Santa Inc (TV series) - Just the 'agenda' you'd expect from Hollywood in 2021...?

[Neil]

Preachy political stuff pretending to be humour...? - - - Updated - - - Doing well on Rotten Tomatoes - 4% - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/santa_inc/s01

[MinionZombie]

An Elf as Santa? Jog on. Who asked for this? Who's the audience for this, self-flaggelating toss-wanks who think this is 'edgy' and 'challenging'? Comedy shouldn't be about "punching down", they say ... unless they choose who's in line for a downwards punch, that is. Comedy should fly in any direction it wants as long as the joke works and is funny. Self-hatred has been common in comedy since the dawn of time, but now it's more about making the viewer subject themselves to self-hatred instead. I can't be doing with anti-vaxxers and nothing but crusty dufters in board rooms either, but fuck me do I have zero interest in this. Looks try-hard cringe as fuck.

[Neil]

Critical Drinker seems to share those thoughts

[MinionZombie]

Woof. It's even more galling considering the likes of Silverman built their careers on saying and tackling anything - one of the foundations of being a comedian - only to recently pull a Frankie Boyle and 'go woke' and get all preachy from the barely visible window of their ivory tower. Yuck. I've dug a lot of things Rogen has done in the past, I even enjoyed Sausage Party (after a second viewing ... although I can't imagine he'd dare to make that movie now, or at least parts of it), although he's also been in some right old duds as well. The days of Pineapple Express and Superbad are long gone, it seems. I'm all for him advocating about alzheimers, for instance, as his family has direct experience of that terrible disease, he puts his money where his mouth is, and you know he's really trying to help make things better on that front in any way he possibly and realistically can ... ... which makes you all the more baffled by this ... whatever it is. Turning your own self-hatred (over your own race and sex - or whatever else) outwards onto the audience is never a good idea, 'cos people don't play that shit and just reply with "fuck you". There's nothing edgy or clever going on here, at least judging from that trailer, and even today the notion of 'all white straight old men' in the big jobs is getting increasingly out of date ... women, too, can now be extremely well paid and powerful arseholes who couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery while exhibiting all the same psychopathic tendencies and disregard for their workers like the most successful straight white old men. I like the 'Rankin and Bass' (ish) animation, although it doesn't have the heart and warmth of that, but that's the only appealing thing about this whole thing. The cringe is off the scale with this one. Misjudged, misguided, miserable. Talk about not reading the room, eh? Finger off the pulse and jammed up the nearest waxed arsehole, one that's sponsored by Goop or some other celebrity mumbo jumbo 'health' treatments.

[Neil]

Now it's just about the lowest rated TV show EVER! I mean - to basically underline MZ'ds comments - what could possibly annoy people when you take a wholesome feel good traditional genre, and then pi$$ all over it with negative preachy identity politics wokery? Or as MZ also describes it, self-hatred... And it seems Seth Rogen is now doubling down on all of this, by describing any dislikes of his series as due to "white supremacism..." Remember just 3-4yrs ago, when "white supremacist" didn't feature in daily language? And now, thanks to wokery, every problem everywhere, for any reason, in anyway, is now due to the bogeyman of "white supremacism"? ps: And it seems the wokery is strong as if you look at some of the 10/10 reviews, it's often by folks who haven't even seen it, or are commenting on the fact they're reacting to the negative views on it...

[MinionZombie]

