The Rings Of Power, And Why Companies Go Woke
You Are Wrong About Why They Desecrate Art (Part 1)
Some of you wonder why media companies can't figure out "go woke, go broke", or can’t understand that they are appealing purely to a vocal minority on Twitter that largely doesn't buy their products anyway... as though we random people have figured out a secret of the industry that they, who hire people specifically to study such trends, couldn't possibly have noticed. We see the notable success of movies like Top Gun: Maverick, and act like massive entertainment companies don't have access to the same sales data we do, and thus can't see that the masses crave fun stories with strong people displaying good values without the woke preaching. It takes very little thought to realize how ridiculous this is.
By now, everyone is aware of Amazon's Prime Studios spending approximately a billion dollars to purchase the rights and produce the television show Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, the most expensive TV show to ever air. And most are certainly aware of the massive backlash that the trailers and the show have gotten for contradicting Tolkien's original lore, for doing the Hollywood standard race-swaps (which only occur in one direction, as we've all noticed) in ways that couldn't even make sense in that world, and have turned all the men and women into 2020's TV tropes for their gender.
Despite Amazon's declaration of success, third party data has come out to show a much more dismal performance of the first two episodes, at less than 1/10th of what Amazon has claimed. Of course, the critics that Amazon Studios and their defenders have called "trolls" and "racists" were predicting this for months, and the fact that this billion dollar investment will be a financial flop is surprise to nobody who's been paying attention. So, why did Amazon go forward with it, when (apparent) failure was so predictable?
MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT WOKE COMPANIES
Many people don't really understand why some of the most major companies go woke.
You'll hear arguments about companies being out of touch with their audiences. And sure, you can find companies full of blue haired HR busybodies who live on the internet, and want to serve an ideology rather than a customer base. You can certainly find creatives, from movie directors to game developers and so on, who have a woke narrative to push and clearly don't understand the pushback they get from audiences. But those are all employees. A much smaller group has made the decision to hire those people, and chose them specifically from among all potential workers (most of whom are not largely represented by childless, 40-something, soy-swilling Progressives). People who keep their eyes on the bottom line and have detailed market data still hire these folks, despite the fact that it is often a dangerous game, profit-wise.
Some people who've looked a little further into it will blame it on the ESG score system. For those who don't know, ESG is the acronym for “Environmental, Social, and Governance” scores, where the major financial institutions give preference in working with companies that run on Progressive policies. And sure, you’d have an easier time getting investment in your company if you hire the blue hairs to promote black pansexual writers creating stories about how evil men hold back strong transgender children.
But ESG has only been a significant force for a bit over a decade, and companies have been becoming more Progressive long before then. Besides, ESG only serves to make it harder for normal and non-political companies to gain a significant foothold in the market; the companies that tend to have the most effect in the ESG-dominated media industries have hardly changed their political trajectory for decades.
The fact that ESG is now the norm being forced by the financial industry cannot itself be an end goal for this, especially since we'd need to ask why the execs and international bodies who dominate the financial industry want to push ESG to begin with.
DESTROYING ART IN HISTORY
What is happening now has significant parallels in history.
Using Lord of the Rings as an example of what is happening now, Tolkien expressed a particular view of the world and a sense of priorities in his art, as all artists necessarily must do. Tolkien was a religious and conservative Englishman, who had fought as a soldier for his nation. Tolkien explicitly wrote his stories about Middle Earth to serve as a mythology that might have existed regarding his people, since their original primitive myths were largely lost to time. Stories like The Lord of the Rings became classics that perpetuated the values, perspectives, and morals of the traditional English view on good vs. evil. It explored the importance of sacrificing for your people, and bonding with your friends for a common goal. It glorified and expressed a grandiosity regarding the cultures and peoples and nature of Northern and Western Europe. It did these things inherently, but also intentionally.
And so, The Lord of the Rings, particularly after becoming such a widely-known classic that it virtually invented the modern fantasy genre, served much of the same functions that religious stories often serve to their peoples. And there is no shortage of iconoclasm in history, where stories and art and institutions that uphold native religious/cultural values are destroyed by outsiders for a variety of reasons.
There are countless examples of this kind of destruction of culture, from the distant past to the present. In the 2000's, the Taliban destroyed Buddhist monuments that had been uncovered from the 6th century, so as not to allow the blasphemy that might inspire pushback against their own cultural agenda. Jewish ethno-nationalists seemed to have much the same agenda when they burned down the Baptist Church of Jerusalem in 1982, and subjected the rebuilt church to arson in 2007. Much of China's historical artifacts were intentionally destroyed in the mid 20th century, not by outside conquerors, but by the Chinese themselves when the Communist revolution pushed for the destruction of the "Four Olds" - which included Old Culture as one of their targets. This is a removal of undesired culture by those who would push their desired values and people in its place.
Of course, the destruction of once-great culture, never again to be remembered, is not the only tactic of those who would replace it with their own. Often there is an intentional demoralization of an enemy people, by openly humiliating their culture and their people. During the Roman empire, there are a number of recorded times where a general would be given a Triumph - a march throughout the city of Rome after returning from successful war campaigns - in which they would parade treasure from their subjugated foes. This would often include pulling important leaders behind the parade in chains, like slaves. Such an event would usually end in an execution of the, by then, pathetic remnants of once great leaders, sometimes in front of their families or other powerful members of a conquered people who had been brought back to Rome. Such a humiliation clearly shows a people that what they love and venerate are pathetic and have no value. It did little for the Romans directly, but it did kill the spirit of rebellion in the conquered, and increase the Roman citizens’ faith in their own institutions.
After seeing enough destruction and humiliation of Western art (and Rings of Power is only one of countless examples), a person might ask if war is being waged against us now. Our art, institutions, and heritage is being broken - either to be replaced entirely with those displaying outside values, or satirized in "remakes" that are little more than demoralizing parodies.
Such humiliation and degradation has little parallel in history, except in war. So, how would we defend ourselves in such a war?
The war being waged upon beauty, and discussion of how to fight that war, is coming in the next article - The Rings Of Power, And The Intentional Destruction Of Beauty