February 11, 2023

What's on the Disney Channel?

Here's the Rotten Tomatoes page. From the critics reviews:
Gay dads? A gender nonconforming fashionista? All voiced by queer actors? I’m obsessed.

From the audience reviews:

This is just so bad on so many levels its quite difficult to articulate the extent to which the writers and actors have debased themselves, so I will try and sum it up. It's horrifically appalling.

There seems to be a discrepancy. 

57 comments:

stlcdr said...

How are critics paid except to write good reviews with kickbacks from the producers of the thing in question? They are not doing it to be entertained but paid.

RMc said...

There's such a major disconnect with the critics and the audience these days. According to RT, roughly 40% of the professional critics liked "Velma", while everybody else agrees it's the most awful thing in the history of human existence.

Kai Akker said...

Any who use those rating services or agglomerators has probably learned the lesson that the critics' reviews are contrary opinion. What they like, perhaps as a break from watching so many lifeless productions (being generous here), is usually tedious, pretentious, or "cutting-edge" fashionable in a bicoastal kind of way. If you enjoy being entertained, the real audience reviews are the ones to pay general attention to. You still have to pick your spots, but that is the necessary default with which to begin, as I've learned it.

gilbar said...

Serious Questions
How many Billions, has Disney lost.. This Year?
How many Thousands, has Disney laid off.. This Year?
What's Disney's market capitalization?
How's that saying go? is it "Go Woke, Go Broke" ?

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Slave ownership guilt trips.

Do the German beat their children to death about Nazi German guilt?

Butkus51 said...

some think Joe knocked it out of the park last week.

You cant fix stupid

Rusty said...

I always look at the audience score. That will give you a better idea of how watchable a show is. People generally know when they're being bullshitted.

Mark said...

Doubt the audience member actually watched it. Review bombing has been a thing for years.

Add to the fact that Rufo is using wverything he can to encourage review bombing.

Bob Boyd said...

I sometimes hear people who tend to look down on the mass of humanity talking about how Steve Jobs famously said, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. They forget about the hard part. Steve Jobs offered people something better, not just something he wanted them to want.

rehajm said...

People generally know when they're being bullshitted

The audience score for this comment- 11%

rehajm said...

I haven’t figured out why rotten tomatoes doesn’t fake the results they want like the rest of the media…

Aggie said...

Critics today pre-evaluate the audiences instead of post-evaluating the material. The pros have become a collection of self-endorsed influencers. Where is the value added?

Tina Trent said...

Repulsive anti-white racism.

But can't Chris Rufo behave with some dignity at this point? He is discrediting the much-needed efforts to reform higher education with his foolish little crossed swords, failure to run public meetings according to state law, and silly posting like this.

City Journal shouldn't be letting him behave this way, and he is humiliating the governor and the other, credible, new trustees.

He also recently took sole credit on the Jordan Peterson podcast for an educational reform movement that was around for decades before he noticed it, thus insulting the hundreds of thousands of parents, taxpayers, and purged educators who have dedicated themselves to this cause for decades.

The Governor of Florida should replace him with another conservative trustee, preferably one with a real record of understanding systems reform, public relations, political coalitioning, and institutional rules. He's an embarrassment.

Patrick said...

Why are these international corporations destroying the moral fabric of America? It can't be because it is profitable for their US market. Who makes these content decisions?
I think of these social media corporations like twitter which was never profitable. If I were an emerging Asian superpower and I wanted to destroy America, I would simply pour money into these ridiculous social media moneypits and have them brainwash the next generation. Easy to do really. Hire a plurality of mentally unstable people and give them content moderation power. When profits aren't an issue, that sort of intellectual rot can spread freely. Same model as we have seen in our colleges & universities, where profitablity is not a factor in keeping a poor product (in this case ideas) from flooding the market.

cassandra lite said...

This reminds me of a movie from the '80s that was praised by every major critic--at a time when print and broadcast critics could make or break a film. I no longer remember what the film was, but I'd seen it, having read the glowing reviews, and knew about ten minutes in that I'd wasted my money. And time.

Then I read Stanley Kauffmann's review in The New Republic, which was then an excellent weekly, though Kauffmann's reviews often came out late. He'd hated the same movie I had, but only he was willing to state that this piece of dreck was admired by the other critics solely because it was so opaque and pretentious that they were afraid they'd missed its excellence.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

The leftist authoritarian woke scold machine has infected Disney.

I hope Disney breaks and fails.

tim in vermont said...

The first time I saw something like this was in PBS, "Fairy Tales for Every Child" and they had an episode with a white country music singer as the star, maybe Loretta Lynn, it was a long time ago, my daughter was still young, and the white people were portrayed as pigs.

