Hollywood and identity politics really is a toxic mix. Awards shows are dominated by hectoring actors. Popcorn fluff must now ‘send a message’. Concerns about representation apparently obsess casting directors. And a film being on-message is often prized over it being any good. Lazy recycled stories and reboots are given a ‘diverse’ gloss. We’re obliged to hail an all-female Ocean’s 11 or Ghostbusters reboot as some breakthrough for womankind, rather than another sign that Tinseltown is completely devoid of new ideas.

But this obsession certainly has its uses for Hollywood bigwigs, as the confected controversy over the new movie Bros makes clear. Bros is a gay romcom directed by Nicholas Stoller, who co-wrote the screenplay with the film’s star, Billy Eichner. It is being promoted as the first film of its kind to get big-studio backing. The critics, we’re told, love it. The only hitch is that the initial box-office reception has been tepid. For Eichner this can only mean one thing: and it’s nothing to do with whether his film is actually any good or not.

In a series of tweets – following a disappointing opening weekend, where Bros took fourth place and just $4.8million (£4.2 million) in cinemas – Eichner got his excuses in early. He said that ‘even with glowing reviews…straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros’. He encouraged ‘everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo’ to ‘go see Bros tonight’, assuring enlightened straights it is ‘special and uniquely powerful to see this particular story on a big screen, especially for queer folks who don’t get this opportunity often’.

Eichner’s comments bring to mind those famous lines from Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Die Lösung’. The poem is a satire on the anti-democratic politics of Stalinist East Germany, which wonders if it might be simpler for the government to just ‘dissolve the people’ and ‘elect another’. It cannot be, of course, that Bros just didn’t do that well – that it failed to connect with audiences or wasn’t promoted as well as it could have been. No, all those moviegoers are the problem – and they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Given we’re all expected to believe that bigotry lies at the heart of everything and everyone these days, Eichner isn’t even required to back up his own mad assertion.

This is becoming a bit of a trend. The Rings of Power, the new Lord of the Rings series on Amazon Prime, has been so panned by fans that Amazon recently paused viewer reviews. The backlash was naturally chalked up by some to racism, given the show’s ‘diverse’ cast. The much simpler explanation, that fans just didn’t like the show, is apparently preposterous. In turn, these blowups seem to incentivise journalists and studios to rally to the defence of complete dross, purely because they’re told some vague group have taken against it.

The irony of Eichner’s comments is that they betray something else. When he damns those ‘certain parts of the country’ that supposedly took against his film you know instantly the places he’s likely to be talking about – those towns full of rednecks and opioids, no doubt, starved of cultural riches and blighted by awful opinions. That this is coming from the man fronting a mainstream, big-studio movie is telling. Hollywood, often derided as playing to the lowest common denominator and chasing mass appeal, is apparently now comfortable with bashing audiences and telling them what’s good for them. And if a film flops, you can just blame it on the audience.

It’s about time Hollywood remembered that its job is to entertain moviegoers, not hector them. But I really wouldn’t count on it. At a time when identity politics infects everything, it seems that many execs would rather say the ‘right’ thing, make the ‘right’ stand and sell tickets only to the ‘right’ kind of people than actually make money. Still, sooner or later they are going to realise that ordinary people don’t take kindly to being insulted – and that, to paraphrase Brecht, Hollywood can’t just cancel the audience and cast another.