How Hallmark's wokeness is destroying their brand
Hallmark Channel Is Self-Destructing
No matter how sexualized and demoralized most networks have become, Hallmark Channel has been a trusted alternative, offering wholesome content to viewers desperate for clean, family entertainment.
Once Crown Media CEO, Bill Abbott, was forced out of Hallmark following his refusal to allow commercials featuring gay couples, Wonya Lucas took the reins and has been hell-bent on infecting Hallmark programming with left-wing ideology the majority of Americans reject.
No longer do most Hallmark movies focus on heartfelt storytelling, top-notch acting, faith, and conservative values. Instead, all channels under the Crown Media umbrella have been overtaken by identity politics.
What is identity politics? It's a radical agenda that judges and affirms others based on their gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation rather than personal merit, abilities, education, and quality of character. In Hallmark's case, it means scripts are no longer inspiring--they are merely vehicles used to condition and indoctrinate viewers into accepting progressive ideology.
Hallmark has joined corporations like Disney and Netflix in weaponizing its brand to focus on political activism in lieu of what fans really want--escapism entertainment.
Where will this lead? Scores of Hallmark fans are anxiously awaiting GAC Family, acquired and run by former Hallmark CEO, Bill Abbott, to build the same type of content he did while at the helm of Crown Media. Abbott is a man of faith and values who will produce the type of programming Hallmark fans want, and when he does, there will be a mass exodus from Hallmark to GAC Family.
Will Hallmark care when their numbers plummet? Probably not. If there's one thing we've seen repeatedly, it's that this far-left ideology requires an entity to go down with the ship rather than cater to their audiences. Netflix has lost so many subscribers, their stocks have plunged more than 35% while Disney stocks have dropped by a whopping 30%--both companies continue to double down on their wokeism. Hallmark would likely choose a collapse before it would backpedal from the cult-like religion of identity politics.
Hallmark Is Full-Blown Woke
Longtime Hallmark fans are in a tailspin over the drastic woke changes poisoning the network, while proponents query, "What do you mean by 'woke'?" as they defend and applaud Hallmark's new direction.
If you don't know what it means to be woke by now, it's time to get your head out of the sand. Our culture is devolving, and we need all-hands-on-deck to save it.
Wokeism is a Marxist movement that claims to champion against racism and social injustice. In reality, it's not "equality" wokeism seeks to ensure, but "equity." Big difference. Wokeism doesn't reduce racism--it is itself a new form of racism. The woke mob seeks to decimate Western culture, and they do it through destroying societal norms, redefining words and ideas, and denying basic scientific realities. Wokeism rewrites history, and truth-tellers who speak out against it are censored, silenced, and threatened. Wokeism abhors freedom of speech and thought and is antithetical to Western morals and values, yet it pretends to be inclusive.
If someone is woke, they hate democracy and are part of the cancel culture cult. Twitter is a prime example. Why is the Left having an utter meltdown since Elon Musk took over? The answer is they want to decide the narrative and suppress and censor all opposition. They are horrified Musk plans to restore freedom of speech to the platform so both sides can be heard.
How exactly is Hallmark woke?
Before we delve into the toxic movies Hallmark is creating these days, let's take a look at their Crown Media corporate website.
In today's hostile cancel culture, businesses feel pressured to prove how woke they are to avoid being targeted and destroyed through boycotts, defamation, and riots. They will bow their knee to violent, vocal minorities in order to escape the chopping block. Just as we all have a credit score, there is an unspoken understanding that any business wishing to stay off the mob's radar must establish a woke score to survive.
.png)
The Crown Media website does not boast about the quality of their writers, producers, talent, or stories. Instead, their online space is reserved for their contributions to the environment, female empowerment, diversity and inclusion, and LGBTQ initiatives.
.png)
Several downloadable reports are available at a click for all the company's statistics to prove they are, indeed, woke enough to avoid criticism from left-wing extremists. Despite Hallmark's largest demographic rejecting this ideology, Hallmark turns a deaf, uncaring ear as they focus on ramming their political agenda down the throats of their most devoted viewers.