Did I tell you that hundreds of millions of funding for PBS and NPR were put in that 1.7 trillion dollar fuck-you-to-the-American people, signed off on by Ukrainian tie wearing Mitch McConnell? Oh yeah, and those guys buried the Hunter laptop story good and deep, didn't they.

Michael K said...

I agree with Patrick.

When profits aren't an issue, that sort of intellectual rot can spread freely. Same model as we have seen in our colleges & universities, where profitablity is not a factor in keeping a poor product (in this case ideas) from flooding the market.

Somebody is paying for this. A lot of tax money but the ideas are being paid for by somebody, maybe China.

tim in vermont said...

"Why are these international corporations destroying the moral fabric of America?"

What is kind of amusing about the situation is that young people are no longer willing to sign up for the military, so the American Empire is bound to collapse of its own contradictions. Marx got a lot wrong about economics, which is why Russia and China had to resort to economic fascism, but he was a very astute political theorist.

These people are in a cabal, and the destruction of American culture suits one faction, and perhaps suits the CIA, since it subverts critical thinking by convincing people that analysis is impossible and conditions people to accept absurdity as normality. Edward Albee could have been the communications director for the White House and little would have changed.

Leland said...

Money can't buy you love, but it can buy a positive review from a critic on Rotten Tomatoes.

JAORE said...

Here is the worst (IMO) of the "critics" opinions:

"Gay dads? A gender nonconforming fashionista? All voiced by queer actors? I’m obsessed."

Well let's all just swoon together.

Not a word about the story, the theme, the entertainment value. Just it touched so many check boxes at once he nearly had an orgasm.

Mighty helpful.

Drago said...

Dumb Lefty Mark: "Doubt the audience member actually watched it. Review bombing has been a thing for years.

Add to the fact that Rufo is using wverything he can to encourage review bombing."

LOL

And here come the lefty projectionists, as you knew they would.

tim in vermont said...

"A lot of tax money but the ideas are being paid for by somebody, maybe China."

That's possible too. Thirty million dollars to Penn University, which then opened the Penn Biden Foundation, where classified documents were found, and which paid Joe Biden almost a million dollars for a now show teaching gig. Oh yea, and Blinken was the head. Whoever is running it does not have the best interests of Americans at heart, though. It could be payback for the Opium Wars, China views us as the inheritors of the British Empire, and so equally culpable.

Somebody found a way to "hypnotize" ChatGPT, and got it to list ethnicities in order of IQ, and the Chinese are at the top.

tim in vermont said...

"Review bombing has been a thing for years."

This is not something people on the right have time for. Can you imagine, for example, a Republican working at AirBnB decide that it would be a good use of time to hunt down the parents of Twitter personality he didn't like, and cancel their account?

Mike Petrik said...

What Tina Trent said.

Gahrie said...

Doubt the audience member actually watched it. Review bombing has been a thing for years.

Yeah.

I first noticed it when Hollywood started going woke and their movies started bombing and they needed an excuse to avoid cognitive dissonance.

Weird coincidence.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

It's too late to put the race genie back in the bottle. We (by that I mean the predominant culture) are putting people (based on skin color) in a series of corners while sitting back and watching them react. Those reactions are then going to be used to extract more concessions and more power. That power will in turn be used to send people to jail for making a meme, sparking sporadic violence, but, if you frame it correctly, as in health mandates, people refusing to go along will stand accused of yet another kind of insurrection.

It's going to get ugly. Like the oracle said to Neo, I hate giving people bad news.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

...send people to jail for making a meme, sparking sporadic violence, but, if you frame it correctly, as in health mandates...

I've picked this up listening to Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn "America this Week" -the Charlie Hebdo part.

n.n said...

Diversity, Inequity, Exclusion or DIEversity.

Maynard said...

I am so old that I remember when liberals thought that stereotyping was a bad thing, not an "educational" tool.

n.n said...

so old that I remember when liberals thought

Liberalism is a philosophy of divergence. Yesteryear's liberal is today's conservative. #PrinciplesMatter

Joe Smith said...

Probably self-hating white writers.

I still haven't figured out what 'white fragility' is supposed to mean.

My white ancestors survived two world wars, famine, the great depression, racism in America, and a whole lot more.

All without taking a single red cent from the government.

And yet, here I am.

Doesn't sound like fragility to me...

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

I was taught not to stereotype. to take people as individuals.

The left like stereotyping. esp if it's a white person.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Maynard... That was in a different century!

Josephbleau said...

“ethnicities in order of IQ, and the Chinese are at the top. “

I know this is a touchy subject but In typical lists Jewish people are at the top, then South Korean, Japanese, and Han Chinese. It is a stereotype though, because black African Igbo people are also a very smart subset.

