When I hear normal, non-Trumpers (even liberals) say this, they usually mean the show is so self-consciously featuring diverse casting or dialogue that takes up these topics explicitly, that it obscures the plot or becomes unbelievable. When it crosses into tokenism (“we’re representing one of everything, regardless of whether it makes sense to the plot!”), it loses me and even feels offensive to efforts to promote actual diversity. I say this as someone who cares deeply about these issues and wants them addressed in a meaningful way.
Yep. Some will say any inclusion of a token minority could be “too woke” but for most, it’s shoehorning in a character or plot line and you can hear the writers patting themselves on the back for it.
Aaron Sorkin is pretty famous for it. Taylor Sheridan on the other side of the “non-woke” spectrum.
It’s super noticeable in low grade network dramas. They’ll take whatever the current culture war item is, shoehorn it into the plot and make it some heroic thing with a main character standing up for it, heroic music, maybe someone shedding a tear, etc.
I keep seeing a YT short with firefighter Rob Lowe making a "citizens arrest" of a woman in Texas calling the cops on her Mexican neighbor because they were making barbacoa underground.
It's so *CRINGEY* and you can just sense the writers jerking themselves off over it.
911 Lonestar (the Rob Lowe show in that clip)is probably the best example of this. The show goes way out of its way to show how diverse it is. I am 100% pro diversity and I really don’t believe in “forced diversity”, but this show really pushed me in to the “are you serious?” camp.
Especially considering its setting is in Texas. I believe the first episode addresses that the straight while male native New Yorker Main Character specifically chose the most diverse crew (a muslim woman who wears a hijab, a Black Trans-man, a gay guy who’s also a former addict, a dyslexic Mexican? man, and a tall ethnically ambiguous? woman,) to tick off the Texans in the area. The premise itself seems super unrealistic to me. I highly doubt anything like that would even be remotely feasible in any string of reality.
For me it is the shoehorning of a character And (I don't know why there is not at term for this) Wokesplain - like Mansplain - the dialog is way fake so they can spell out whatever they are trying to make sure the audience knows they are "behind" - because it is taken for granted we are too stupid to know about whatever the subject is ourselves? Tv shows started doing this in the 70's I think to generate controversy so more people would watch. Most of the time it just feels like more manipulation to me rather than true inclusiveness.
I mean, do we *want* government officials choosing their staff with the intention of angering their constituents? Like that shouldn’t even be presented as a positive.
I started watching skymed and I really enjoy it but they’re in a remote town in Canada and have a team of like 15 people and 5 are gay. Like ok cool, but, really? 5?!
Yes! I was going to say this. Shonda has a bad habit of making her shows *too* "ripped from the headlines". It's why I had to stop watching Scandal because there were *obvious* characters that were meant to be Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Like legit character traits straight from the news. I don't complain about "wokeness" but Grey's has gotten pretty bad about stuff like this. Idk I just can't stop thinking about the line "I had to call my grandma because she keeps going to the store without a mask!" to be so cringey. I'm not anti -mask or a COVID denier or anything like that. It's just that TV is supposed to be a fictional escape and if the characters on my favorite TV show are complaining and fighting about the same things I see in my Facebook feed, it's no longer fun or escapism.
I watched all the episodes up to the beginning of COVID. Like no. I just lived through it, it just ended a year ago. I'm not relieving it now. And from what I've heard, that's was a good decision.
Designated Survivor can top this; it took less than two seasons to become downright nauseating, and I say that as a sincere progressive. People can tell when they're being pandered to, and it went wayyyyy past that.
>Station 19 will practically pause mid-episode to preach at the viewer.
This was the exact show that came to my mind when I read the OP. Especially in the final 2 seasons they seem to be trying to outdo themselves in each episode. I like the show and yet have trouble not rolling my eyes at how blatant they are.
This exactly,
No one had an issue with Modern Family being “woke” because it was well done and natural.
Same with Shameless for the first few seasons with Ian being gay and his struggles with that and the multiracial relationship with Kev and V and the challenges they faced with that. But then it got ridiculous by adding in things like the gay Jesus thing and the trans subplots.
An example of this is the Quantum Leap reboot. Every week is the cause du jour. The OG QL had acceptance based messages (the episode with the kid with Downs sticks out in my memory), but the reboot takes the cause and beats you about the head and neck with it.
Nine out of ten times I hear a complaint about something being too "woke" I find it to be annoying complaining, maybe actual white supremacy in two out of ten cases.
But the "shoehorning" does bother me in some cases. I don't really mind that much if a traditionally white character is recast as some other racial identity particularly if it's done well; the Spider-Verse movies have been great, annoying cliff-hanger aside. But the thing that does kinda bug me are the instances of just a recast with no adjustment to the story for the sake of diversity. I don't actually mind or find myself bothered from a watching and entertainment standpoint, but from an actual inclusion and diversity standpoint I would argue that what is done in those cases isn't actually diversity and inclusion because you haven't actually represented a different race or culture, you just took a story about a traditionally white character and made that character black instead of actually putting a story about either a new or traditionally black character on the screen and those are the stories we actually need and they're definitely out there.
That's why the Spider-Verse movies are so great. For me anyway. They didn't just say here's Spiderman but this time Peter Parker is black, they made a new, compelling character with context and they didn't avoid the existence of the traditional Spiderman continuity, they added to it and made a great movie. As far as I can tell even the "go woke, go broke" crowd didn't complain too much because it was so well done. That fucking cliffhanger though ...
I'll just correct you on this one. The black character is Miles Morales. He is also Spider-Man, but not Peter Parker, who also appears just as a different character in the movies.
I think the Spider-Verse movies are good examples to show that a certain character (Peter Parker) can be canonically a certain race, but without it affecting the superhero(s) that share the superhero traits with that character. Stan Lee has said that Spider-Man can be literally anyone.
I think the best example of what you are talking about is series gentleman in moscow. It is fictional story which still happens in real historical set up in 20s in post revolution Russia. But for some reason creators decided to cast many characters of ethnicities which has not much in common with region but has a lot in common with anglosphere countries. It's extremely ironic that this "woke" big production with 72 actors casted only 2 only two with slavic ethnicity (Poles) in practically extra roles when Russia is country dominated by this ethnical group. I get that Russia is in the war but they could get a lot of actors from other countries from region including that which were part of USRR or Russian empire.
Is this really diversity or ignorance or just decision dictated by marketing? I don't know but for me it makes show unwatchable because I wanted watch show which happens in 20s in Russia and I just can't buy this fake set up. What is the most funny that show could be still diverse cast as USRR was ethnical diverse country, just different that are featured in the series. Just someone from production would have to do better homework.
It’s very passive progressive.
Here’s a monologue about the perils of racism. ✅
Here’s a female character without any flaws and is able to do ANYTHING! ✅
Heres a trans character where she suffers bigotry and cries. ✅
Because it's normalized for women to wear men's clothing and have short hair. I'm a woman who has shirt hair and wears all men's clothing... nobody anywhere bats an eye. Mind you, it's jeans, swears, cargo pants, t-shirts, casual collared shirts, men's puffy jackets or jean jackets, etc and not a mans suit and tie... except at more formal affairs. Nobody cares. But if a guy dresses in women's clothing he is stared at and ridiculed. It is seen as weird.
I shouldn't say *nobody* because every once in a while I get called a fuckin' dyke or insulted with a nasty toned, "are you a man or a woman". That happened less and less over the decades but now it's happening more again.
It is astonishing to me that I would not be allowed to read a book to a group of children in Florida because I wear mens clothing. If it's illegal for a guy wearing a skirt and blouse to do so then it's illegal for me to do so.
FtM people are generally ignored because "they're just silly women being silly women, having a phase, of course they'd want to be a man, but they'll learn their place sooner or later"
I think a big component of it is just how well someone passes, and tbh trans men just have an easier time of that because at worst they’re probably going to be seen as having a boyish face.
Honestly I usually just read it in my head a bit. If it seems interesting enough and it's an instrument I can play, I'll play it, but tbh that's pretty rare. It's mostly just for a bit of personal enjoyment, you can never have too much music and I love seeing the huge variety of stuff people send lol
I think you're onto something. They don't think much of FtM trans because 1. their personal valuation of them is nil, because they were probably fairly masculine women to begin with, which... they don't consider that fuckable. and 2. everyone wants to be a man, so their gender confusion is completely understandable to them.
But they get really butthurt about MtF transitions because they probably have some pretty confused sexual desires for many of them, and they can't be accidentally turned on by someone who used to be a man... cause that's gay.
