When it comes to Hollywood and the NBA, for example, the big bucks are coming from China, not America. And when it comes to Disney, the main profit center isn't children; it's young adults who, Peter Pan–like, refuse to grow up.
The brilliant Daniel Greenfield makes this point in an article entitled "Disney's Business Model is Turning Kids into Dysfunctional Adults: Its customer base isn't kids. It's messed up adults." Greenfield, as always, has done the research, and, in the case of Disney, he points to the fact that Disney's most fanatic consumers are in the over 18 demographic:
Disney isn't for kids anymore. Its movie business is dominated by Marvel blockbusters. Half of Disney+ subscribers, its big bet on the home streaming future, are adults with no children.What about the theme parks?
60% of Disneyland visitors were adults with no children. Only 36.7% of Disney World visitors had children under 18. The largest demographic for the theme parks, like the movies, are millennials. They are also members of the fandoms who are likeliest to spend money on licensed merchandise, and on toys and movie tie-ins that are Disney's bread and butter.
And Disney is rapidly adapting with theme parks and resorts that emphasize its Marvel and Star Wars properties more than classic fare. Its Galactic Starcruiser hotel, aimed at Star Wars fans, costs $4,809 for two adults. Why bother with kid stuff when you can sell $13 beers?
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
This mindset is just something I can’t get my arms around.
When I was younger, my friends and I, and siblings too, couldn’t wait to be out on our own, have our own apartments, have jobs, pay our bills, assume adult responsibilities in the world.
My own children similarly were responsible, finished school, got responsible jobs, moved out and became responsible independent adults.
This mindset of adults of chronological adult age, who seemingly don’t want to grow up, escapes me.
Why are they still spending time and resources on these childish things? Why don’t they have children?
In short, they are chronologically adults, but in reality still just big children.
crusade to bring up the next generation in accordance with their “new normal.”
Hitler tried that didn’t turn out well Marxism never sleeps every generation has the same war until understanding before acting.
They took over the schools and children for a reason.
Remarkable and useful insights: the biggest bucks for NBA and Hollywood come from China; hence their predominant wokeness. And the biggest bucks for Disney come from messed-up grownups, not kids.
Yes I think one reason the young adults (like mime) go to Disneyland now is because they have fond family memories (I took my 4 kids once a year from birth to age 18 for the past 25 years and we always had a great time).
Now my young adults sons have visited with their girlfriends once or twice and they drink in the Star Wars bar and check out the Steve Martin magic shop and remember their childhood visits there fondly.
But when current kids don’t go (and they aren’t—too expensive now and the last time I went there were hardly any kids or strollers compared to the past 2 decades), they won’t have those memories, and won’t go as young adults or when they have their own kids.
Good points.
I wouldn’t mind having a beer in the Star Wars bar. Then again, now a’days you go to a bar in any major city and you’d think you were in the Star Wars bar XD XD.
Yes.
I’ve been going to Disneyland once a year with my kids (3 day pass each time) for the last 25 years. We go from birth until age 18, and my last one has one more trip to go before she graduates from high school.
I noticed something very different last year. There were suddenly hardly any strollers or kids, in comparison with prior years. Partly perhaps due to Covid and CA parents’ fears. . .but I don’t think that’s the entire explanation.
My Gen Z son went there with his girlfriend and spent a large part of the day shopping and in the new Star Wars bar. Yes, a bar. . .overpriced too.
Disneyland is too expensive for many families now. (I have to say I enjoyed all the many wine bars now at Disneyland—there are now more than one!) And now there are rum drinks available in the restaurant in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride too. Walt is rolling in his grave for sure. . .on the other hand, Disney security does an excellent job of throwing out guests the minute they seem tipsy at all. . .
Disney’s Business Model is Turning Kids Into Dysfunctional Adults. Its customer base isn’t kids. It’s messed up adults.*
Which is scary, this has also been the business model/target of the Democratic Party for a couple of decades via their owned and controlled mass media across the board from movies, tv shows, fake news and so called music.
*frontpagemag.com ^ | Fri Apr 8, 2022 | Daniel Greenfield
They should be rescinded.
The Chronicles of Narnia Franchise...C.S. Lewis would not be happy.
Palms Spring crowd.
Remember Governor Newsolini shut Disneyland down for a long time.
This is what has happened since it reopened.
Yeah, me too. The humor was better. Bugs and Wile E., Yosemite Sam.
Mickie and Minnie just never did anything for me.
“When will the FL legislature rescind such breaks.”
That’s a tough one. Disney does employ a lot of people and any employer that size will get breaks.
What I’m looking to see is if Congress extends copyrights.
Losing control of those characters Disney will lose all resemblance of what it used to be.
“It took me until about age 50 to realize that except for our Greatest Generation, there really aren’t any adults anymore”
And as I like to point out, the ‘Greatest Generation’ also spent all their time providing for their kids and shielding them from the horrors of the real world.
...and so, with these kids having no defenses, the college professors SWOOPED-IN and turned them into the Flaming Leftists that now run the West.
Daniel Greenfield's piece is framed as a critique of Disney, but the bigger takeaway is this:
Functional people don’t spend all of their time in front of a television set. And functional families don’t plant their children in front of one and then buy them whatever they want to get them to shut up. Functional people are not very profitable for Disney or for the rest of Hollywood.
The entertainment industry went from a leisure enterprise to one that thrives on dysfunction, that is less interested in having 60% of the country watching something for an hour than having 10% of the country binge watch it for six hours. Ratings and demographic profiles of the industry reflect a profound shift away from entertainment as a past time to entertainment as a lifestyle.
And even an identity.
Yeah, yeah, #$%^@! Disney, but that ain't really the point.
