I previously estimated that Captain America 4's worldwide box office gross would be well short of that of the third film from 2016 even in current dollars, and that the tracking-based estimate for the opening weekend, positing a gross of some $86-$95 million in the first three days in the domestic market, suggests the film's finishing with $500-$600 million taken in worldwide as the most probable outcome.
Boxoffice Pro had then not yet put out its own forecast (these days they do so just three, rather than four, weeks in advance of a film's release), but they have their estimate out now--some $70-$85 million for the three day period, as reported almost two weeks closer to the release date. Assuming the same combination of legs in the domestic market, and a commensurate international response, as I forecast in the prior piece, this implies a range of more like $400-$500 million.
Boxoffice Pro's assessment says nothing about a decline in expectations, but all the same, their figure's being even lower, and that with just three weeks to go until the movie's debut, reaffirms the impression that this is not what the backers of this movie need given the film's $350 million+ cost for production alone, and Marvel Cinematic Universe's combination of a shaky market position and big plans now. Indeed, between the price tag for the movie (implying a need for a gross of $600 million or more for the backers to just break even given the structuring of revenues), the billion-dollar hit that Captain America 3 was in current dollars, the (almost) billion-dollar hit that Captain America 2 was in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, the billion dollar hit that Deadpool also was, and the public relations importance of the billion-dollar mark generally these days, it seems that nothing much short of--you guessed it--a billion dollars will do given the need of the MCU to show that Marvel's really back (for all its success, Deadpool & Wolverine was too idiosyncratic a film to prove that by itself). The result is that nothing short of a great "overperformance" relative to the current expectations will save the day here, with all that implies for the franchise in which the relaunch of Captain America is so important an element.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
For Your Consideration: Some Thoughts on the 2025 Oscar Nominees
After being twice-delayed by the not-so-minor matter of the climate change-intensified fires devastating a large part of Los Angeles county (and sending a good many of the more literate observers of current events back to their copies of Mike Davis' Ecology of Fear as those who sneered at Davis' "apocalypticism" prove themselves complete and utter morons for the umpteenth time) the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has finally released its list of the nominations for its 2025 awards ceremony.
Can we speak of any really great surprises here, with regard to really surprising snubs or really unexpected honors? Comparing Variety's comprehensive predictions about the nominees list (a safe index, I think, of entertainment industry Establishment opinion) to the list we eventually got I see that in the Best Picture category Variety correctly forecast eight of the ten nominees, while also getting right three of the five directing nominees, sixteen of the twenty acting nominees, and eight of the ten writing nominees as well--thirty-five of the forty-five in total for a 78 percent average across the board, and 80 percent in seven of the eight categories. Meanwhile, where the nominees Variety did not guess correctly are concerned a significant number were a matter of some Best Picture nominee snatching the spot away from a less-lauded film--as with A Complete Unknown getting the Best Director and Best Supporting Actress nods that Variety had predicted going to the un-nominated All We Imagine as Light and The Last Showgirl, while Emilia Pérez landed the Best Actress nod they thought would go to Hard Truths.
In short, real surprises were few in number. Fans of this film or that actor may complain about a snub, but all the same, it is part of the ceremony's politics that it spreads the prizes around, such that (simply for a start) if some expected Jamie Lee Curtis to get at least a nomination for her supporting role in Showgirl the fact that she won a statue in that exact category two years earlier worked against that--just as Denzel Washington's nine nominations and two wins meant that giving him another nomination for a Gladiator II no one expected to see in the running for much in the way of the bigger prizes is not some great shock. And this is only as expected given last year's thinned-out slate of films, which was as light on obvious award contenders as it was on obvious blockbusters (recall how at the year's start many thought that not one movie would make the billion-dollar mark), such that we did not see any movies with very large and vocal popular lobbies to compare with "Team Barbie" and its coronation of "their" movie as Best Picture in July, and their subsequent shock and anger when the movie got less than they felt was coming to it. Indeed, as David Walsh, who can be counted on for a rare forthrightness in these matters, put it, "It is difficult to point to important films that were slighted or ignored, because there were so few of those this year."
The result is that pretty much the only exception to the predictability is Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong getting acting nods in the otherwise overlooked The Apprentice. I will leave it to others to parse whether these nominations are a matter of well-deserved recognition for work well done, protest gesture, or a mix of the two, but it does seem to me fair to say that on the whole the slate was less impressive for the political content of its films than last year's, when the historical drama Oppenheimer and the socially critical Poor Things together swept up most of the principal awards--save in the area of identity and gender politics, as such movies as Emilia Pérez and The Substance make clear. Of course, as those familiar with his writing would expect, Walsh sees the themes of those films as going hand in hand with the lack of "expression in Hollywood films" of "the most pressing questions in American life"--and what others have called the "corporate wokeness" supposedly in retrograde still alive and well among those who make films with an eye to winning critical laurels.
Can we speak of any really great surprises here, with regard to really surprising snubs or really unexpected honors? Comparing Variety's comprehensive predictions about the nominees list (a safe index, I think, of entertainment industry Establishment opinion) to the list we eventually got I see that in the Best Picture category Variety correctly forecast eight of the ten nominees, while also getting right three of the five directing nominees, sixteen of the twenty acting nominees, and eight of the ten writing nominees as well--thirty-five of the forty-five in total for a 78 percent average across the board, and 80 percent in seven of the eight categories. Meanwhile, where the nominees Variety did not guess correctly are concerned a significant number were a matter of some Best Picture nominee snatching the spot away from a less-lauded film--as with A Complete Unknown getting the Best Director and Best Supporting Actress nods that Variety had predicted going to the un-nominated All We Imagine as Light and The Last Showgirl, while Emilia Pérez landed the Best Actress nod they thought would go to Hard Truths.
In short, real surprises were few in number. Fans of this film or that actor may complain about a snub, but all the same, it is part of the ceremony's politics that it spreads the prizes around, such that (simply for a start) if some expected Jamie Lee Curtis to get at least a nomination for her supporting role in Showgirl the fact that she won a statue in that exact category two years earlier worked against that--just as Denzel Washington's nine nominations and two wins meant that giving him another nomination for a Gladiator II no one expected to see in the running for much in the way of the bigger prizes is not some great shock. And this is only as expected given last year's thinned-out slate of films, which was as light on obvious award contenders as it was on obvious blockbusters (recall how at the year's start many thought that not one movie would make the billion-dollar mark), such that we did not see any movies with very large and vocal popular lobbies to compare with "Team Barbie" and its coronation of "their" movie as Best Picture in July, and their subsequent shock and anger when the movie got less than they felt was coming to it. Indeed, as David Walsh, who can be counted on for a rare forthrightness in these matters, put it, "It is difficult to point to important films that were slighted or ignored, because there were so few of those this year."
The result is that pretty much the only exception to the predictability is Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong getting acting nods in the otherwise overlooked The Apprentice. I will leave it to others to parse whether these nominations are a matter of well-deserved recognition for work well done, protest gesture, or a mix of the two, but it does seem to me fair to say that on the whole the slate was less impressive for the political content of its films than last year's, when the historical drama Oppenheimer and the socially critical Poor Things together swept up most of the principal awards--save in the area of identity and gender politics, as such movies as Emilia Pérez and The Substance make clear. Of course, as those familiar with his writing would expect, Walsh sees the themes of those films as going hand in hand with the lack of "expression in Hollywood films" of "the most pressing questions in American life"--and what others have called the "corporate wokeness" supposedly in retrograde still alive and well among those who make films with an eye to winning critical laurels.
The Drama Over It Ends With Us Just Isn't Ending
Remarking It Ends With Us from the standpoint of its box office prospects last summer I saw the film as worth discussing for two reasons--namely what it may indicate about the prospects for translating bestsellers into cinematic blockbusters (shakier these days, I think, for some telling and important reasons), and for what seemed to me Hollywood's most viable way forward, making movies with a deep appeal to a slice of the audience (while holding the budget down) rather than aiming at something mildly appealing to the broad public (and hoping this will permit a meaningful profit on a colossal outlay). Consistent with my expectations on both counts the movie was not a record-crushing box office behemoth, but it showed every evidence of proving very profitable on the basis I discussed (the $25 million production pulling in over $350 million globally, almost as much as the $200 million Twisters, with all that implies for the profit margin).
Of course, that was not an analysis in which Hollywood, or its courtiers in the entertainment press, were much interested, insistent as they are on sticking to business as usual (such that there was far more interest in the box office success of Ends With Us star Blake Lively's husband's movie Deadpool as validating their preferences--very questionably as that movie's success too can seem to be a triumph won by appealing deeply to a specific demographic). Now the box office success of the movie, and whatever implications it may have for the industry, are also being overshadowed by the legal war between the costars, the associated enterprises and everyone else somehow caught up in this (the length of which list of personages may be as absurd as it is frightening).
This scandal/legal battle is the kind of thing I usually try to avoid writing about--and would have not even acknowledged here were it not for the fact that I had taken such an interest in the film's box office performance and its implications, and frankly, the role of the New York Times in this mess. I make no pretense to sorting out the claims and counterclaims of Ms. Lively and Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Baldoni et. al.. However, I certainly think it possible to say something about the paper's conduct--for if the Times' handling of such affairs is far from the most serious of the malfeasance on which they engage on a daily basis, the paper, like the rest of the mainstream media, displays its worst tendencies when faced with the mix of celebrity, scandal and sex, while it is harder and harder to dismiss this malfeasance as mere tabloid crap given the way such forces have exploited the cultural politics generally involved in them.
Considering the Times' jumping into the fray with its December 21, 2024 story "'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine" accusing Mr. Baldoni of having deployed such a "smear machine" against Ms. Lively from that perspective I will not say that the paper has necessarily wronged Mr. Baldoni. But as Theodore Dreiser reminded his readers again and again not only the media's blatant lies but its highly selective truth-telling as well are apt to align with other agendas less obvious to the public. In this case what seems to be going on is that the Times hastened to seize on (yet another) Hollywood harassment scandal because it fit in with, and seemed to reinforce, the now eight year old (and recently flagging) #MeToo campaign. (Indeed, it seems relevant that Megan Twohey, who coauthored one of the two pieces on Harvey Weinstein that got the ball rolling, had the byline on this one too.) And however sincere others may be about the campaign's causes, the fact remains that for the media this has been above all a matter of pouring gasoline on the flames of the neverending kulturkampf, their doing which has gone into overdrive since the election this past November. Escalating their longtime gaslighting of the American public with smarmy "You've never had it so good" so "Don't worry, be happy" propaganda, and slighting the historic mismanagement of the Democratic Party's dumpster fire of a campaign (indeed, such mismanagement that some suspect still worse than mere mismanagement here), they sell the narrative that the outcome last November "It Wasn't the Economy, Stupid" in part by insisting that it was instead about the very divisions in the country whose exacerbation they pursue so relentlessly to divert that part of the public they cannot fool from the hard realities of the twenty-first century.
Of course, that was not an analysis in which Hollywood, or its courtiers in the entertainment press, were much interested, insistent as they are on sticking to business as usual (such that there was far more interest in the box office success of Ends With Us star Blake Lively's husband's movie Deadpool as validating their preferences--very questionably as that movie's success too can seem to be a triumph won by appealing deeply to a specific demographic). Now the box office success of the movie, and whatever implications it may have for the industry, are also being overshadowed by the legal war between the costars, the associated enterprises and everyone else somehow caught up in this (the length of which list of personages may be as absurd as it is frightening).
This scandal/legal battle is the kind of thing I usually try to avoid writing about--and would have not even acknowledged here were it not for the fact that I had taken such an interest in the film's box office performance and its implications, and frankly, the role of the New York Times in this mess. I make no pretense to sorting out the claims and counterclaims of Ms. Lively and Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Baldoni et. al.. However, I certainly think it possible to say something about the paper's conduct--for if the Times' handling of such affairs is far from the most serious of the malfeasance on which they engage on a daily basis, the paper, like the rest of the mainstream media, displays its worst tendencies when faced with the mix of celebrity, scandal and sex, while it is harder and harder to dismiss this malfeasance as mere tabloid crap given the way such forces have exploited the cultural politics generally involved in them.
Considering the Times' jumping into the fray with its December 21, 2024 story "'We Can Bury Anyone': Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine" accusing Mr. Baldoni of having deployed such a "smear machine" against Ms. Lively from that perspective I will not say that the paper has necessarily wronged Mr. Baldoni. But as Theodore Dreiser reminded his readers again and again not only the media's blatant lies but its highly selective truth-telling as well are apt to align with other agendas less obvious to the public. In this case what seems to be going on is that the Times hastened to seize on (yet another) Hollywood harassment scandal because it fit in with, and seemed to reinforce, the now eight year old (and recently flagging) #MeToo campaign. (Indeed, it seems relevant that Megan Twohey, who coauthored one of the two pieces on Harvey Weinstein that got the ball rolling, had the byline on this one too.) And however sincere others may be about the campaign's causes, the fact remains that for the media this has been above all a matter of pouring gasoline on the flames of the neverending kulturkampf, their doing which has gone into overdrive since the election this past November. Escalating their longtime gaslighting of the American public with smarmy "You've never had it so good" so "Don't worry, be happy" propaganda, and slighting the historic mismanagement of the Democratic Party's dumpster fire of a campaign (indeed, such mismanagement that some suspect still worse than mere mismanagement here), they sell the narrative that the outcome last November "It Wasn't the Economy, Stupid" in part by insisting that it was instead about the very divisions in the country whose exacerbation they pursue so relentlessly to divert that part of the public they cannot fool from the hard realities of the twenty-first century.
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
What Will Captain America 4 Make at the Box Office? (Update)
I previously suggested a range of $750 million-$1.2 billion as the likely gross for a fourth Captain America film entirely on the basis of the performance of prior Captain America and MCU films--if only as a starting point for thinking about the matter. However, we now have the first publicly available tracking-based estimates, which apparently project an opening weekend gross of $86-$95 million for the movie in the North American market (with the Friday-Sunday period in mind, the following Monday holiday not counted in).
Of course, a great deal can happen in the month between the publication of this estimate, and the movie's release (as the collapse of The Flash and the surging of Barbie both showed in the summer of 2023). Still, for the time being let us work with the numbers we have, and apply to them the combination of two multipliers--namely the multiplier we should use to extrapolate the full domestic run from the opening weekend, and the multiplier we should apply to the expected domestic run to get the likely worldwide take.