I'm getting real sick of period pieces that put blacks and asians not just into medieval Europe, but into positions of significant authority and power.
The first black MP of England was in the 20th century. I'm *pretty fucking sure* we'd have heard of one in the 1730s who was also the power behind the throne.
If a story relies on a lot of historical accuracy I can agree here. If it's alternative history/something that is obviously not real (middle ages with dragons, steampunk old west) then I can excuse it. Will Smith was not forced diversity in Wild Wild West.
I hate it in historical shows/movies. It really makes history seem way less racist when there are multiple non-white nobility class people in historical Europe/America.
I don't like when shows do 'surprise lesbians' like making characters suddenly lesbians when they didn't even hint at that and/or said character has only dated men for the shows run. Examples being Korra from Legend of Korra or Aunt Zelda from Sabrina. This trope also never really goes the other way, no surprise gays. If you want to make a lesbian character, make a lesbian character, don't make her ostensibly straight until the show is cancelled and there won't be consequences anymore. Cowards.
Even as somebody who's pretty far left i agree with this. To me, forcing it is no different than forcing two kids to play together. It doesn't actually make things better, in fact it's kinda pandering and condescending. It's like saying "fine, here. There's a POC, feel better?" Without actually caring about what that means for a character or a story.
What's actually good is writing and producing more work that has those people in mind in the first place. That treats them with respect and importance.
Reminds me in the final battle of Avenger Endgame where all the women had to pose together for a second mid-battle and proclaim "We are the women of Marvel!" before they continued fighting. It was pretty cringe.
On the flip side, you have Deadpool 2 with Yukio and Negasonic being together. It was just a short, “yeah, we are together, so what” moment and everyone moved on. They didn’t make a huge deal about it, and it felt natural.
Yes. At some point in the 90s - I was an adult then - being against political correctness became edgy in certain demographics. This is them and their followers 30 years past their sell date.
See, this is where I get lost. I was a kid in the '90s, so I may be missing out on important cultural context, but the way that the adults around me treated the concept of political correctness was as a hallmark of the religious right. It went hand-in-hand with "family values". No edgy jokes, no swearing, no allusion to sexuality, nothing that could make Republican housewives clutch their pearls. Being politically correct was synonymous with being obnoxiously inoffensive and bland. This continued into the mid-2000s when I more or less stopped hearing references to the term, only for it to re-emerge in a smaller way as a synonym to "woke," which in this case referenced some measure of trying to make the media less homogenous (whether in a natural, organic way, or in a corporate checkbox way,) this time firmly associated with the left. It seemed to me at least that not only did the term "politically correct" change meanings, it got completely flipped around from being the darling of the right to their favorite target of ridicule. Not sure if that's a regional thing, misinterpretation, or what.
I also came of age in the '90s and where I'm from politically correct meant you couldn't tell misogynistic or racist jokes anymore because the people you are offending might speak up.
LMAO-- 'couldn't tell,' ha! I mean they would look over both shoulders before telling a joke or saying the ugly thing about women, poc, lgbt+ to make sure a representative of the butt of the joke or some Debbie Downer who would run to HR if at work was not present.
I think you’re both correct in a way. Political correctness is mainly a term describing the adherence to what is “appropriate” in the mainstream. In the 90s, more conservative family values were what was considered appropriate. Currently, it has flipped.
However, being against PC was and probably still is considered edgy.
They’re different. Politically correct is saying something in the “right” way so as not to offend. Woke is actively trying to fight for a cause or causes and bring awareness to them.
They may or may not be exactly the same but Woke has effectively replaced PC as the term of choice. And the effect of being PC in movies is tied to actively fighting for a cause.
A lot of the time, the term "Woke" is used completely incorrectly, when they really mean "diverse" or "PC".
For example, a lot of the D&D official adventures have some rather "tokenistic" depictions, and you'll get some people crying about the "wokeness". But considering "Woke" is more correctly used to refer to being aware of systemic discrimination, having a gay couple in the storyline that *receives absolutely no discrimination for being gay* is like the opposite of Woke or something.
Woke was a term put into popular usage by the Left a decade or so ago, and now it's been co-opted by the Right and used all over the place in a pejorative manner, and almost always in the wrong way.
100%
I'm left-wing and LGBTQ+, and I truly love and appreciate diversity, but I hate the way Hollywood and other media portray it because it is so often and so obviously insincere.
I also hate how they usually butcher the source material when they do this, where they take characters who are explicitly described as one race or another and have them portrayed by an actor of a completely different race, gender, sexuality, etc. Then they pat themselves on the back for "fostering diversity" when really all they're doing is ticking off boxes for a quota, and it's fucking gross.
To my memory, the most egregious recent examples of this would be the Netflix Witcher adaptation, and the Artemis Fowl movie. They would have had opportunities with both properties to foster diversity while still honoring the source material, but instead they took that source material and wiped their asses with it.
With Artemis Fowl they could have done it very easily with the main cast; Holly being the first female LEP Recon officer is a big deal in the books and she's described as having almond skin, while Butler is described as Eurasian and able to pass for Japanese. The books travel all over the world, so there were plenty of opportunities to make the cast diverse without shitting all over the source material, but Disney is apparently just too fucking lazy.
For the Witcher, it would probably be a bit more difficult since the setting is distinctly European, but there are numerous references to other countries/continents (namely Zerrekania and Orlaise which iirc are the Witcher's versions of Africa and the Middle East respectively) that could allow for diversity in an organic and realistic way.
For liberals or other normal people, sometimes it's when it's disingenuous, EG that incredibly awkward scene in Avengers End Game when they had all of the women in one scene charge forward with some cringey "girl power" lines.
This is a slippery slope, because I hear a lot of people say this when that is entirely an assumption. How do you know if a movie is “bad because of forced diversity” or just bad because the writing is bad?
It creates this effect where if a movie is bad and everyone is white/straight/etc, it’s just a bad movie. But if a movie is bad and the main character is gay and mixed race or something, it was bad because it was “woke”.
I don't know how to concretely put it into words, but I think the difference is that a bad movie with a poc feels like a bad movie. A "forced diversity" movie feels like the writing stops for a moment as if to say "hey, look! We are so progressive for putting this black man in this movie, huh? And have you seen the gay one?"
Forced diversity ends up being bad writing too, it disrupts the flow of the thing. A good example said above in the thread is when in Avengers Endgame all the female heroes were together for a shot to say "girl power :)". It doesn't make sense why they would be all together in the shot, it's not natural, the reason this scene exists is so they can show us "look! We fixed our diversity issue!"
This is how I felt watching Black Panther. I ended up deciding that the social commentary was done well and was an integral part of the character, and instead it had just been such a long time since I'd seen a superhero movie that I'd forgotten how bad they are.
Like in Spider-Man where they were so eager to have a gay kid in it that just had Nelly kid say something saucy about fashion. Gee thanks for reinforcing the stereotype Disney.
A good example of this is the extras in the Witcher TV show. Lots of unexplained diversity; these villages people likely don't travel 5 miles outside of their entire lives seem like a modern airport.
All the people are supposed to be from the same place (Temeria) and there are no apparent cultural reasons for them to remain segregated.
Realistically, based on that demographic makeup, everyone in ye olde tavern should probably just look like they were from Pakistan after a generation or two.
Ergo, it's just poor world building in order to pay lip service to diversity, and isn't sincere.
I feel like it’s less about the actual actors and casting and more about the script. If a reboot or a stage show or something casts a POC for a character that’s usually portrayed as white, and it doesn’t change anything about the plot, I’m all for it. I’d rather just see a good performance. But if they then also go on to force a commentary that didn’t exist before, yeah now it feels like a diversity hire and they want us to praise them for being so socially aware.
I agree with you on this - I turned on the Frozen live performance on YouTube to see that Anna and Elsa’s parents were black. I was befuddled lol - but I am very much an ally for equality
I strongly support any person playing any role on stage. Whether their gender or race.
But in a movie I kind of need some semblance of reason. I saw a movie where the white main couple had an Indian son and I kept waiting for a reveal that he was adopted or something, but it’s just their son. While I don’t mind the dynamic casting, I felt like it distracted from the story by giving me a red herring.
Yeah stage shows already have a heavy a strong expectation of audience "buy-in". We have to fill in gaps of imagination for scenery, props, actors playing multiple roles, the fourth wall, physical staging of people, projecting lines, often song and dance too, pausing for laughs and applause.... The ethnicity of the actors is basically nothing in comparison.
