The whole point of the video wasn't, that sexism and racism doesn't exist or was fake in the attack of the movie, but that Sony Picture took the attacks and used them as a marketing tool. Putting oil into the fire to sell the movie (the Dan Aykroyd interview). It's a new marketing tactic now called "Woke Brands".
The whole point of their video was that the racism/sexism the cast of Ghostbusters 2016 faced was mostly overblown by Sony to sell tickets and
any actual harassment they faced online was statistically insignificant. Essentially, 'people don't care about women/minorities replacing historically white male roles in media so stop trying to divide us Sony'. They briefly touch on the large online harassment campaign Leslie Jones faced explicitly because she was a black women in Ghostbusters but only to make a joke.
With hindsight publishing that analysis 4 months before the 2016 election is amazing. Its just like when HitB did their condescending Box Office Number Crunching episode but didn't realize that
theaters take a percentage of the profits. Its that same level of smug yet inept criticism that RLM applies to all subjects. When its them talking about bad B movies on VHS its typically great because they have experience and are somewhat of an authority on the subject.When its them trying to explain away social issues they have no idea about is when it gets embarrassing.
I think, you believe that the RLM's guys don't see value in female heroes but in male heroes instead. No, they said multiple times, that they don't care for super hero movies at all, because they don't really enjoy it. For some time they hopped multiple times, that trend would stop and just now realized, that it will not go away. They don't see much value in a female superhero, because they don't see value in any super hero movie.
Also accusing Disney in using feminism as a marketing tool (the same as above).
I'm not confused. I've been watching RLM and HitB since 2011. They will talk about any number of super hero schlock as schlock. However, when it comes to super hero/ any mainstream media starring women/minorities they go out of their way to lecture us on how minority groups don't care about representation. ' Women/minorities related to Luke Skywalker. Who cares who they cast in the lead.Just make a good movie.' When a diverse cast is in a film they dog whistle tokenism and paint it as Hollywood inorganically cashing in on a trend disregarding all historical context/the concerted effort needed to change the industry.
Also, Mike and Jay can cry me a river complaining about super hero movies on HitB. They've been doing it for almost a decade and the show has gotten progressively worse. They've nearly completely abandoned any type of interesting framing device to ground the show. They could talk about different/interesting movies but they do the show on super hero stuff cause it'll give them the clicks. Its just as cynical as Adam Sandler at this point.
The same think, they accuse Georg Lucas of using the "only all black cast"-angle as a marketing tool to sell his movie. A white guy making a movie about the achievements of black people and try to sell it as progressive.
I see the pattern, that many people believe, that any kind of major representation is good representation. And RLM's angle, that those are just marketing tricks, are seen as problematic in this thread. You can disagree with them, but i just don't see, what makes them bigots.
All Hollywood is marketing tricks. This isn't new or novel observation. My point in highlighting the Red Tails review is that the crews ( mainly Mikes) perspective is so dated and insular that its almost useless in discussing modern topics.
For example , here is an all time whataboutism quote from Mike during their Annihilation review. He's trying to point out the hypocrisy in the media on why they didn't champion a female lead,
mid budget, hard R ,sci-fi film like Annahilation in the same way they did
Black Panther.
Mike: You've got people creaming in their pants over silly comic book movies about changing the world and then here quietly you have a science fiction horror drama that completely failed. With all the talk that this is the the time for women, the uprising of women in Hollywood you know women don't get enough roles, women need positive role models. And they're like this is it on a fucking silver platter and no one talked about it.
Jay is so baffled by the bad whataboutism take that he has to explain it to Mike.
Jay: I think a part of it is when they say that they want these movies you know to have representation and equal screen time for everybody they're talking about the mass appeal movies.
I was so baffled that Mike didn't understand that a 200 million dollar four quadrant black directed/led super hero movie would get more press coverage than a 40 million dollar niche, hard R, Cronenberg-esque sci-fi film. Its almost as if established white female movie stars have a history of leading mid budget sci-fi movies in Hollywood (Sigourney Weaver, Jodie Foster,Scarlett Johanson,Sandra Bullock,Amy Adams, Natalie Portman ect) and Black Panther/Wonder Woman was something unprecedented.
This was the point I had to tap out on RLM content. They are either stupid or malicious. Both are dangerous when they have such a large audience.
