These were some random thoughts I had the other night. Iwas tired, but there's some sense in there somewhere, even if Harry Potter is not one of my personal geek-out favorites:)


Let us ignore for a moment that the forces at the top supporting this are in fact only out to poison and conquer (quite literally, IMO) any and all rooted supporting traditions of western society, and that clearly includes every last classic or supremely popular film they can think of. Let's say it really is instead about a virtuously utopic need for equity (which is somehow, at the same time, not a prerogative in Asia, Africa?).

It's a FANTABULOUS idea to have equity in women's sports too, right? Equal pay, equal air time, equal gym facilities and stadiums.. you name it.

Guess what? These ideas don't work where people vote with their own money. It works great in places where the government decides what entertainment there will be available to the public.

So all of these businesses have been in a jam, haven't they. You can make these woke movies and you can advertise and glorify the female versions of sports ad nauseum. Left to their own decisions, however, people are going to spend their money on what they like more, and that is what will make the most profit. Generally speaking, people relate to films more that have characters like themselves. Showing age a bit, but The Wiz was a cool ethnic take on The Wizard of Oz, and yet nobody was surprised it didn't resonate with everyone. It wasn't supposed to.

The media can do 24/7 PR blitzes about Beyonce, but try as they might for that equity concept, people still vote with their own money so, much to the chagrin of some, Taylor Swift gets to be top of the heap (at least until they try to kick the pedestal out from under her and destroy her one day, which maybe she has now escaped in the Trump era? Then again, she wasn't allowed onto the other yellow brick road to immense wealth by her gatekeepers until she was willing to diss Trump, if anyone still remembers her initial hesitation to do so).

And hey, nothing wrong with women's athletic sports, but when it comes to wanting to see the best performances, people vote with their own money, and so far at least, they want to see the fastest, the strongest. And that's men. Sorry. It's not bigotry, just biology. We can still appreciate women's athleticism. It's just not going to draw crazy testosterone-driven men to yank their shirts off for their favorite ladybeast.

Personally, I've always liked the women more when it came to tennis, in part because there is some graceful movement involved (those roided-up Williams tanks excluded). Of course, ballet and gymnastics are also great as displays of the female form. I'd rather watch any of those (in girl form at least) than a basketball or baseball game, but generally speaking.. you can't force equity onto people nor shame them into it when they are free to choose what they like with their own money.

For a while there was a super vocal minority with a bullhorn turned up to blast, and entertainment industries and sports organizations were in a damned if we do, damned if we don't predicament. The practical reality is, they need to turn a big profit on big film productions, big singing names, big sporting spectacles. And the DEI stuff was never intended to work within a system that caters to the public's desires. It was born from a top-down ideology, the "E" part, especially.

Does that mean the film industry will come back to reality any time soon? It will come, if not from the large established outfits, then from newer competing ones. Whichever caters to what people want to see with their own money will win out. Top-down ideology will never win unless they get rid of the entire system, which is, after all, exactly what some want. The Trump era may be a temporary pause in a longer trend in that direction, or it might be the start of a new era. I can tell you which way establishment Hollywood wants it to go, which is a little crazy considering the gigantic blockbusters they used to have. No more that.

I only ever saw Emma Watson in that Hermione role. I never really liked her even in the first big film. I was glad for this later, and you probably know why. I think the character is fine. Just needed a different girl. Placing a black girl in the role now would just ruin it for me because it's been done with so much force and pseudo-virtuosity by now (like how EVERY commercial is now black actors in the US), that it ruins every other part of the film. People feel like they are being lectured to when all they really want for their money is a 2-hour escape that doesn't intentionally alienate a huge percentage of the audience. That deadweight approach to entertainment should stay the domain of latenight television:p