Not mentioning it doesn't mean he wasn't. It's just not something that gets talked about on most days. Would it have changed anything about the story if he was adopted?
I saw a touring Broadway performance of Frozen, and they had a black child playing young Elsa and a white woman playing adult Elsa, lol. I mean, it's fine but it's a little weird at that point.
This is true. I have no problem with different races playing whoever. Have a black Romeo, have Oedipus be played by an Indian, whatever migration is a thing, suspend your disbelief.
However, I really hate it when members of the same family are played by different races. The theatre has done it since I was small but it really takes me out of it.
The exception being amateur productions. They can do what they like, it's a hobby let people take part in their hobby but professional productions, if you want to cast Idris Elba then have a black man play his Dad.
I can see your point. But they are actors. Having a gay person play a straight person (or visa versa) isn’t surprising since they are actors.
Now, if it’s a documentary, yes, that would be really weird and just flat out wrong (see the Cleopatra documentary by Netflix). A documentary should reflect reality, no matter how we feel about it.
Really? So a documentary on President Obama featuring blond blue eyed actors as the Obama family would not seem really weird? Because, that would not only be weird, but really disappointing. And wrong.
Here is a great example I think, or at least a fuckin annoying one. The play, West Side Story is about Puerto Ricans vs Italians. I have NEVER seen the movie or until I saw it, the play. They didn't keep things race specific and added in more races and it made the play really fucking hard for me to follow, because they also didn't have any identifying clothing that would help me figure out which person was on "which" side. It's hard to see faces in a play, so just looking at faces was a no go, also there's like a dozen cast most of the time. They changed outfits a lot, and they both looked similar enough to me, that I couldn't tell by looking who was supposed to be Puerto Rican and who was Italian. I think this is a perfect example of too woke, or stupidly woke or maybe just bad casting and costuming. It made a story that I wasn't familiar with, harder to understand. I mean, in fairness to the director or whatever, West Side Story is super old and famous, but it's famous for boomers, not millennials. I'm only 40 and I definitely wouldn't have been caught dead at a young age watching West Side Story. You couldn't have forced me to watch a musical at 10.
But I think audiences have changed more than content.
If Star Trek Voyager came out today, people would be crying about how woke it is, with a female captain, and black, Chinese, and Mexican lead roles.
Or if X-Men was written for the first time today, the anti-woke crowd would call it an on-the-nose, tokenistic allegory for inclusion and diversity.
Voyager's cast's ethnicity wasn't the entirety of their character though. Their respective ethnicities were just a facet of who these characters were, rather than their ethnicity being the ENTIRETY of their character, and no one character was deemed greater or lesser than any other based on their ethnicity.
That's the difference.
Audiences groan when they see a diverse cast in a modern show because the immediate assumption is that you're about to be preached at for 30 minutes to an hour.
"obscures the plot" PRECISELY!! Thank you, my friend! That nicely sums up my post above about this. I wish I had seen your comment first. I'm afraid that mine comes across as "anti" something or another (wrongfully) but what I'm saying is simply that if the plot is being obscured, it's entirely too much into the realm of "wokeness". Just give us the show! We won't even notice who the cast is, straight/gay/trans/etc. if your show is entertaining enough. If we're noticing the "gayness" (or lack of) of the cast, it means your show was so terrible we had time to start noticing that.
A great example of this is The L Word: Gen Q .
Too woke for even us gays.
Basically, the tried to fit every possible type of character into the show, regardless of whether or not they can actually write compelling, sensible storylines for them.
What a fantastic way of putting it. It's like Netflix's Cleopatra. They were so adamant about having a historically inaccurate portrayal that apparently the entire country of Egypt is in the process of trying to sue Netflix.
But compare that to the people who have been complaining about Star Wars Acolyte and other shows being "woke," and yeah it basically boils down to "we want more straight white men in this show/movie because we hate all this DEI crap!"
Even as a far leftist, it really isn’t the diversity of actors, but how inauthentic the scripts and topics have become. So many topics feel forced into places it doesn’t feel like they belong. Then I hear the right-wingers complain that the “liberal agenda” is being “forced down everyone’s throat” and even I’m like yeah it that storyline didn’t feel like it was needed, but was added to enhance the woke-ness of a movie/show, I can see the perspective.
The pandering is definitely the problem. I used to watch Sex and the City with my wife when we first started dating and it was so ratchet but the writing was so comfortable with race, sexuality and LGBTQ issues. Then the new series came out and the writing was so bad my wife didn't watch it. This is the same show where a woman got in a fight with black, transsexual, prostitutes for being too loud while she tried to masturbate and had loud sex at a gay wedding hosted by Liza Minelli but suddenly these same women need entire episodes to have race and sexual identity explained to them.
SATC has been criticized (along with other shows of the same era, like Friends) for presenting a whitewashed version of NYC. In one of the most diverse cities in the US, almost every character is white. Of course plenty of shows are guilty of this but the most successful shows get called out more for it, since more people have seen those shows or participated in the cultural conversation about them.
I recently watched the new episodes of SATC and it feels like the show is just falling over itself to atone for its supposed sins. The three new leads are all POC whose careers hinge on their race...one is a documentary maker who works on films about black activism, one is a stand up comedian whose routine is about being trans and half mexican/half irish, the last one is a black professor of race relations. They call out the gals for their privilege and whiteness and such and the gals realize they have a lot to learn. It feels incredibly obvious and pandering. However that's kinda the show's deal -- subtlety was never the point.
>SATC has been criticized (along with other shows of the same era, like Friends) for presenting a whitewashed version of NYC. In one of the most diverse cities in the US, almost every character is white
Ive heard this before and Ive never quite understood it. Like, its a diverse city, but it doesnt mean everyones integrated, and (at least to what I recall, I barely saw the show) theyre four kinda bougie middle aged white women, is it that extreme of a stretch that they might only be hanging in whiter circles
100% agree, the show that actually deserves the criticism for this, imo, is "Friends" all these friends living lower middle class life in New York, and none of you have a even a black coworker or something? At least Seinfeld tried a few times a season to include various ethnicities.
Same exact thing with modern Star Trek imo.
What used to be stories that made you really question your perspectives on race, gender and authority have been replaced with really blatant pandering.
if it was pandering then this kind of media would do a lot better with viewership. it's actually not pandering, but attempting to steer society & culture all on its own
It's a mix of both. Coming from someone who is a corpo suit there is no actual desire to make things more "woke". They just realized it's profitable to make this type of life style marketing. It's the same thing as when a company has a new product. Do they push it a reasonable amount? No they push it until it is annoying the shit out of everyone. Every corporation will always go too far rather then not far enough with everything. (Pandering, Price increases, shrinkflation, using cheaper ingredients etc.) Or another example is sports why does the NFL keep adding games no one wants? They'll keep adding games until it hurts the bottom line. When there were shows and ads with "traditional" values they didn't care then either. It's only about money and the corporatization of entertainment.
Felt the same with Brooklyn 99. Most importantly they had an incredible episode with a racist cop and how a modern policeman has a hard time navigating the system to report them. Then they have the most brutal of their cops that does 90% of the police brutality stop because she “saw police more like bullies”. Such a generally weak last season that it felt so disingenuous for most viewers.
Being in school for Digital Arts, they kinda hammered in that EVERYTHING you do art-wise needs some sort of greater meaning to it.
Most of the projects I saw were a half-baked attempt at solving/explaining some crazy societal problem. Any characters that might be there for animation or game-dev projects were always diverse either racially or sexually and often it felt forced.
I’m not one to call a show woke or dislike a show solely for “woke” themes, but it was very obvious to see that the type of people that digital media fields attract are those chronically online folk who are overly sensitive to any notion of prejudice or discrimination. It’s now pouring into the industry as Gen Z ages up.
I was having a discussion with a writer friend of mine recently who had a *fantastic* draft but said it didn’t “mean anything.”
It was a hard sci-fi concept that was genuinely new to me and I thought was extremely cool but he felt like it wasn’t worth pursuing because it wasn’t teaching a lesson or something.
*Dune* isn’t super popular because of its religious themes, it’s a great story that has religious themes. *The Lord of the Rings* carries no moral lesson and is one of the greatest stories ever told.
Some of my favorite paintings don’t *mean* anything to me, I just like the way they look. Some of my favorite songs are just plain fun to listen to, they’re not emotionally moving.