Review bombing goes both ways. IIRC "The Eternals" was getting 1s and 10s with very little in between ... I doubt either were all that accurate. With the sheer volume of negative reactions, though, you can't just chalk that up to white supremacists alone ... there just aren't that many of them. Besides, you'll get extremists or trolls hopping on anything just to be dicks, and then that gets used as a convenient shield to hide behind to avoid the legitimate negative reactions (e.g. Ghostbusters 2016 just being crap was excused because of a minority of misogynists in comment feeds shit stirring, giving a convenient shield for what was actually a very poorly conceived film with it's dance numbers, "I lost my glasses!" 'gems', and multiple jokes about soup etc) There's no excuse for attacking people directly on Twitter, mind you - e.g. what happened to Rose Tran from Star Wars 8 ... just disgusting ... but again, a tiny - but hugely vocal - minority of tosspots. The reaction to Santa Inc. will be feeding into a wider reaction against a far broader topic and the numerous proponents ... and the simple fact that, yeah, exchange "white" and "male" for any other checkbox in the Santa Inc. context and it'd have very different optics, which shows up the 'projection of self-hatred onto the audience' (i.e. "you should feel bad about yourself because your tick these boxes that we don't like any more"). Remember when tarring a whole swathe of people with the same brush was seen as despicable and revolting and something you shouldn't do? It's interesting when 'woke-minded' sorts talk of "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequence" ... yeah, that works both ways, doesn't it? They'll sling it all day long, but they don't like it when it's flung back. No religion should be off the table, Christianity included. Religion has wrought untold damage on the world, trampling all over any good it did. It's funny, though, now that religion is less popular than ever, the need for religious fervor has not gone away. It's been redirected into other things, public institutions for instance (the NHS has for quite some time now been treated as unreproachable as the Catholic church used to be, blocking any logical and honest discussions that desperately need to be had about it in order to better spend taxpayer money and provide a more effectively targeted service that puts the patient and their family once again at the top of the list of priorities). Another area where the yearning for religious fervor, to cast the first stone in one form or another, has been in identity politics, political correctness, and it's bastard offspring of "wokery" (the corruption of political correctness and its original intentions, which consisted of numerous fair and just goals). Blaming the negative reaction solely on the convenient boogie man of white supremacy, regardless if some have stuck their oar in (any attachment of anti-semitism to slagging off this show is disgusting and absolutely not on), displays a complete and total sense of unwilling to unpack what is going on and why it's going on. It's like Fox News and CNN slagging each other off for being 'fake news' and 'pushing biased agendas' down viewer's throats ... they're actually as bad as each other, they just do it in different ways, but with the same religious fervor and the same closed-minded, blinkered, head-shoved-right-up-the-ole'-rectum-ness of it all. These extremes account for a small portion of the population, but the volume with which they fight makes it seem like it's a 50/50 deal. No, it's more like 10% extreme assholes (of both left and right) and 90% pretty reasonably-minded normal folk caught in the middle getting tugged one way or another by whichever of the two assholes is nearest to them. The whole thing is sick and vile and I'd dearly love for common sense and honest, fair debate and discussion to return, for news to be news and not opinion dressed up as "breaking news".

[Neil]

The car crash continues... Rotten Tomatoes is seemingly blocking reviews for it Love the way Seth calls people hateful supremacists because people don't like the show he created, because it's clearly full of hate... A recent Tweet from Seth, "The response to the Santa Inc trailer shows exactly why we need diversity. Too many angry white men can't accept that their time is up." - Oh, the cult is strong in this one

[MinionZombie]

It's odd that there's all this talk of "inclusivity" while simultaneously phrases like "white men can't accept that their time is up" do the rounds with a casual flick of the tongue. There's scumabgs in every single group in humankind, but they don't define those wider groups now, do they? We don't/shouldn't tar a whole group with the actions of a few, because that's what arseholes do. And you kind of wonder: if he's so down on white men, why doesn't he jog on himself? It's like eco extremists saying mankind is a disease that needs to be purged while continuing to relentlessly suck up oxygen and resources themselves. Naturally, because it's the Internet and we can't have nice things, there have been some rather vile comments on the likes of IMDb and Variety in connection to reviews of this show - a casual glance reveals wild Anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories as well as general trolling (trolls find any hot button and will leap on it) ... ... but a casual glance also reveals that those sorts of comments aren't the majority by any means, and most of the comments are standard responses (e.g. stating a dislike for the style of humour, or the story) or taking exception to the perceived trampling of Christmas. Now, there were picket lines protesting Silent Night Deadly Night in 1984, decrying how it was destroying the innocence of Christmas etc etc. Now, that was patently bollocks as it was a movie rated for grown ups and not aimed at kids (nor is Santa Inc., I know), but what was a fuck up was advertising the movie during the daytime when children were watching TV (where the suggestion of Santa as a serial killer wouldn't exactly sit well with little tykes sucking on their thumbs). That was a super dumb move and SNDN did get yanked from cinemas after only a week, despite the protest actually increasing public interest in seeing the movie (as is usually the case in those instances). Christmas shouldn't be some sacred thing that cannot be touched in any way, but it does seem that the majorty of negative responses to Santa Inc. are more about the crass humour, the story, and the self-hatred turned outwards onto the audience (which has become a wider trend in films and TV in recent years). The "I feel bad, so you should feel bad as well!" approach, connected in-part to people feeling personally guilty for actions committed by other people ... er, you wot mate? Most folks will respond with 'why the fuck should I feel guilty about something I haven't done/don't do?' Unsurprisingly, those who claim to be more open-minded and inclusive end up showing the opposite by being rather silly. In an all-encompassing sense, discrimination cannot have any part in inclusivity. At best it tarnishes any results, at worst it defeats the entire purpose by just poking the shit end of the stick in someone else's face instead of throwing away the poo stick entirely.