This all seems speculative for me, how can you be sure that countries test all the people who are not in school in urban locations and such who may score lower. Opportunities in cities sort people to some degree. But it is the way to bet. In the US, among immigrants we see the smartest people of all countries because they are more able to immigrate.

In the US we see that people in Massachusetts score higher in intelligence than other states, that may be counter to what some think, but iq is not necessarily related to good government, as in China.

Birches said...

Not enough people cared to take down the rot until Chris Rufo made the issues tangible to people. Sorry, you're not getting credit, but without Rufo you would still be shouting in the void.

MayBee said...

It reminds me of another current entertainment "controversy". A new Hogwarts game has been released, and the gaming press and Twitter are all acting as if it is a very controversial game that should be ignored because JKR is a TERF and has ruined her own franchise.

In the meantime, the game is the bestselling game of all time.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

“Fragility“ is a barely disguised rebranding of White Guilt, which being a common term (and affliction) is not eligible for copyright protection. They’re all selling the same White Guilt under their own brands: 1619, CRT, BLM, Bulwark etc.

Creola Soul said...

Go woke, go broke.

Randomizer said...

Does anyone pay attention to the Rotten Tomatoes ratings except to note the disparity between critics and audience scores?

To consider a new TV show, I read the reviews on IMDB. The insincere reviews are easy to spot. They usually start with, "Ignore the negative/positive reviews, those people just..."

I do not know why Disney hates America, but I assume thatpeople at a high level are being paid buy are enemies.

wendybar said...

Straight up racism. Typical from the left now. The White Liberal left are STILL the racists after all these years.

Static Ping said...

I've mentioned this a few times before, but I will mention this again. What you are seeing on Rotten Tomatoes is the GOAL. They are intentionally making a show that will alienate at least half and possibly far more of the potential audience. The people making this show were all hired because they marked diversity boxes, not because they have any talent, and they rarely have any supervision. The people who hired them hired them specifically so they could be praised as stunning and brave at the right parties and by the media. The reviewers in the media are devout wokesters, financially dependent on the the company making the product, terrified or criticizing diversity hires, or some combination of the above, and therefore must praise the show no matter the quality. The hope is the combination of the glowing (and fake) reviews and the hate watchers will make the show viable. And, if it doesn't, who cares? Everyone got paid. The failed show runners will continue to be hired since they were hired with absolutely no concern that they were any good, and they can't fire them since that would be X-ist. The executives are being paid more money than they will ever need and have gained massive social credit for their efforts, and anyway they can't fire the showrunners since that would be X-ist. And the media reviewers never face any backlash by anyone who matters, so who cares what the mouth breathers think, even if they are 80% of the potential audience.

True, this sort of thing will eventually run out of money, but you can make a lot of money by bleeding a "too large to fail" company dry.

Owen said...

Static Ping @ 2:25: Good point about media business persisting with mediocre “talent” even though the product bombs. Because the “talent” was chosen to pander to “X” constituency, which is always ready to punish efforts to return to merit-based staffing. And because once you have built a track record of mediocrity (and so have your competitors), your remaining public is easier to please. You can get by for a good long time, just ladling out more of the same schlock, and dodging any accusations of bigotry.

Patrick’s point about the rotten product of our educational institutions is spot-on and I think a similar dynamic is at work there. These are second-rate people and they surround themselves with third-rate people.

dbp said...

Mark said...
Doubt the audience member actually watched it. Review bombing has been a thing for years.


There were 236 audience reviews.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

cassandra lite,

This reminds me of a movie from the '80s that was praised by every major critic--at a time when print and broadcast critics could make or break a film. I no longer remember what the film was, but I'd seen it, having read the glowing reviews, and knew about ten minutes in that I'd wasted my money. And time.

Hmm . . . Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire comes to mind. Boyfriend (now husband) and I read a rave review and went to see it. Something of a miscalculation, to put it mildly.

Known Unknown said...

"But can't Chris Rufo behave with some dignity at this point? He is discrediting the much-needed efforts to reform higher education with his foolish little crossed swords, failure to run public meetings according to state law, and silly posting like this."

This cracks me up. If you truly believed that American education was in ruin, you would do everything you could to change it, even silly Twitter posts.

Your enemies don't give a shit about the rules.

gilbar said...

surprised there's been No mention of Hollywood's "Gay Mafia"
(Adam Carolla: The Gay Mafia Is Real)

surely, y'all have noticed; that EVERY tv show and EVERY movie HAS TO have At Least One (preferably more) gay main cast members now? Shows are NOT going to get funding, unless..

Big Mike said...

I've used Rotten Tomatoes as a guide to whether it's worth flying for two tickets and a tub of popcorn, and I've gotten used to seeing a difference between critics' scores and audience scores. But this is the most extreme difference I've ever seen.