The movie industry has always had a dark side, but something else has changed. Going to a movie used to be an event. You dedicated an evening to it. You left the house, journeyed to a theater, bought a ticket, sat in silence for two hours (give or take) concentrating on a film, and left. It was a one-off entertainment event, like going to a baseball game or a concert or a stage play. For many individuals and families, this became an important social ritual, done with some frequency. For me, growing up in small town southern Indiana in ye olden days before multiplex theaters, going to ten movies a year would have been a lot; I doubt if my family averaged more than two or three when I was a kid. People living in larger cities had more options; for many families, a couple of times a month or even weekly was common. But it was still an event, somewhat divorced from day-to-day life. Only hard-core cinephiles, a somewhat weird subculture, and people in the business saw more.
In this environment, the film industry tried to make films that would draw normals out to the theater. That's the discipline that has been lost with streaming.
This began to change in the 1950's and 60's with the nation's emerging television addiction. For half a century, the film industry struggled to find niches to preserve its role: "what can we do that tv can't." That era is coming to an end. Television, in the form of the streaming networks, is now swallowing the theatrical movie business. And more and more Americans are living their non-work lives in front of the screen.
The problem isn't "the movies," per se. The problem is the viewing addiction, which today extends to smartphones and other devices as well as the tv.
The healthiest part of the media ecosystem today (outside of certain conservative websites, of course), is probably the theatrical movie scene, which is notably less raunchy than what is on tv. The worst of today's trash isn't released in theaters. It goes straight to the streamers, where it is pumped into passive consumers who pay for subscriptions, not tickets, and casually surf the streamers' landing pages and fix their eyes on any target of opportunity that pushes a button. People watch garbage on tv that they would NEVER pay to watch in the theater. At the theater, they would be conscious of wasting their money. It's different for at home, subscription based surfing.
This is addictive behavior. And it's getting worse. The kids are into TikTok and have ten second attention spans.
We have the option, of course, of personally disengaging, and many of us have. But we can't win the culture war by disengaging. That just yields the field to the enemy. We can't beat something with nothing. That's the problem. If nothing else, we can at least support the good films when we can find them.
Personally, I try to watch movies the old fashioned way. I don't browse on streamers; it's been a long time since I've found a decent movie that way. (I know decent movies are available through the streamers, but it's looking for a needle in the haystack.) I pay attention to reviews. I listen to friends' and freepers' recommendations. I've recently started to quickly scan festival lists; if I find half a dozen films of possible interest out of a hundred, that's fine, and it only takes five minutes to scan the list and read the short synopsis. Etc., etc. Then I'll rifle shot a film of real interest, as opposed to allowing myself to be force fed junk by a streaming network.
It's been a long time since I've seen a bad movie.
If I like a movie enough to rewatch it, I'll buy the Blu-ray or purchase it online. Then I own it and don't need the streaming subscription. I've started cancelling subscriptions. If necessary, I'll wait until a streamer gets three or four films I want to see, then subscribe for a month to catch up, and then quit. Covid has forced many of the festivals into experimenting with online screenings, and I've taken advantage of some of those. Given the choice, I'll rent or buy a film direct from Bleeker Street, which makes that option available, rather than using a streaming network. It's all a bit like the old days of going to the theater as a conscious buyer making a deliberate decision to watch X. And again, I don't find myself watching bad films.
In a perfect world, I would have zero subscriptions and the ability to access any film in which I actually had an interest on a PVOD basis. I'm willing to pay a bit more to take control back from the Borg.
Looking for a good movie for this evening or tomorrow? Check this out: Montana Story
This is a classic "small movie," an indie family drama set on a ranch in Montana. The writer/director team was in the middle of another project when the covid shutdowns hit. They quickly realized that this project was unfilmable under the circumstances. They shelved it. At that point, they had nothing, not even an idea. But these are the kind of indie filmmakers ya gotta respect. They decided to see if they could come up with something doable, given no money and covid lockdown protocols. They noodled for an idea. A ranch in Montana suggested itself as an ideal place to achieve social distancing. They developed a story with a very small cast, written from the outset with the intention of using the smallest crew possible with no fancy gimmicks. (They wrote it from scratch in five or six weeks.) I'm sure some things would have been different with a bigger budget, but this gives it a very old-fashioned theatrical feel. They checked under the couch cushions and scraped up enough money to film it on an ultra low budget basis (>$300,000). Filming was completed in about three weeks, half of which they spent dodging snowstorms. Everything depends on the script and the acting, both of which are excellent. Don't think they make movies like they used to? Watch this. It'll cost you $13.50, but if you want to cut the streamers out of the action, put on your big boy pants and buy a ticket, like you used to before you got in the habit of expecting Netflix to bring it to you for free.
P.S. AIFF2022 placed its online films on Eventive, with which I was unfamiliar. You can watch on your computer, of course, but Eventive can also be activated on smart tv's. I found it through Roku. Good to know if you are interested in finding ways to watch that don't involve Netflix, Amazon, Apple+, etc.
Excellent point, Bob L!
We wrote Disney off in late 80s or early 90s. A co-worker was livid upon his DissyWorld trip with young kids. They scheduled and stayed at a Dissy Hotel, the one that the monorail goes thru. Well it was Pride Week. Dan said the hand-holding and casual kissing was bad enough, but the “in your face” priders were the ones that were “dry-humping”, etc when they saw the families w kids. Dan’s wife was on a mission to ensure e1 at the power plant knew what happened. Her greatest beef was that when they booked, Dissy never informed them of Pride Week.
60% of Disneyland visitors were adults with no children.
That’s because more and more adults are either staying single, or going childless.
And, Disney parks are priced out of reach of the average family of 4 anyway.
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