The downsides of the philosophical vacuity of Wokeness

A fascinating piece in Bari Weiss's Commonsense, Hollywood's New Rules by Peter Kiefer and Peter Savodnik.  The subheading is

The old boys club is dead. But a new one—with its own litmus tests and landmines—is rapidly replacing it. 'This is all going to end in a giant class-action lawsuit.'

I have never been an especially avid or capacious consumer of Hollywood fare.  Life is too busy and too full and too short.  But I am no hermit.  I have seen plenty of movies and TV shows over the decades.  Probably an embarrassing volume.  But it is purely passive entertainment.

All the sturm and drang of Hollywood celebrities?  Meh.  The cultural significance of Hollywood and its impact on the nation?  Well, there is substance to that conversation but probably not near as much as major fans might think.

Over the past twenty years, I had assumed the declining eclecticism and artistic quality of Hollywood movies was to a great extent due to Hollywood shifting its focus from American audiences to the viewing desires of global audiences.  Such a shift homogenizes the stories.  

Apparently there is something else going on as well.  We are accustomed to Hollywood and its celebrities mouthing the inanities of Wokeness (Critical Race Theory, Social Justice Theory, etc.) and the degradation that that creates.  Apparently, though, Hollywood has now decided to inflict the racist bilge on itself by driving its productions with racial quotas.  At least, according to Kiefer and Savodnik.  They tell a plausible story.

So, in September 2020, the Academy launched its Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry platform (or RAISE). For a movie to qualify for Best Picture, producers not only had to register detailed personal information about everyone involved in the making of that movie, but the movie had to meet two of the Academy’s four diversity standards—touching on everything from on-screen representation to creative leadership. (An Academy spokesperson said “only select staff” would have access to data collected on the platform.) 

The Academy explained that movies failing to meet these standards would not be barred from qualifying for Best Picture until 2024. But producers are already complying: In 2020, data from 366 productions were submitted to the platform.

Meanwhile, CBS mandated that writers’ rooms be at least 40 percent black, indigenous and people of color (or BIPOC) for the 2021-2022 broadcast season and 50 percent for the 2022-2023 season. ABC Entertainment issued a detailed series of “inclusion standards.” (“I guarantee you every studio has something like that,” a longtime writer and director said.) 

[snip]

But the result has not just been a demographic change. It has been an ideological and cultural transformation. We spoke to more than 25 writers, directors, and producers—all of whom identify as liberal, and all of whom described a pervasive fear of running afoul of the new dogma. This was the case not just among the high command at companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, but at every level of production.

How to survive the revolution? By becoming its most ardent supporter. “Best way to defend yourself against the woke is to out-woke everyone, including the woke,” one writer said. Suddenly, every conversation with every agent or head of content started with: Is anyone BIPOC attached to this? 

[snip]

One showrunner, afraid to send his emails to us out of fear of them accidentally winding up on the wrong screen, agreed to show us correspondence with agents, writers, and studio chiefs that capture the new thinking at the highest levels of the Hollywood food chain.

Sitting in his office, in a casita behind his house and next to the pool, we scrolled through the emails on his laptop:

“This one a dead end — they are going to limit search to women and bipoc candidates”

“How tied to hiring him are you? There are some internally that don’t like the idea of hiring a white guy. I wish I had a better way to frame it. Hate this shit.”

“Studio now telling us this job must go to a female / bipoc writer. Sorry — it sucks”

When we wrapped up, the showrunner said: “This is all going to end in a giant class-action lawsuit.”

[snip]

The showrunner said that the new politics is making it hard to get work done. He added that Human Resources departments at the studios and streaming services are awash in complaints directed at white, male showrunners just for doing their job. “It’s gotten to the point where I won’t give notes on a script any longer to a woman or person of color.”

Stentz said that he hasn’t run into any problems with “young millennial staffers with more, shall we say, of a social justice emphasis.” But, he added, “I know other people have had less happy experiences.”

The writers’ room is supposed to be smart, funny, nasty, a little bawdy, the kind of place where people can make jokes and riff and wonder aloud and vomit out ideas that might become an unforgettable scene. Another showrunner in his mid-fifties (white, male, unfortunately) said: “You’re not allowed to pick your staff anymore, and studios won’t let you interview anybody who isn’t a person of color.”

He added that the culture of documenting even the slightest of slights makes him anxious. “I’m sitting in a room trying to run a show with a collection of people I don’t totally trust.”

[snip]

It is important not to lose sight of the backdrop against which all of the above has happened. On this, pretty much everyone agrees.

Over the past decade, the streaming services have upended old business models and imposed a new ruthlessness on an industry that was already pretty ruthless.

For years, the real money in Hollywood came from the television channels that broadcast reruns and old movies; residuals meant creatives were paid handsomely. But with the rise of Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services, that model collapsed. And the vast majority of creatives had to make do with less.

Now, most people in the industry do not earn enough to support a family of four in Los Angeles. As money has gotten tighter, people have gotten angrier, and things have gotten uglier. “I’d say all that probably expedited the radicalization,” a longtime Hollywood creative said of the shifting marketplace.

Mike White said that it is a lot easier for Hollywood to talk about race than class.

Read the whole thing.  

I'd be inclined to think that this might be sour grapes from displaced insiders.  Except that I hear and see similar stories from clients in other industries and know that the whole quota issue, vociferously denied, is alive and well.

A few years ago, GE was seeking to establish a technology platform standard for manufacturing and had founded a whole new company in Silicon Valley to lead the charge.  I was speaking with an executive of one of the firms who landed one of the contracts to recruit the executives of this new firm.  One of the challenges he was bemoaning was that they were under direct instructions to hire 50:50 male and female despite the talent pool being more like 80:20.  

In one of the hottest technology talent markets in all the world, they had to simultaneously find female talent which did not exist.  This created a second burden for recruiters.  Males candidates who became aware of the quota were less likely to pursue an opportunity because the unavoidable message was that gender was to be rewarded rather than performance.  

The company never really got off the ground and soon after corporate GE began its spiral into oblivion.  

When companies cease to seek the best performers and focus on some sort of arbitrary quota profile, regardless of whether by race, religion, culture, gender, etc. they no longer are prioritizing service to customers or profits to shareholders.  Financial distress follows not long afterwards unless there is a real awakening to the downsides of the philosophical vacuity of Wokeness.