The Jabberwock

A grifter is a charmer that would deceive a person in order to gain something from that person. Grifters have been an ever rising issue, especially in our media in which it has never been easier to build a platform to voice your opinions. A specific type of grifters that slowly are and had been invading into our media are the ones primarily on the right- side. Right-wing grifters try to paint themselves as film critics, having similar motives of trying to improve the qualities of films. Most of these critics’ criticism however is often very biased; filled with conservative ideology that often falls flat if it was actual criticism.

Critical Drinker is a prominent example of a right wing grifter. Boasting over 2.4 million subscribers on Youtube, he accumulated a large platform with people invested in what he is saying. Looking over his content, he mostly writes his criticism focused on modern pop culture, primarily on Disney media. Owner of the channel Will Jordan stated in several interviews and podcasts that The Critical Drinker channel always remains unbiased, but in an unfiltered sarcastic tone. The character that Will Jordan plays is always a film critic like Roger Ebert. 

Most of his videos are critics videos, criticizing the plot and characters of the story. The criticism presented is surface level, but certain comments have very glaring underlying issues. An example of this criticism comes from his Acotyle trailer analysis from Star Wars. Analyzing a trailer of media that hasn’t come out is an interesting analysis, but the video devolves into questionable territory. The Critical Drinker points out the shot of Jedi Master Sol with him teaching a group of Jedi Younglings. He in the video directly said how Disney has forced diversity while counting the races of the kids present in one group shot. The conclusion and point Drinker tried to point out is Disney is trying to push the message of female supremacy and “The Message” from one trailer that the media itself hasn’t released yet.

 “The Message” has always been a common theme Drinker tries to point out, the apparent product of Kathleen Kennedy and Disney executives pushing out a form of agenda for spreading. “Woke” messaging. The Woke primarily boils down to LGBTQ ideas and how it’s hurting modern audiences who might be influenced by the oversaturation of LGBTQ ideology in their media. 

People that associate with Drinker also share the ideas of  “The Message”. His primarily associates and guests on his After Dark Show agree with his ideas of this apparent agenda coming from the left. One particular guest from his podcast show is the infamous Ben Shapiro, the most prominent right wing political advocate that also criticizes the apparent left wing motive. Drinker as well would make regular appearances on The Daily Wire hosted by Ben Shapiro. As much as Drinker paints himself as an unbiased media critic, his associations and appearances on these shows question that apparent unbiasedness when analyzing media. 

The issue of right-wing grifters like Drinker aren’t their political beliefs. Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs as a person, but that should be separate from an important job such as media criticism. Media criticism is there as a job to give exposure to genuine well done pieces of artwork. Media critics always have a blank slate in mind when doing their work as they know how important it is for the artist of that media to get their one chance of exposure to the public. If there is clear and genuine strong dedication as well as care in the media itself, praise would obviously be awarded by the media critic. Drinker’s criticism is full of bias from his political beliefs with racist undertones when presenting the media. 

When Drinker actually gives his critics without those racist undertones, Drinker simply goes over the simple plot details just like in his full season review of the Acolyte. His primary points are just how it fails to live up to its potential and how disastrous the show is without fully explaining why the show didn’t work for him. He comes off as that he has an issue of different minorities in the media because it’s all just Woke LGBTQ to him that hurts his conservative viewpoints,

Critics like Drinker are hurting how new media is being created. Now Acolyte isn’t the strongest example, but if Drinker say attack another show from a much less known studio because of its apparent Woke messaging. I doubt people who listen to Critical Drinker would go watch that media now and now the creator of the media would definitely be attacked by Drinker’s audience. The only reason Drinker even has this audience is because people always want to gravitate to better media and look to film critics who analyze strong or weak media. The more outlandish things Drinker says would result in more people tuning in and watching his frankly substance-less content.

Art media should be challenging and not be shut down by right-wing grifters like Drinkers. Let me reiterate again, it has nothing to do with their own political beliefs, it’s their dishonesty in their job they claim they are very strong in. If more grifters exist, the media market would definitely become an oversaturated uncreative conglomerate of repetitive basic stories with the true gems on the bottom of the ocean. Grifters should be called out and exposed for their dishonesty.