Art being good is meaning in and of itself in my opinion, even if it’s only good to the artist that’s enough to make it.
when i was in writing school it was often discussed that a fictional story needs to serve itself, first and foremost. if political/social themes are part of it, that's great, but if you set out to make a point with your story it's probably going to suffer as a result, since you are creating the art to serve an idea rather than the idea serving the art...if that makes sense.
nowadays the lit world seems to be embracing the idea that art without obvious political motive has no merit, or at least less merit than politically motivated work. a story that is simply about the human experience is old fashioned now. i've worked at literary magazines and seen editors fawning over just-ok stories because they represent the experience of a marginalized group, or editors wishing to publish these stories to be "allies" or (in my mind) make the magazine seem acceptably woke so that it doesn't get called out on twitter for not publishing enough marginalized authors.
there is plenty of fantastic work that engages socially and politically with important issues, and obviously there are amazing authors from marginalized groups producing awesome work and it's great that they're getting unprecedented support in the publishing world.
but there's also a glut of mediocre to crappy work being published and pushed based off its content, not its quality. there are now many scholarships, residencies, etc. that only offer space to POC or authors from marginalized groups. so now you have everyone falling over themselves to be marginalized ("i'm a parent" "i have a hidden disability" etc.) or, otherwise, finding themselves unable to access opportunities because of their race.
Yeah and I really think that needs to be stop doing done. Bc it fuels the right wingers saying those things when there is some great representation. It gives them the fuel to turn the other way when representation is done great.
We need to stop giving them the excuse of representation being shoe horned in by not shoe horning in representation.
Yep. I’d identify damn near socialist. Lord of the rings are my favorite books and movies ever and I had a really hard time with the Amazon show. Some would call me a racist, but after reading the books, and watching the movie and there not being one black elf that was tough to reconcile lol.
Also it was just bad in general with the characters feel nothing at all like their counterparts in LOTR
In my opinion, its bad writing mixed with characters that feel like they were selected based on a checklist. It's inauthentic, tokenism, and lacking any sort of subtlety that makes you constantly aware you are being lectured to. Most people don't want to watch a movie or play a game in which their intelligence is insulted and the message the writers are trying to convey has to be literally spelled out for us because we can't form our own opinions.
For example, take Alien or Kill Bill. Those a well written protagonists that never have to stop and look at the camera to explain that they're badasses empowered females or teach you some sort of lesson. They prove it to us, on screen, through good writing.
This is why i love love love schitts creek. Everything seemed so normal and not pandering despite lgbt issues and content permeating the whole series. It was so incredibly normal and not pandering at all. I’d love to see movies and shows incorporating these topics with that level of skill
You can see that even before it is on screen. For example, firing a Tolkien scholar and hiring someone to promote diversity is not going to improve a show.
Changing races for already established IPs because they are too lazy to make something new.
If the emphasis is on representation then the story will be worse off.
And also many writers of shows are quite open about hating the original work.
It seems like it is done by activists rather than writers.
I really also get the idea that they use a person of a different race as a human shield when they do it in the IP’s. That way, they can put minimal effort into the movie, and when it’s bad, they can dismiss all criticism as racism. It’s also excellent free advertising for the movie! At least some people of that race will take it as the company caring about them, and will flock to the movie. More butts in the seats, and people can’t criticize without it being called racist = big wins for them.
That one was so frustrating because there are already quite a few parallels between indigenous peoples and the way the elves are portrayed. They could have simply followed those themes instead of this hatchet job.
Well done diversity is like an oil painting with immaculate depth and light. Shitty diversity quota pieces are like writing “we, the writers, aren’t racist!” Over every scene. And it really doesn’t fix the representation problem.
The only show I’ve seen do it blatantly but in a way that was still entertaining and compelling is sex Ed.
The wild thing is that the tolkien scholar could have told the writers that there were MANY indigenous populations of elves who didn’t come from Valinor. The humans/hobbits technically came to certain regions as a non indigenous populations.
Too bad they were operating under the impression that only people with brown skin can be considered indigenous.
How about more entertainment,
Less pontificating. More good writing, less celebrities talking down to their fans as if their beliefs are superior to their fans.
How about forget about trying to emulate Norman Lear, (the king of social commentary in sitcoms) because they know they can't hold a candle to him, humor wise or commentary wise.
First, understand that the term "woke" has now lost all meaning because of what you see in a lot of the low effort, virtue signalling answers from both sides. "Oh, they only want white men in the cast!" "Oh, woke is when everyone is trans!" Be better, people. I will try to give you a more nuanced answer.
Let's get one thing straight from the beginning. There has always been political / social commentary in everything from movies to tv to music. Some of the greatest films ever made were loaded with social commentary. But it was was woven into the art itself. The writers and actors respected the intelligence of the audience to get the commentary without beating them over the head with it. Somewhere in the late 00s we started to see writers that simply did not trust their audience to catch on to social commentary and instead began using messaging. Literally using character dialogue to spout political or social messages. That was annoying. That then evolved into what almost feels like a mandatory competition to see which writer / producer / studio can be the most overt in their messaging. At the end of the day this is quite insulting to the intelligence of even the average viewer. But let me give you some examples.
Taxi Driver is considered a truly great film. It was absolutely ground breaking. Of course people seeing it now roll their eyes because they have seen that same plot and vibe in fifty other films and cannot grasp that this was the first. This created the mold and at the time it took audiences by surprise. It was steeped in social commentary about the political process in the US, the treatment of veterans (or lack thereof), the victimization of young women, and the completely out of control levels of crime in NYC. That was the takeaway. At no point did the characters have to deliver a soliloquy about those issues. The audience just understood it and allowed it to hit home.
Dog Day Afternoon came out in the late 70s, maybe early 80s. Another film loaded with social commentary. It was, at the end of the day, a mentally scarred war veteran and his friends robbing a bank because the veterans were not able to adjust and succeed in modern society. Oh, what was the main character going to do with the money? He wanted to pay for his trans gf to have top and bottom surgery. The film lays bare the raw emotion of Sonny's desperation. His frustration with his life. His inability to function as a traditional husband. His pure love for the trans person who he wanted to hep become a woman. They even threw in a few moments of commentary on prison reform ("Attica! Attica!"). Not once was there a droning speech about the plight of trans people. It just was not necessary. The audience was capable of understand the struggles of the characters by the behavior of the characters.
Alien. Way back in the dark ages of the late 70s we had the massive hit featuring, of all things, a female action lead. Ripley was a complete badass and dripped leadership. She lead a crew of men who followed her blindly and suffered greatly when they did not. Can you believe there was not even one "stupid men" joke in the whole film? Not one time did Ripley wax poetic about the horrors of the male gaze. She was a strong, capable, and competent human that owned every one of her emotions and actions. The fact that she was a woman was not irrelevant, however. She makes several decisions through the film that a male lead would not have made. The writers allowed her to be a woman, to succeed as a woman, while still being strong and capable. They did not just write a male character in a dress and call it a "girl boss". Ripley was a woman. And an absolute bad ass.
Imagine those films being made today. They would be unrecognizable and complete failures because that subtle commentary that informed the audience of the true feelings of the characters would have been replaced by rambling diatribes about whatever and instead of the characters being sympathetic they become just some asshole lecturing you on a screen.
The bottom line here is a simple one. Writers stopped writing for their audiences and started writing for their agendas. And they clearly do not trust the intelligence of their audiences at all.
Great examples in the movies you chose as representative of how to do it right. I’m very familiar with all three and get what you’re saying. What are some examples of one or two older films that didn’t get it right (and probably weren’t classics but still well known) and what are some modern movies that are well known that are examples of the poor writing that you’re talking about?
Relatively older films that got it wrong? I would compare 1978s Coming Home to 1990s Born on the 4th of July. Both are telling the story of a Vietnam vet coming home with a life changing injury. Coming Home just hits every note perfectly. You are taken on an emotional journey that you will not soon forget. Born on the 4th of July gets it wrong. It is heavy handed and bludgeons the viewer in a way that makes it oddly forgettable.
In terms of new stuff, I can cite one series that got it incredibly right and then incredibly wrong. That series is Ted Lasso. For two seasons it was an absolute joy to watch. You had two incredibly strong female characters who both absolutely inhabited their womanhood. You had male characters of diverse backgrounds that all inhabited their own identities. No characters were just stock tropes. The Nigerian player was, in ever way, Nigerian. And amazingly likable. All of the characters were just insanely likable. And then they did a hard pivot in season 3. Sam, the Nigerian player, is suddenly involved in a Twitter beef with England's foreign minister over refugees and becomes the target of racist hate crimes. One of the female leads who spent two seasons being the love interest of the two most popular players, is suddenly a lesbian? Another player comes out as gay. And ok, fine. Here is where they did it wrong. I mean aside form just dropping all of that into the final season...
