Think about it economicaly, studio execs know that the boomer white racist population is not that big and pandering to them is preaching to the choir in a church full of corpses.

No matter what it makes economic sense to always pander to the younger generation to make sure you have a growing market.

George Lucas’s problem is his obvious lack of talent but he was a very important landmark, by explicitly saying “hey the biggest hollywood franchise needs younger fans yesterday!”. The last 20 years is basically hollywood realizing this demographic shift, its not 1965 anymore and you absolutely can’t pretend some cracker in the south is representative of the entire population or even the majority.

Demographically these crazy chud middle class whites are not more than 50% of the population, not even close in fact. It doesn’t make that much sense to alienate the majority. They’re the niche market instead.

While there may be the obvious economic difference and white middle class have a lot more money this doesn’t matter when buying a movie ticket is not like financing a $500k home.

It makes perfect sense for media to reflect the changing US demographics and specialy the urbanization and rural vs urban division in political views.