As it happens the MCU's movies tend to have fairly front-loaded grosses in North America. None has taken in there more than 3.6 times (or less than 1.8 times) its opening weekend gross. At the same time the movies do tend to be strong international performers, with the range here extending from a 55/45 split to a 31/69 split in the domestic/international gross, giving us another multiplier of between 1.8 and 3.2. Between the two we can broadly expect a Marvel movie to make globally between 3.3 times and 11.6 times its North American opening weekend gross. A fairly big range, if we go with the more typical 2-3 times its opener the movies usually make in their domestic run, and consider as precedents both Captain America 2 (given Captain America 3's exceptional nature as a Phase Three quasi-Avengers movie), and Black Panther 2 (given both its having to come after the gigantic preceding film and that it is the only movie where the persona was filled by a new character and actor), between which we get multipliers for the worldwide gross of 1.9 to 2.8, we end up with a narrower range of from 3.3-11.6 to 3.8-8.4. Safely assuming a middle-of-the-road performance with regard to the movie's domestic legs, and its international relative to its domestic response, we get a combined multiplier between 5.5 and 6.1. This works out to a gross of $325-$800 million for the global take at the outside, with the mid-range figure $470-$580 million--which, frankly, feels intuitively plausible to me. What we make of this as a performance may be another matter, however.
Of course, a great deal can happen in the month between the publication of this estimate, and the movie's release (as the collapse of The Flash and the surging of Barbie both showed in the summer of 2023). Still, for the time being let us work with the numbers we have, and apply to them the combination of two multipliers--namely the multiplier we should use to extrapolate the full domestic run from the opening weekend, and the multiplier we should apply to the expected domestic run to get the likely worldwide take.
As it happens the MCU's movies tend to have fairly front-loaded grosses in North America. None has taken in there more than 3.6 times (or less than 1.8 times) its opening weekend gross. At the same time the movies do tend to be strong international performers, with the range here extending from a 55/45 split to a 31/69 split in the domestic/international gross, giving us another multiplier of between 1.8 and 3.2. Between the two we can broadly expect a Marvel movie to make globally between 3.3 times and 11.6 times its North American opening weekend gross. A fairly big range, if we go with the more typical 2-3 times its opener the movies usually make in their domestic run, and consider as precedents both Captain America 2 (given Captain America 3's exceptional nature as a Phase Three quasi-Avengers movie), and Black Panther 2 (given both its having to come after the gigantic preceding film and that it is the only movie where the persona was filled by a new character and actor), between which we get multipliers for the worldwide gross of 1.9 to 2.8, we end up with a narrower range of from 3.3-11.6 to 3.8-8.4. Safely assuming a middle-of-the-road performance with regard to the movie's domestic legs, and its international relative to its domestic response, we get a combined multiplier between 5.5 and 6.1. This works out to a gross of $325-$800 million for the global take at the outside, with the mid-range figure $470-$580 million--which, frankly, feels intuitively plausible to me. What we make of this as a performance may be another matter, however.
What Will Captain America: Brave New World (aka Captain America 4) Make at the Box Office? (Preliminary Estimate)
It seems safe to say that the release of Captain America: Brave New World (aka Captain America 4) will be a crucial test of the continued viability of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the superhero genre, and the blockbuster generally--which makes it well worth considering how the film is likely to do after hitting theaters this Valentine's Day weekend.
A reasonable place to begin such a consideration is the track record of the series to date. For this purpose I present the domestic, international and worldwide grosses for the series' three films below in both current dollars, and with the prices of the month of release adjusted for November 2024 prices (the latter figure presented in the parentheses).
Captain America--The First Avenger
Domestic: $177 million ($247 million) International: $194 million ($271 million) Worldwide: $371 million ($518 million)
Captain America--The Winter Soldier
Domestic: $260 million ($346 million) International: $455 million ($606 million) Worldwide: $714 million ($950 million)
Captain America--Civil War
Domestic: $408 million ($536 million) International: $745 million ($978 million) Worldwide: $1.153 billion ($1.514 billion)
Simply going by the average of the three films one would expect a Captain America movie to make a little under a billion dollars--while going by the precedent of the third film one would expect the movie to make considerably more than a billion dollars.
However, simply going by these figures ignores the reality that 2025 is a long way away from 2016--and that the grosses of the MCU's films have trended downward significantly since then in ways reflecting structural changes in the market for films. Most obviously there has been the (still ongoing) pandemic's effect on movie attendance. (Where before the pandemic North Americans were still buying 3-4 movie tickets per capita, in 2022-2024 the figure was closer to 2.) There has also been the blow dealt Hollywood by its diminished access to the Chinese market, which matters the more with the MCU because of how popular it was in that market. (The franchise cleared $1 billion in China in 2019 alone, with Avengers: Endgame alone taking in over $600 million, an extraordinary sum for any movie in any market, let alone an American release in one foreign market--and that's just not happening again anytime soon.)
All of this was evident in the way that the four MCU films that came out between July 2022 and May 2023 (Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3) suffered drops in their real-terms, inflation-adjusted gross compared to their direct predecessors from Phase Three of about 20 to 50 percent. The bigger the prior movie had been, the bigger the drop tended to be (as seen in the difference between the third Guardians' 20 percent fall, and the drop of half suffered by the second Black Panther). Granted, the two follow-up films, The Marvels and Deadpool, did not perform this way--The Marvels seeing a catastrophic collapse in its gross of more like 85 percent compared to the successful original Captain Marvel, whereas Deadpool & Wolverine saw a great improvement in its gross, bettering the original Deadpool's take by about thirty percent (and in the process, producing the greatest hit, in real terms, in the whole history of the X-Men/Deadpool franchise). However, both those films were each in their way anomalous in their subject matter and the audience response to it (both of them ostentatiously postmodernist and more than-usually-comedic team-ups of characters from different parts of the Marvel franchise, if with the difference that Nia DaCosta's bringing together Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau simply was not the hit-maker that Shawn Levy's teaming up of Deadpool and Wolverine proved to be this past summer). By contrast Captain America 4, if perhaps more ambitious than many other recent MCU efforts, seems to be at bottom a "normal" superhero movie, such that it seems reasonable to rely on the Thor 4-Black Panther 2-Ant-Man 3-Guardians of the Galaxy 3 sequence as a relevant precedent. Given that Captain America 3 grossed $1.5 billion in today's terms, this implies a range of $750 million-$1.2 billion, with the fact that it was one of the franchise's biggest successes--precisely because its plot and casting made it a quasi-Avengers movie in the period of the franchise's peak of popularity--so that I would guess that the fall in Captain America's 4 gross would be closer to the bottom end of the range than the top on the basis of their very limited information. We will, of course, have a better basis for such a judgment when the tracking-based estimates start coming in.
A reasonable place to begin such a consideration is the track record of the series to date. For this purpose I present the domestic, international and worldwide grosses for the series' three films below in both current dollars, and with the prices of the month of release adjusted for November 2024 prices (the latter figure presented in the parentheses).
Captain America--The First Avenger
Domestic: $177 million ($247 million) International: $194 million ($271 million) Worldwide: $371 million ($518 million)
Captain America--The Winter Soldier
Domestic: $260 million ($346 million) International: $455 million ($606 million) Worldwide: $714 million ($950 million)
Captain America--Civil War
Domestic: $408 million ($536 million) International: $745 million ($978 million) Worldwide: $1.153 billion ($1.514 billion)
Simply going by the average of the three films one would expect a Captain America movie to make a little under a billion dollars--while going by the precedent of the third film one would expect the movie to make considerably more than a billion dollars.
However, simply going by these figures ignores the reality that 2025 is a long way away from 2016--and that the grosses of the MCU's films have trended downward significantly since then in ways reflecting structural changes in the market for films. Most obviously there has been the (still ongoing) pandemic's effect on movie attendance. (Where before the pandemic North Americans were still buying 3-4 movie tickets per capita, in 2022-2024 the figure was closer to 2.) There has also been the blow dealt Hollywood by its diminished access to the Chinese market, which matters the more with the MCU because of how popular it was in that market. (The franchise cleared $1 billion in China in 2019 alone, with Avengers: Endgame alone taking in over $600 million, an extraordinary sum for any movie in any market, let alone an American release in one foreign market--and that's just not happening again anytime soon.)
All of this was evident in the way that the four MCU films that came out between July 2022 and May 2023 (Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3) suffered drops in their real-terms, inflation-adjusted gross compared to their direct predecessors from Phase Three of about 20 to 50 percent. The bigger the prior movie had been, the bigger the drop tended to be (as seen in the difference between the third Guardians' 20 percent fall, and the drop of half suffered by the second Black Panther). Granted, the two follow-up films, The Marvels and Deadpool, did not perform this way--The Marvels seeing a catastrophic collapse in its gross of more like 85 percent compared to the successful original Captain Marvel, whereas Deadpool & Wolverine saw a great improvement in its gross, bettering the original Deadpool's take by about thirty percent (and in the process, producing the greatest hit, in real terms, in the whole history of the X-Men/Deadpool franchise). However, both those films were each in their way anomalous in their subject matter and the audience response to it (both of them ostentatiously postmodernist and more than-usually-comedic team-ups of characters from different parts of the Marvel franchise, if with the difference that Nia DaCosta's bringing together Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau simply was not the hit-maker that Shawn Levy's teaming up of Deadpool and Wolverine proved to be this past summer). By contrast Captain America 4, if perhaps more ambitious than many other recent MCU efforts, seems to be at bottom a "normal" superhero movie, such that it seems reasonable to rely on the Thor 4-Black Panther 2-Ant-Man 3-Guardians of the Galaxy 3 sequence as a relevant precedent. Given that Captain America 3 grossed $1.5 billion in today's terms, this implies a range of $750 million-$1.2 billion, with the fact that it was one of the franchise's biggest successes--precisely because its plot and casting made it a quasi-Avengers movie in the period of the franchise's peak of popularity--so that I would guess that the fall in Captain America's 4 gross would be closer to the bottom end of the range than the top on the basis of their very limited information. We will, of course, have a better basis for such a judgment when the tracking-based estimates start coming in.
Revisiting Screen Rant's Box Office Forecasts for 2023's Superhero Films
Recently revisiting the matter of the box office performance of The Flash I also revisited Screen Rant's forecasts back in early 2023 for the box office grosses of the eight live-action Marvel and DC superhero films scheduled for release that year, seven of which actually did hit theaters before December 31 (all but Kraven the Hunter). Anticipating that three of the movies would break the billion-dollar barrier (Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Aquaman 2), a gross just short of that for one more ($950 million for Captain Marvel 2), not too much less for still another ($700 million for The Flash), and something even for the weaker DC heroes ($450 million for Shazam 2, $400 million for Blue Beetle), altogether the expectation was of the seven movies taking in some $5.7 billion altogether.
Every single one of these predictions proved overoptimistic, in many cases grossly so. Not one of these movies even approached the billion-dollar barrier, let alone broke it. The closest was Guardians of the Galaxy 3, with $845 million--against the $1.2 billion Screen Rant forecast for it, as all of the others were subject to charges of significant underperformance, and altogether those movies ended up making some $2.5 billion--not quite half the figure forecast for them. Unsurprisingly most probably lost money, with two of them in fact topping the chart of the year's biggest flops (The Flash and Captain Marvel 2).
As this suggests 2023 was a terrible year for conventional blockbusters, with that longtime king of the blockbuster the superhero film suffering particularly badly. The following year, 2024, did not go as badly as some feared--but then its slate was a lot thinner. Rather than five first-rank Marvel/DC superhero films such as we had in 2023, there was just one, Deadpool & Wolverine--and that, I stress again, a highly idiosyncratic movie whose success, while undeniable, does not necessarily prove that "Marvel's back!" the way the occupants of the executive suites and their courtiers in the entertainment press would like everyone to believe. The results with respect to the "lessons" of 2023 were thus less conclusive than they might be. However, with Captain America 4 mere weeks away and two more Marvel Cinematic Universe films following it in the next half year, all as DC gets its relaunch with a new Superman film, we will see this year whether 2023 was an unhappy anomaly, or revealed the "new normal" of the box office.
Every single one of these predictions proved overoptimistic, in many cases grossly so. Not one of these movies even approached the billion-dollar barrier, let alone broke it. The closest was Guardians of the Galaxy 3, with $845 million--against the $1.2 billion Screen Rant forecast for it, as all of the others were subject to charges of significant underperformance, and altogether those movies ended up making some $2.5 billion--not quite half the figure forecast for them. Unsurprisingly most probably lost money, with two of them in fact topping the chart of the year's biggest flops (The Flash and Captain Marvel 2).
As this suggests 2023 was a terrible year for conventional blockbusters, with that longtime king of the blockbuster the superhero film suffering particularly badly. The following year, 2024, did not go as badly as some feared--but then its slate was a lot thinner. Rather than five first-rank Marvel/DC superhero films such as we had in 2023, there was just one, Deadpool & Wolverine--and that, I stress again, a highly idiosyncratic movie whose success, while undeniable, does not necessarily prove that "Marvel's back!" the way the occupants of the executive suites and their courtiers in the entertainment press would like everyone to believe. The results with respect to the "lessons" of 2023 were thus less conclusive than they might be. However, with Captain America 4 mere weeks away and two more Marvel Cinematic Universe films following it in the next half year, all as DC gets its relaunch with a new Superman film, we will see this year whether 2023 was an unhappy anomaly, or revealed the "new normal" of the box office.
Why Has Deadpool Been Such a Hit with its Core Demographic?
While Ryan Reynolds claimed Deadpool & Wolverine was a 4-quadrant hit, the reality seems to be that the movie was overwhelmingly a hit in one demographic area, skewing male and young--even by superhero film standards.
The fact has not got much publicity, unsurprisingly in light of the associated cultural politics. The conventional wisdom holds that audiences which are the opposite--not male, not young--are grossly underserved by Hollywood, such that when a supposedly rare movie seen as playing to a different audience "finally" hits theaters and appears to make any money at all (perhaps marginally, perhaps not even that) there is much crowing about the fact, and the movie held up as an object lesson in how well Hollywood could be doing if it paid those other demographics more attention. The success of a movie on the terms on which Deadpool succeeded, of course, is not consistent with that narrative, and slighted accordingly.
Still, the fact that a movie scored big by appealing to a slice of the audience very deeply rather than being aimed at everybody a little bit seems to me worth remarking as consistent with the way Hollywood "hit-making" has been going in this period of reduced moviegoing (it's been just 2 ticket sales per capita in North America in 2022-2024, vs. 3-4 before the pandemic) and failing longtime strategies (Hollywood's offering very little we haven't seen a million times before).
That makes the way in which it appealed worth a word. The Deadpool sequel, like its predecessor the marriage of such indie movie crapola with an A-list-adjacent superhero in a way that James Gunn would probably have loved to give audiences but never quite got the chance to do, appealed to its audience on the basis of nihilism, flippancy, metafiction and "transgression" with results likely to be repulsive or trite to the grown-up but exercise a powerful influence on the minds of those not quite so grown-up but pretending to be--and accordingly had potential to be a hit with "the 18-24s" on that level. This was all the more the case because of a difference in the kind of superhero film they grew up with as against what their elders knew. For those superhero fans who came of age in, for example, the '90s, watching the films and shows of the Crow and Spawn and Blade franchises (among others), and more generally accustomed to foul-mouthed, blood-soaked action movies, while remembering all too well that '90s indie movie spirit, that '90s irony, and perhaps too its manifestations in such comedies as (the underrated) Mystery Men, Deadpool may not be so special--but on those whose frame of reference is defined by straightforward, usually earnest, PG-13 spectacles such as Marvel offers, it made an impression. All that did not rule out interest from other groups--but all the same, they were less likely to be so great a part of the hardcore fan base for the franchise as the younger cohort.