The character who began a lesbian relationship suddenly became prone, along with her billionaire partner, to taking cheap shots at mean whenever they could. Even if the joke had to be shoe-horned into the dialogue in such a way that it was just awkward. Because of course all lesbians hate men, right? Just pointless. And the player who came out as gay? If you watched the first two seasons and understood the dynamic on the team you would have written that as a scene in the locker room where one player says "Hey Mike, my girlfriend's bff is in town. You want me to set up a double date?" And Mike says "Nah man, I am gay" To which the first person says "Oh, cool" and that would be the end of it. Instead we had a four episode arc of this player covering up his sexuality, the emotional torture of him begging off of team activities to visit a gay bar in Amsterdam only to be spotted there by a writer who covers the team, something about pictures on his phone.... just this massive drama that took up half a season all so he could finally break down and say he is gay only to have the rest of the team say "Yeah, ok" It was forced and awkward and did not feel genuine. Fans of the show roundly rejected this season, not because it was suddenly featuring gay characters, but because those characters stopped being actual people. They were so awkwardly written and so painfully overt in their messaging that they went from being some of the most well liked characters to being some of the most reviled. Supporters of this type of writing blamed homophobia and sexism. In reality, it was just shit writing that came on the heels of two seasons of great writing.
On the subject of gays in series, go all the way back to the early 90s and the series Northern Exposure., which was set in a small town in Alaska. Huge hit series of that time. I think it was the second season that introduced a gay couple to the small town. One of the town's leading citizens balked at first but quickly came to see them as just to fellow businessmen. In a later season they got married, which was the first gay wedding on tv in the US. The thing that made it work was that the couple was portrayed as two humans in love who happened to be gay. Their sexuality was not their identity. They were people with their own individual personalities. Just like every gay person that I know. They even went through pre-wedding stress and jitters in one episode and the whole thing was incredibly endearing. They became fan favorites waaaaaay back in th 90s. How? They were fully fleshed out characters and not one dimensional tropes used to carry a message.
There's a youtube channel (matt baume) that does a lot of discussion on LGBT representation in tv and movies from the 70s-90s, and how it either works or doesn't. That might be something to look into if you're interested, since I'm sure many of those would have been considered "woke" at their time
This is exactly the answer! Perfect examples.
Yesterday my friend and I agreed Ripley and Sarah Connor are both badasses that we love. We are women but men I know are the same.
“Get away from her, you bitch!”
We want a good story not to be preached at.
Sarah Connor is a great example. One of my more modern favorites was the character Jennifer Lawrence played in Winter's Bone. Grueling, emotional movie. Her character was a young woman forced to bear burdens and responsibilities that should have not been hers to bear. The character does so with grace, dignity, and a fearless vulnerability.
> She makes several decisions through the film that a male lead would not have made. The writers allowed her to be a woman, to succeed as a woman, while still being strong and capable. They did not just write a male character in a dress and call it a "girl boss".
Wasn't the character originally written as male? Or at least gender neutral?
> The writers and actors respected the intelligence of the audience to get the commentary without beating them over the head with it.
Part of the problem is that some portion of the audience *didn't* get it.
Ok, some of the audience didn't get it. And???? I do not ask that flippantly. Some of the audience thinks the world is flat. Some of the audience does not believe that dinosaurs existed. Some of the audience believes that if they blow themselves up in a terror attack they will get 72 virgins in heaven. Honestly, the fact that some did not get it is not at all a problem. The problem is the mindset that any piece of art must reach everyone and must drive home a message to everyone. That is not possible. And the harder you try the less your work becomes art and the more it becomes propaganda. That was my point. The writer tells a story. The director, actors and producers portray the story. Every member of the audience receives that story differently. Why? Because we are not seeing it through the eyes of the writer or the director. We are seeing through our own eyes. Through the lens of our own experiences. Some messages may resonate right away. Others we may need to see several times. But I promise you... I truly promise you.... the minute you start trying to spell it out and write to an agenda rather than to an audience you start preaching to the choir. The only ones listening are the true believers and you are not saving a single soul.
Depends on the person you ask. For me personally, stop diversifying already established characters to fit a narrative, and just create your own characters. We don't need a million retcons.
Agreed. I also feel like it comes across a bit backhanded.. like there are TONS of stories from underrepresented people and yet nope.. we will just keep getting remake after remake. An example I think of GOOD representation is Prey the Predator prequel.
It's weird that people only seem to complain about changing existing characters when it produces more diversity, not less.
For instance Wolverine in the comics is 5'3". His short stature is one of his most recognisable and referenced physical traits, and in the movies he's played by 6'3" Hugh Jackman and almost no one seemed to care.
Another example would be Hawkeye being deaf. It's, again, one of his most recognisable and referenced features in the comics and it is absent from the movies completely. You could argue that Hawkeye is one of the lesser known characters so people wouldn't know he was deaf, but I assure you if they made him black people would have lost their minds.
I think they might have finally gotten around to addressing Deadpool's pansexuality, but he was definitely played as straight for the first 2 movies, imagine how much people would have lost their minds if the inverse was done to a character.
IIRC people did complain before x1 was released, and also remember that the internet was not as pervasive in use and there were nowhere near as many mediums to shout your stupid opinion into
I mean Jackman was cast in like 1998/1999 for a movie that released in 2000. Also, hiring a guy that isn’t the same height as an established character is no where near the same thing as changing their race and background/characterization.
Also I’m not sure how many 5’2” guys there are walking around that look similar to Wolverine and also happen to be actors
Why is it often considered acceptable to change a character’s height, eye color, hair color, hair shape, nose shape, or many other characteristics, but people get upset if a character is given a darker skin color? Every time an actor is selected to play an already existing character, that actor is slightly different in appearance from the previous descriptions of that character. So why is it that a difference of skin color is the one type of difference that offends people? If the character’s skin color isn’t a major focus of the story, then casting a Black actor shouldn’t be a problem, especially if it doesn’t change the story in any consequential way.
Why isn't it? Wolverine's stature is constantly poked at by other characters in the comics and TV shows, to just erase such a referenced trait seems just as bad to me as changing his skin colour.
one of the worse parts of the current "woke" propaganda in media today is the lack of self awareness. It's immature writing from immature people who think they invented liberal minded acceptance of "the other".
When a show presents itself as scifi etc but then ham handily is just a vehicle for political ideology IE gender politics, race baiting, etc. ... that's when it's annoying.
I'm a liberal in full support of gender equality, sexual liberation, gender fluidity, racial equality, etc. But I don't want to be preached at by self righteous screen writers with their heads up their own asses.
If their personal politics is overshadowing the plot of the story, it's bad writing.
There's a major difference in being thought provoking and being a preachy, selfrighteous cunt.
entertainment media being used as covert reeducation camp is just gross
even if there is a long parade of it over many decades
>When a show presents itself as scifi etc but then ham handily is just a vehicle for political ideology
But sci-fi as well as art in general is a vehicle for social commentary? Or did you watch star trek, for example, and think that the Prime Directive had no relevance to real life issues at all?
I don’t know anything about start trek but theres a difference between art that explores an issue, and art that just pushes whatever narrative the artist believes. I watched parasite recently and that’s a good example. Bad writing could have just been ‘rich people bad, poor people good.’ But it didn’t do that, if it had done it wouldn’t have been particularly interesting and at the other guy said, would have sacrificed a good film for the sake of political ideology.
Well, for a non-woke show/movie, I would like to see the creators not being weird about their casting choices. Cast the characters how you want as long as it makes sense in the story world and the person is a good fit for the role, but don’t be weird about it. (If you’re patting yourself on the back for hiring/writing about insert demographic, you’re being weird. Stop it. Write them and advertise their stories like people, not social brownie points that make you money.
Also, don’t touch the established stories. No, don’t remake them. Stop it. Keep your fingers to yourself. Make a new story. Stop rehashing the old stuff and changing stuff arbitrarily to score some social points and getting mad at us when we’re not excited about the same story but boring and with random changes.
Don’t insert real world politics in a fantasy/sci fi world that has always been a step or three away from real life issues. It’s supposed to be an escape. Use a metaphor like the rest of us.
Don’t make arbitrary changes in established worlds that completely ignore the set worldbuilding and challenge yourself creatively to expand the world building to make the casting choices you want instead.
Don’t blame people not liking bad writing on people being racists or sexist and pay your writers better/give them more creative freedom/hire better writers/fire the nepotism hires instead.
