Well, in part you're right, many of the people on the "front lines" are not aware of the plot they're taking part in, or more accurately are only aware of part of it. The Soviets were specifically instructed to target self important celebrities for subversion.
Think about it in generations. The soviets subvert a generation of say, teachers, and those teachers have more or less a good idea of the thing they're taking part in, and those teachers train another generation of teachers, who are less clearly aware of what they're doing, and so on and so forth, until someone is genuinely in disbelief that their teacher's teacher's teacher was a literal agent of the communists.
I think there was also the problem that plenty of these guys that were subverted and those subverted in turn, pretended or even believed themselves to be moderate
They would say that they were JUST pro-welfare, NOT pro-turning-the-place into a welfare state that even pays for illegal migrants
They lacked self-awareness or a desire for moderation, or even a desire to see alternatives to welfare like private charities & paying for a kids education out of their own and some other volunteers' pockets. Instead, it's JUST the government who gets things done.
Going back to entertainment, I think much of entertainment was already FULL of Left-Wingers for creators and fans didn't care because they made product they wanted anyway
If you told them that this character
would over time due to Leftist politics be turned into something like this
You would be called a paranoid right-wing homophobic mysogynistic nut job even before the 2010s
These guys in entertainment want to think of themselves as saints, specifically the creators, they couldn't give a damn about the money, they want to "non-conform" and follow this new wave that makes them feel great and revolutionary
The bosses don't give a damn, they want money, they have however fallen for the lies or idea that this so-called "non-conformity" which caters to some "wider audience" SELLS
Though TBF feminism back then was different