The fact has not got much publicity, unsurprisingly in light of the associated cultural politics. The conventional wisdom holds that audiences which are the opposite--not male, not young--are grossly underserved by Hollywood, such that when a supposedly rare movie seen as playing to a different audience "finally" hits theaters and appears to make any money at all (perhaps marginally, perhaps not even that) there is much crowing about the fact, and the movie held up as an object lesson in how well Hollywood could be doing if it paid those other demographics more attention. The success of a movie on the terms on which Deadpool succeeded, of course, is not consistent with that narrative, and slighted accordingly.
Still, the fact that a movie scored big by appealing to a slice of the audience very deeply rather than being aimed at everybody a little bit seems to me worth remarking as consistent with the way Hollywood "hit-making" has been going in this period of reduced moviegoing (it's been just 2 ticket sales per capita in North America in 2022-2024, vs. 3-4 before the pandemic) and failing longtime strategies (Hollywood's offering very little we haven't seen a million times before).
That makes the way in which it appealed worth a word. The Deadpool sequel, like its predecessor the marriage of such indie movie crapola with an A-list-adjacent superhero in a way that James Gunn would probably have loved to give audiences but never quite got the chance to do, appealed to its audience on the basis of nihilism, flippancy, metafiction and "transgression" with results likely to be repulsive or trite to the grown-up but exercise a powerful influence on the minds of those not quite so grown-up but pretending to be--and accordingly had potential to be a hit with "the 18-24s" on that level. This was all the more the case because of a difference in the kind of superhero film they grew up with as against what their elders knew. For those superhero fans who came of age in, for example, the '90s, watching the films and shows of the Crow and Spawn and Blade franchises (among others), and more generally accustomed to foul-mouthed, blood-soaked action movies, while remembering all too well that '90s indie movie spirit, that '90s irony, and perhaps too its manifestations in such comedies as (the underrated) Mystery Men, Deadpool may not be so special--but on those whose frame of reference is defined by straightforward, usually earnest, PG-13 spectacles such as Marvel offers, it made an impression. All that did not rule out interest from other groups--but all the same, they were less likely to be so great a part of the hardcore fan base for the franchise as the younger cohort.
No, Deadpool & Wolverine Was (Probably) Not a 4-Quadrant Film
Those who become familiar with the entertainment industry press also become familiar with the entertainment industry's jargon--or less kindly, its buzzwords, of which I think we are hearing more and more in the mainstream these days. One such buzzword is the "four quadrant movie," based on a gender-and-age division of the audience into the four "quadrants" of males over 25, males under 25, females over 25, females under 25.
In considering this conception of the market one should remember that the idea is to really appeal to all four groups, rather than appeal to one demographic which drags others with them (for instance, movies that appeal to children who make their parents take them when they would otherwise never see the movie, or, to invoke a recent stereotype, women wanting to see Barbie and dragging their husbands and boyfriends along, and reportedly ending many a relationship in the process).
Those who make movies commonly hope to attract the widest possible audience, aspiring to interest moviegoers across the entire range of age and gender--and those whose movies fail to do so lament the fact. For example, the backers of the last Bond movie No Time to Die were dismayed by the lack of interest among the young in the movie (a factor in the movie's relatively weak box office performance), while more recently Andy Muschietti told Variety that The Flash "failed to be a 4-quadrant movie."
However, a movie need not be a 4-quadrant film to make a billion dollars, as Deadpool & Wolverine showed. As those familiar with the material would expect, and those familiar with the fan base for the Deadpool character in particular would guess, the audience for the franchise skews both young, and male, and very sharply too, with the data about the ticket-buyers confirming this. At least in the early part of the movie's run 62 percent of the audience was male, and 37 percent in the age 18-24 range alone, numbers suggesting anything but really broadly distributed interest across the four quadrants, whatever Ryan Reynolds may claim about the matter.
In spite of that the movie was the highest-grossing live-action movie of 2024, defying the constriction of the market to gross a staggering $600 million in North America (and $1.3 billion globally).
That seems to me important not simply for analyzing Deadpool's success, but because it seems to affirm what I think is the trend in the bottom line of films based on what I have been seeing since 2023 especially--that in a time in which people are going to the movies less (the North American public averages 2 movie tickets a year now, rather than 3 or 4), and Hollywood's bread and butter offerings are pretty well exhausted, trying to appeal to a very broad audience is likely to work less well than appealing very strongly to a narrower section of the public (whether that section conforms to the bounds of the 4-quadrant division or not).
In considering this conception of the market one should remember that the idea is to really appeal to all four groups, rather than appeal to one demographic which drags others with them (for instance, movies that appeal to children who make their parents take them when they would otherwise never see the movie, or, to invoke a recent stereotype, women wanting to see Barbie and dragging their husbands and boyfriends along, and reportedly ending many a relationship in the process).
Those who make movies commonly hope to attract the widest possible audience, aspiring to interest moviegoers across the entire range of age and gender--and those whose movies fail to do so lament the fact. For example, the backers of the last Bond movie No Time to Die were dismayed by the lack of interest among the young in the movie (a factor in the movie's relatively weak box office performance), while more recently Andy Muschietti told Variety that The Flash "failed to be a 4-quadrant movie."
However, a movie need not be a 4-quadrant film to make a billion dollars, as Deadpool & Wolverine showed. As those familiar with the material would expect, and those familiar with the fan base for the Deadpool character in particular would guess, the audience for the franchise skews both young, and male, and very sharply too, with the data about the ticket-buyers confirming this. At least in the early part of the movie's run 62 percent of the audience was male, and 37 percent in the age 18-24 range alone, numbers suggesting anything but really broadly distributed interest across the four quadrants, whatever Ryan Reynolds may claim about the matter.
In spite of that the movie was the highest-grossing live-action movie of 2024, defying the constriction of the market to gross a staggering $600 million in North America (and $1.3 billion globally).
That seems to me important not simply for analyzing Deadpool's success, but because it seems to affirm what I think is the trend in the bottom line of films based on what I have been seeing since 2023 especially--that in a time in which people are going to the movies less (the North American public averages 2 movie tickets a year now, rather than 3 or 4), and Hollywood's bread and butter offerings are pretty well exhausted, trying to appeal to a very broad audience is likely to work less well than appealing very strongly to a narrower section of the public (whether that section conforms to the bounds of the 4-quadrant division or not).
Andy Muschietti Gets in his Two Cents on The Flash's Failure
Apparently the press is still talking about the colossal failure of Andy Muschietti's DC superhero film The Flash.
The director of the movie, explaining the matter in Hollywood insider terms in a story from Variety, talked about The Flash not being the "four quadrant movie" that supposedly any movie financed at that level has to be in order to turn a profit.
Getting a little more substantive than this tossing about of buzzwords he remarked "that a lot of people just don’t care about the Flash as a character."
Of course, anyone could have told Mr. Muschietti that--and indeed, before the breathless hyping of the movie as "the greatest superhero movie ever made" completely confused things back in the spring of 2023 the more astute box office analysts had less buoyant expectations for the film than they would have for, for example, a Batman or Superman film. (Thus did the comparatively optimistic folks at Screen Rant who thought Ant-Man 3 would be a billion-dollar hit, Guardians of the Galaxy do better and The Marvels fall just short of a billion expected just $700 million for The Flash.)
However, this mattered the more for a host of reasons Mr. Muschietti did not raise. Yes, there is the "Ezra Miller problem," and yes, there is the way the "greatest superhero movie ever made" hype probably backfired, but there are also the more structural matters--not least the audience's longtime lukewarmness toward the DC Extended Universe, all as The Flash had the misfortune of hitting theaters in a much tighter market than before (again, moviegoing down by a third relative to the pre-pandemic period) in which even more promising material was underperforming badly (as those three Marvel Cinematic Universe films did relative to the expectations for them), with the reality of superhero fatigue not helping.
Of course, just as Mr. Muschietti did not raise these aspects of the issue, neither did the writers at Variety, nor those other media outlets retailing the remarks--who as courtiers to the industry's kings cannot be expected to be very attentive to these inconvenient facts.
The director of the movie, explaining the matter in Hollywood insider terms in a story from Variety, talked about The Flash not being the "four quadrant movie" that supposedly any movie financed at that level has to be in order to turn a profit.
Getting a little more substantive than this tossing about of buzzwords he remarked "that a lot of people just don’t care about the Flash as a character."
Of course, anyone could have told Mr. Muschietti that--and indeed, before the breathless hyping of the movie as "the greatest superhero movie ever made" completely confused things back in the spring of 2023 the more astute box office analysts had less buoyant expectations for the film than they would have for, for example, a Batman or Superman film. (Thus did the comparatively optimistic folks at Screen Rant who thought Ant-Man 3 would be a billion-dollar hit, Guardians of the Galaxy do better and The Marvels fall just short of a billion expected just $700 million for The Flash.)
However, this mattered the more for a host of reasons Mr. Muschietti did not raise. Yes, there is the "Ezra Miller problem," and yes, there is the way the "greatest superhero movie ever made" hype probably backfired, but there are also the more structural matters--not least the audience's longtime lukewarmness toward the DC Extended Universe, all as The Flash had the misfortune of hitting theaters in a much tighter market than before (again, moviegoing down by a third relative to the pre-pandemic period) in which even more promising material was underperforming badly (as those three Marvel Cinematic Universe films did relative to the expectations for them), with the reality of superhero fatigue not helping.
Of course, just as Mr. Muschietti did not raise these aspects of the issue, neither did the writers at Variety, nor those other media outlets retailing the remarks--who as courtiers to the industry's kings cannot be expected to be very attentive to these inconvenient facts.
How High Will the Box Office Go in 2025?
With the end of the year we are seeing not just the inevitable analyses of the now concluded year of 2024, and predictions for 2025.
For its part Boxoffice Pro anticipates a $9-$10 billion take for the year.
If the first half of the year or so plays like 2023, and the second half like 2024, this does not seem out of the question. Still, it is a far cry from the $11-$12 billion that was the 2015-2019 norm in current dollars, let alone the $14-$15 billion to which that range was equal when we adjust for today's prices, and confirmation that the market's shrinkage by a rough third from its pre-pandemic level seems an enduring fact of life. The result is that there seems to me no great surprise here--all as, given the number of big movies coming out this year (compared with 2024, when the movie that opened the summer was The Fall Guy), there seems a good chance of 2025 having a 2023-like number of big loss-makers.
For its part Boxoffice Pro anticipates a $9-$10 billion take for the year.
If the first half of the year or so plays like 2023, and the second half like 2024, this does not seem out of the question. Still, it is a far cry from the $11-$12 billion that was the 2015-2019 norm in current dollars, let alone the $14-$15 billion to which that range was equal when we adjust for today's prices, and confirmation that the market's shrinkage by a rough third from its pre-pandemic level seems an enduring fact of life. The result is that there seems to me no great surprise here--all as, given the number of big movies coming out this year (compared with 2024, when the movie that opened the summer was The Fall Guy), there seems a good chance of 2025 having a 2023-like number of big loss-makers.
The Politics of the Silver Age Marvel Comics
Amid all the talk of the politics of Marvel's films it seems worth saying a word of the politics of the original comics that were their basis--the '60s-era first numbers that gave us the Marvel universe's iconic characters.
Having read them in the good old Marvel Essentials volumes that made them conveniently available for 21st century readers, I would say that Marvel's politics were "centrist"--subscribing to the essentially conservative, staunchly Anti-Communist, view that prevailed in that era (and has never ceased to dominate American life since, even after the supposed "end of history"), but in contrast with the right that was the principal alternative taking the view that existing institutions had to be made to "work for everyone." Thus in Marvel's pages the Commies were endlessly infiltrating, spying on, plotting against America and the Free World, and Marvel celebrating the good fight against them--so much so that scant years after Dwight Eisenhower himself warned the country about the dangers posed to its the "military-industrial complex" to the nation's "liberties or democratic processes" in his Farewell Address Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made a latterday Edisonade hero out of the very embodiment of that military-industrial complex in Tony Stark/Iron Man (in his first appearance, making his personal contribution to a war effort in Vietnam they obviously supported, at least at the time). Yet one can also acknowledge that Marvel's X-Men were unquestionably a call for tolerance and inclusion--and warned of the dangers of society failing its minorities (with intolerance drawing forth intolerance in the form of Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants).
Of course, the center did not quite hold over the years that followed, and just as American movies of the day reflected the change, so did Marvel comics, with more pointedly leftward stories appearing, and some stories taking a more sharply right-wing tone. Thus did Captain America in the wake of Watergate face down Richard Nixon. But thus did we also see the story of the Hulk, who might seem a natural Anti-Establishment figure as a patriotic scientist whose life was destroyed by the nuclear arms race in which he participated and ruthlessly persecuted by the state he had served in the form of a caricature of a General, go in the extreme opposite direction, with the Hulk facing down not Nixon but anti-war protesters presented as no-good hippie punks stupidly menacing Bruce Banner's kindly old mentor in their loyalty to their wrong-headed cause, while taking their cue from Tom Wolfe shortly thereafter going in for a sneer at so-called "radical chic" by making the Hulk another "cause" for the Upper East Side crowd (with, of course, Mr. Wolfe and his white suit actually visible in one panel).
Still, in the center Marvel began, and to the center it has generally tended, with it seeming to affirm rather than refute this that the rancor over the politics of Marvel's films has most had to do with their identity politics--for in spite of much mislabeling it is not the left but the center which has embraced such politics in the manner fueling the culture wars of today.
Having read them in the good old Marvel Essentials volumes that made them conveniently available for 21st century readers, I would say that Marvel's politics were "centrist"--subscribing to the essentially conservative, staunchly Anti-Communist, view that prevailed in that era (and has never ceased to dominate American life since, even after the supposed "end of history"), but in contrast with the right that was the principal alternative taking the view that existing institutions had to be made to "work for everyone." Thus in Marvel's pages the Commies were endlessly infiltrating, spying on, plotting against America and the Free World, and Marvel celebrating the good fight against them--so much so that scant years after Dwight Eisenhower himself warned the country about the dangers posed to its the "military-industrial complex" to the nation's "liberties or democratic processes" in his Farewell Address Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made a latterday Edisonade hero out of the very embodiment of that military-industrial complex in Tony Stark/Iron Man (in his first appearance, making his personal contribution to a war effort in Vietnam they obviously supported, at least at the time). Yet one can also acknowledge that Marvel's X-Men were unquestionably a call for tolerance and inclusion--and warned of the dangers of society failing its minorities (with intolerance drawing forth intolerance in the form of Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants).
