kill the shareholder in your head
why are we talking like industry characters
I just saw Sinners last weekend. I am a month late to the movie and therefore a month late to the weird box office press cycle, which is at this point largely irrelevant considering now that it has made 300 million dollars.
This subject has already been over-discoursed and beaten to the ground, but as background: After a successful opening weekend, bizarre articles came out of the woodwork claiming the movie would not be profitable until it made 250 million dollars, placing big asterisks next to the movie’s success. Considering Ryan Coogler got a largely unprecedented deal in which he retains rights to the movie in 25 years, these articles could be seen as a preventative measure to ensure such deals, which are bad for the studio’s bottom line, do not become commonplace. It’s also notable that such cynicism was directed toward a Black filmmaker, this double standard highlighted in the difference in press coverage between Sinners and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which had fairly comparable first weekends.
Now, with all this context set aside: why are we even talking about movies like this in the first place?1
I am stoked that the WNBA is back. I literally cannot get enough of the WNBA, and so I listened to a sports podcast a week or so ago which included a conversation with the WNBA commissioner. The commissioner referred to basketball as a fantastic product and labor as “human capital.” Joe Lacob, owner of the new Golden State Valkyries (who I will be watching in person this summer!) wants his team to lead the league in revenue. I am not sure why there are multiple articles online about this statement, as I am sure every owner of a sports team wants to make as much money as possible off of that sports team. This week I read reddit comments excited about the prospect of the New York Liberty eventually becoming the league’s first $1 billion team. Which is cool, I guess, but am I, as a fan, expected to care about a franchise’s revenue as much as the actual basketball games?
One of the classic misogynist dunks on the WNBA is that it is still not profitable, a league that loses money. The lack of profit is served up as evidence to the point that nobody cares about the WNBA, nobody is interested in women’s sports. Money as a unit of social worth, as a meter for care and interest. But who is the bigger loser: someone who cares about an unpopular sports league, or someone who cares about how much or little money that unpopular sports league makes?
I understand that, especially for these examples, there are good faith reasons to pay attention to these numbers. A box office win for Sinners is in turn a win for original movies, and might open doors for future studio investment in non IP-slop films. More revenue streaming into the WNBA might entail more equitable pay for players. I want to keep watching movies in theaters, and I want to keep watching women’s sports on TV. On some level, I know that these wants are unfortunately contingent on the financial viability of these activities.
But these sorts of conversations don’t have to be in the forefront of a layperson’s relationship to movies or sports or books or whatever. It’s weird that budgets and revenue streams and partnerships have entered casual vocabulary so pervasively. It’s weird that fans are talking like shareholders. It’s weird that being a participating member of the internet has given us all honorary marketing degrees. It’s weird that we can’t talk about anything without talking about its capacity to squeeze out more money.
I think there is a certain feature of fandom that manifests as an unquenchable hunger to get closer to the action: fans want bloopers and behind-the-scenes vlogs, fans want to sweep up everything on the cutting room floor, expanding the parasocial experience to its limit. We want to be in the room where it happens, and now, maybe we want to be in the boardroom too.
When I went to the last, goodbye concert of a band I love, Daisy, in September of 2022, one of the band members said towards the end of the show, “From the lens of capitalism, this band has been a total failure.” The band then played a song that I still listen to all the time.
Disclaimer: I come to this topic as someone who has only ever held jobs in the public sector or in nonprofit work, so I fundamentally do not understand what it means to chase profit. For some this may make me unqualified to say anything, but I would argue that it instead makes me pure of heart.
side note: does anyone else feel like what we are witnessing with sports betting must be comparable to the unfettered Big Tobacco ads in the 1950s? Something’s gotta give…
as I write this I’m getting more and more scared that I’m inventing a not-real discourse person because I am too online and also read the trades
this tweet reminded me of this piece <3 lol https://x.com/ChuckMockler/status/1927796474219216913