Towards the end of the fifth season of ‘Stranger Things,’ the character of Will Byers gathers his family and friends together. He has good reason. They need to prepare for the final battle against Vecna, a terrifying, skinless monster with a penchant for mass murder and apocalyptic terrorism. But instead, Will comes out as gay.
This is perhaps the most anticlimactic moment in television since Pam woke up to reveal that the entire tenth season of ‘Dallas’ had been a dream. In laborious and earnest tones, Will takes four minutes to tell everyone that he just isn’t into girls. Cue the inevitable chorus of solidarity from his friends and a warm group hug. Given that this series is set in the 1980s, a more realistic approach would have been for them to storm out and declare Will to be more disgusting than Vecna.
This has happened so often in Hollywood that it’s become the norm. A storyline is upended to promote the ideological obsessions of the present. We’ve had a Black Cleopatra, a lesbian kiss in the ‘Toy Story’ spinoff ‘Lightyear,’ empathetic, home-loving orcs in Middle Earth, and a robot in an animated series of ‘Transformers’ declaring its pronouns as ‘they/them,’ as though mechanized killing machines are sensitive about their gender identities.
A key aspect of storytelling is verisimilitude. Movies can present completely unreal worlds, but unless an audience buys into the internal logic, they quickly lose interest. Consider the recent Netflix series ‘Ripley,’ in which a major male character is played by a female actor who identifies as ‘nonbinary.’ The characters don’t notice that she’s a woman, and we’re expected to play along. It insults our intelligence and completely derails an otherwise brilliant series.
If we want to save the arts, we must return to the universal. We have to remember that we’re meant to be entertainers, not high priests of a new religion that nobody asked for.
The audiences know it, too. The ‘coming out’ episode of ‘Stranger Things’ is currently the lowest-rated episode on IMDb. The recent live-action remake of ‘Snow White,’ with its emphasis on diversity rather than murderous stepmothers and subterranean dwarves, reportedly lost over $115 million for Disney.
Audiences are migrating to where they can find authenticity and truth. They’re supporting creators who prioritize strong storytelling over ‘the message.’ While the legacy studios are busy building ‘safe spaces’ for their writers, and scolding audiences for not being sufficiently ‘progressive,’ we are building a new industry for the people.
Hollywood used to be about what brought us together. Now, it’s about what divides us. They’ve traded the Dream Factory for an Indoctrination Lab, and the American people are voting with their wallets and their remote controls.
If we want to save the arts, we must return to the universal. We have to remember that we’re meant to be entertainers, not high priests of a new religion that nobody asked for.
If that doesn’t happen, get ready to see a lot of ‘For Sale’ signs on those studio gates.