.png)
Fans Say Older Hallmark Movies Are Better
If you're part of any Hallmark fan group on social media, you'll notice a common theme emerge: fans lament the new movies aren't nearly as good as the old ones.Why are the older Hallmark movies better?
The main reason the "oldies" are better is due to the absence of a political agenda. Other reasons include an emphasis on traditional values, sexual purity, poignant plots, quality actors, great chemistry, and elements of faith.
Fans also express disappointment over Hallmark leaving a large number of classic movies in the vault while choosing instead to re-air the same movies repeatedly.
The reason for that is obvious: older movies do not fit their political agenda. They are too conservative, too faith-filled, too white, with no gay characters, and less independent females. This isn't kosher for the small but angry mob.
Simply put, Hallmark is changing to fit a morally declining culture instead of maintaining a higher standard, turning their brand into more white noise, proving it's impossible to entertain and be woke at the same time.
Leftists Explode When Hallmark Fans React to LGBTQ Characters
When Hallmark fans voice their disgust over the new and unwelcome direction the movies are going, liberals and progressives go into attack mode: You are a racist! Probably a Trump supporter, too. It's about time Hallmark focused on diversity and inclusion! Love and families look different these days, which includes the LGBTQ, so time for you to enter the 21st century!
Any Biblical argument utilized as the standard to debunk the theories that God made people gay or that Jesus would condone the homosexual lifestyle are met with immeasurable vitriol: Jesus would love everybody! Get off your high horse. Maybe you need to thump yourself with the Bible since you are so filled with hatred! Hypocrite!
Here's the problem--the Bible is the ultimate measuring stick for truth, and the majority of Americans used to acknowledge this until moral relativism invaded our culture. Whether you believe in God or not does not change the fact He is our Creator, and he established a blueprint for living in His Word. This might be foolishness to those who are perishing (I Corinthians 1:18).
Does Jesus love everyone? Of course. He died for all of our sins so we can spend eternity in heaven with him if we repent, ask for forgiveness, and accept Him as Lord. The problem with proponents of the LGBTQ is they refuse to acknowledge that homosexuality is a sinful lifestyle that requires repentance.
The funny thing is the people who reject Christ and don't know the Bible or believe what it says are the first ones who try to use scripture to defend their positions. It's laughable. Their favorite story is from John 8 where a woman is going to be stoned for committing adultery and Jesus asks those without sin to cast the first stone. When everyone leaves, Jesus says He doesn't condemn her either. Non-believers stop there with the story and ignore what Jesus says next: Go and sin no more. Jesus never tells her it is fine to keep wallowing in her sin. Jesus is love, but He is also just, and judgment awaits all who reject His gift of salvation.
God didn't make people gay. Genesis 1:27-28 is clear that God created man and woman in His image and told them to be fruitful and multiply. Marriage between a man and woman is God's design. There is no homosexual alternative to God's plan.
Christians don't hate gay people, so the Leftist accusation that anyone who disapproves of this lifestyle are "haters" and "homophobes" is ignorant. Ironically, the Left is silent on Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen--countries that actually execute people for being gay. Maybe these Marxists are afraid they will be labeled xenophobes for pointing it out.
Homosexuality is a sin that will separate people from God for all eternity, so to expect a Christian to accept and embrace this lifestyle is absurd. It's antithetical to faith--faith that shares the good news of redemption from sin through a personal relationship with Jesus. You can click here for an article that shares more information on the topic, including the scriptures explaining what God says about homosexuality. If you're a progressive, however, you aren't interested in subjecting yourself to God's authority because you'd rather idolize your own opinions. Progressives are the real hypocrites--they preach love and inclusion, all while acting venomous and hostile to anyone who doesn't agree with them.
When you consider that only 3% of the American population is gay and only .6% is transgender, it's even more ludicrous that Hallmark insists on incorporating gay characters into nearly every new movie. One can safely assume only an infinitesimal fraction of these percentages tune into the Hallmark Channel anyway. For Hallmark to parade such perversity continually before the overwhelming majority of those who are sickened by it shows just how political the network has become. Viewers are being force-fed an abomination to condition them into acceptance.
