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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

- "Oh yeah, we own that old series? How come we aren't making more money off it?"

- "Let's bring that show back and hire showrunners who have stated that they hate the original show."

- "The existing fans of the show are geeks and nerds. Let's alienate them so we can appeal to a more general audience. And let's also be sure to punish them for expressing their adoration of the show."

- "Add more special effects! Lens flare! Insert gratuitous eroticism and obvious political propaganda! Enraged viewers are profitable viewers." (Rule of Acquisition #287)

- "Why aren't millennials watching cable TV anymore? Nitflix? We're a multi-billion dollar company, so why can't we have our own streaming service? That'll be hip with the kids, right?"

That's basically why I don't watch Star Trek anymore or TV in general. Why would I pay money to people who don't appreciate what I did for them all those years starting from age 6?

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> obvious political propaganda

Can someone please recommend an article/documentary/book/etc. that goes into detail about how this works in practice? It's so obvious when you watch shows like Jack Ryan or Madam Secretary or Zero Dark Thirty that there are some backroom dealings going on that insert a particular political association onto the viewer, but the scale and scope of such a targeted insertion is so ridiculous that you start to wonder if you're just being paranoid. The amount of people that would have to be involved with it, and for everyone to go along with it...

Someone must have blown the whistle on this at some point, right? I'm not out of my mind, am I?

I'd be interested in that too, if it exists, although my assumption would be that it arises naturally because, if you want your work to be successful, you've got to conform to the group that you're in and drink the kool-aid. Hollywood and the entertainment industry are like that more than ever because the press, which makes a lot of money off making people enraged, are watching what they're doing 24/7 and waiting for even semi-notable figures to do something politically incorrect. There's a lot of pressure in entertainment to avoid anything that might be politically incorrect because that can mean a loss of profit in short order. If an actor in a movie or show says something on their own time that can be construed as offensive, that can mean millions in losses.

So I don't think there's someone from up top telling writers what to write, but the nature of the industry encourages people to write a certain way and believe certain things(publicly).

>>So I don't think there's someone from up top telling writers what to write...

Why not? The military spent tens of millions of dollars to inject patriotism into every sporting event as a way of advertising following 9/11. Stadiums weren't paying the Navy to do a flyover at halftime, it was the Navy paying for increased visibility. Seems just as likely that they have some clout/spending in film and television.

Oh, I'm not completely dismissing the possibility. It's just something that I doubt because not only would it have come out(as we know of what the military has done), but they probably wouldn't need to do it in the first place. Why explicitly tell people to write propaganda when the state of politics and the media causes them to write it for you?

> Why explicitly tell people to write propaganda when the state of politics and the media causes them to write it for you?

Because political influence is valuable to people. Movies are the best way to ingrain a political narrative in such a way that it may persist for decades. If the next decade was full of movies casting the military as the antagonist, we know the long-term effects would be increased scrutiny on the military and reduced recruitment.

This is why military injects themselves into the movie making process. They give production companies get access to billion dollar equipment and in return, the production company employs a host of high-ranking officers as "consultants" to ensure the film complies with the narrative they want to see.

This is also why the Catholic church forced their way into the MPAA very early on. They wanted to ensure that movies portrayed Christian morals.

> This is also why the Catholic church forced their way into the MPAA very early on. They wanted to ensure that movies portrayed Christian morals

Well, that didn't lasted for long...

How about just watching the shows? Every little quip about a one political party or groups of people. Who do the shows make the villain? Who do they talk down to?

It's pretty simple when most content comes from a small area and has the same assumptions. The diversity of thought in Hollywood is pretty narrow.

Someone must have blown the whistle on this at some point, right? I'm not out of my mind, am I?

There are plenty of books, but I get the feeling you would think all the authors are obviously tainted. Try "Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took over Your TV" by Ben Shapiro. Now, if you consider him alt-right, then you have been seriously misinformed.

Tom Clancy himself had strong conservative political views and his work always reflected that mindset. If anything it would be disingenuous for a show like Jack Ryan to stray from that.

