People Abandoned Disney Over Terrible Storytelling, Not Primarily Politics
The Federalist | 02/21/2024 | Samuel Mangold-Lenett

…

The simple fact of the matter is that, overwhelmingly, people don’t actually care if their entertainment is ideological, but they do care if it sucks — which many of Disney’s recent releases do. Disney’s lackluster success in recent years has little, if anything, to do with their products being ideological. It has everything to do with the elevation of ideology over storytelling.

Suffice it to say that Disney’s ideological messaging over the last several years is a cultural cancer that deserves to be booed, jeered, and boycotted, but the reality is that people don’t mind patronizing a business with which they disagree so long as they receive a quality product, which Disney movies no longer appear to be.

Prioritizing “the message” while neglecting the mechanism that effectively conveys it is why people have checked out. Countless movies successfully launder ideology into the masses while not compromising on the story.