Hallmark has done this gradually, like slowly boiling a frog in a pan. In 2020, Hallmark aired Matching Hearts, and at the very end, there were two Asian men who made a gay connection. It was so quick, it was almost subliminal, and if you looked away for a second, you would have missed it. Hallmark built on this, but kept the gay reveal until the end, to make sure viewers didn't turn off the TV until the movie was nearly over. Gay scenes increasingly consumed more screen time, from the lesbian who attended the boot camp in Don't Go Breaking My Heart to a lesbian wedding in Wedding Every Weekend, a gay relationship in Christmas House and Love Classified, two married lesbians with twins in A Very Merry Bridesmaid, and so many more--too many to list.
Conservatives tried to outwit Hallmark by refusing to watch movies that included gay couples, so Hallmark went the extra step to start including gay characters in nearly every movie, leaving viewers with a tough decision--watch Hallmark anyway or stop watching altogether. Many continue to compromise their personal beliefs in the hopes each new movie will somehow be different, more like the good old days, but those days are over, at least as long as Wonya Lucas is in charge.
Progressives parry by saying, Turn the channel then. No one is making you watch. Where are conservatives supposed to turn the channel to for wholesome entertainment then? It seems 99.9% of the channels are run by progressives, so little clean, family-friendly content exists, except for stations that show outdated reruns. We had one channel--Hallmark--but now it, too, is lost.
More Ways Hallmark Is Woke or Less Clean Than Before
Racial Diversity
A chief complaint among Leftists during Bill Abbott's tenure at Hallmark was that the network was "too white."
Why is that a problem?
There is certainly nothing wrong with including racial diversity in Hallmark movies, but when you consider other cultural mores, you can see this left-wing argument is also faulty and hypocritical.
First, let's look at demographics. Demographics are critical when planning programming and marketing for a network. The product Hallmark has to sell is movie content, and their goal is to reach as many people as possible with this product. Demographics include all the data variables that help a business, like Hallmark, find who their product appeals to the most and then base their content on the wants and needs of those people.
Hallmark tends to attract female viewers between the ages of 18 and 54, and since the majority of the American population is white, it makes sense Hallmark once centered on movies to appeal to this chief demographic.
The same people championing for racial diversity in Hallmark movies have no beef with few white people ever being spotted on BET--the Black Entertainment Network. It's apparently not racist to celebrate Black History Month, have a Black Miss USA Pageant, black only scholarship funds, and support black business initiatives while white versions of these things would be deemed racist.
Can you imagine a woke mob insisting that China, India, Africa, or Iran start including more minorities in their TV movie industry? What a joke. It's good business to appeal to your largest demographic.
The way Hallmark incorporates minorities should be insulting to people of color. Hallmark movies are becoming one big commercial for affirmative action--hiring people based on skin color even if they are less qualified and make flops like A Holiday in Harlem, A Christmas Treasure, and Christmas in Harmony).
Diversity, based on how Hallmark does it, is not an authentic reflection of real-life for most people. While people of all colors in America develop friendships and relationships with others based on shared interests, the tendency is to gravitate to your own group, no matter what color you are. Blacks have mostly black friends. Whites have mostly white friends. Asians stick together. Hispanics stick together. Look at your own friend group and your significant other. Most likely, they are the same race as you.
Now, look at relationships on Hallmark. A woman's BFF is frequently a different color than she is. There are one or more biracial romantic relationships in each movie, despite only 10% of the population finding this relatable. Even gay couples in Hallmark are often paired with someone of another skin color (Every Time a Bell Rings, A Tail of Love, A Very Merry Bridesmaid).
Recall the movie A Very Merry Bridesmaid. The leading man, Drew, taught English in Panama, and he longingly gazes at a book about global cultures. His dream is to create curriculum in schools that teaches about all the different cultures of the world and invite speakers to come and share elements of these cultures with the student body. Coyote Creek Christmas centers on a "Christmas Around the World" party. This is globalism, part of the Great Reset the Left desires, and one reason they love open borders. How about including patriotic education in schools and teaching about American exceptionalism? You won't see that in a Hallmark movie.