Of course, the center did not quite hold over the years that followed, and just as American movies of the day reflected the change, so did Marvel comics, with more pointedly leftward stories appearing, and some stories taking a more sharply right-wing tone. Thus did Captain America in the wake of Watergate face down Richard Nixon. But thus did we also see the story of the Hulk, who might seem a natural Anti-Establishment figure as a patriotic scientist whose life was destroyed by the nuclear arms race in which he participated and ruthlessly persecuted by the state he had served in the form of a caricature of a General, go in the extreme opposite direction, with the Hulk facing down not Nixon but anti-war protesters presented as no-good hippie punks stupidly menacing Bruce Banner's kindly old mentor in their loyalty to their wrong-headed cause, while taking their cue from Tom Wolfe shortly thereafter going in for a sneer at so-called "radical chic" by making the Hulk another "cause" for the Upper East Side crowd (with, of course, Mr. Wolfe and his white suit actually visible in one panel).
Still, in the center Marvel began, and to the center it has generally tended, with it seeming to affirm rather than refute this that the rancor over the politics of Marvel's films has most had to do with their identity politics--for in spite of much mislabeling it is not the left but the center which has embraced such politics in the manner fueling the culture wars of today.
The Comedy of Michel Barnier
France's political crisis doesn't seem to get much attention in the American press these days, but even so it continues.
The part of the rather tangled affair relevant to this post is that after Emmanuel Macron, in another display of his extreme incompetence (or duplicity) as a politician, forced an early election that actually left him in a weaker position than before from the standpoint of his backing in the country's legislature, and his ability to push through the unpopular "reforms" (read: neoliberal program) on which he is so bent, went on to further inflame much of French public opinion by giving those who had voted for the leftward grouping in parliament two middle fingers by forming a government with the right, in spite of its having had fewer votes and seats than they (and the not insignificant fact that they were far from wholly on board with his program). Having created this mess, Macron then appointed one Michel Barnier to the Prime Ministership.
In line with the magical thinking to which adherents of conventional wisdom are prone, they imagined that Barnier would somehow make the reforms Macron is determined to have get through parliament. Certainly the portion of the mainstream American press covering the matter, talking up Barnier as they generally do anyone who looks to them the part of an "experienced" right-wing Establishment politician--especially when his task is brutalizing working people--were ready to attribute to the man in question such powers.
Reality being what it is he Monsieur Barnier did not achieve the expected miracle, and a vote of no confidence resulted in his replacement in the post and the impossible task France's President had set before him after the shortest Prime Ministership in the history of the Fifth Republic.
Reporting on that Politico titled its piece "The Tragedy of Michel Barnier"--that choice of word, "tragedy," bespeaking such courtiers of the elite's tendency to ennoble figures like Barnier in line with the old classical view that stories which see the powerful defeated are stories of "great men" done in by still greater forces than they, whereas the miseries of mere commoners are low comedy about fools getting exactly what they deserve. However, anyone of rational, modern, humane mind (I know, you don't see too many of these in the press, or on the Interweb for that matter) should be able to see in these elite hijinks the low comedy--and the tragedy in what is being inflicted by them on the people of France, Europe, and the world.
The part of the rather tangled affair relevant to this post is that after Emmanuel Macron, in another display of his extreme incompetence (or duplicity) as a politician, forced an early election that actually left him in a weaker position than before from the standpoint of his backing in the country's legislature, and his ability to push through the unpopular "reforms" (read: neoliberal program) on which he is so bent, went on to further inflame much of French public opinion by giving those who had voted for the leftward grouping in parliament two middle fingers by forming a government with the right, in spite of its having had fewer votes and seats than they (and the not insignificant fact that they were far from wholly on board with his program). Having created this mess, Macron then appointed one Michel Barnier to the Prime Ministership.
In line with the magical thinking to which adherents of conventional wisdom are prone, they imagined that Barnier would somehow make the reforms Macron is determined to have get through parliament. Certainly the portion of the mainstream American press covering the matter, talking up Barnier as they generally do anyone who looks to them the part of an "experienced" right-wing Establishment politician--especially when his task is brutalizing working people--were ready to attribute to the man in question such powers.
Reality being what it is he Monsieur Barnier did not achieve the expected miracle, and a vote of no confidence resulted in his replacement in the post and the impossible task France's President had set before him after the shortest Prime Ministership in the history of the Fifth Republic.
Reporting on that Politico titled its piece "The Tragedy of Michel Barnier"--that choice of word, "tragedy," bespeaking such courtiers of the elite's tendency to ennoble figures like Barnier in line with the old classical view that stories which see the powerful defeated are stories of "great men" done in by still greater forces than they, whereas the miseries of mere commoners are low comedy about fools getting exactly what they deserve. However, anyone of rational, modern, humane mind (I know, you don't see too many of these in the press, or on the Interweb for that matter) should be able to see in these elite hijinks the low comedy--and the tragedy in what is being inflicted by them on the people of France, Europe, and the world.
What Champions of Liberal Arts Education Don't Want to Admit
I am personally mindful of the value of a "liberal arts education"--an education which in one way or another stresses languages, the humanities, the social sciences, the arts. I even see them as having a "practical" value. There is no field where individuals do not benefit from enhanced reading, writing, critical thinking skills--and these courses are all well-known to offer a stronger training in that than any alternative would, all while conferring more specific benefits, with the sciences exemplary. After all, as Carroll Quigley remarked, science is nothing but a method--and the method ultimately derived from epistemological, philosophical, inquiry--with recent examination of the problems of medical research, for example, turning up the difficulty trained scientists have designing experiments properly simply because of the shortcomings of their grasp of the method, and the philosophy underlying it, in a reminder that while some sneer at the subject, scientists have a very practical need for philosophical training in order to do their jobs as well as they might.
Yet at the same time we have to acknowledge the hard facts that:
1. Students in college are, understandably, less eager for years of (very expensive) schooling than to get on in the world, and when push comes to shove see such subjects being required to spend four years or even a decade after the twelfth grade in school before they can properly begin their careers as an unfortunate necessity. It is bad enough that they have to bother with the material directly related to their own field before they can even begin to start in a profession--and the value of the liberal arts an especially tough sell, the more in as their elders have been so relentless about putting them down (with the STEM fetishists second to none here).
2. Students arrive in even selective colleges from relatively strong K-12 educational institutions inadequately prepared for serious liberal arts study (again, in part because their elders thought other things more important).
3. The quality of the liberal arts education imparted to even the able and willing is far from what it ought to be, unhelped by shortchanging of the relevant departments in the allotment of resources, the contradictions between the imperatives of research and of teaching, by the shortcomings of their instructors' training (alas, expected to "retail" what more highly placed personnel produce in C. Wright Mills' discussion of the matter), and it must be admitted, by the morass created by postmodernism-cum-kulturkampf in this section of higher education.
4. The holder of a degree of a non-vocational kind, and especially a few particularly in-demand kinds of vocational degree (nursing, engineering and similarly applicable technical fields, and the more mathematical sorts of business training) have an especially tough time in a job market that, in spite of the media's relentless "You've never had it so good" gaslighting of the public (and the old hypocrisy of employers about wanting to hire "well-rounded individuals"), is frankly lousy for college graduates, with liberal arts majors far from exclusive but still significant sufferers, and looking like it will only get worse. Especially when combined with the realities of what students pay for college, and what the debt burdens mean afterward regardless of the strong likelihood that they will be underemployed, any degree can seem an asset speculation in a market that looks as if it is heading for a crash with no one likely to bail them out.
Few of those who champion liberal arts education are willing to acknowledge any of this, precisely because they have little answer for it.
Instead they fall back on platitudes about education's adding "enrichment to personal lives," only affirming how out of touch they are even when earnestly trying to prove the opposite to the public.
Yet at the same time we have to acknowledge the hard facts that:
1. Students in college are, understandably, less eager for years of (very expensive) schooling than to get on in the world, and when push comes to shove see such subjects being required to spend four years or even a decade after the twelfth grade in school before they can properly begin their careers as an unfortunate necessity. It is bad enough that they have to bother with the material directly related to their own field before they can even begin to start in a profession--and the value of the liberal arts an especially tough sell, the more in as their elders have been so relentless about putting them down (with the STEM fetishists second to none here).
2. Students arrive in even selective colleges from relatively strong K-12 educational institutions inadequately prepared for serious liberal arts study (again, in part because their elders thought other things more important).
3. The quality of the liberal arts education imparted to even the able and willing is far from what it ought to be, unhelped by shortchanging of the relevant departments in the allotment of resources, the contradictions between the imperatives of research and of teaching, by the shortcomings of their instructors' training (alas, expected to "retail" what more highly placed personnel produce in C. Wright Mills' discussion of the matter), and it must be admitted, by the morass created by postmodernism-cum-kulturkampf in this section of higher education.
4. The holder of a degree of a non-vocational kind, and especially a few particularly in-demand kinds of vocational degree (nursing, engineering and similarly applicable technical fields, and the more mathematical sorts of business training) have an especially tough time in a job market that, in spite of the media's relentless "You've never had it so good" gaslighting of the public (and the old hypocrisy of employers about wanting to hire "well-rounded individuals"), is frankly lousy for college graduates, with liberal arts majors far from exclusive but still significant sufferers, and looking like it will only get worse. Especially when combined with the realities of what students pay for college, and what the debt burdens mean afterward regardless of the strong likelihood that they will be underemployed, any degree can seem an asset speculation in a market that looks as if it is heading for a crash with no one likely to bail them out.
Few of those who champion liberal arts education are willing to acknowledge any of this, precisely because they have little answer for it.
Instead they fall back on platitudes about education's adding "enrichment to personal lives," only affirming how out of touch they are even when earnestly trying to prove the opposite to the public.
What the Cult of the Good School Tells Us About "Meritocracy"
In what I call the "Cult of the Good School"--the mindless fawning respect for instructional rank within a hierarchy universally known and almost universally unquestioned (Harvard is superior to Yale, any Ivy to anything else in America, private colleges superior to public ones, etc.) one sees not only the "habit of invidious comparison" run amok, but what is in fact social snobbery dressed up as intellectual meritocracy. Yes, the "Big Name" schools may have some of the less privileged among their scholarship students, but anyone who is not a complete idiot knows that the colleges people attend (if they do attend them) have far, far more to do with family background and social class than individual merit, and one might add, even to the quality of the educational opportunities distributed in an exceedingly unequal fashion in American society. The readiness to foot the higher bill for a school far away rather than commute, and for a private school rather than a public one; the advantages possessed by children of alumni and donors and persons in a position to make a "donation" or "do a favor"; the channels that lead from the more elite private schools to the more elite colleges entirely apart from what quality of education they furnish; the existence of a colossal "college placement" industry which sells to eager parents their ability to "work the system"; among much, much else (the ethnic quotas, the athletic scholarships handed out for sports that mainly rich kids play, etc.); should never be slighted. Equally the fact that the "power elite" is disproportionately drawn from such institutions speaks not to the superior merit of the attendees, or the quality of the education imparted as one rather poorly argued "defense of the Ivy League" by two of their more senior functionaries implies, but the social networks and inherited wealth enjoyed by the children of the privileged strata who are their principal students (a fact underlined by how on average the graduate of an elite college may not make much more than the attendee of their local state school), with, indeed, those schools' prestige used to pass off social privilege and social snobbery as intellectual superiority. Still, defenders of the system as it exists, staunch believers in the myth of meritocracy profoundly oblivious to the fact that the term was coined as part of an argument against such thinking, and what his thought-experiment showed about just how remote an actual meritocracy would be from the social order of today, slight them as a matter of course in the sniveling think pieces for which the mainstream media's platforms provide infinite space, as they do for all other forms of Establishment expressions of self-pity.
Of Establishment Self-Pity
We are told that we live in an era of "populism" (ad nauseam). It would be far more accurate to say that we are living in an era in which it has become harder for policymakers and supporters of the status quo generally to ignore public disagreement with the neoliberal and neoconservative policies they have so unflinchingly instituted for a half century in spite of their failures, and contempt of public opinion. In discussing this it is only fair to also note that in the highly uneven political contest which followed the far right, thanks to its advantages (including a good deal of elite sympathy for the far right, and the centrist tendency to accommodate it in a way it would never the left), has been more successful in channeling that disagreement into support for its parties and leaders and their proposed policies than any element on the left--though however ineffectual, it may be that some are looking leftward in a way they did not before (to the horror of center and right alike).
The results have been uncomfortable for many in "the Establishment," certainly those who feel their particular institutions and interests to be challenged by the ascendant political tendency. Per usual, their response has not been an openness to compromise and reform, but disdain for the critics, and (problematic as the term is I think it really is warranted here) pity for themselves.
So does it go with the defenders of the status quo in higher education as they moan "Oh why, why don't the people like us?" then conclude "It's them, not us."
So does it go in Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Philip J. Hanlon's poorly and sloppily researched, reasoned and written counter-attack of critics of that pillar of the Establishment, the Ivy League, in TIME magazine last month--the kind of piece that, as Nathan J. Robinson might put it, forces me to "restrain my instinct to write multi-thousand word rebuttals."
Still, even holding back from the multi-thousand word rebuttal required to dismantle the piece I still find it hard to refrain from comment upon particular bits of it, with one that seems to me to especially do no credit to this "Senior Associate Dean of the Yale School of Management, President of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, and Lester Crown Professor of Leadership Practice" and former President of Dartmouth is their claim that universities add "$40 billion annually to the GDP and their technology transfers have contributed over $600 billion to the nation's GOP in the last twenty years."
Let us overlook the fact that in raising this they switch the subject from the Ivy League specifically to higher education generally, confusing the matter. Let us also overlook the reference to "GOP" instead of "GDP" ("GDP" is how it is written in the source they link, leaving no doubt of the nature of the typo, and what passes for copyediting at TIME). Instead let us consider what these two figures, which are supposed to overawe us with the mighty contributions of the university to the economy, mean within the larger picture. As one finds clicking the link about universities adding $40 billion to U.S. GDP (a surprisingly low figure for institutions employing 4 million persons) one finds that the source, a 2019 item posted at the web site of the Association of Governing Boards, identifies the source figure, actually $36.9 billion, as the contribution of international students to the economy specifically, not universities as a whole. It thus does not mean what they say it does.
Meanwhile the reference to the $600 billion (rounded up from the original figure of $591 billion in the same item that supplied the "$40 billion" figure) contributed in technology transfers refers to the years 1996 to 2015--during which Gross Domestic Product came to some $261 trillion in current (before inflation) figures. The result is that all that university research contributed less than 1/4th of 1 percent of U.S. GDP during the whole two decades.
