In noting a pair of interesting and sort-of-related developments this last week, I am wondering if they are an indication of just how deeply angry ordinary Americans of a deplorably conservative bent are with the panjandrums who provide our entertainment, of the pro-sports and movie varieties. The first is the fact that ratings for the NBA finals are cratering, and other pro sports aren’t very far behind. The Commie Crud probably is discouraging physical attendance at games, for sure, and ostentatious displays of partisanship for Black Lives Matter on the part of players have definitely ruined any pleasure in watching games for viewers who just want to forget about politics and protest for a while. It’s also a very bad look for well-compensated and privileged Black players – a good few of whom are not precisely paragons of gentlemanly and law-abiding behavior themselves – to go on national television openly expressing solidarity with an assortment of Black thugs, addicts and criminals who have had fatal encounters with various police forces in the last couple of years.
Black lives may indeed matter, but it certainly doesn’t look as if the lives of Black business owners, Black police officers and random innocent Black citizens caught in exchanges of lead disagreement between Black gangsters matter don’t seem to matter very much at all to the most outspoken BLM supporters in various sports. We suspect that the lives of White citizens are valued even less, although one might think that the money paid by White fans for season tickets, sports memorabilia and product endorsements might earn at least a little apolitical courtesy. It would appear not … and sportsball fans of all colors are abandoning the stadiums, fanship and broadcast games with alacrity. It might be that professional players of some sports might have to have a second job to support themselves in the off-season, unless the Chinese fans and endorsement dollars keep them in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.
The second development was the closing of theaters in the Regal (US) chain, and those in the UK run by the parent company Cineworld. The primary cause is, of course, the enforced closings of places due to the Commie Coronavirus Crud. Let’s face it, going to an ordinary multiplex to see a movie had become less and less a fun thing to do, in the face of rising ticket prices, noisy patrons, ear-splitting audio levels, projector bulbs kept dim to spare expensive replacements, and now the opportunity to catch the Commie Coronavirus Crud sitting in an enclosed space for two or three hours among strangers in the dark … er, well … you first.
The last movie I made a special effort to go see was at an Alamo Drafthouse, where at least an effort is made to ensure courteous behavior among the audience, and they serve food and drink during the movie itself, and my daughter went with friends to a move at an Evo Entertainment outlet a couple of months ago to see 1917, an venue which offers movies, a bar and sit-down restaurant, bowling, paintball and a game arcade; there is some kind of future for movies … there may even be a revival of the old-fashioned drive-in movie theater.
Assuming that there are any new Hollywood releases out there that anyone wants to see … which is the other half of the challenge facing movie theaters. The big blockbuster movies that ordinarily would have had a huge opening weekend have nowhere to go, except possibly to a pay-per-view opening on streaming video … and that $30 a pop for the live-action version of Mulan was perhaps not a brilliant notion for Disney. Has anyone heard anything about how that went down among the audience? I haven’t seen anything, so I suspect that it didn’t do well at all. And with the Hollywood entertainment establishment going all woke for the insatiable throbbing dick of diversity, as well as dunking enthusiastically on conservatives generally, there’s even less to look forward to at the multiplex. I’ll content myself with foreign movies in subtitles and old releases on DVD. Discuss as you wish.