It's fine to incorporate diversity into movies, but the way Hallmark is doing it is insincere. It's about checking boxes and meeting quotas, not casting actors based on talent, chemistry, and appeal to viewers. Why can't blacks be paired with blacks? Why can't a movie cast be all Asian or all Hispanic? This would be more genuine and synergistic. Viewers can easily see the identity politics behind Hallmark decision-making, and it's repellant.
Female Empowerment
Remember loving fairytales as a young girl? Who didn't dream of Prince Charming sweeping you off of your feet and carrying you into the sunset?
The feminist movement ruined the fairytale. Angry women froth at the mouth over men representing the evil patriarchy holding them down. Feminists despise traditional gender roles and anyone who embraces the notion that God hot-wired men and women differently for a purpose.
Older Hallmark movies included stories of women who were down on their luck and were rescued by a modern day Prince Charming.
That's gone now, too. Nearly every Hallmark movie these days includes a woman who is at the top of her field, a business owner, or in an enterprising situation. Even if a woman has a setback in a movie, she always turns things around and can stand on her own two feet without a man. She is financially stable or finds a way to be--all by herself.
There's nothing wrong with being an independent woman, but Hallmark ignores the scores of conservative women who watch their channels who find no greater joy in life than being a wife, mother, and homemaker--concepts that are the polar opposite of woke.
Social Justice
Social justice is another topic Hallmark explores, though they try to disguise it as "do-gooding." Social justice is the idea that wealth, opportunities, and privileges are not distributed equally throughout society-again, another Marxist concept. Social justice regards capitalism as evil, since capitalism requires people to actually work to achieve their goals. Social justice warriors are those who lobby for the redistribution of wealth, reparations, and welfare programs for those who'd rather have a hand-out than a hand-up.
We already have two things that guarantee all people are equal and have the same opportunities to make a great life for themselves--the Bible and the US Constitution.
In A Kiss Before Midnight, Teri Hatcher plays an attorney who is a social justice "warrior," and in Love Strikes Twice, Maggie is also an attorney who works for a practice called "Social Justice Law Center." Social Justice is a concocted branch of law that tackles issues already covered by Civil Law or Human Rights Law.
.jpg "Love Strikes Twice")
Hallmark's Love Strikes Twice Image: Crown Media
When you watch all the do-gooder characters in Hallmark movies, their actions seem honorable until you realize it's only Hallmark's cover for fighting against manufactured social injustice.
Sexual Innuendo
Hallmark movies have always been squeaky clean without even a hint of impropriety. That is also changing. Some fans have noticed the necklines of many stars are now plunging much lower, revealing more skin that we've ever seen in Hallmark.
In addition, the stage is being set for shacking up outside of marriage--something that has never been done on Hallmark. Previously, lodging accommodations between male and females have been kept separate, but now innuendo has been introduced. In Boyfriends of Christmas Past, there's a flashback to when the leading lady is vacationing with her boyfriend; in Sweet Pecan Summer, Aunt Carol is almost caught looking at lingerie to wear with her boyfriend; and in The Wedding Veil Legacy, Tracy reveals she and her boyfriend had been making plans to live together.
Despite what our decaying culture dictates, conservative viewers are still teaching kids about sexual purity until marriage, so if Hallmark continues in this direction, it will be yet another reason Hallmark movies are no longer clean and family-friendly.
Environmental Activism
Being a good steward of our planet is smart, but climate alarmists who only feign concern for the environment as a smokescreen to impose communist policies in America are part of woke culture. To pacify the Earth worshipping cult, Hallmark also includes several movies with an environmental focus, like Feeling Butterflies, Journey of My Heart, Chasing Waterfalls, just to name a few.
More Alcohol Consumption
Many viewers have noticed a significant uptick in the number of Hallmark movies glamorizing alcohol use. Even if you are fine with alcohol consumption in moderation, it does make the movies less family-friendly if you are watching with younger viewers.
In Just One Kiss, for example, Mia divorces her husband for being an alcoholic, but then she drinks wine and other liquor multiple times throughout the movie.