The $600 billion figure is meant to give the impression that the universities are powering an economy roaring with innovation. Alas, when one gets beyond the most superficial sort of examination it affirms just how little innovation was really going on in that period--how little technological change there has been, in spite of the Silicon Valley-singing hype. It is thus also far from satisfying as evidence of what the authors endeavored to prove in that section, namely that what America's higher education delivers is well worth the price--all as these two writers studiously avoid mentioning a good many other statistics, such as the nearly $1.8 trillion student loan debt owned and securitized as of the third quarter of 2024, some $1.6 trillion of this Federal debt owed by some 43 million debtors owing some $35,000 on average. This raises a point the authors overlook--namely the question of, even if we allow for the gains in the economy, who is reaping the benefit--and who bearing the burden, especially at that national level they raise when the matter is convenient, and shun when it is inconvenient, greatly muddling the picture even as they fling the accusation of "cherry picking" at their critics.
The results have been uncomfortable for many in "the Establishment," certainly those who feel their particular institutions and interests to be challenged by the ascendant political tendency. Per usual, their response has not been an openness to compromise and reform, but disdain for the critics, and (problematic as the term is I think it really is warranted here) pity for themselves.
So does it go with the defenders of the status quo in higher education as they moan "Oh why, why don't the people like us?" then conclude "It's them, not us."
So does it go in Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Philip J. Hanlon's poorly and sloppily researched, reasoned and written counter-attack of critics of that pillar of the Establishment, the Ivy League, in TIME magazine last month--the kind of piece that, as Nathan J. Robinson might put it, forces me to "restrain my instinct to write multi-thousand word rebuttals."
Still, even holding back from the multi-thousand word rebuttal required to dismantle the piece I still find it hard to refrain from comment upon particular bits of it, with one that seems to me to especially do no credit to this "Senior Associate Dean of the Yale School of Management, President of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, and Lester Crown Professor of Leadership Practice" and former President of Dartmouth is their claim that universities add "$40 billion annually to the GDP and their technology transfers have contributed over $600 billion to the nation's GOP in the last twenty years."
Let us overlook the fact that in raising this they switch the subject from the Ivy League specifically to higher education generally, confusing the matter. Let us also overlook the reference to "GOP" instead of "GDP" ("GDP" is how it is written in the source they link, leaving no doubt of the nature of the typo, and what passes for copyediting at TIME). Instead let us consider what these two figures, which are supposed to overawe us with the mighty contributions of the university to the economy, mean within the larger picture. As one finds clicking the link about universities adding $40 billion to U.S. GDP (a surprisingly low figure for institutions employing 4 million persons) one finds that the source, a 2019 item posted at the web site of the Association of Governing Boards, identifies the source figure, actually $36.9 billion, as the contribution of international students to the economy specifically, not universities as a whole. It thus does not mean what they say it does.
Meanwhile the reference to the $600 billion (rounded up from the original figure of $591 billion in the same item that supplied the "$40 billion" figure) contributed in technology transfers refers to the years 1996 to 2015--during which Gross Domestic Product came to some $261 trillion in current (before inflation) figures. The result is that all that university research contributed less than 1/4th of 1 percent of U.S. GDP during the whole two decades.
The $600 billion figure is meant to give the impression that the universities are powering an economy roaring with innovation. Alas, when one gets beyond the most superficial sort of examination it affirms just how little innovation was really going on in that period--how little technological change there has been, in spite of the Silicon Valley-singing hype. It is thus also far from satisfying as evidence of what the authors endeavored to prove in that section, namely that what America's higher education delivers is well worth the price--all as these two writers studiously avoid mentioning a good many other statistics, such as the nearly $1.8 trillion student loan debt owned and securitized as of the third quarter of 2024, some $1.6 trillion of this Federal debt owed by some 43 million debtors owing some $35,000 on average. This raises a point the authors overlook--namely the question of, even if we allow for the gains in the economy, who is reaping the benefit--and who bearing the burden, especially at that national level they raise when the matter is convenient, and shun when it is inconvenient, greatly muddling the picture even as they fling the accusation of "cherry picking" at their critics.
Which Movies' Box Office Fortunes Are People Most Interested in Tracking?
It seems obvious enough that people have different reasons for interesting themselves in how well this or that film does at the box office. They may be a fan of an artist or the source material or of a franchise, and naturally enough hope that it does well. Or more disinterestedly, as habitual box office-watchers, they may be interested in how a particular kind of film does. (Looking at It Ends with Us I was interested in what it would imply about movies based on books, as these haven't done so well in recent years, and in the prospects of the movie being one of those low-budgeted movies that outdoes most of the tentpoles at the level of the bottom line that I suspect we are going to increasingly see.)
However, it may be that what provokes the interest of a wide audience in a film's chances is some very vocally hoping to see a film fail--and plausibly, also the way this provokes those who hope that it won't do so into paying more attention.
Consider, for example, Disney in recent years, and how a great many people were angry at the company, and gloated over its recent failures. Many were openly eager to see its movies do poorly--and as it happened, had plenty of cause for satisfaction these past few years, as Disney racked up flop after flop (two colossal animated flops in 2022, the underperformance of Marvel's movies in Phases Four and Five culminating in the debacle of Captain Marvel 2, and further disappointment with the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, its remake of The Haunted House, and what was supposed to be a centennial event in Wish). There were others who were on Disney's side, but I doubt they would have paid so much attention to the box office if it wasn't for the fact that they were so aware of those eager for Disney to suffer.
Lately, I think, the enmity has lost its edge, even dissipated--no one seeming to have it in for the studio over Inside Out 2, or Deadpool & Wolverine, both of which actually seem to have been enjoyed by many of those who had expressed hostility earlier. Whatever else one makes of that, it also seems likely to mean less interest in how Disney's movies do in the months ahead.
However, it may be that what provokes the interest of a wide audience in a film's chances is some very vocally hoping to see a film fail--and plausibly, also the way this provokes those who hope that it won't do so into paying more attention.
Consider, for example, Disney in recent years, and how a great many people were angry at the company, and gloated over its recent failures. Many were openly eager to see its movies do poorly--and as it happened, had plenty of cause for satisfaction these past few years, as Disney racked up flop after flop (two colossal animated flops in 2022, the underperformance of Marvel's movies in Phases Four and Five culminating in the debacle of Captain Marvel 2, and further disappointment with the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, its remake of The Haunted House, and what was supposed to be a centennial event in Wish). There were others who were on Disney's side, but I doubt they would have paid so much attention to the box office if it wasn't for the fact that they were so aware of those eager for Disney to suffer.
Lately, I think, the enmity has lost its edge, even dissipated--no one seeming to have it in for the studio over Inside Out 2, or Deadpool & Wolverine, both of which actually seem to have been enjoyed by many of those who had expressed hostility earlier. Whatever else one makes of that, it also seems likely to mean less interest in how Disney's movies do in the months ahead.
Chewing Over Film Grosses: A Few Thoughts
Those inclined to argue over the commercial success or failure of particular films are much more inclined to do so when a film is fairly high-profile (who would notice it otherwise); when people feel they have reason to care about why a commercial endeavor that does not affect their lives at all one way or the other performs in the marketplace; and when there is room for disagreement about how well it has done.
Last summer Deadpool was most certainly a high-profile film. And I think that a good many people were interested in how it would do--partly because it was the first really big superhero film of the year, and especially the first big Marvel movie after the catastrophe that was Captain Marvel 2. Still, the general run of opinion became overwhelmingly bullish about this one early on, and only got more so, as weeks in advance of release the tracking data suggested a $200 million+ opening weekend, to which expectation the film lived up fully, as it went on to absolutely unambiguous success. Tripling its opening weekend domestic gross to collect over $600 million in North America, and making still more than that internationally, it broke the billion dollar barrier no superhero film had managed to do since 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, became the most successful film in not just the Deadpool series but the X-Men franchise when we consider the matter in "real," inflation-adjusted terms, the highest-grossing live-action movie of the year in North America, a sure maker of a colossal profit (I would be shocked to see it outside the top five on Deadline's list next year), and a movie that would have been a big win for Marvel even before the pandemic let alone in the depressed situation that followed it, all in spite of the handicap of its "R" rating and its "edgy" and "cult" interest. Given the fan base for both Deadpool and Wolverine many were thrilled to see the movie become so--but as there was really no grounds whatsoever for disputing its being a major success, and so nothing for its admirers (or detractors) to argue about on that level.
By contrast a movie like the one that came out just a week earlier, Twisters, left those interested in these matters with a lot more to consider. It was a high-profile movie--and the media's politicizing it (however unpersuasively) likely got some to care more about how it did than they otherwise would have. At the same time the movie grossed a quarter of a billion dollars domestically, which looks impressive, especially these days--but that is just half what the first film managed when you adjust for inflation, while its ticket sales were weak internationally. With the movie's global take thus $370 million it was easy to see a movie that reportedly cost over $150 million to produce and much more to market failing to make its money back in theaters and, depending on how the post-theatrical earnings played out, being at best marginally profitable, and perhaps a modest loser, even as much of the press talked it up as a big hit. The result was that if far fewer people were interested in the movie than in Deadpool the combination of politicization, uncertainty and a very challengeable media narrative left those who are prone to talk about these things with a lot more to chew over.
Last summer Deadpool was most certainly a high-profile film. And I think that a good many people were interested in how it would do--partly because it was the first really big superhero film of the year, and especially the first big Marvel movie after the catastrophe that was Captain Marvel 2. Still, the general run of opinion became overwhelmingly bullish about this one early on, and only got more so, as weeks in advance of release the tracking data suggested a $200 million+ opening weekend, to which expectation the film lived up fully, as it went on to absolutely unambiguous success. Tripling its opening weekend domestic gross to collect over $600 million in North America, and making still more than that internationally, it broke the billion dollar barrier no superhero film had managed to do since 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home, became the most successful film in not just the Deadpool series but the X-Men franchise when we consider the matter in "real," inflation-adjusted terms, the highest-grossing live-action movie of the year in North America, a sure maker of a colossal profit (I would be shocked to see it outside the top five on Deadline's list next year), and a movie that would have been a big win for Marvel even before the pandemic let alone in the depressed situation that followed it, all in spite of the handicap of its "R" rating and its "edgy" and "cult" interest. Given the fan base for both Deadpool and Wolverine many were thrilled to see the movie become so--but as there was really no grounds whatsoever for disputing its being a major success, and so nothing for its admirers (or detractors) to argue about on that level.
By contrast a movie like the one that came out just a week earlier, Twisters, left those interested in these matters with a lot more to consider. It was a high-profile movie--and the media's politicizing it (however unpersuasively) likely got some to care more about how it did than they otherwise would have. At the same time the movie grossed a quarter of a billion dollars domestically, which looks impressive, especially these days--but that is just half what the first film managed when you adjust for inflation, while its ticket sales were weak internationally. With the movie's global take thus $370 million it was easy to see a movie that reportedly cost over $150 million to produce and much more to market failing to make its money back in theaters and, depending on how the post-theatrical earnings played out, being at best marginally profitable, and perhaps a modest loser, even as much of the press talked it up as a big hit. The result was that if far fewer people were interested in the movie than in Deadpool the combination of politicization, uncertainty and a very challengeable media narrative left those who are prone to talk about these things with a lot more to chew over.
Talking Back to the News: Is it Worth It?
These days more people than ever who follow the news, in spite of not having a professional or vocational interest in the news, comment on that news in one public way or another. Whether getting in their say on a comment thread at a news outlet, or on social media, or on a blog of their own, or any of a number of other places, they talk back to the media.
Often they do so because the coverage has in their view been unsatisfactory.
Often they find it unsatisfactory because, by a reasonable standard, it is unsatisfactory.
Those who do respond have every right to voice their opinion--with, I would add, their doing so an exercise of the right to free speech rather than an abuse of that right insofar as their opinion is an honest one. They may even be said to have an obligation to voice their opinion, if they are calling out something that must be called out.
Still, the time and energy absorbed by getting involved in such response, the deeper mental and emotional engagement involved, have their cost. Those who most recognize the news media's corruption and incompetence may, genuinely finding fault with just about everything that news media presents (which is easy enough, because they do such an atrocious job "bringing us the world"), may easily find themselves spending all their time talking back in this way.
Indeed, in an age in which the most pompous news outlets out there make clickbait of their headlines, with obnoxious provocation a common strategy, much of their content is intended to spur such a reaction--such that making his case for why The Atlantic is "the worst magazine in America" Nathan J. Robinson remarks how many of that publication's headlines are "designed to annoy people into arguing about it," such that he has to remind himself "that 'it's bad on purpose to make you click" in order "to restrain [his] instinct to write multi-thousand word rebuttals." Those of us who, unlike Mr. Robinson, are not making a living from our opinions, or enjoying access to platforms that would permit our "multi-thousand word rebuttals" to reach an appreciable audience, can still less afford to get sucked into doing so every time we see a crime against journalism, even those apt to appear in a single publication (like The Atlantic). I will not go so far as to say that you should never talk back, but you should know the practical cost, be selective--and if you feel you can't do that anymore, probably reduce your exposure to the news rather than talk back to it all.
Often they do so because the coverage has in their view been unsatisfactory.
Often they find it unsatisfactory because, by a reasonable standard, it is unsatisfactory.
Those who do respond have every right to voice their opinion--with, I would add, their doing so an exercise of the right to free speech rather than an abuse of that right insofar as their opinion is an honest one. They may even be said to have an obligation to voice their opinion, if they are calling out something that must be called out.
Still, the time and energy absorbed by getting involved in such response, the deeper mental and emotional engagement involved, have their cost. Those who most recognize the news media's corruption and incompetence may, genuinely finding fault with just about everything that news media presents (which is easy enough, because they do such an atrocious job "bringing us the world"), may easily find themselves spending all their time talking back in this way.
Indeed, in an age in which the most pompous news outlets out there make clickbait of their headlines, with obnoxious provocation a common strategy, much of their content is intended to spur such a reaction--such that making his case for why The Atlantic is "the worst magazine in America" Nathan J. Robinson remarks how many of that publication's headlines are "designed to annoy people into arguing about it," such that he has to remind himself "that 'it's bad on purpose to make you click" in order "to restrain [his] instinct to write multi-thousand word rebuttals." Those of us who, unlike Mr. Robinson, are not making a living from our opinions, or enjoying access to platforms that would permit our "multi-thousand word rebuttals" to reach an appreciable audience, can still less afford to get sucked into doing so every time we see a crime against journalism, even those apt to appear in a single publication (like The Atlantic). I will not go so far as to say that you should never talk back, but you should know the practical cost, be selective--and if you feel you can't do that anymore, probably reduce your exposure to the news rather than talk back to it all.
