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As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

economist.com

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Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#151

Post by kelnos »

slibhb wrote: post #112
krapp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, having the one black or gay character in a tv show is obvious tokenism, particularly when portrayed as shallow stereotype, but it seems to me as if any attempt at representation nowadays is written off as "political" or tokenism, even when it's sincere. It's like, you can have Asians OR Latinos OR Blacks OR gays but no more than two, and they can't stack, and you definitely can't rewrite an existing character t…

> Sure, having the one black or gay character in a tv show is obvious tokenism, particularly when portrayed as shallow stereotype, but it seems to me as if any attempt at representation nowadays is written off as "political" or tokenism, even when it's sincere. This is the crux of the issue. To me, "attempts at representation" are demeaning by definition . Giving someone a part because of their skin color or sex or s…

> Giving someone a part because of their skin color or sex or sexual orientation is demeaning.

I really hope you're not suggesting that the reason why nowadays casts aren't solely composed of straight, cis, white people is because all of the unqualified other actors are being given jobs they don't deserve.

Maybe "attempt at representation" can also mean producers, writers, casting directors, etc. just finally realizing that the world is full of more than just white people, and maybe stories should be written that include those people too. It doesn't have to be some awkward forced diversity where it doesn't make sense.

> Diversity has to be genuine for it to be good.

Sure, and yet I just see a lot of hand waving about all this rampant non-genuine diversity without any evidence that this is widespread. Certainly that sort of thing exists: of course we've all cringed at a character or casting decision that was clearly made for the wrong reasons. But I just don't think I see that happening that often these days. Maybe broaden the types of TV shows and movies you watch to stuff that isn't targeted squarely at straight, cis, white people?

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#152

Post by kelnos »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #150
paulpauper wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same story but more diversity in casting

Yep. Mostly taking former white roles, and just replacing the actors/characters to be black... There are whole conspiracies about hollywood being against gingers specifically. Instead of taking a new story, and making a new movie with something we haven't seen before 50 times (and here they can take some story from an actually diverse world), they take an old story (eg snow white), that we've seen many times, in many…

I'm not sure why you're so offended by remakes of things where the race of a main character has changed (on the grounds that writers should be able to come up with some new stories), but for some reason are ok with remakes where the race of a main character is kept white.

> Or are the beancounters stopping any risks, so they feed us 200+ year old fairytales, that we've seen before?

I mean, yes, I think this should be pretty obviously the case, given all the remakes and reboots we've seen in the past decade or two. This has nothing to do with some diversity conspiracy, though.

To be fair, though, I do think there is at least some creativity in animated movies recently (that don't specifically target a white audience), for example (IMO fantastic) movies like Coco and Soul.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#153

Post by OnlineGladiator »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #104
citizenpaul wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> amazed that companies haven't figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be I was once asked to do some stats on the marketing effectiveness of a company I was at. Not my job but I really hated a couple of the people in the marketing dept so I went at the task anyway. I had long had suspicious that the advertising was mostly smoke and mirrors so I was glad to find out that I was right…

On the other hand a good marketing person is worth gold. In one company I contracted at they had a marketing person who was super proactive and really worked social media , the press and other channels. She pretty much singlehandedly made the company into a known player in their field. Same probably goes for good salespeople. But there aren’t too many people of that caliber. Most just go through the motions.

> On the other hand a good marketing person is worth gold.

I don't deny this, but I think you can say this for any position that ultimately can deliver something. A good PM, a good IT manager, or just the accepted good engineer. People that really want to contribute will work on what matters most and set their egos aside. I say this as someone who has been a PM before and realized it was not the most critical function at the time, so I offered to go back to engineering (I've worked full time as both for years). A good employee will contribute the best they can, and a great employee will be able to identify what matters most and works towards helping (even if they can't do it themselves).

I realize my comment is a tangent, I just feel like it's unnecessary siloing that props up some positions as more important than others. It will depend on the situation. Sometimes you need more engineering talent, sometimes you need more salesmanship, sometimes you need more product direction - it's impossible to know without being at the company. And it's very hard to recognize what matters most outside of your area of expertise.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#154

Post by kelnos »

spiderice wrote: post #84
dragonwriter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even Bill Maher agrees. Bill Maher is a shallow elite contrarian, not a progressive that it would make sense to say “Even” about when he agrees with criticism of something perceived to be on the left.

I love how now that he disagrees he's suddenly "not a progressive".

