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Go woke, go broke

Maybe Mike Lindell should consider going woke:
Alex Wagner reports on how Mike Lindell's pillow business is suffering huge losses as a result of having a very public conspiratorial election denier as the face of the company, and looks at how the Republican Party is trying to repair the damage Trump's anti-election hype has done to their base's faith in voting.
Conspiratorial election denial bad for business pillow guy learns; GOP does damage control (MSNBC on YouTube, July 13, 2023)
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dann said:
It will be interesting to see if the backlash against the new Barbie movie will help promote it to an even wider audience than expected:

The GOP declares war on ... Barbie (Politico, July 7, 2023)
The Right-Wing Backlash Against ‘Barbie’ Is Hilariously Flopping (RollingStone, July 19, 2023)
Why does the Barbie movie have Republicans in such a tizzy? (Guardian, July 20, 2023)
The real reason behind the Barbie movie backlash (Independent, July 21, 2023)


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I agree it would be interesting. Do you have a measurable prediction? How do you think you'd go about measuring it?

For example, just over two months ago, Upchurch predicted that Bud Light would make up its lost sales volume following the PR controversy, by early July. I don't have the latest reported sales figures, but it seems that prediction has been falsified. We can follow up and confirm that at some point, if we want.

Do you have something similar in mind for the Barbie movie?
 
dann said:
It will be interesting to see if the backlash against the new Barbie movie will help promote it to an even wider audience than expected:

The GOP declares war on ... Barbie (Politico, July 7, 2023)
The Right-Wing Backlash Against ‘Barbie’ Is Hilariously Flopping (RollingStone, July 19, 2023)
Why does the Barbie movie have Republicans in such a tizzy? (Guardian, July 20, 2023)
The real reason behind the Barbie movie backlash (Independent, July 21, 2023)


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Oh good grief...

Though, actually, I'm not sure what major movies Republicans don't clutch pearls about these days.
 
Barbie had a 22 Million opening night,looks as if another "Woke" moive is going to be big hit.
 
dudalb said:
Barbie had a 22 Million opening night,looks as if another "Woke" moive is going to be big hit.
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The Dispatch Podcast people today said something to the effect of, so Barbie is a movie about a woman who finds herself in the real world and basically pulls herself up by the bootstraps and makes something of herself... while the other big movie of the weekend is about a huge government program! And which one do conservatives attack?
 
Bad data point for the anti woke reactionaries as barbie, with an explicitly feminist message, is an unmitigated success. Expect them to quietly forget their criticism .
 
Well, mainstream feminism is pretty... mainstream. From Ellen Ripley to Sidney Prescott to Natasha Romanoff, nobody is getting upset about strong women doin' it for themselves.

The putative mechanism for "go woke, go broke" is not that right-wing extremists will singlehandedly cancel something by the sheer power of their outrage. They were never going to bring Barbie down on their own.

Rather, the mechanism is supposed to be that too much wokeness will alienate the demographics that you're trying to get money from. Sometimes, there's considerable overlap - the Bud Lite debacle, for instance. They came up with a woke ad campaign that alienated their target demographic, and didn't bring in a new customer base to replace it. So, they lost money - "go woke, go broke".

The people outraged about Barbie aren't the people the studio is relying on to make money. There's plenty of moviegoers in the general public who aren't that fussed about the ideological controversies, and are happy enough to contribute to this movie's success.

Now, if the studio had decided that Barbie was a transwoman, I speculate two things would have happened: One, the amount of the general public still interested in seeing it would have been a lot lower. And two, writing and directing a trans-affirming movie would have taken priority over writing and directing a good movie. The movie would have sucked ass. It would have gotten "ally box office" opening weekend, which would have been decent but below expectations, and then it would have cratered.

That's all speculation, of course. The important thing is, "go woke, go broke" isn't about pissing off the right-wing extremists. It's about pissing off your actual customer base, whoever that might be.
 
dudalb said:
Barbie had a 22 Million opening night,looks as if another "Woke" moive is going to be big hit.
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lobosrul5 said:
The Dispatch Podcast people today said something to the effect of, so Barbie is a movie about a woman who finds herself in the real world and basically pulls herself up by the bootstraps and makes something of herself... while the other big movie of the weekend is about a huge government program! And which one do conservatives attack?
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TurkeysGhost said:
Bad data point for the anti woke reactionaries as barbie, with an explicitly feminist message, is an unmitigated success. Expect them to quietly forget their criticism .
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I really can't understand this, how did people fail to do the correct social analysis, rated what they've been told about the movie according to political beliefs of the pundit?

You'd almost think all a movie needed to be was entertaining to a mass audience to be a blockbuster rather than a political polemic!
 
Darat said:
I really can't understand this, how did people fail to do the correct social analysis, rated what they've been told about the movie according to political beliefs of the pundit?

You'd almost think all a movie needed to be was entertaining to a mass audience to be a blockbuster rather than a political polemic!
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Exactly.
 
theprestige said:
Exactly.
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Exactly indeed. Outside the notable exception of bud light, the criticism has always been that "go woke, go broke" claims frequently made by reactionary weirdos were entirely spurious, and that these various alleged woke examples succeeded or failed based on totally unrelated factors like general quality. The examples of failure were held up as proof of wokeness causing brokeness, and the successes were quickly forgotten and not explained.

