Your Social Justice is a Commodity (September 2016)

https://medium.com/@karasoth/your-social-justice-is-a-commodity-cdf0a273a1ef

I could get into Gamergate as part of the start of the new culture war that is in effect but I would rather go into a much more developed aspect of the commodification of political identity.

Midnight’s edge has done a lot of Yeoman’s work going through the footage of the Sony leak and looked at how Ghostbusters: Answer the Call became a flop at the box office. Its marketing campaign was delayed and focused a lot on Misogyny and male privilege. But why?

Scientist Man has some of the answers. But we saw “Controversies” over Finn and Poe being Gay, or Finn being the “Main Character” of the new Star Wars movies. We also see controversy about “Misogynist MRAs” going against the new Mad Max film.

What doe these three films have in common? They take existing intellectual properties and re-introduce them (largely) without the prior characters known and loved in the Intellectual cannon. In the Case of The Force Awakened and Mad Max this was done as a hedge and the movies largely had quality materials to sell them on. Answer the Call on the other hand was a Paul Feig movie with a painting of Ghostbusters. Or a misapplication of branding.

We see a delayed roll out of the Ghostbuster’s promotional material followed with a strong sales pitch on “Misogyny and Internet trolls.” This latest project of nostalgia mining failed because it did not tap into the nostalgia but thought the name equaled the brand….and when that failed thought current trends on STEM/STEAM education and New Wave Feminism would create an audience for the film.

And while exploiting the property (as Sony did) is turning people off Nostalgia mining has a place where it can work AND be an original product (See Stranger things) . And in this regard we see where commodification of identity fails. Identity is how we explain what can’t be explained with words.