As I wrote on Monday, Marvel's president Kevin Feige said something that should dishearten audiences hopeful that Marvel would turn a corner and leave behind its socio-political infection and embrace the storytelling it was once famous for.
As Feige said during an interview, Marvel will continue to represent the world... or at least what he thinks it looks like:
“I said this before ‘woke’ and ‘DEI’ became a thing and I’m still saying it after: Marvel is the world outside your window,” Feige told reporters on Friday. “It’s not Gotham City and Metropolis. This is New York and L.A.. And yes, there’s also Wakanda and Asgard, but it is all made up of the people who make up our world.”
As I said in that previous article, with the upcoming Fantastic Four film set to rewrite the team so that Sue Storm is now the leader and not Reed Richards, it seems that the world Feige believes is "outside your window" isn't your window, but his. The world of west Hollywood.
And herein we see the Achilles heel in Hollywood's thinking.
They think that the majority of us think like they do, when we absolutely don't.
I've often spoken about the ideological bubble many coastal cities find themselves in. Whether it's New York or Los Angeles, the elite seems to think that the rest of America sees the world as they do. Or, more accurately, the way these elite tell each other the world is.
They live in such a way that they're oftentimes closed off from the rest of us thanks to their lifestyles separating them from the average American experience. When it comes to interacting with the world outside this bubble, their main goal is to talk at, not with. The only people they're talking with are their fellow elites, and most of their communication is done via virtue signal, which is more of a business-centric way of speaking to their peers than it is personal.
Virtue signaling is a great way to let their fellow elites know they're of the same ilk, and fosters this delusion that they actually care about this oppressed group or that underprivileged people. For media types, especially those in news and entertainment, much of what they produce is done to that end. It helps them create this self-image of the group that's trying to make the world a better place.
It's all a lie, of course. Everything they do is for their own benefit, but it's nice to pretend, and it's even nicer when you have people pretending along with you.
Meanwhile, in the real world, we're not nearly as obsessed with race, gender, or current-year socio-political obsessions. We wake up, go to work, see to our children, and generally do our best with where we are. Many of us live paycheck to paycheck and as such, we live far closer to reality. Economic shifts, cultural disruptions, and mainstream trends affect us far more here on the ground.
The Hollywood elite would be incredibly surprised at how little the vast majority of us actually care about the social issues they hold dear. Moreover, they'd be shocked to see that many races, sexes, religious groups, etc., relate to each other far more than they understand because when you're in the trenches together, you tend to develop friendships and relationships based on shared experience, not forced ethnic diversity.
This idea of an America that is racist and needs to be preached to about tolerance and acceptance is one that actually doesn't exist, and talking down to us like it is from a bubble that has no idea what the common experience is like makes us want to flip the bird so hard that we strain a muscle. When a race riot destroys a town, the people who suffer are multi-racial, and they get together to speak out against it. When illegal immigration got so destructive that kidnappings, drug overdoses, and murder became a massive crisis, everyone spoke out against it.
And I do mean everyone, of every race, of every sex, of every religion.
From inside the bubble, where they aren't affected, Hollywood just sees a responsibility to tell everyone to just eat cake as they starve.
Feige's words prove that this bubble is still thick and impenetrable. It's another piece of evidence that Hollywood doesn't know what it's talking about when it comes to real American culture. It remains comfortable in its ignorance because within the bubble, nothing truly gets in. Signals only go out.
They believe we're a people that need to be taught the value of diversity, that men should take a back seat to let women take charge — not because they're proven to be more capable — but strictly for the fact that they're women. They believe we need to be saturated with stories to influence us toward a Utopia that the elites, in their inexperience and ignorance, can be achieved if we just believe... and vote Democrat.
No thanks.
Call me when you leave the bubble.