The barbie movie is a smash success not because it is or is not woke, which is a metric that only the most insane reactionary fringe of the US cares about, but because it's just an entertaining movie for a variety of reasons, many of which are a bit harder to pin down (which is why it's so hard to reliably make good entertainment)
 
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dann said:
It will be interesting to see if the backlash against the new Barbie movie will help promote it to an even wider audience than expected:

The GOP declares war on ... Barbie (Politico, July 7, 2023)
The Right-Wing Backlash Against ‘Barbie’ Is Hilariously Flopping (RollingStone, July 19, 2023)
Why does the Barbie movie have Republicans in such a tizzy? (Guardian, July 20, 2023)
The real reason behind the Barbie movie backlash (Independent, July 21, 2023)


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The dotted line has resulted in the film being banned in Vietnam and the Philippines. Yes, it seems a bit silly, but then what was the point of putting the dotted line in there--just an accident?
 
Brainster said:
The dotted line has resulted in the film being banned in Vietnam and the Philippines. Yes, it seems a bit silly, but then what was the point of putting the dotted line in there--just an accident?
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There's a Wikipedia page about this question: Barbie (film): Nine-dash line controversy.

As for Go woke, go broke:
Box office
As of July 23, 2023, Barbie has grossed $155 million in the United States and Canada, and $182 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $337 million. It was described as a "record-breaking" box office success during its opening weekend, marking the highest-grossing weekend for a film by a woman director.
In the United States and Canada, Barbie was released alongside Oppenheimer, and was originally projected to gross $90–125 million from 4,243 theaters in its opening weekend, with Warner Bros. predicting a $75 million debut. The week of their release, AMC Theatres announced that over 40,000 AMC Stubs members had pre-booked tickets to both films on the same day. It earned $70.5 million on its opening day, which included $22.3 million from Wednesday and Thursday night previews, both of which were records for 2023. Barbie's opening weekend grossed over $155 million, marking the largest opening since Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($181.3 million in November 2022). It was also the biggest opening ever for a film helmed by a female director, besting Captain Marvel (2019). The film also surpassed Suicide Squad (2016) to have Robbie's highest opening weekend. The film would also surpass The Super Mario Bros. Movie to have the highest opening weekend for a film in 2023. The Barbenheimer phenomenon was widely credited with boosting interest in the film, with a total of 79% of tickets sold over the weekend (52% for Barbie) being for the two films, a total of 18.5 million people.
Barbie (film): Reception (Wikipedia)
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As for theprestige's questions, I don't know what the studio predictions are based on or how they count the number of actually sold tickets:
theprestige said:
I agree it would be interesting. Do you have a measurable prediction? How do you think you'd go about measuring it?

For example, just over two months ago, Upchurch predicted that Bud Light would make up its lost sales volume following the PR controversy, by early July. I don't have the latest reported sales figures, but it seems that prediction has been falsified. We can follow up and confirm that at some point, if we want.

Do you have something similar in mind for the Barbie movie?
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theprestige said:
ontroversies, and are happy enough to contribute to this movie's success.

Now, if the studio had decided that Barbie was a transwoman, I speculate two things would have happened: One, the amount of the general public still interested in seeing it would have been a lot lower. And two, writing and directing a trans-affirming movie would have taken priority over writing and directing a good movie. The movie would have sucked ass. It would have gotten "ally box office" opening weekend, which would have been decent but below expectations, and then it would have cratered.
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I wasn't aware of this when I saw the movie, and they don't hang a lantern on it or anything, but the "Dr. Barbie" side character is played by a trans woman, Hari Nef, who before now was best known for TV acting.

Admittedly not the leading role, but they cast a trans woman as a Barbie, a literal icon of femininity, and as far as I can tell no normal people are upset about it.

 
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TurkeysGhost said:
I wasn't aware of this when I saw the movie, and they don't hang a lantern on it or anything, but the "Dr. Barbie" side character is played by a trans woman, Hari Nef, who before now was best known for TV acting.

Admittedly not the leading role, but they cast a trans woman as a Barbie, a literal icon of femininity, and as far as I can tell no normal people are upset about it.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_7740964be8001da745.jpg[/qimg]
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Yeah, it's called acting. They cast gay actors as straight characters all the time. They cast straight actors as gay characters. They cast grown-ass adults as teenagers. People generally don't lose their brains over acting. Although you do get the inevitable fringoids who take great offense at the notion of Jake Gyllenhaal getting a high-profile gay part, or who just can't STFU about how wrong it is that Jason Priestly wasn't really in high school when he starred in 90210.

There are plenty of people who can pass as the opposite sex, with with sufficient attention to wardrobe and makeup, favorable lighting, a willing audience, and some touch-up in post.

To my point: They didn't make the character trans. Even more to my point: They didn't make Margot Robbie's character trans.
 
Brainster said:
The dotted line has resulted in the film being banned in Vietnam and the Philippines. Yes, it seems a bit silly, but then what was the point of putting the dotted line in there--just an accident?
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having seen the movie, I buy the claim from the studios that it's mostly an unfortunate coincidence.

It's a gag in the film that travelling from the Barbie world to the real world involves several steps (all with Barbie style clothing and accessories), including driving, snowmobiling, boating, and finally roller blading before arriving in California. The child-like map and dotted line is supposed to demonstrate this winding and nonsensical journey, and I very much doubt anyone was thinking about the 9 dash line while creating it.
 
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