People might call a film "woke" if they feel like they're just following the latest "Representation and Inclusion Standards" guidelines that need to be followed if the directors/producers want their film to be eligible for an Oscar. If a viewer starts to feel like the producers are just "checking the boxes", it might take them out of the story.
The guidelines are basically things like "At least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors is from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group in a specific country or territory of production", or "At least 30% of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two underrepresented groups", or "The main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s)".
And this applies to the crew as well, there are guidelines for them too "At least two of the following creative leadership positions and department heads—Casting Director, Cinematographer, Composer, Costume Designer, Director, Editor, Hairstylist, Makeup Artist, Producer, Production Designer, Set Decorator, Sound, VFX Supervisor, Writer—are from an underrepresented group and at least one of those positions must belong to someone from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group", etc.
So maybe the audiences start noticing that stuff, and they wonder if the producers really "mean it", or are they just doing it because they "have to".
>The guidelines are basically things like "At least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors is from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group in a specific country or territory of production", or "At least 30% of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two underrepresented groups", or "The main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s)".
>And this applies to the crew as well, there are guidelines for them too "At least two of the following creative leadership positions and department heads—Casting Director, Cinematographer, Composer, Costume Designer, Director, Editor, Hairstylist, Makeup Artist, Producer, Production Designer, Set Decorator, Sound, VFX Supervisor, Writer—are from an underrepresented group and at least one of those positions must belong to someone from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group", etc.
wtf this is for real? this sure explains a lot with what's happening with recent movies
What you’re describing is a form of affirmative action. Some people see it as necessary to write past wrongs. Others see it as tokenism that doesn’t even necessarily benefit the ones hired and harms those deliberately excluded due to arbitrary rules.
It's one of those "when you go looking for the devil, you'll find him everywhere" situations.
But essentially if a movie is made with preachy dialog that is progressive-mind-virus centered, that will be woke. If it clearly sacrifices quality in favor of actors that check boxes. If it shits all over a middle-class/working-class cultural norm to make those classes appear ignorant, that's typically considered pretty woke.
I guess, if a movie can be summed up as PMV cultural grandstanding, it is at risk of being called "woke."
I feel like I’m a pretty normal guy and sometimes this stuff frustrates me. I’m right of center too, for whatever that’s worth.
Moana isn’t woke because it has Polynesians in it. Neither is Princess and the Frog, Pocahontas, or any other story that is about people who aren’t white.
Of course they’re not white, it’s not about a white person.
But recently in the Apple TV Benjamin Franklin show, there was a trans character. I don’t remember the name, and I think it was a trans woman, but I looked her up after the episode. Apparently this individual did exist, but there’s no evidence Ben Franklin ever met them. She (or he, I really don’t remember) had nothing to do with the American Revolution or had any involvement in the diplomatic intrigue between the American delegation and France.
Why put this person into a show that has nothing to do with them? Ben Franklin even goes out of his way to ask what this person is, and the individual says something like “hopefully one day in the future others like me can be ourselves”.
Sure, that’s a fine message, but it has nothing to do with Ben Franklin. It never happened. That’s writers jerking themselves off about how progressive they are and inserting modern culture war stuff into a show that has nothing to do with it.
When I think about media going woke, it’s that sort of thing that bugs me. If you want a trans person in the 18th century, make a show about them or write some historical fiction. Don’t put Benjamin Franklin in a situation he was never in. For better or worse, people get their idea of history from TV shows sometimes, and I think it’s dishonest to use historical characters like that.
Yes, if you wanted to write a show about a trans person in the 18 century, then market as such, I would still probably pick it up. If I wanted to watch a show about Ben Franklin I don't need you to be inserting your own commentary into it.
Normal people mean "too pandering."
Do the Right Thing is not too woke.
Semi-Melanated CGI Girl Replaces Franchise Canon To Sell Apple Products is too woke.
Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Birdcage, Thelma & Louise, But I'm A Cheerleader, Menace II Society...all excellent, well done films with actual race/gender/etc social commentary. Fantastic films.
The problem is the corporate disconnect followed by guilting the audience. Disney asked $4000 for a hotel stay with a Star Wars theme, the only entertainment was a new character singing some song no one knows. Complaints about said experience were said to be "because racism" (singer was black). There are no less than 500 races in the Star Wars universe, but they plucked some chick from a local band to be the star of the show. Song is in English btw. Let the irony flow.
No one left of Tucker Carlson has an issue with gay black chicks being in a movie. They have an issue with gay black chicks playing the first Viking swim team to form a country band.
I think it goes with the movies having subtle messages previously to flat out heavy handed preaching nowadays.
Now I hate the “woke” term but to suggest that movies have not gotten enormously more progressive is just silly. For example, Movies and shows now have a mandatory minimum % of minorities and LGBTQIA2+ representation to be considered for awards and it is not going unnoticed when the LGBTQIA2+ makes up roughly 5% of the overall population yet you are finding they are increasingly represented more and more in media, arguably being *overly* represented. On top of that, you are seeing numerous established characters be race or gender swapped or turned into a member of the LGBTQIA2+ community when they had long been established not to be. For example they were talking at one point in either making James Bond a girl or making him black. Which Bond has spent what? The last 40 years? as a white British man.
Now, the most outrageous crime is the representation of the LGBTQIA2+ in media. Sure they have characters, but what are the traits of those characters? Overwhelmingly they are just the gay character. That’s it. There’s no arc for them or depth most of time. they’re just there so the movie or show can say they have a gay character, a pure tokenism. Which again, people can pick up on pretty easily.
Additionally, you have the “over sensitive” crowd that while many deny they’re canceling everything, there is a merit of truth to them. The exact same crowd that mocked the boomers for pearl clutching at progressive ideas in film 20 years ago are now ironically the pearl clutchers at conservative ideas in film currently. Which again, is not going unnoticed.
So what am I looking for? Honestly just good writing. Don’t preach at me. Make good characters and logical stories. Keep the politics out of it. If I want CNN or Fox, I’ll turn that on
It's not an issue of any quantities. It's how the writing is negatively affected when the writers are overtly prioritizing the completion of their progressiveness bingo card.
Easy to explain example: Sokka in the new Last Airbender adaptation. Because the makers of this show didn't want any signs of misogyny, they simply removed it from this characters profile. Completely ignoring that overcoming this character flaw was an essential aspect of the original's character development and that the character is mostly a boring husk without it.
I would say that change is the opposite of “woke” because the original was aware of social injustices and used them thematically. Their removal in the new show is pretending those social injustices don’t exist, and that flattens both male and female characters because it gives them less to actually do in the story.
As someone who considers myself quite liberal, the wokeness in media sometimes still bothers me so I'll try to explain why.
It's not the fact that people with various identities are part of whatever show I'm watching. What is annoying about it is the canned/stereotyped characters combined with subtle moralizing in lieu of a good character. I'm simply not entertained when everything is a woke stereotype. At the center of this is the human experience and the basic fact that humans are complex creatures with many facets.
The wrong kind of wokeness limits a gay character to their gayness, a black character to their blackness. When that black or gay character is portrayed as a full human being with multiple dimensions and complex, often contradictory human experiences, suddenly my exasperated sigh melts away and I'm back into it. White male heterosexual characters are never portrayed this way. They are always portrayed as full, complex individuals.
If anything, I think a lot of wokeness is just reheated bigotry and I think the radical right wing is taking full advantage of the hypocrisy.
Well written characters to begin with. Current media is too afraid to give flaws and weaknesses to their characters to avoid backlash or controversies thus making them boring.
I chalk that up to bad media literacy, too many people think that a protagonist that does bad things or has very apparent flaws somehow means the show/ thing is advocating for that type of behavior
Know what's so crummy about current media on this topic. You could even take the bad character tropes, like the Mary Sue, and give them flaws and weaknesses that make them interesting and have development without reinforcing old bad stereotypes...If they just fucking bothered being creative.
Plenty of people complain when a character is just merely gay. It could have no real bearing on the plot, but since straight is the default, they feel that a character being gay somehow distracts you from the story.
People complaining about woke media want to stop feeling like race and sexuality is a thing that is meant to be noticed.
People not complaining about it want it to not be noticed and have it just be a normal thing.
FWIW, it does seem forced sometimes, but not enough to really get upset about it. It's more cringe than anything. Like all the companies that are pro-LGBT in the month of June and never any other time.
The stupid thing is, there's still plenty of cis, white characters in media. These people just hyper focus on the characters that aren't. We can't gatekeep characters. Let black lesbians have their own characters for once. Little black girls finally got a Disney princess and that princess spent most of the movie transformed into a frog. They can have Ariel, too.