Tina Trent said...

Known Unknown.

You're nauseating naive.

The opposition is so crazy, just let them expose any resistance by behaving.

You know nothing. Funny pun, that.

Tina Trent said...

Also, Known Unknown -- coward anonymouse Rufo maybe -- the first time I tried to reform New College legislatively was in 1985.

What's your track record, mouse?

SteveWe said...

Static Ping @ 2:25: You summed it up perfectly.

tim in vermont said...

"I know this is a touchy subject but In typical lists Jewish people are at the top,"

"Hypnotized" ChatGPT put Jews second, I live among Jews, almost everybody I know is Jewish, so I can only assume that this is some kind of generalization.

Known Unknown said...

"The opposition is so crazy, just let them expose any resistance by behaving."

You live in 1995 Mitch McConnell land. No one cares. A fucking invalid was elected to the Senate just because he had a D next to his name. Keep playing nice and see what happens.

"the first time I tried to reform New College legislatively was in 1985."

You apparently did a bang-up job.

Bunkypotatohead said...

"1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect."

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

This fits here - Bill Maher on the New RED Woke Army

Tina Trent said...

Known Unknown: the activists who preceded Rufo did all the work to get the issue noticed. We put into place laws and rules in several states returning power to local residents and statewide for parents and taxpayers to review all course curriculum, textbooks, and handouts, with the power to negotiate with State Regents and publishers to present factual, unbiased, non-DEI texts. That's a huge accomplishment. We also elected governors and other representatives who support school reform. I could go on, but why fight with an anonymouse? I just don't want to see amateur behavior harm our decades of hard work. He's only there because we did that work. Things don't happen overnight, and I hope the new trustees succeed, including him.

takirks said...

Josephbleau said:

"“ethnicities in order of IQ, and the Chinese are at the top. “

I know this is a touchy subject but In typical lists Jewish people are at the top, then South Korean, Japanese, and Han Chinese. It is a stereotype though, because black African Igbo people are also a very smart subset."


What's the common denominator, there? All of those are ethnicities and nationalities that have had long experience of living in what we'd term "civilized conditions". They've adapted to those conditions, some of them better than others. They have high levels of cultural cooperation, and exhibit a lot of skill at abstract thinking.

They do well on the tests. Mostly, because they wrote them in the first place.

Does it ever occur to anyone that what you're likely measuring with an IQ test is something other than that which the average person would label "smart"? I would, if I could, totally recast that whole IQ test and call it an "Adaptation Quotient" rather than some nebulous concept of "intelligence as a virtue". Why? Because, from where I'm observing the early 21st Century, the people those vaunted IQ tests are identifying and then elevating to positions of technocratic authority within our society are not exhibiting much in the way of qualities like wisdom and common sense--Which I'd like to suggest are key things you want in such jobs. Instead, by focusing on the things the IQ test can easily measure, we're actually elevating and emphasizing a sort of weaponized autism that's entirely inimical to society's greater good.

I think that a lot of what the tests are actually measuring are things that make the people who wrote them feel all superior and virtuous; they're not things that really matter, like "Hey, would it be wise to breach the containment on this mine, and maybe kill a thousand miles of the Colorado River...?" "Does it make common sense to offer stipends and benefits to homeless drug addicts, and not police their social dysfunctions, turning our city into an open sewer filled with used needles...?"

I don't think that what you automatically ascribe virtue to is actually virtuous. Doing well on a test is only a tiny slice of that which actually ought to be evaluated when trying to figure out whether or not the party in question is actually, y'know... Intelligent.

I'll point one thing out for you that you might want to consider: Do you know what all those aforementioned "virtuous" intellectually superior ethnicities happen to have in common? Think about it; familiarize yourself with their histories, and then come back here for the rest of this post. I'll wait.

Yeah. All of them are hated by their "less intelligent" neighbors and blamed for everything that goes wrong around them. This would point to an essential issue with calling them "intelligent", because if they actually were...? You'd never, ever hear about them. You wouldn't burn down their shtetls and trading hongs, because you'd never know about them. Any real "masters of the universe" would be smart enough to remain in the background, and not piss absolutely everyone off. The Jews, the Chinese, the Igbo... All of them have that in common: They're persecuted minorities nearly everywhere, and do you know why? Because all that vaunted "intelligence" apparently isn't... All that intelligent. All those ethnicities have a definite knack for pissing everyone around them off.

If there was a truly superior intellectual breed of human, you'd never, ever know about them. They'd almost certainly be smart and sensible enough to just blend in with the rest of us. Which calls into question the entire premise of testing for those characteristics that match those of the Jews, the Chinese, and the Igbo. I don't see that this vaunted "intelligence" thing did them much good, over the long haul.