HOLLYWOOD, INTERRUPTED: Amandla Stenberg: The Acolyte Got Canceled Because of ‘Hyper-Conservative Bigotry.’
As I argued in my 2nd take on this show, it’s obvious that the whole concept here was a post-2020, BLM-inspired take on Star Wars. If the Jedi are space cops then the Jedi must in fact be bad guys who indiscriminately murder entire communities of black and gay people and then cover it up. Why? Because all cops are bastards, you fascist! Someone might have suggested to the show’s creator that a show in which the Jedi are suddenly the bad guys maybe was a twist too far for the Star Wars universe, but I guess Disney though BLM-Star Wars would be edgy and therefore good. So they dumped a reported $180 million on this turd.
There’s also an interaction between the two problems. Someone could have made a very dark show about Jedi’s who abuse their authority but it wasn’t these writers. While it’s clear that was their intent, what you actually get is a show that doesn’t make sense. For instance, one of the Jedi is so ashamed of his secret past that he agrees to kill himself. Later we learn that aside from acting like an impulsive idiot (bad writing), he actually didn’t do anything to anyone. Another character (a Wookie Jedi) gets murdered for his role in this massacre, but what was his role exactly? His mind was taken over by the space witches to attack his Jedi friends. Other than that, he never harms anyone I don’t think. They started with a terrible premise about bad cops and made a complete hash of it, so much so that there is literally no one to root for in this show.
The show got canceled because the ratings were poor, the lowest of any Star Wars show released by Disney so far. And this week lead actress Amandla Stenberg, who previously put out a diss track calling her critics racist, once again released a video in which she said the show was canceled because of “hyper-conservative bigotry.” Here’s a bit of what she said.
Our show, our Star Wars show has been canceled. I’m going to be transparent and say It’s not a huge shock for me. Of course, I live in the bubble of my own reality but for those who aren’t aware there has been a rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced, when it was still just a concept and no one had even seen it. That’s when we started experiencing a rampage of I would say hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred, and hateful language towards us. You know, this really affected me when I first got the job because it’s just not something, even though I anticipated it happening, it’s not something you can fully understand what it feels like until it’s happening to you.
Later on she added: “It’s not lost on me how the way that these events have unfolded is also due to the hyper-divisiveness of the time that we live in, that is driven I would say at this point by echo-chambers of thought and algorithms that reinforce our biases. And I think that applies to everybody.” Had she stopped there it might have been a somewhat neutral take on things, but of course she immediately went back to blaming the right. “But I think that in a particular sect of people it manifests as a lot of fear for what is changing, a lot of hatred for anything that is other,” she said. She closed the clip by saying, “Let’s vote, y’all.” No need to specify who she wants you to vote for. That’s a given.
I won’t add much to this except to repeat that while I’m sure there are some obnoxious racists out there sending hate mail to Amandla Stenberg, that’s not why her show was canceled. The show was canceled because it was a woke concept at odds with the universe it was in and because of the terrible execution of the concept. It succeeded neither as light entertainment nor incisive social commentary. Those who tuned it out did so not because everyone watching was an alt-right racist, but because it was bad art which seemed morally confused.
So once again, Kathleen Kennedy was given an enormous pile of money by Disney, which she then set alight by trying to make a leftist message front and center in a TV series whose primary goal should be to entertain Star Wars’ fan base. That would result in getting positive word of mouth, which would then get many more Star Wars fans to give the house of the mouse their credit card numbers.
There’s only so many times you can fail to do that, before audiences realize they don’t need to fund this: Hollywood Bust: Technicians, Craftsmen, and Below-the-Line Workers Being Laid Off in Droves. “Unfortunately, it’s the more blue collar workers — who are not nearly as left-looney as the higher-paid actors and soulless producers — who are bearing the brunt of the recession,” Ace of Spades writes.
As Rob Long wrote last year at Commentary in “The Content Mandate Murders:”
The world, I don’t need to tell you, is falling apart. That’s bad. On the other hand, bad years for the world often mean terrific years for us in Hollywood. The rule is: When times are lousy, people go to the movies. That’s what they did during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Those were banner years for the business. Audiences were desperate for a few hours of relief from the relentlessly terrible economic news, and after 1941 they were aching for something to distract them from war in Europe and the Pacific, telegrams from the War Department, from a world that was falling apart.
* * * * * * * *
Some of the biggest movies of the 1930s were sunny and upbeat fare—musicals, romantic comedies, the merry lives of the super-rich. Maybe when you’re surrounded by poverty and depression, it’s nice to lose yourself for a few hours in glamorous Manhattan skyscrapers and elaborately costumed dance numbers.
And if you look at a list of the top movies from 1941 to 1945, you’ll still find lots of musicals, Westerns, romantic dramas. You could spend the whole day at the movies and never know there was a war on. That is, as long as you didn’t pay attention to the newsreel.
Decades later, when the world was falling apart (again) in the late ’60s and early ’70s, among the biggest movies were Doctor Zhivago, The Sound of Music, Love Story, Airport—you get the idea. When young American servicemen are dying in Southeast Asia and crazed death-cult hippies are murdering everyone in the house at 10050 Cielo Drive, who can blame audiences for thinking, Let’s go see “Paint Your Wagon” because Clint Eastwood sings! Or A VW Bug that’s sentient? I’ll grab the car keys!
Show business, in other words, is at its most successful when it counter-programs against a world that’s falling to pieces. But “counter-program” is probably not the right phrase to use, because it’s highly unlikely that any movie-studio mogul, way back in 1939 (or, for that matter, 1969) commissioned a focus group and hired a marketing research team to figure out just what the national mood was.
People were selling apples on the street. The national mood was pretty easy to discern then. And then later, when the children of the Greatest Generation were old enough to read and adopt revolutionary left-wing claptrap, nobody in show business needed to conduct a national survey to know that the nation was having a slow-motion nervous breakdown. Just look at Hank Fonda’s daughter! She’s over there yukking it up with the commies! Quick! Somebody green-light Tora! Tora! Tora!
Studios and television networks operated mostly on instinct back then, which was easier to do because the men—and they were 99 percent men—who ran those companies were deeply connected to the great, chaotic American Experiment. They weren’t producing movies and TV shows for a distant, unfathomable crowd of nobodies somewhere out there in the dark. When you include yourself in the term “American viewing public,” it’s a lot easier to know what projects to invest in. They’re the ones you’d watch yourself.
Kathleen Kennedy cut her teeth as producer for Steven Spielberg on such films as the Back to the Future trilogy, the Jurassic Park movies, and Schindler’s List. Despite her far left worldview, does anybody think she’s actually watching shows like The Acolyte and Ahsoka for pleasure?