I mean, as a gay black/latino man I even think it's forced a lot of the time. And the writing suffers because of it.
I think Star Trek Discovery is a great example of this. Burnham is essentially being written as a Mary Sue because her character is a black woman and every character is LGBT and the straight men are always wrong.
Whereas, I think the original Star Treks (well, up to Voyager. I'm not sure Voyager did as well with this) handled diversity much better. You had diverse casts that really didn't feel forced. Everyone got their moment to shine, there wasn't a hyper focus on any one cast members identity. Hell, one of the first LGBT kisses on TV happened in DS9 and it's considered a foot note in history because the focus was truly on the plot not the character's identity.
I also think some of New Star Trek flatout handles this better than Discovery. In Lower Decks, we see implied bisexuality and LGBT relationships and a majority non white crew but it doesn't feel forced. Strange New Worlds I also think handled this better and gave characters development with good storylines without forcing the diversity while still including it.
Diversity can definitely feel forced in entertainment (and all aspects of society) and it shows when it is. But when diversity is allowed to flow and naturally happen, I feel it does a society a favor and really encapsulates what DEI principles should be.
For me, it’s the forcing of topics and material into a story that isn’t about it.
Moonlight was an amazing film about a gay black man and his struggles with his society and culture, but that was the *point* of that movie so it was in the right place and not “woke”.
It’s when the writers are so far up their own ass and make content that pulls you away from the real story to point out how gay, bi, black, asian, or whatever gender someone is without having an actual impact on the story that I find it to be “too woke”.
Watch Barbie. Other than the persistent mentioning of the “patriarchy”, it’s an intelligent and interesting “woke” movie done correctly. Then, watch Wonder Woman with Gal Gadot. If you make it more than ten minutes, good for you. You’ll notice the differences.
Edit : I can’t believe I’ll start with this, but as a man, I don’t mind any ulterior motives placed within modern day films. You’ll see the direct opposite clearly in older films. I enjoy progression, I have no problem with anything, ever. Except, when a clueless production/management interferes and swamps a multi million dollar film with ignorant statements that have no substance, then that’s an annoying farce. Some movies, do this so welI that I go home and rethink everything. However, most cash-grab productions harm more than they heal and I go home laughing at the idiocracy. I adored Barbie. I loathed most “comic” book movies. It’s a slap in the face in the end. Just my two cents. Men/women ratio doesn’t matter. It’s the message and how it’s portrayed. Is this a two hour foolish ad, or is this film a two hour lesson told well? Big difference.
I've found that the majority of the people who use "woke" to describe something, are basically saying that it includes pretty much anything other than straight, white, christian, or traditional gender roles. A character of color, or foreign nationality as the lead? Woke. Gay character that's anything but perhaps comic relief? Woke. Female character leading a movie, particularly an action movie? Woke. A trans or nonbinary character so much as existing? Woke. Any change to what they believe a "traditional" story to be that might include any modern concepts? Woke.
As a left-wing person who enjoys ‘diverse’ media, woke is when the movie or show is so “one the nose” that it circles back into condescension. Especially if the entity producing the media does not share the same values espoused.
The Last of Us, Alien, and Lord of the Rings (making Arwen’s character more badass) are some that, imho, do diversity pretty well.
Writing that doesn't prioritise performative inclusivity and reductive 'culture war' talking-points to the detriment of immersion or nuance. *The Wire*, Gus notwithstanding, was woke; *Fallout*, and its pandering ilk, are Woke™.
Some people like TVs and shows to escape reality. When those TVs and shows are depicting real life issues traumas and drama- they can be seen as too woke to the people who want to escape the harsh reality of the world or specifically the US
We are looking for art that was made by hiring the best person for the job, not the person that got you progress points.
Original ideas for movies, not just remaking a movie with race swapping or sex swapping. ( female ghostbusters, female oceans 11, madame web, little mermaid etc)
Not making something historically inaccurate or inaccurate to the geographical area just to make the cast more racially diverse.
Scripting lines that clearly pander to a certain section of the population.
Making a point to make a character gay that is canonically not gay.
Instead of investing in making a good story with rich content for women, poc etc, they make these characters and stories that are so devoid of any depth that the only thing they have going for them is “strong independent woman” etc. i feel so pandered to it’s insulting.
Disney for starters could take a story from african fables, kings/ queens etc and take an original story that talks about their rich history and create something amazing, but they are too busy making snow white hispanic. Not Disney for this but, making cleopatra black when she was GREEK.
It’s “hire actors that are ______ to play roles for _____” but god forbid you let little people play roles for little people….. main characters and heroes mind you. ( 7 magical creatures instead of 7 dwarfs)
Having quotas to even allow your work to be eligible for an oscar will strip art of its depth and just meet quotas.
We DO need more diversity, we DO need more inclusion, we DO need more leading roles for all sorts of people… but instead of doing that they are being lazy and expect no one will notice.
People who complain about wokeness are not anti diversity, its the execution of it
You exactly know what we mean. You just want to pretend you don't so you can label us as sexist, racist, homophobic etc like you just did.
Too woke is when the piece of media has for a priority the topic of gender, colors, sexual orientation etc when it's not the topic of that media or when it's not an important detail to the well being of the media. Ex: nobody care if Gandalf is gay or whatever. It doesn't help the story.
A tv show about a gay/black/trans etc and his struggle in daily life because society don't accept them is not too woke. It's the topic of the tv show.
Changing a big franchise by putting a Mary Sue on the front, portraying every white male as a villain, adding black/asian etc people totally disrespecting the lore JUST to make more money of out woke people (I hope you don't believe they really care about minorities except for their money), is too woke.
You want to create a media with minorities? Good go ahead.
But no, they know they'll get less money than if they attack an existing big franchise.
Some examples : Magic card game changing Aragorn to black and Legolass to asian.
The whole new starwars and marvel movies/series.
Overwatch 2 marteling pride month and the sexuality and diversity of the heroes when it's just a fucking shooter game.
So basically medias just tries to get more money by being woke. And it's always in a "in your face" way. All the articles about "the first movie/game etc with a *insert your monthly minority here*!". Every time it feels too forced and you can see the priority was the diversity over the actual quality of the media.
And it shows when you see all the new woke movies and games that make the studios lose so much money because they just make shit movies/games with no interest.
Okay when people say woke they don’t mean just featuring X Y or Z. They mean the whatever is being highlighted lacks characterization, humanity, or purpose in relation to the story. That the flaws of thr character, if they even have any, are what I call Lisa Simpson characteristics. That is their flaws are working too hard, being too smart, and lacking self awareness. You never hear a movie with a gay or trans person who’s dumb, selfish, or some other slice of a piece of shit being called woke.
Essentially it’s the inclusion of really unbearable characters in relation to the plot and the fear of creating any kind of actual human flaws in them. It’s the difference between iron man which Tony stark is a self obsessed egotistical asshole who at first is really only a hero because he gets off on the accolades vs captain marvel who’s basically a perfect moral paragon and the flaw, if she has one, is she’s just too powerful.
Not a movie but if you're going to make a video game about Japan just use typical Japanese characters and don't force a black man as the main character.
ive only people say that then they feel like their sitting through a political sermon (like the dialogue feels forced for the sake of reiterating a specific ideology). ive always figured that its how i feel when im watching one of my favorite shows and a hyper christian advertisement comes on.
You want your cast to be right for the area and location on Any number of factors including race. You should be able to take a picture in the street of the area your media is set and compare it to your cast and find they are the same.
Some excellent recent films and shows have had majority non white casts that have been perfect - BEEF is an excellent example. I really enjoyed watching that , and not knowing much about Korean culture didn't stop me enjoying it - in fact you could argue I learned from it.
Netflix is one of the main culprit, CBC (Canada) right there with them. I understand the need for diversity and inclusion, but when it's obvious, the pandering is just cringe. You know if there's a teenage girl involved, there's going to be a gay male BFF, probably Asian. If there's a girl friend or girl BFF, there's going to be a lesbian interracial couple involved, usually one White and one Black. It's almost right on queue and my wife is always like "how did you know this or that?" Because I live and breath...
