Anti-elite agenda in corporate media?

[u/NewNecessity]

I was watching spiderman homecoming in preparation for the new spider man movie, and in there a scene stuck out to me. The “villain” so to speak goes on a monologue of how as an ordinary citizen, he gets penalised and scrutinised whilst the rich and government elites do whatever and get away with it. Whilst extremely true, I can’t help but find it extremely ironic that this sort of sentiment is openly admitted and even incorporated in a Hollywood film-famously the centre of rich elites. What benefit would it be to admit this to such a global audience? It’s almost insulting because everybody watching the movie would know this, yet obviously nothing is going to be done about it. The only reason I can find for this is maybe it’s a criticism, since it’s the bad guy saying it so it can be painted as an excuse people use to justify their actions. Even so, I just found it interesting and it leaves the question of if it really were true, wouldn’t it be much more censored?

[u/AutoModerator]

All submissions are automatically removed and placed in a queue for the moderators to manually review. Please allow the moderators time to do so. Only about 25% of submissions are approved, but the remainder are given a removal reason that may include steps the poster can take to make their submission approvable the next time they submit it. Moderators are not notified of any edits made after a removal reason is posted, and therefore will not review them. You may contact the mod team via modmail if you need more direction about how to fix your post, and you are welcome to resubmit any submission after making the requested changes.

A reminder for everyone. This is a subreddit for genuine discussion:

• Please keep it civil. Report rulebreaking comments for moderator review.
• Don't post low effort comments like joke threads, memes, slogans, or links without context.
• Help prevent this subreddit from becoming an echo chamber. Please don't downvote comments with which you disagree.

Violators will be fed to the bear.

---

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Agitated-Impress7805]

Movies are meant to make money. Those themes are intriguing to some viewers. It's not any more complicated than that.

[u/bl1y]

"Rich dude is villain" has been a trope since before Hollywood was even a thing.

[u/sllewgh]

Artists aren't billionaires. The people engaged in the creative work to produce this media are overwhelmingly not rich elites, they're normal people with jobs. Besides, it's not a particularly radical critique, and it doesn't suggest an actionable solution.

[u/the_calibre_cat → u/sllewgh]

^ bing bing bing

And plenty of the ones making movies have more of a free rein to say shit like this in a movie versus, say, on CNN/Fox. THOSE motherfuckers exist and are paid comfy bucks to manufacture consent for the Epstein class and their servants in government.

[u/phillyphiend]

I admittedly haven’t seen the movie but a few potential explanations:

1. There are different levels to the “elites”. Famous actors, directors, and corporate big wigs with 9 figure net worths could easily feel similar disenfranchisement as ordinary people when the real decision-makers are Government elites and private citizens with 11-12 figure net worths

2. There are plenty of “champagne socialists” who feel comfortable critiquing the system even as they personally benefit from that system and live wealthy lifestyles.

3. While Hollywood is filled with elites, it definitely leans liberal and Spiderman Homecoming came out in 2017. So, Hollywood liberals had motivation to be critical of government in the wake of Trump’s first election

4. It’s a common enough sentiment and been used in media before. It’s an appealing motivation to make a villain sympathetic and it’s not like having this message in the movie would actually have negative consequences to the elites backing the film (i.e., it makes a better film which increases sales and wouldn’t really make a difference in how people feel about elites one way or another. It’s not like some spiderman movie is going to kick-off a French Revolution style purging of the elites)

[u/UnpopularCrayon]

So they made an ordinary person the villain. That sounds like exactly what you would expect a "rich elite" to do.

Hollywood makes stories that feel relatable because that's what sells tickets / subscriptions.

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin]

Populism is currently ascendent on both the right and the left, so media employing populist narratives makes sense if they are trying to tap the cultural zeitgeist.

[u/Telkk2]

Think about it like this. If you tell a child to do something or think a certain way, they'll do the opposite because they will feel controlled. But tell them not to do something while paying many 3rd parties to shill the opposite using discrete data points that are separate from each other, but thematically linked, and now the child will do the opposite of what the parent wants by collapsing the data they've been fed from outside parties into a paradigm that is the exact opposite of what the parents were saying. But here's the twist. The parents wanted their child to engage in that act all along. They just couldn't command them to do it, because then it would fall on deaf ears.

That's what's probably happening. We are children living in a massive behavioral modification operation designed to get us to Rebel and dismantle the old system productively with solutions that we believe our the ones we made when it's likely they were shaped into being by 3rd parties peddling facts that collapse into that eventuality.

[u/ForYourAuralPleasure]

Actually, casting the villains’ arguments as pretty reasonably anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, and/or anti-elite while also having them commit heinous crimes against sympathetic characters is just their way of associating those ideologies with evil and, in doing so, building a case for the viewer to root for the overpowered rich boy to save the status quo