Same could be said about Clint Eastwood, for that matter.

You should check out Tom Secker's "Spy Culture" website. You'd be quite amazed how much influence the US Military (and other US departments) have when it comes to producing movies and TV series that need even the slightest assistance from the US Air Force/Navy/CIA/FBI etc.

"Need to hire a couple of UH-60's for a scene? Let's be having a look at your script first."

Secker also has a book (it's on my reading list) called "National Security Cinema"[1] which investigates these same themes.

[0]: https://www.spyculture.com/

[1]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/National-Security-Cinema-Government...

I'm sure you can find a better example than the people you are renting the helicopter from obviously not wanting to be shown in a bad way.

It's just a throwaway to explain the point with regard to the examples the parent poster cited.

Peruse the site yourself and you'll find all sorts of other examples.

The military wouldn’t give assistance with props and such in Independence Day unless they took out references to Area 51.

https://uproxx.com/movies/why-military-cut-ties-with-indepen...

Yes, that's a very typical example.

For straight propaganda look no further than "the last ship", show practically written by Navy.

"Manufacturing Consent" is about the press, but it probably applies just as well to most media owned by big corps. You don't need a big conspiracy, just to set up the right conditions.

To quote the best popular work on political economy, Yes, Minister:

- Jim Hacker: "I thought these planning inspectors were supposed to be impartial?"

- Bernard Woolley: "Oh really, Minister. So they are. Railway trains are impartial too, but if you lay down the lines for them that's the way they go."

and obvious political propaganda!

Yes and no. Consider Dr Who. Loved that show when I was a kid and still love the classic episodes but it’s not made for me now, it’s made for the Twilight/Harry Potter crowd. “Supernatural boyfriend with magic wand”, not the character I remember. And if you’re going do that radical a change you might as well go all in.

Similarly Star Trek and Star Wars, I just don’t watch them now.

The struggle is being self-aware enough to know whether or not you're being a curmudgeon stuck in the past. For example, I used to hate the new direction of the Ninja Turtles after the original cartoon and movies. But a lot of people love it. It's not even bad, on reflection. I was just mad they changed something I had a lot of good, even foundational memories attached to. I formed new memories and moved on.

I have no problem with the direction of Star Trek. I was never into Star Wars, but I have few complaints about what I've seen. I have never seen an episode of Dr. Who, but a supernatural boyfriend with a magic wand sounds great! You made it sound appealing to me.

Exactly, though unfortunately a lot of people don't manage to get unstuck. I used to be one of those people stuck in the past, pissed off at the people who are ruining a fixture of my life, giving way too much of a shit about things that aren't real. Then I realized that it's actually very boring for my interests and for the media to always be the same thing. Does there need to be more of the Star Trek that I used to enjoy? No, not really. It's been played out. If people want to completely change it to their liking, they can have at it.

That being said, I still find companies like CBS, Viacom, Nintendo, 343i, and Sony to be quite off-putting. If people enjoy their stuff, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I don't want to give support to companies that don't appreciate their customers.

At least Lucasfilm understood that the enthusiasm of Star Wars fans, their ability to make goofy and even elaborate fan films, was a big contributor to the continuing success of Star Wars.

I read a fan theory that Kylo Ren embodies all the fans who can't deal with the franchise changing for new audiences. He's the archetypal curmudgeon, like his dad.

The struggle is being self-aware enough to know whether or not you're being a curmudgeon stuck in the past

I love love love the reboots of BSG and Westworld, as well as loving the originals, so I don’t think it’s that :-)

supernatural boyfriend with a magic wand sounds great! You made it sound appealing to me.

In that case check it out, I am not saying it’s bad per se, just not for me, or for old-skool fans. The original premise of the show is that Doctor Who is a aristocratic but disgraced old scientist on a distant planet, he and his granddaughter steal a time machine and go off to explore the universe and have adventures along the way. In the reboot, he is in some sort of sexual relationship with the time machine, and various teenage girls from present-day Earth. The actress who plays Nebula in the MCU got her big break on this show.

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