That's not a new take on Maher, and it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that it is.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#155

Post by ajsnigrutin »

kelnos wrote: post #152
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Mostly taking former white roles, and just replacing the actors/characters to be black... There are whole conspiracies about hollywood being against gingers specifically. Instead of taking a new story, and making a new movie with something we haven't seen before 50 times (and here they can take some story from an actually diverse world), they take an old story (eg snow white), that we've seen many times, in many…

I'm not sure why you're so offended by remakes of things where the race of a main character has changed (on the grounds that writers should be able to come up with some new stories), but for some reason are ok with remakes where the race of a main character is kept white. > Or are the beancounters stopping any risks, so they feed us 200+ year old fairytales, that we've seen before? I mean, yes, I think this should be…

Snow White is white in the story itself - "skin as white as snow". It's a "historic" fairytale set in northern europe, where people are white. It has many adaptations, where they keep to the canon, and she's... well, white as snow. It's literally in the title.

Snow white has "skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony". Even if she stays white, if the actress was blonde, that would bother me... she's not Snow White anymore.

I know this page is very american-centric, but snow white was one of the stories most of us here in europe read (or listened to our parents read) as kids, and we all remember the story, and the image of Snow White, we've all built in our heads.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#156

Post by takoid »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #67
hmsshagatsea wrote: post #13

How about hollywood starts making GOOD content again?

I remember when the first Avengers movie came out, a lot of my industry friends repeated some nonsense line about how we need to see Blockbusters so that the money can trickle down to independent filmmakers and riskier ideas. 10 years later and the market is saturated with super hero films, the independent directors are all directing Disney blockbusters, and the riskier ideas only get a spotlight during Oscar season…

> we need to see Blockbusters so that the money can trickle down to independent filmmakers and riskier ideas

Did they ever expand upon how this trickle effect supposedly happens?

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#157

Post by [deleted] »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #126
slibhb wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, having the one black or gay character in a tv show is obvious tokenism, particularly when portrayed as shallow stereotype, but it seems to me as if any attempt at representation nowadays is written off as "political" or tokenism, even when it's sincere. This is the crux of the issue. To me, "attempts at representation" are demeaning by definition . Giving someone a part because of their skin color or sex or s…

I agree. There's also the issue that typically the token minorities really seem to be sanitized of their actual culture too. They're white characters played by minority actors. And as a result, it feels patronizing to the viewer and the minorities.

[deleted]

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#158

Post by amyjess »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #67
hmsshagatsea wrote: post #13

How about hollywood starts making GOOD content again?

I remember when the first Avengers movie came out, a lot of my industry friends repeated some nonsense line about how we need to see Blockbusters so that the money can trickle down to independent filmmakers and riskier ideas. 10 years later and the market is saturated with super hero films, the independent directors are all directing Disney blockbusters, and the riskier ideas only get a spotlight during Oscar season…

That's because all the riskier ideas are on television and TV-emulating streaming services (if you make a series divided into "seasons" and "episodes", I consider your series television even if it's straight-to-streaming).

The traditional roles of TV and film have been inverted. Film is now mindless entertainment aimed at the widest possible audience, while television has become a medium for plumbing the depths of artistic possibility.

I chalk this up to two things:

1) Film is increasingly internationalized in ways that television isn't. A movie has to appeal to a wide variety of cultures, all of whom have different mores. Ultimately, the only thing the whole world can agree on is that explosions are fun.

2) Television offers a more flexible format. You can only sit in a theater for so long without a break. Television lets you do sprawling, drawn-out epics with hours of content a year. Television lets you mix serialized and episodic storytelling as you please: your series can lean into one or the other, or it can offer a mixture of both with the showrunner using the balance of serialized and episodic content to carefully control the pacing, set up expectations, and then possibly subvert them. This has always been true, but television has historically been beholden to FCC regulations, network BS&P, advertisers who panic when faced with anything unconventional, rigid time slots, and linear programming. The rise of non-linear consumption (e.g. DVRs), premium cable, and direct-to-streaming series have completely blown the doors off what's allowed on television (or "television"), and showrunners are taking advantage of it in a huge way.

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#159

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

Slow_Hand wrote: post #77
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dune isn't going to suck because of the pandemic. It's going to suck because of the pg-13 rating.

What element of Dune do you think would suffer by not having an ‘R’ rating? It’s not as if the book is reliant on anything exceptionally violent or obscene. Probably the darkest element is the reference to The Baron’s rape of young people. Frankly that’s better off as something to be implied and not depicted. I think you can get away with enough in a PG-13 to suit the tone of this story. Watching the recent trailer y…

Well for one thing it's about drugs...

Re: As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”

#160

Post by drewg123 »

amelius wrote: post #120
drewg123 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Movie theaters can't go out of business soon enough for me. I hate being trapped with rude people talking and using their phones during the movie. Not to mention people who don't believe in baby sitters, and bring their infant or toddler along for a good scream fest in the middle of the show. And don't get me started on loud eaters, flatulent people, etc. I think they've been on borrowed time since the 80s, when vide…

Uh, you can just watch movies at home if you don't like theaters ...

But not first run movies that have a theatrical window.
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