Ten Tips for Staying Sane While Following the News
Following the news is stressful, and often pointlessly so, not only because of the undeniably terrible things going on in a world that is very likely becoming more unjust, more conflicted, more dangerous, but because the scum of the Media-Industrial Complex are intent on getting and holding your attention through confusion, fear, outrage for the sake of advancing their assorted political agendas (which are unlikely to be in your personal interest), and of course, commercial gain. They will report much that is unimportant, while what they report that is important they are likely to report unhelpfully--offering a few bits of information that may be inaccurate or false over and over and over again (not always innocently), with the associated content puffed up with associated irrelevancies, ill-connected factoids, empty speculation and mindless bluster from their so-called "experts." My suggestion is that those not intent on shutting out the world utterly curate their news carefully. As this is admittedly easier said than done, what would be some actionable advice here? I offer the following ten items as being of use in following the news generally.
1. Carefully time the occasion and quantity of your news intake. This means that you should not let yourself compulsively seek out the news--and avoid whatever will force it on your attention. Keep away as much as possible from social media accounts, from clickbait-crammed portals to your e-mail accounts, and anything else that will inflict "What's trending" on you, and when you must use those services ignore those trying to lure you in. Instead check the news only deliberately, when you want to do so, preferably with a clear head so that you don't get distracted, don't lose track of the time, don't waste time paying attention to what is probably important to you. Indeed, delimit the amount of time you're willing to put into this--something a lot easier to do if you make a point of looking at the news not every day but every week (or two) as you read your news rather than watch it (reading offering more control than subjecting yourself to a broadcast where they tell you what they want in the order in which they want to tell it to you around a series of commercial breaks), and use that time carefully, only reading past a headline if you are convinced there is really something important here, and when you do even that, "preview" a piece before deciding whether to do more. (In brief: look at the opening paragraph, look at the conclusion, look at the accompanying graphics and topic sentences. Unless there really is something you really want to read, don't look at any more.)
2. When you do seek out the news avoid news aggregators, which are of decreasing value. These increasingly push on you utterly worthless sources (perhaps due to a failure of filtration, perhaps due to other reasons), while the proliferation of paywalls and adblock blockers has meant that you cannot simply, at no financial cost, conveniently sample the coverage of a variety of news outlets the way you used to, depriving them of what was once their primary advantage. Instead I would suggest your having a select--ideally, very short--list of news outlets that follow current events that you find worthwhile and rely mainly on those.
3. Remember that an accurate image of a major event, which is likely to be complex, is likely to emerge only slowly--and unless you yourself are a public official or activist, or personally, financially or in some other way connected to what is going on, there is rarely (not never, but rarely) any reason why you personally can't wait. Barring a news outlet's having really, really earned your trust, take everything you read, see and hear with at a minimum a grain of salt--the more in as very few in the news media will let a little thing like the truth get in the way of their object of stoking fear, anger, hatred at their chosen targets to make you keep watching.
4. In light of the slowness with which a clear picture is likely to emerge of a current event, and the fact that it is very rare that you will actually need to immediately do anything in response to the report, learn to avoid getting sucked into following a story from minute to minute, or even day to day, when you do not absolutely have to pay such close attention. Again, this is easier to do if you get in the habit of only checking in with the news once a week or less, and if you take everything reported in the news with a grain of salt--with this also the easier if you favor sources that are in at least their original, non-web, version print rather than TV-oriented and so oriented to the mind-numbing 24/7 news cycle.
5. Do not presume to understand any event or issue out there on the basis of the news media's torrent of little bits--all as, again, taking in all the little, usually low-content, bits is likely to leave you understanding events less than more. Even a minimum of comprehension will require stepping back and doing some research of your own. Of course, if you check the news only intermittently you will have more time for this, and more of the lucidity needed for making such judgments, but this is time consuming, and no one person can do it for everything. Again, be selective about when you make the effort.
6. In doing such research, especially in the absence of a deep background in a subject, one unavoidably has to turn to those who are equipped to make sense of these things. In finding them out be ready to step away from the "objective" mainstream (which is really anything but objective) and look at more avowedly "ideological" sources for a grasp of what is going on. They are less squeamish about explaining things, and indeed some such media outlets pride themselves on their effort to do so. (Compare, for example, what you are likely to get in Vox or The Conversation with what you get from the New York Times.) Additionally, in contrast with the hypocrisy about objectivity you get from the mainstream media they are usually pretty clear about where they stand. (If a publication is ready to apply a contentious ideological label to itself such as "conservative" or "progressive" I find that they tend to live up to the promise.) This makes it the easier to judge what they may get right, and where they may fall short--and indeed I would suggest that you have such sources on your list of "go-to" sites.
7. Rid yourself of the presumption that all sides in an argument are equally worthy of respect. They aren't, as the controversies over "both sidesism" show. In a rational argument the side that doesn't respect the facts or logic is unworthy of any more respect than that--and if you are at all interested in understanding what is going on, you have the responsibility to make the judgment. Judge carefully, of course, and be ready to judge again should new information seem to call your old judgment into question--but in the end do not shrink from judging.
8. If you care about what actually matters in the world, pay less attention to politics (in the sense of the sound bites of political hacks, and the endless analysis thereof) and more to policy (what, in the end, governments actually do)--because the latter is so little discussed that you have to strain to find it, as against the "show business for ugly people" with which the news media is so enthralled, and expects the public to also be enthralled. Really, it isn't all that enthralling--and even were it so you aren't there to be enthralled, but informed in the way that attention to this prevents you from being.
9. Remember that the way the news media works means that no amount of effort will perfectly insulate you from the trivial and the pernicious. Indeed, should you try to dig a little deeper into a matter and in the process engage in Internet searches, widen the variety of the news outlets you consult, etc., you will probably subject yourself to a great deal of this. The result is that it will take restraint to keep you from being diverted or baited by it (for instance, enabling the human refuse who present a piece "bad on purpose to make you click" to snare you into clicking).
10. When you have had enough of the news for a period, feel free to take a break from it altogether. Indeed, while an occasional "news fast" is no substitute for more careful news consumption (just as a period of fasting is no substitute for a healthy diet) I can personally testify that they can be helpful--not least in getting you "back on the wagon" after a period of lapse from whatever habits you have developed to manage your news intake.
1. Carefully time the occasion and quantity of your news intake. This means that you should not let yourself compulsively seek out the news--and avoid whatever will force it on your attention. Keep away as much as possible from social media accounts, from clickbait-crammed portals to your e-mail accounts, and anything else that will inflict "What's trending" on you, and when you must use those services ignore those trying to lure you in. Instead check the news only deliberately, when you want to do so, preferably with a clear head so that you don't get distracted, don't lose track of the time, don't waste time paying attention to what is probably important to you. Indeed, delimit the amount of time you're willing to put into this--something a lot easier to do if you make a point of looking at the news not every day but every week (or two) as you read your news rather than watch it (reading offering more control than subjecting yourself to a broadcast where they tell you what they want in the order in which they want to tell it to you around a series of commercial breaks), and use that time carefully, only reading past a headline if you are convinced there is really something important here, and when you do even that, "preview" a piece before deciding whether to do more. (In brief: look at the opening paragraph, look at the conclusion, look at the accompanying graphics and topic sentences. Unless there really is something you really want to read, don't look at any more.)
2. When you do seek out the news avoid news aggregators, which are of decreasing value. These increasingly push on you utterly worthless sources (perhaps due to a failure of filtration, perhaps due to other reasons), while the proliferation of paywalls and adblock blockers has meant that you cannot simply, at no financial cost, conveniently sample the coverage of a variety of news outlets the way you used to, depriving them of what was once their primary advantage. Instead I would suggest your having a select--ideally, very short--list of news outlets that follow current events that you find worthwhile and rely mainly on those.
3. Remember that an accurate image of a major event, which is likely to be complex, is likely to emerge only slowly--and unless you yourself are a public official or activist, or personally, financially or in some other way connected to what is going on, there is rarely (not never, but rarely) any reason why you personally can't wait. Barring a news outlet's having really, really earned your trust, take everything you read, see and hear with at a minimum a grain of salt--the more in as very few in the news media will let a little thing like the truth get in the way of their object of stoking fear, anger, hatred at their chosen targets to make you keep watching.
4. In light of the slowness with which a clear picture is likely to emerge of a current event, and the fact that it is very rare that you will actually need to immediately do anything in response to the report, learn to avoid getting sucked into following a story from minute to minute, or even day to day, when you do not absolutely have to pay such close attention. Again, this is easier to do if you get in the habit of only checking in with the news once a week or less, and if you take everything reported in the news with a grain of salt--with this also the easier if you favor sources that are in at least their original, non-web, version print rather than TV-oriented and so oriented to the mind-numbing 24/7 news cycle.
5. Do not presume to understand any event or issue out there on the basis of the news media's torrent of little bits--all as, again, taking in all the little, usually low-content, bits is likely to leave you understanding events less than more. Even a minimum of comprehension will require stepping back and doing some research of your own. Of course, if you check the news only intermittently you will have more time for this, and more of the lucidity needed for making such judgments, but this is time consuming, and no one person can do it for everything. Again, be selective about when you make the effort.
6. In doing such research, especially in the absence of a deep background in a subject, one unavoidably has to turn to those who are equipped to make sense of these things. In finding them out be ready to step away from the "objective" mainstream (which is really anything but objective) and look at more avowedly "ideological" sources for a grasp of what is going on. They are less squeamish about explaining things, and indeed some such media outlets pride themselves on their effort to do so. (Compare, for example, what you are likely to get in Vox or The Conversation with what you get from the New York Times.) Additionally, in contrast with the hypocrisy about objectivity you get from the mainstream media they are usually pretty clear about where they stand. (If a publication is ready to apply a contentious ideological label to itself such as "conservative" or "progressive" I find that they tend to live up to the promise.) This makes it the easier to judge what they may get right, and where they may fall short--and indeed I would suggest that you have such sources on your list of "go-to" sites.
7. Rid yourself of the presumption that all sides in an argument are equally worthy of respect. They aren't, as the controversies over "both sidesism" show. In a rational argument the side that doesn't respect the facts or logic is unworthy of any more respect than that--and if you are at all interested in understanding what is going on, you have the responsibility to make the judgment. Judge carefully, of course, and be ready to judge again should new information seem to call your old judgment into question--but in the end do not shrink from judging.
8. If you care about what actually matters in the world, pay less attention to politics (in the sense of the sound bites of political hacks, and the endless analysis thereof) and more to policy (what, in the end, governments actually do)--because the latter is so little discussed that you have to strain to find it, as against the "show business for ugly people" with which the news media is so enthralled, and expects the public to also be enthralled. Really, it isn't all that enthralling--and even were it so you aren't there to be enthralled, but informed in the way that attention to this prevents you from being.
9. Remember that the way the news media works means that no amount of effort will perfectly insulate you from the trivial and the pernicious. Indeed, should you try to dig a little deeper into a matter and in the process engage in Internet searches, widen the variety of the news outlets you consult, etc., you will probably subject yourself to a great deal of this. The result is that it will take restraint to keep you from being diverted or baited by it (for instance, enabling the human refuse who present a piece "bad on purpose to make you click" to snare you into clicking).
10. When you have had enough of the news for a period, feel free to take a break from it altogether. Indeed, while an occasional "news fast" is no substitute for more careful news consumption (just as a period of fasting is no substitute for a healthy diet) I can personally testify that they can be helpful--not least in getting you "back on the wagon" after a period of lapse from whatever habits you have developed to manage your news intake.
Ten Tips for Staying Sane While Following the News: Short Version
I recently wrote a post about curating the news so as to keep yourself from being driven insane by it. These ten tips, presented in summary form, are:
1. Carefully time the occasion and quantity of your news intake. (Avoid social media and anything with clickbait, only look at the news when you want to do so, read rather than watch, ignore what isn't important, and preview what may be important before diving in.)
2. Avoid news aggregators. Just keep a short list of sites you find worthwhile and consult those.
3. Take everything they say with a "grain of salt.
4. Don't get sucked into following things from minute to minute, day to day--precisely because they probably won't have more information for you--and indeed think about checking the news only weekly, or even less often than that.
5. Remember that understanding the news means real research--which is the more reason to avoid anything more than a glance unless you really want to know what's going on.
6. Favor those news outlets which rather than hiding behind a pretense of "objectivity" analyze and explain.
7. Remember that not every side in an argument is worthy of respect. Make the judgment.
8. Pay less attention to politics, more to policy.
9. Remember that there is no perfect insulation from the media's idiocies--and you will have to exercise restraint to not get sucked in.
10. A news fast is no substitute for sounder news curation, but still helpful from time to time--especially if you have found yourself picking up bad habits again.
1. Carefully time the occasion and quantity of your news intake. (Avoid social media and anything with clickbait, only look at the news when you want to do so, read rather than watch, ignore what isn't important, and preview what may be important before diving in.)
2. Avoid news aggregators. Just keep a short list of sites you find worthwhile and consult those.
3. Take everything they say with a "grain of salt.
4. Don't get sucked into following things from minute to minute, day to day--precisely because they probably won't have more information for you--and indeed think about checking the news only weekly, or even less often than that.
5. Remember that understanding the news means real research--which is the more reason to avoid anything more than a glance unless you really want to know what's going on.
6. Favor those news outlets which rather than hiding behind a pretense of "objectivity" analyze and explain.
7. Remember that not every side in an argument is worthy of respect. Make the judgment.
8. Pay less attention to politics, more to policy.
9. Remember that there is no perfect insulation from the media's idiocies--and you will have to exercise restraint to not get sucked in.
10. A news fast is no substitute for sounder news curation, but still helpful from time to time--especially if you have found yourself picking up bad habits again.
Should We Treat "Entertainment" News as News During a News Fast?
In a word, "Yes."
After all, entertainment news is still news, with many of the most wearying characteristics of other kinds of news--namely its bombardment of the audience with disconnected bits of information (and the Talking Heads' often asinine opinions about them).
However, there is also the reality of what that news consists in. Frivolous as that news often is, entertainment news is not so separate from the rest of the world that in following it along you do not expose yourself to the news more broadly.
For example, you look to see what people are saying about that recent Big Dumb Blockbuster, thinking that this is harmless enough. (It's not a war, after all, or a famine, or a natural disaster.) Yet even Big Dumb Blockbusters are apt to reflect reality in some degree--to be seen as commenting upon it in some degree, especially by those looking to find something offensive to their sensibility in everything. At the very least you expose yourself to the idiocies of the "culture wars," which have, indeed, made much of the content of the real news the argument about pop culture, including the stuff of Big Dumb Blockbusters, with this, in turn, becoming part of the entertainment news.
The result is that any really serious news fast will excise it from one's life--though frankly, given what much of this news consists in anyway, that really shouldn't seem like any great sacrifice for anyone really needing a break from the media culture surrounding us.
After all, entertainment news is still news, with many of the most wearying characteristics of other kinds of news--namely its bombardment of the audience with disconnected bits of information (and the Talking Heads' often asinine opinions about them).
