Hollywood remains trapped in old ideas and stale forms –in narrative paradigms that look increasingly dubious in the light of current events. The dominant genre of the 21st century so far has been the superhero movie, with an ethos (and often a fan base) that is fundamentally anti-democratic. The institutions of government (with the occasional and ideologically significant exception of the municipal police department) are venal and incompetent. Their civic functions are better left to rich guys, ultrapowerful mutants or off-the- books paramilitaries made up of industrialists, military officers and demigods. Meanwhile, the public is entirely disempowered, cowering in fear of evil intruders or whipped up into a frenzy by unscrupulous demagogues. The hero alone can save them.

Whenever Adeline attended a comic book convention and encountered cosplay, she was sure that she was witnessing the ultimate state of late period capitalism. People who spent their leisure time tweeting and creating intellectual property for Twitter were going out into the world and dressing themselves as the intellectual properties of major international corporations. They had performed their bodies into walking advertisements for entities in which they had no economic stake. These advertisements would later appear in photographs on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Pinterest and Flickr and be collated on advertising supported websites like Newsarama and io9 and The Mary Sue. Brand identity was complete.

Asked about the company's competitors at Netflix's earnings call, [CEO Reed] Hastings said that he isn't really concerned about Amazon and HBO “because the market is just so vast.” “You know, think about it, when you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night. We’re competing with sleep, on the margin. And so, it's a very large pool of time.” The company and its more traditional competitors, he said, are like “two drops of water in the ocean of both time and spending for people”