Anti-capitalist messages on screen can end up reinforcing capitalist realism

Evidence

I’m not saying that there are no political potentials at all in the popular culture I discuss in Capitalist Realism. What I was pointing to, though, was the fact that anti-capitalism at the level of a film’s message does nothing in itself to disrupt the super-hegemony of capital. Anti-capitalism — or at least anti-corporatism — is utterly standard within Hollywood films: consider something like Avatar, for instance. This is the objective irony of capital: nothing sells better than anti-capitalism. Or, even more bleakly, late capitalism’s culture is anti-capitalist. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2223

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the ch37/ch39 claims about anti-capitalist films affirming capital’s own fantasies, naming Avatar specifically as the ch39 example. — connects to: Corporate anti-capitalist satire reinforces rather than undermines capitalist realism — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 29; Anti-capitalist protest becomes carnivalesque background noise without an alternative model — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 32; Denouncing elites reinforces the cynicism that sustains capitalist realism. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 497 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• A work faithfully depicting capitalist realism may thereby reinforce it #corroborates (0.98) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2223
• Capitalist realism makes alternatives to capitalism unthinkable #qualifies (0.72) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 8