However, there is also the reality of what that news consists in. Frivolous as that news often is, entertainment news is not so separate from the rest of the world that in following it along you do not expose yourself to the news more broadly.
For example, you look to see what people are saying about that recent Big Dumb Blockbuster, thinking that this is harmless enough. (It's not a war, after all, or a famine, or a natural disaster.) Yet even Big Dumb Blockbusters are apt to reflect reality in some degree--to be seen as commenting upon it in some degree, especially by those looking to find something offensive to their sensibility in everything. At the very least you expose yourself to the idiocies of the "culture wars," which have, indeed, made much of the content of the real news the argument about pop culture, including the stuff of Big Dumb Blockbusters, with this, in turn, becoming part of the entertainment news.
The result is that any really serious news fast will excise it from one's life--though frankly, given what much of this news consists in anyway, that really shouldn't seem like any great sacrifice for anyone really needing a break from the media culture surrounding us.
What Does it Mean to be Bourgeois?
Previously writing of the matter of "middle classness" I have stressed the necessary material foundation of middle class existence--its historical basis in independence based on ownership of means of production; as this became less tenable as a basis for thinking about any but a very small portion of the population, social analysts' substituting for the idea of a property-owning "Old" middle class a "New" middle class of dependent professional-managerial employees; and the combination of consumption level, security and opportunity that these two situations were supposed to afford those who possessed those foundations.
The emphasis on the material was because so many of those who discuss the "middle class" are so shabbily evasive about the material requirements of the situation as they make middle classness about having a college degree or an office job or subjective perception of one's standing or professed "values" or some other such thing, a tack which enables them to present the middle class as far larger than it really is for various political reasons--like deflecting any charge that it has shrunk in the neoliberal era. (My own reading of the situation is that the "New" middle class, properly speaking, was never more than a small minority, that notions of a solid and comfortable middle classness as the societal norm in even the post-World War II United States were always a promise and not a reality--that the "wide middle class" we talk about is actually better understood as a "quasi-middle class," enjoying middle class-ish levels of consumption, but not really middle class security or chances to get ahead--and that this quasi-middle class has if anything tended to wither since then, to the point that its members' pretension to middle classness looks very, very threadbare these days.)
However, there is still something to be said of the middle class as a social grouping with distinct attitudes, the more easily pinpointed when one looks at that term connected with but only imperfectly synonymous with middle classness (the more in as we have to contend with that reality of quasi-middle classness), "bourgeois." Generally identified with conventionality, conformism, conservatism--above all, in relation to the economic system and its orthodoxies, namely capitalism and the economic individualism to which it enjoins all of society's members--it means not only an expectation of self-reliance on one's own part and that of others, but that one should have at the center of their life, as an end in itself rather than because of the associated material rewards, concern for self-advancement within a socioeconomic system the bourgeois treats as so natural and eternal that the claim that "society--there is no such thing," if such obvious idiocy as a description of the social world that they may not stand by it when it is presented to them so flatly, very much reflects how they think about the world in practice. At the same time they believe that their non-society--their market-centered non-society--is the best of all possible worlds, not least in its being more than any other a fair and meritocratic allotter of individual outcomes, so much so that they think that no one in this system can reasonably ask for more than "equality of opportunity," with the bar for what qualifies as such equality set so low its existence can seem, often is, mere empty piety; easily incline to seeing practical outcomes as moral outcomes such that what people get monetarily is what they "earn" and "deserve"; and regard those at the top (the words "entrepreneur," "startup," "hedge fund," "billionaire" speak as no others do to their imaginations) as "successful" and as "winners" who attained what they did because of their superior qualities ("intelligence," "talent," "drive," "grit") and "hard work" and are unquestionably worthy of respect, admiration, emulation, while they regard those who are not at the top as "unsuccessful" and "losers" the opposite in every way, failures whose personal faults have received their due, a person's worth summed up in their "net worth". By the same token the bourgeois views calls for modification of any of these outcomes in even the slightest way as not only an attack on their selfishness (for even if only people far richer than themselves are to be taxed under a particular proposal, they fear the tax man may come for those in their bracket next--and that if he doesn't, well, they will be rich someday too, won't they?) but also what passes with them for morality, for they see any such act as a penalty imposed on virtue for the sake of rewarding vice that, given their very low opinion of the human average, and especially of those they deem socially inferior, strikes at the very foundations of civilized life itself.
All that said the unattractions of the "Way of the Bourgeois" seem fairly obvious. The good bourgeois is enjoined to a narrow path of responsibility, restraint, diligence in pursuit of remote and uncertain reward that because of that stress on responsibility, restraint, diligence they are not even allowed to enjoy very much--all as even when they do relatively well their gains are paltry by comparison with what those possessed of genuine WEALTH enjoy (the statistics showing that billionaires are rarer than one in a million, and in spite of the Horatio Alger propaganda few of these really "self-made" in any sense). Indeed, the bourgeois' drive is more often rooted in their horror at the thought of falling into the lower class (and so not only having that much less of everything, but being one of those they despise) than of any real prospect of getting the big prizes.
Naturally it is desirable that those walking this path "not think too much" about what is asked--demanded--of them as against what they are likely to get, and indeed they are constantly dissuaded against this by those who stress "confidence" and "faith"--confidence and faith that one will be one of those winners at the top, somehow--and that those who must reckon with where they have actually got never question the promises made them. If they are not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, or even making minimum wage (especially if they are not even making minimum wage), they must be conditioned to think first, foremost and preferably last of how they personally went wrong--or if they must lay blame anywhere else, do so upon "safe" objects (like the "welfare queens" they are sure exist, and the "limousine liberals" coddling them, that must be why they're not a billionaire yet).
All this, in turn, conditions everything else--their sticking with the herd and groveling before rank and Authority, their ideas on family and religion and education and culture and much, much else. (A man, they think, must have a family, but in spite of all the cant about family always put work first--because a family's purpose is above all to "tie him down" and compel him to "work hard," keeping him on that narrow path that provides the only possible justification for his existence on Earth. One must have religion--or at least religiosity--because whether or not he actually believes, or can, "faith" is so important for getting along. One must admit the need for education as helpful in success, somehow, and think much of their children going to "good schools" and enjoin them to high academic achievement--but regard educators as second-rate people at best and intellectualism with distaste and distrust. One must grant the need for recreation, but more grudgingly, suspect "outside interests" as competing with one's "real job," and steer clear of what they are told are "childish things," such that somehow it is all right for a grown man to spend vast amounts of time and money as a fan of a football team, but not for him to play the latest edition of John Madden.) This outlook conditions, too, the manner of their stomaching the endless betrayals of self, moral compromises, indignities, hypocrisies inseparable from this mass of contradictions and repressions all this entails. (If playing by these rules isn't making him happy--if it makes them that sitcom stereotype of the unapproachable grouchy middle-aged dad who yells all the time--well, that's just how life is, and it is the sin qua non of mature responsible adulthood to accept every one of those misery-making standards unquestioningly, 'cause reasons, for, as is so often the case, their extreme, Panglossian, optimism about the system in the abstract goes along with an equally extreme pessimism about the chances of individual happiness in this world, to the point of merely speaking of the idea eliciting from them an ironic sneer.)
Of course, thanks to the narrowness, to the betrayals and compromises and indignities and hypocrisies and evident misery entailed, the package is such that in spite of the most intensive indoctrination of everyone from birth on up in this system of thinking and acting, many resist the expectations pressed upon them by their elders and society at large. Those who would "work to live" rather than "live to work," and still more those who would "walk the paths of Bohemia," necessarily do so. Likewise the fascination of that latterday form of aristocratic existence that is "celebrity" and the "fantasy careers" directed at achieving it reflect the desire, as widespread as it is natural, for something freer, easier, more humanly varied and satisfying--as a figure such as Upton Sinclair was able to point out a century ago writing of America in the Roaring '20s, with its attraction if anything grown since. The desire for an alternative is evident, too, in the desire to "drop out" of the fittingly named Rat Race altogether that few dare act upon, though the evidence is that more are doing so all the time in an age in which, as the burgeoning underemployment of college graduates, and the collapsing purchasing power of the wages of even those who do land "the good job" testifies, the effort expected of the would-be member of the middle class keeps growing, while the likelihood of actually being middle class keeps shrinking.
Indeed, looking at the endless invective that the courtiers of power and flatterers of the respectable in the media fling at the younger of the working-age age cohorts (the much-maligned "millennials," and after them Generation Z) it is clear that their perception of a lack of "proper bourgeois virtue" on their part is the cause. Refusing to draw the glaringly obvious conclusion that their reserve toward bourgeois ways comes from the fact that that whole way of life is just not working for them, even to the extent that it had for earlier cohorts, said guardians of morality merely insist upon adherence to the Old Ways as they pour out abuse showing them to be as lacking in wit as they are in humanity--and never noticing all the while how remote their intolerance is from the rhetoric of "freedom" and "choice" of which they make so much, or the undercurrent of crab bucket mentality and plain envy evident in their verbal assaults on anyone who would want anything else or more out of life.
The emphasis on the material was because so many of those who discuss the "middle class" are so shabbily evasive about the material requirements of the situation as they make middle classness about having a college degree or an office job or subjective perception of one's standing or professed "values" or some other such thing, a tack which enables them to present the middle class as far larger than it really is for various political reasons--like deflecting any charge that it has shrunk in the neoliberal era. (My own reading of the situation is that the "New" middle class, properly speaking, was never more than a small minority, that notions of a solid and comfortable middle classness as the societal norm in even the post-World War II United States were always a promise and not a reality--that the "wide middle class" we talk about is actually better understood as a "quasi-middle class," enjoying middle class-ish levels of consumption, but not really middle class security or chances to get ahead--and that this quasi-middle class has if anything tended to wither since then, to the point that its members' pretension to middle classness looks very, very threadbare these days.)
However, there is still something to be said of the middle class as a social grouping with distinct attitudes, the more easily pinpointed when one looks at that term connected with but only imperfectly synonymous with middle classness (the more in as we have to contend with that reality of quasi-middle classness), "bourgeois." Generally identified with conventionality, conformism, conservatism--above all, in relation to the economic system and its orthodoxies, namely capitalism and the economic individualism to which it enjoins all of society's members--it means not only an expectation of self-reliance on one's own part and that of others, but that one should have at the center of their life, as an end in itself rather than because of the associated material rewards, concern for self-advancement within a socioeconomic system the bourgeois treats as so natural and eternal that the claim that "society--there is no such thing," if such obvious idiocy as a description of the social world that they may not stand by it when it is presented to them so flatly, very much reflects how they think about the world in practice. At the same time they believe that their non-society--their market-centered non-society--is the best of all possible worlds, not least in its being more than any other a fair and meritocratic allotter of individual outcomes, so much so that they think that no one in this system can reasonably ask for more than "equality of opportunity," with the bar for what qualifies as such equality set so low its existence can seem, often is, mere empty piety; easily incline to seeing practical outcomes as moral outcomes such that what people get monetarily is what they "earn" and "deserve"; and regard those at the top (the words "entrepreneur," "startup," "hedge fund," "billionaire" speak as no others do to their imaginations) as "successful" and as "winners" who attained what they did because of their superior qualities ("intelligence," "talent," "drive," "grit") and "hard work" and are unquestionably worthy of respect, admiration, emulation, while they regard those who are not at the top as "unsuccessful" and "losers" the opposite in every way, failures whose personal faults have received their due, a person's worth summed up in their "net worth". By the same token the bourgeois views calls for modification of any of these outcomes in even the slightest way as not only an attack on their selfishness (for even if only people far richer than themselves are to be taxed under a particular proposal, they fear the tax man may come for those in their bracket next--and that if he doesn't, well, they will be rich someday too, won't they?) but also what passes with them for morality, for they see any such act as a penalty imposed on virtue for the sake of rewarding vice that, given their very low opinion of the human average, and especially of those they deem socially inferior, strikes at the very foundations of civilized life itself.
All that said the unattractions of the "Way of the Bourgeois" seem fairly obvious. The good bourgeois is enjoined to a narrow path of responsibility, restraint, diligence in pursuit of remote and uncertain reward that because of that stress on responsibility, restraint, diligence they are not even allowed to enjoy very much--all as even when they do relatively well their gains are paltry by comparison with what those possessed of genuine WEALTH enjoy (the statistics showing that billionaires are rarer than one in a million, and in spite of the Horatio Alger propaganda few of these really "self-made" in any sense). Indeed, the bourgeois' drive is more often rooted in their horror at the thought of falling into the lower class (and so not only having that much less of everything, but being one of those they despise) than of any real prospect of getting the big prizes.
Naturally it is desirable that those walking this path "not think too much" about what is asked--demanded--of them as against what they are likely to get, and indeed they are constantly dissuaded against this by those who stress "confidence" and "faith"--confidence and faith that one will be one of those winners at the top, somehow--and that those who must reckon with where they have actually got never question the promises made them. If they are not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, or even making minimum wage (especially if they are not even making minimum wage), they must be conditioned to think first, foremost and preferably last of how they personally went wrong--or if they must lay blame anywhere else, do so upon "safe" objects (like the "welfare queens" they are sure exist, and the "limousine liberals" coddling them, that must be why they're not a billionaire yet).
All this, in turn, conditions everything else--their sticking with the herd and groveling before rank and Authority, their ideas on family and religion and education and culture and much, much else. (A man, they think, must have a family, but in spite of all the cant about family always put work first--because a family's purpose is above all to "tie him down" and compel him to "work hard," keeping him on that narrow path that provides the only possible justification for his existence on Earth. One must have religion--or at least religiosity--because whether or not he actually believes, or can, "faith" is so important for getting along. One must admit the need for education as helpful in success, somehow, and think much of their children going to "good schools" and enjoin them to high academic achievement--but regard educators as second-rate people at best and intellectualism with distaste and distrust. One must grant the need for recreation, but more grudgingly, suspect "outside interests" as competing with one's "real job," and steer clear of what they are told are "childish things," such that somehow it is all right for a grown man to spend vast amounts of time and money as a fan of a football team, but not for him to play the latest edition of John Madden.) This outlook conditions, too, the manner of their stomaching the endless betrayals of self, moral compromises, indignities, hypocrisies inseparable from this mass of contradictions and repressions all this entails. (If playing by these rules isn't making him happy--if it makes them that sitcom stereotype of the unapproachable grouchy middle-aged dad who yells all the time--well, that's just how life is, and it is the sin qua non of mature responsible adulthood to accept every one of those misery-making standards unquestioningly, 'cause reasons, for, as is so often the case, their extreme, Panglossian, optimism about the system in the abstract goes along with an equally extreme pessimism about the chances of individual happiness in this world, to the point of merely speaking of the idea eliciting from them an ironic sneer.)