.jpg "Just One Kiss")
Just One Kiss also features a gay couple. Image: Crown Media
You Can't Entertain & Be Woke at the Same Time
CEO Wonya Lucas has single-handedly decimated one of the last clean, family-friendly channels available in order to embrace woke ideology which seeks to indoctrinate rather than entertain. She claims her efforts are to "better reflect society" but her actions show she is trying to better reflect cultural Marxism. As someone who has been "racially profiled" for living in a white neighborhood and has received death threats as she climbed higher in her profession, Lucas appears to be basing her decisions on her own personal experiences. Her father was the first black GM for a Major League Baseball team, and her uncle was Hank Aaron. She watched both of her relatives fight racism, yet she ended up being the racist.
Here's Woke Wonya Lucas, the woman responsible for ruining Hallmark.
Lucas's initial changes were subtle, but Hallmark is no longer hiding their Marxist agenda any more than Disney--another company once synonymous with family entertainment (until it decided to morph into a sexual predator).
If there is one Hallmark movie that encapsulates their woke agenda, it would be 2021's Every Time a Bell Rings. This movie has it all: three independent adopted sisters (one of whom is Asian); the Asian sister is married to a black man; all three sisters let a man know they don't need his help in figuring out the clues to a scavenger hunt; one of the white sisters starts a lesbian relationship with a black woman; one sister is a do-gooder who builds houses in foreign countries; the married sister refuses to get pregnant even though her husband wants a family because she's focused on her career. This is not relatable to most families!
Every Time a Bell Rings is so woke, it feels like a spoof about Leftists when you watch it. Image: Crown Media
In 2022's A Royal Runaway Romance, Princess Amelia remarks how brave her uncle is to have come out about being gay.
Here's what's truly brave: speaking out against the LGBTQ agenda and the wokeism that is destroying our culture while proclaiming truths that an angry mob doesn't want to hear.
President Trump is right when he says, Everything woke turns to shi* because Hallmark movies have certainly gone down the toilet.
What Can Be Done?
Fans have contacted Hallmark and voiced their upset over the propaganda being laced in all their newer movies (from 2020 to the present). Hallmark ignores their comments and goes full-speed ahead with their political agenda.
Here's what you can do.
First, BOMBARD Hallmark with phone calls and e-mails letting them know you are against movies with same-sex couples and Marxist themes.
You can contact Crown Media in three ways:
e-mail: viewers@crownmedia.com
Phone: 888-390-7474
You can also contact Hallmark through Twitter and Facebook.
Second, if Hallmark continues to ignore feedback from the viewing majority, refuse to be disrespected by pulling the plug on your support. Stop watching their movies. Drop their channel from your streaming service. Don't buy their products. If Hallmark experiences a significant loss of viewers, they will ultimately lose advertisers. Hallmark will then have to decide if they are willing to go under for their woke behavior, or if they will return to the classic movies viewers want--movies that are clean and free of politics.
Third, turn to GAC Family for romcoms. As mentioned earlier, former Crown Media CEO, Bill Abbott, purchased the network and is working his Hallmark magic in creating clean, family-friendly content. It's a slow process to build a catalog of new movies and shows, but he's working on it! Several Hallmark stars, like Candace Cameron Bure and Danica McKellar, among many others, have already left Hallmark for GAC. Stars might switch for more creative license and more money, but it's a good indicator they aren't pleased with the progressive changes at Hallmark.
If the GAC Family channel isn't included in your provider's package, contact them to request they add it to your plan.
New providers continue to carry GAC. Click here for the channel finder.
The wicked Left is waiting to see what new movies GAC will produce and will be ready to pounce and attack when LGBTQ characters and other woke elements aren't included. Progressives have already dubbed GAC as a homophobic network, simply because Leftists have no respect for faith-based programming that doesn't align with their own form of self-worship. Don't let the Left destroy another good thing. Swing your support to GAC Family and let Hallmark Channel get a taste of the same "cancel culture" they've helped sustain.
Don't complain how bad Hallmark movies are getting and then continue to watch them. Nothing will change without you making some sacrifices, letting your voice be heard, and pulling your support. Show Hallmark if they are going to go woke, they can go broke.
Post a Comment