You are no longer Disney’s audience. It now wants to cater to a very specific group of angry people who love nothing more than to be victimized and view another specific group as the oppressors. If you’re hoping that Disney is going to provide any entertainment for general audiences which may include yourself, then you’re out of luck.
Case in point, there’s a new clip of Disney/Marvel’s “She-Hulk” rolling around out there, and it’s so nakedly radically feminist that it could have easily come out of 2014, just like its CGI.
See it for yourself below. Here is the main character, Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) telling Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) that she’s better at controlling her anger at him because she has to deal with misogyny all day long.
Just to recap, Bruce Banner (aka The Hulk) has been through it. This is a man who went into exile after he attempted to commit suicide because of his fear that he would hurt someone if he lost control. This is the same man who attacked his own teammates in a rage when he transformed into The Hulk thanks to the machinations of a villain. He was enslaved on a planet to become a gladiator, unable to transform back into his human self because his alter half wouldn’t let him, then failed to stop a genocidal godlike alien in a one-on-one fight which sent him into an existential crisis, forcing his human form to fight entire armies without the strength of The Hulk, and ultimately losing again to this same alien, leading to half the universe being obliterated. Then after that, the love of his life died on a planet far away where he could do nothing about it.
But yeah, She-Hulk has it worse because sometimes men whistle at her.
The writers of this show are bad. There’s no way around it. There was zero chance that this monologue would land, especially in this universe when the main characters are dealing with literal universal threats that can snap away half of existence and have watched their friends die while fighting in galactic wars.
Let’s take a look at how a woe-is-me speech actually can work and it comes from none other than the man she’s talking to, The Hulk. Here’s Banner explaining how he constantly lives in fear and self-loathing because of what he’s capable of but incapable of controlling.
This speaks to people because despite his self-focus it makes sense for him to feel this way. He’s a monster and he wants to stop himself but can’t. He’s bitter at the hand he was dealt and no matter who he’s with or where he goes, he always feels like he doesn’t belong.
She-Hulk, on the other hand, is brag-complaining about how she’s better at controlling her temper better than him because she faces far more adversity than he does by just being a woman. It doesn’t make sense, especially in this universe, and as such it doesn’t land. Perhaps if the response from Banner was to literally laugh in her face and tell her his own story, the show would have recovered, but we know that’s not going to happen. This is the new Disney after all.
I’m convinced that the goal of Disney is no longer to attract viewers but to push a message, but I fail to see how they’re going to get people to buy into this message when it’s delivered in such a stupid way. This is only going to cause more division and it is rightly being dragged across the internet.
Disney has definitely taken a turn for the worst, and at this point, it may be worth canceling your Disney+ subscription. Given the latest offerings from Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar, there’s really not much left on there except for the nostalgia factor of older, better creations.