Of course, thanks to the narrowness, to the betrayals and compromises and indignities and hypocrisies and evident misery entailed, the package is such that in spite of the most intensive indoctrination of everyone from birth on up in this system of thinking and acting, many resist the expectations pressed upon them by their elders and society at large. Those who would "work to live" rather than "live to work," and still more those who would "walk the paths of Bohemia," necessarily do so. Likewise the fascination of that latterday form of aristocratic existence that is "celebrity" and the "fantasy careers" directed at achieving it reflect the desire, as widespread as it is natural, for something freer, easier, more humanly varied and satisfying--as a figure such as Upton Sinclair was able to point out a century ago writing of America in the Roaring '20s, with its attraction if anything grown since. The desire for an alternative is evident, too, in the desire to "drop out" of the fittingly named Rat Race altogether that few dare act upon, though the evidence is that more are doing so all the time in an age in which, as the burgeoning underemployment of college graduates, and the collapsing purchasing power of the wages of even those who do land "the good job" testifies, the effort expected of the would-be member of the middle class keeps growing, while the likelihood of actually being middle class keeps shrinking.
Indeed, looking at the endless invective that the courtiers of power and flatterers of the respectable in the media fling at the younger of the working-age age cohorts (the much-maligned "millennials," and after them Generation Z) it is clear that their perception of a lack of "proper bourgeois virtue" on their part is the cause. Refusing to draw the glaringly obvious conclusion that their reserve toward bourgeois ways comes from the fact that that whole way of life is just not working for them, even to the extent that it had for earlier cohorts, said guardians of morality merely insist upon adherence to the Old Ways as they pour out abuse showing them to be as lacking in wit as they are in humanity--and never noticing all the while how remote their intolerance is from the rhetoric of "freedom" and "choice" of which they make so much, or the undercurrent of crab bucket mentality and plain envy evident in their verbal assaults on anyone who would want anything else or more out of life.
Ten Things to Remember About the Mainstream News Media's Politics
I have been writing about the media's failings for some time now--not least its political biases. On the basis of that, here's a list of "ten things to remember about the mainstream media's politics," in the broad as well as narrow sense of the term.
1. Contrary to the orthodoxy the consumer is not king and the media does not simply "give the people what they want." It gives people what its owners and advertisers want, and what those who supply them with their information want, and what its carefully selected elite, careerist, group-thinking and upward-identifying managers and staff (courtiers to kings rather than tribunes of the people) want, especially insofar as those capable of punishing them with lawsuits and in other ways do not object. That is to say that the media is fundamentally oriented to the interests of the powerful, with this orientation reinforced by the fact that to the extent that it caters to the public it does not cater to all of the public equally, its more affluent elements more valued because of their purchasing power (it is they who buy subscriptions, and whom advertisers desire to reach), and therefore better served--and these tend to be privileged, upward-identifying and status quo-supporting. The result can be--and indeed, is--a very different thing from what the public at large wants to know, or needs to know.
2. The "objective" news reporting the mainstream media prides itself on has its roots in a centrist view of the world. Purporting to be "above ideology" and "neutrally" dealing with "just the facts" with the help of equally neutral "technocratic" expertise it amounts in practice to deluging the public with disconnected and uncontextualized bits of information, and then bringing on "experts" to tell the public "what it all means" rather than explain the events of the day to them so that they can really understand the matter and make sense of things for themselves.
3. Even in doing the above ideology comes into the matter. The "centrist" persuaded they are above ideology is in fact obedient to an ideology they simply do not recognize or acknowledge. Indeed, the centrist is actually deeply, and classically conservative in their politics--with this conservatism determining which bits of information they report, which experts they consult, which views they platform, as well as what they do not report or platform, as they go about their "objective" reporting.
4. Centrist conservatism has in recent decades been identifiable with a significant embrace of economic neoliberalism, and social and foreign policy neoconservatism. Centrists do accommodate "identity politics" in a way the avowed conservative tends to deeply dislike, but it should be remembered that identity politics is not a left idea, but, however much it annoys cultural traditionalists, in its postmodernist philosophy and nationalist tendency very much of the right, even before one considers how identity politics is constantly used to change the subject from and even attack those who would raise matters like class. Identity politics has thus been a prop to conservatism, rather than a compromise of it, and readable as consistent with conservative philosophy broadly in premises and usage.
5. If centrism dominates the mainstream one should acknowledge that the mainstream media does not simply limit itself to presenting the views of the center to the public. However, that media does not deal with other views equally, treating the left as anathema, keeping even the safely center-left on rather a short leash (consider what MSNBC required of Phil Donahue during his time on that channel, and especially its executives' notions of a "fair and balanced" discussion of the Iraq war), and affording the avowed right considerably more indulgence--with their indulgence carrying over to what may be recognized broadly as the far right. Taken altogether this makes the media a platform for neoliberalism, neoconservatism and (stoked by its identity politics) culture war, with the media's platforming of often far right views making much of it a "pink slime" machine helping "mainstream" its views (with the result that the far right has been increasingly mainstream).
6. In presenting different understandings of the world the media is often accused of "both sidesism." In practice both sidesism is a rarity. Most of the time the media gives us "one sidesism," especially on the larger questions--because there is essentially elite, Establishment consensus on the matter. (Where in the media did we find serious challenge to the "There Is No Alternative"-type promotion of neoliberal economic policies?) The rare turn to both sidesism indicates argument among those the media treats as counting for something in the world--disagreement within the Establishment--as other opinions are rarely of any account in its eyes. Moreover, some of these cases of both sidesism are cases which should be treated in a "one side" way. As the case of climate change demonstrates, both sidesism is frequently a matter of powerful interests finding it convenient to deny scientific facts being respectfully platformed by a deferential media.
7. Where the respect for Establishment expertise is concerned the center's respect for the Establishment comes in far ahead of its respect for expertise. Consider, for example, the argument that "no one could have seen the crisis in subprime mortgages" coming. This was not just a lie but a stupid one. Many did see it coming. Consider, for example, former Wall Street analyst, Hudson Institute member, United Nations adviser and University of Missouri Professor economist Michael Hudson, who published an article anticipating the crash in the May 2006 issue of Harper's. Right he may have been about what was happening and what it was leading toward, but his politics are such that he is "no one" from the standpoint of the mainstream, and so only rarely noticed and easily ignored--Hudson getting a mention for his prediction in the Financial Times, but the pushing of the "no one saw this coming" narrative continuing as if it never happened. By contrast, another public intellectual's denial that anyone could have seen it coming, and insisting the financial community was responsible for nothing, it's all black swans, see, in line with his political prejudices that, as David Cameron admitted, align with his own, made him a "rock star" not just with said community but with the press generally. Because that's what matters within the media world.
8. In line with their courtier-like elitism the mainstream media pays a great deal of attention to politics relative to policy. In doing so they lionize political figures as the drivers of current events, promulgating a "Great Man Theory of Current Events" at the expense of more nuanced, systemic understandings of the play of political forces (and certainly any consideration of the matters of societal structure, class, power so anathema to the centrist), and divert attention from policy--for as the journalist recounting some development demonstrates again and again, in taking the reader or listener through the speechifying and haggling they so much bury them in the details of "how" a thing happened that "what" actually happened (i.e. What sort of a bill or a budget did we actually get in the end?) falls by the wayside. The outcome is by no means uncongenial to those who see the world the media's way.
9. Befitting the mainstream media's aforementioned commitment to the status quo, and deference to wealth, power and position, and extreme opposition to and contempt for the opposite, the media is prone to "suck up" and "punch down." Thus it virtually never holds the elite to account, no matter what their crimes--such that after dishonestly and cynically wrecking an economy, or starting a catastrophic war, the press will sing of the goodness, wisdom, even "genius" and greatness of the actor in question, while when it cannot eschew reference to the badness of the outcome obscuring their responsibility by presenting the relevant figures as "tragic" terms--all as it subjects the powerless to the harshest moralizing (those who have all of the power having none of the responsibility while those who none of the power have all the responsibility, for everything, somehow). Indeed, the media's very vocabulary shows as much, with the ordinary man or woman "lying," the CEO or president "telling a falsehood."
10. If the media is absolutely guilty of the charge of sensationalism and playing to the lowest common denominator it does so within distinct limits--choosing what it sensationalizes according to its ideology, and its dictation that the media punch down rather than up. Thus does the media rile the public up against imaginary welfare queens as the supposed cause of the country's economic and fiscal distress--while saying little or nothing of trillions given out to the very real "welfare queens" of Wall Street and Big Oil, and the way in which working people for that "welfare" with raises in their taxes, and cuts to their services.
1. Contrary to the orthodoxy the consumer is not king and the media does not simply "give the people what they want." It gives people what its owners and advertisers want, and what those who supply them with their information want, and what its carefully selected elite, careerist, group-thinking and upward-identifying managers and staff (courtiers to kings rather than tribunes of the people) want, especially insofar as those capable of punishing them with lawsuits and in other ways do not object. That is to say that the media is fundamentally oriented to the interests of the powerful, with this orientation reinforced by the fact that to the extent that it caters to the public it does not cater to all of the public equally, its more affluent elements more valued because of their purchasing power (it is they who buy subscriptions, and whom advertisers desire to reach), and therefore better served--and these tend to be privileged, upward-identifying and status quo-supporting. The result can be--and indeed, is--a very different thing from what the public at large wants to know, or needs to know.
2. The "objective" news reporting the mainstream media prides itself on has its roots in a centrist view of the world. Purporting to be "above ideology" and "neutrally" dealing with "just the facts" with the help of equally neutral "technocratic" expertise it amounts in practice to deluging the public with disconnected and uncontextualized bits of information, and then bringing on "experts" to tell the public "what it all means" rather than explain the events of the day to them so that they can really understand the matter and make sense of things for themselves.
3. Even in doing the above ideology comes into the matter. The "centrist" persuaded they are above ideology is in fact obedient to an ideology they simply do not recognize or acknowledge. Indeed, the centrist is actually deeply, and classically conservative in their politics--with this conservatism determining which bits of information they report, which experts they consult, which views they platform, as well as what they do not report or platform, as they go about their "objective" reporting.
4. Centrist conservatism has in recent decades been identifiable with a significant embrace of economic neoliberalism, and social and foreign policy neoconservatism. Centrists do accommodate "identity politics" in a way the avowed conservative tends to deeply dislike, but it should be remembered that identity politics is not a left idea, but, however much it annoys cultural traditionalists, in its postmodernist philosophy and nationalist tendency very much of the right, even before one considers how identity politics is constantly used to change the subject from and even attack those who would raise matters like class. Identity politics has thus been a prop to conservatism, rather than a compromise of it, and readable as consistent with conservative philosophy broadly in premises and usage.
5. If centrism dominates the mainstream one should acknowledge that the mainstream media does not simply limit itself to presenting the views of the center to the public. However, that media does not deal with other views equally, treating the left as anathema, keeping even the safely center-left on rather a short leash (consider what MSNBC required of Phil Donahue during his time on that channel, and especially its executives' notions of a "fair and balanced" discussion of the Iraq war), and affording the avowed right considerably more indulgence--with their indulgence carrying over to what may be recognized broadly as the far right. Taken altogether this makes the media a platform for neoliberalism, neoconservatism and (stoked by its identity politics) culture war, with the media's platforming of often far right views making much of it a "pink slime" machine helping "mainstream" its views (with the result that the far right has been increasingly mainstream).
6. In presenting different understandings of the world the media is often accused of "both sidesism." In practice both sidesism is a rarity. Most of the time the media gives us "one sidesism," especially on the larger questions--because there is essentially elite, Establishment consensus on the matter. (Where in the media did we find serious challenge to the "There Is No Alternative"-type promotion of neoliberal economic policies?) The rare turn to both sidesism indicates argument among those the media treats as counting for something in the world--disagreement within the Establishment--as other opinions are rarely of any account in its eyes. Moreover, some of these cases of both sidesism are cases which should be treated in a "one side" way. As the case of climate change demonstrates, both sidesism is frequently a matter of powerful interests finding it convenient to deny scientific facts being respectfully platformed by a deferential media.
7. Where the respect for Establishment expertise is concerned the center's respect for the Establishment comes in far ahead of its respect for expertise. Consider, for example, the argument that "no one could have seen the crisis in subprime mortgages" coming. This was not just a lie but a stupid one. Many did see it coming. Consider, for example, former Wall Street analyst, Hudson Institute member, United Nations adviser and University of Missouri Professor economist Michael Hudson, who published an article anticipating the crash in the May 2006 issue of Harper's. Right he may have been about what was happening and what it was leading toward, but his politics are such that he is "no one" from the standpoint of the mainstream, and so only rarely noticed and easily ignored--Hudson getting a mention for his prediction in the Financial Times, but the pushing of the "no one saw this coming" narrative continuing as if it never happened. By contrast, another public intellectual's denial that anyone could have seen it coming, and insisting the financial community was responsible for nothing, it's all black swans, see, in line with his political prejudices that, as David Cameron admitted, align with his own, made him a "rock star" not just with said community but with the press generally. Because that's what matters within the media world.
8. In line with their courtier-like elitism the mainstream media pays a great deal of attention to politics relative to policy. In doing so they lionize political figures as the drivers of current events, promulgating a "Great Man Theory of Current Events" at the expense of more nuanced, systemic understandings of the play of political forces (and certainly any consideration of the matters of societal structure, class, power so anathema to the centrist), and divert attention from policy--for as the journalist recounting some development demonstrates again and again, in taking the reader or listener through the speechifying and haggling they so much bury them in the details of "how" a thing happened that "what" actually happened (i.e. What sort of a bill or a budget did we actually get in the end?) falls by the wayside. The outcome is by no means uncongenial to those who see the world the media's way.
9. Befitting the mainstream media's aforementioned commitment to the status quo, and deference to wealth, power and position, and extreme opposition to and contempt for the opposite, the media is prone to "suck up" and "punch down." Thus it virtually never holds the elite to account, no matter what their crimes--such that after dishonestly and cynically wrecking an economy, or starting a catastrophic war, the press will sing of the goodness, wisdom, even "genius" and greatness of the actor in question, while when it cannot eschew reference to the badness of the outcome obscuring their responsibility by presenting the relevant figures as "tragic" terms--all as it subjects the powerless to the harshest moralizing (those who have all of the power having none of the responsibility while those who none of the power have all the responsibility, for everything, somehow). Indeed, the media's very vocabulary shows as much, with the ordinary man or woman "lying," the CEO or president "telling a falsehood."
10. If the media is absolutely guilty of the charge of sensationalism and playing to the lowest common denominator it does so within distinct limits--choosing what it sensationalizes according to its ideology, and its dictation that the media punch down rather than up. Thus does the media rile the public up against imaginary welfare queens as the supposed cause of the country's economic and fiscal distress--while saying little or nothing of trillions given out to the very real "welfare queens" of Wall Street and Big Oil, and the way in which working people for that "welfare" with raises in their taxes, and cuts to their services.
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