'The Acolyte', another failure of the soporific 'wokism' that has taken hold at Disney

I was born in 1975, two years before the release of the first film in the Star Wars saga, and my childhood was closely associated with its films.

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The first three installments of the saga were the films that most got me into the science-fiction genre, along with a film released in 1979 that has always fascinated me: "The Black Hole" (1979), produced by Disney. I never imagined then that this label would end up making me distrust any film or television series.

Yesterday it was announced that Disney has decided to cancel "The Acolyte", its latest series about the Star Wars universe, after just one season. The series sparked considerable initial interest, but has increasingly displeased many Star Wars fans. Fans of the series suggest that the fiasco was due to "racism", "homophobia" and "hatred", after the appearance of lesbian witches in the series and other controversies. The reality is stubbornly different.

So-called "wokism" (a leftist obsession with identity) has been destroying films and series for years, by trying to use them as a vehicle to promote a vision of the world in which being male, white and heterosexual is like being an outcast. In "The Acolyte" the protagonists were women, something I have no objection to, if it weren't for the fact that this is used to sell a leftist ideological discourse according to which women represent everything good and men symbolize everything bad.

Obviously, ideological products of great quality can be made. Even totalitarian movements such as Communism and Nazism - two ideologies that I find repulsive - made great cinematic gems thanks to the talent of filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein and Leni Riefenstahl. However, "wokism" tries to compensate for the lack of talent with ideology, and in doing so it fails. "The Acolyte" is a very expensive example of this failure: it cost 180 million dollars. A new source of losses for the Mickey Mouse production company.

Of course, if "The Acolyte" has failed it's not because the vast majority of Star Wars fans are conservative. I'm sure that's not the case. In fact, it's likely that many of those fans are politically close to the left. The problem is that a bad product designed to indoctrinate you ends up upsetting even those who are most sympathetic, especially when the ideas you intend to promote treat the mere fact of being a man, white or heterosexual as a problem, earning the antipathy of many millions of people, even people on the left who are beginning to be fed up with being demonized for their sex, the color of their skin or their orientation.

The worst thing for Disney is how "wokism" is seriously affecting its brand image. Years ago, that production company was a guarantee that you could go to the cinema to see a good movie with your children and that everyone would leave the room happy. Today, Disney inspires distrust in many families, who do not know what new ideological ideas they will be surprised by with each new production.

As if that weren't enough, Disney's "wokism" has also ended up destroying other brands acquired by that company, such as Marvel or Pixar, and for the same reasons, causing many followers of both brands to end up distrusting them. I was a big fan of Pixar before Disney bought it. I knew that going to see a Pixar movie guaranteed me a good time at the cinema. Now I don't even consider going to see a movie with this label. I haven't even wanted to go see "Inside Out 2", ten years after I really liked the first part, because I no longer want to risk paying for a ticket and leaving the cinema upset. That's what Disney has achieved.

The paradox is that Walt Disney, who was conservative and anti-communist, never wanted to bring politics into his works. I wonder what he would say when he saw what certain "woke" activists are doing with the brand that he brought to the top of the entertainment world.