Paramount launches hostile bid for Warner Bros

The problem here isn’t as simple as torrenting. It’s the narrowing of what culture is created and promoted and what isn’t. Paramount is overtly a right wing organization now under the Ellison’s. Part of their bid to WB is “it’d be a shame if trump killed this deal of yours”. Netflix’s groveling or Paramounts success might mean we see less art critical of the government and more that panders to its interest

Has WB or Netflix ever been critical of the government?

> Conservatives Take Aim at ‘One Battle After Another’: “Year’s Most Irresponsible Movie”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/one-batt...

> Netflix's 93% RT Hit Show That Has the U.S. Government Furious Is a Streaming Sensation

https://collider.com/netflix-boots-streaming-success-after-g...

And that’s before we’ve even touched HBO. John Oliver is probably the most obvious example. But I’d say shows like Watchmen count too. Fahrenheit 451. Succession was pretty clearly mocking FOX News and its media ecosystem.

Art that’s critical of the government doesn’t literally have to be shouting “Trump bad”, it can be done through critique or mocking of the values it holds.

Rewatched Watchmen (show) recently and just wow. It hasn’t aged a day and is truly a masterpiece.

The current status quo of Hollywood has extremely narrowed what culture is created and promoted, it is only now starting to open back up.

It's more about how the buyers intend to use the media themselves.

The Ellisons are personal friends of Trump and Netanyahu. Netanyahu has spoken repeatedly about media as a weapon, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3tdrO8bA7rs. Ellison is the largest individual donor to the IDF. Trump handed Tiktok to Ellison.

The bid is backed by Kushner (i.e. Trump) and their Saudi allies.

HBO Max still airs “Last Week with John Oliver”.

Even Paramount still has “South Park” and the creators are basically daring Paramount to cancel them.

It's hard to cancel popular shows for political reasons (at least in america) - it's too transparent.

But its possible to starve them of talent, funding and eventually let them wither into obscurity, by not promoting nor giving it the opportunity to flourish.

But there's still youtube even if these incumbent media outlets are compromised - independents can still create and distribute there. This is very different from the airwaves or cable.

Nuremberg

Didn't the South Park contract predate the Skydance takeover?

Yes but Paramount was already debating whether to bribe Trump and clamping down on news shows that reported anything critical of Trump.

> It’s the narrowing of what culture is created and promoted and what isn’t.

What professional media companies create and promote gets less and less relevant every year. The content served by Meta/ByteDance/Alphabet’s computers and other online sources get more and more relevant.

I remember when it hadn't come out and there were mostly images and speculation I was really concerned that Lindelof had no idea what he's doing. A friend who watches a lot more TV than me insisted when it did release that it was very good, and reluctantly I agreed to watch Episode 1, and I knew immediately he got it and I was hooked. Watchmen is about masks, what masks mean, what it means when people wear masks, and Lindelof's TV show takes this somewhere the original book didn't but still remains about masks.

I knew about Tulsa, about Black Wall Street but I didn't know there was actually a plane. I was like, "That's surely creative license" when I saw it. But nope, the racists actually had a fucking plane.

I am so embarrassed to admit I didn’t know about Black Wall Street or the Tulsa massacre. And when I learned about it I was shocked I didn’t know about it.

And you’re absolutely right, it’s all about masks and he gets it.