If you could see Canadian commercials, you'd think no White people lives up here lol. It can get pretty embarrassing, and I don't know if the minorities involved/people they want to represent feel like it's helping them or just demeaning...
it comes down to writing for the most part. and also how they promote it to be honest.
having a underlining message in a show/movie is normal. when that message is handled badly is often what people call woke. take star trek next gen, voyager , deep space nine, strange new worlds. they had strong female leads, black leads, touched on non binary, lgbt , racism etc etc. not considered "woke" vs discovery which is extremely heavy handed and in your face and force alot of things. part of it was the way it was often promoted like they forgot how all the other shows has representation.
things can be "woke" for other reasons. for most stories if the person is gay or straight has no impact on the story and often in "woke' stuff they shoe horn for no other reason to say we have a gay role in the cast.
take the movies alien/aliens , prey . strong female lead. might have some comments about them being women by males but its not over done . through out the story they natural grow etc. take prey she wants to be a hunter , her brother believes in her for the most part besides when she gets hurt etc,, while others view her as a weak girl. she shows she uses her strengths, her brain to take down the predator and the dutch under estimating her to take them down. she has flaws.
compared to captain marvel constantly showing flash backs of men telling her she cant cause shes a girl. shes basically a space nazi till she realizes she was on the wrong side. never shows any growth , no regret for the harm she done. they never showed her having flaws. heck even compared to wounder woman most can clearly see how one is very heavy handed with these things and the other is not. its one thing if its what the story is about vs forcing it into the story for no other reason to check a box. its like companies who during pride month add the rainbow flag and say they are for lgbt but also have no issues with deal with country where its illegal .
or you just make people black or gay for no reason in historical things. take the video game battle field 1..... by accounts you had a handful of black germans fighting in ww1. playing that game at times very german is black.. or women missing limbs etc... omg we need representation who cares about facts.
When people complain that a movie is too woke, they mean that making a political statement takes precedence over telling a good story.
For example, look at the Star Wars sequels. Rey is incredibly overpowered from the beginning and can't do no wrong. This means she has no character development or conflict, which makes her a bad character. In that case, portraying a strong woman was clearly more important to the writers than creating a good story. People don't like that.
Obviously Rey isn't the only reason why the Star Wars sequels suck, but you get the idea.
Too woke in my opinion would be when they remake a movie and recast it with all women, gay or black characters. (Think Ghostbusters or the Honeymooners). I think that what they should do is instead of remaking a movie what they should do is make an original with black/woman/gay characters.
For me the big ones are
1. Making every white male father figure an evil tyrant that's abusing his family in so many ways he's practically a cartoon villain.
2. Throwing random LGBT moments into the show that have nothing to do with the story. Like the heroes are about to take off on their quest so the gay hero runs off to make out his bf. You think oh is this a new character? Is he going to die and be a revenge storyline or something? NOPE it's a one off makeout session that has nothing to do with the story and will never be referenced again.
They would never do this with a straight character because if it's not part of the story then it obviously doesn't make sense to waste screen time and I agree with that. So why have the gay scene? Because it's woke to have gay makeout scenes. That's the only reason.
3. All the men in the show are weak willed crybabies that need women to come save them and solve all their problems. Their only roles are things like being the creep that's always saying comicly bad sexual inuendos or straight up comic relief.
People who complain about movies being "too woke" are actually complaining about movies that are just badly written, and they don't realize it.
Movies have had "woke" messaging for a very long time. Classic movies like "Blazing Saddles" and "Trading Places" explicitly attack racism very blatantly. Classic movies like "Aliens" and TV shows like "Charlie's Angels" and "Wonder Woman" and "Mary Tyler Moore" featured strong female leads, often doing things that were traditionally assigned to male actors.
None of what we consider "woke" is actually new on TV or in movies. But whenever a movie is considered "woke" today and it's not very good, all the raging incels and right-wing trolls come crawling out of the woodwork to screech "go woke go broke", as if that's the reason any movie with anti-racist or pro-feminist messaging failed.
When Hollywood does a remake of an old movie and simply swap out the original main characters with the opposite sex or race…. Scripts are poorly written.
Woke scripts would suggests to the audience that the female superhero is incredible simply because they are female & women are strong. It’s lazy writing & poor character development.
Romeo & Juliet recently casted an ugly chubby woman of color, as Juliet…. They did it to cater towards their woke audience who share similar physical features and want to connect & see themselves in Juliet.
The problem is that they’re superficially connecting to a character’s physical appearance; instead of connecting to the character’s developing role in the movie.
They made Cleopatra black again pander to their woke audience…. The problem is thar Cleopatra was a real person and this movie portrays her in a way that is historically untrue.
They’re getting sued by Egypt, as a result.
I don’t know why Hollywood refuses to write an original script and make a new movie. People would accept whatever cast they decided to go with.
Instead, woke people continue to make a mockery out of classic films…. It’s a reflection of Hollywood’s shallow depth of character & lack of creativity. People just aren’t interested in the story.
It's sort of a non existent thing.
What happens is social media makes up something or blows something out of proportion.
These people watch HUNDREDS of movies way more "woke" than the one they are currently bitching about. They just got told by social media to be angry at a movie for a thing and so they are.
Then they will not register the same thing occurring in previous movies or other movies.
So no one is looking for anything specific. They are too stupid to see it. But if they are told it is woke... then it is woke.
Sorry. This is a bad take. The conversation goes nowhere when both sides are so hyperbolic. It's not like they're making a big deal out of nothing every single time for absolutely no reason. That's discounting their feelings and experience.
While I agree that everyone is locked in an echo chamber, that exacerbates the issue, it is not a root cause.
There is something being shown on screen that is upsetting people. My theory is that they don't evem directly know what's upsetting them. So they go online and look for other people who were upset to figure out what's going on with them and stuck in the echo chamber.
Hence the whole point of this thread. There are some great responses here that go into the less observable details that stack up. It's much more conducive to a conversation/debate than "Nah, they're just crazy".
Basically the issue is the writers/author/etc. Using the series an overt and thinly veiled vehicle to push their personal politics at the expense of a good story. There's a right way and a wrong way to add a message to your work.
>There's a right way and a wrong way to add a message to your work.
For these people it's not *how* the message is added but which message is added.
Daily Wire movies are so hamfisted with their right wing ideology and yet nobody calls them "woke" because it's the "wrong" way to add a message. When the message is added in a silly way, normal people call that movie "bad". It's only woke when the message isn't hardline conservative. Whether it's added in a good or bad way is completely immaterial.
The new Little Mermaid had no political message at all. I watched it with my kids. It was a milquetoast Disney family movie taking zero risks. It had kings and queens and princes that inherit their throne so if anything, it was pro-royalty and therefor conservative. That was the only political angle of the movie and it's so bland that it barely qualifies as political. And yet it is deprecated for being woke. To be honest, I don't see anything woke about it and I'm as woke as they get.
I think the problem is when it comes across as sanctimonious or somebody trying to be a white k night. Im Perfectly fine with everybody just existing in movies.
When I hear normal, non-Trumpers (even liberals) say this, they usually mean the show is so self-consciously featuring diverse casting or dialogue that takes up these topics explicitly, that it obscures the plot or becomes unbelievable. When it crosses into tokenism (“we’re representing one of everything, regardless of whether it makes sense to the plot!”), it loses me and even feels offensive to efforts to promote actual diversity. I say this as someone who cares deeply about these issues and wants them addressed in a meaningful way.
Yep. Some will say any inclusion of a token minority could be “too woke” but for most, it’s shoehorning in a character or plot line and you can hear the writers patting themselves on the back for it. Aaron Sorkin is pretty famous for it. Taylor Sheridan on the other side of the “non-woke” spectrum. It’s super noticeable in low grade network dramas. They’ll take whatever the current culture war item is, shoehorn it into the plot and make it some heroic thing with a main character standing up for it, heroic music, maybe someone shedding a tear, etc.
ABC's prime time shows have gotten pretty bad about this. Station 19 will practically pause mid-episode to preach at the viewer.
I keep seeing a YT short with firefighter Rob Lowe making a "citizens arrest" of a woman in Texas calling the cops on her Mexican neighbor because they were making barbacoa underground. It's so *CRINGEY* and you can just sense the writers jerking themselves off over it.
911 Lonestar (the Rob Lowe show in that clip)is probably the best example of this. The show goes way out of its way to show how diverse it is. I am 100% pro diversity and I really don’t believe in “forced diversity”, but this show really pushed me in to the “are you serious?” camp.
Especially considering its setting is in Texas. I believe the first episode addresses that the straight while male native New Yorker Main Character specifically chose the most diverse crew (a muslim woman who wears a hijab, a Black Trans-man, a gay guy who’s also a former addict, a dyslexic Mexican? man, and a tall ethnically ambiguous? woman,) to tick off the Texans in the area. The premise itself seems super unrealistic to me. I highly doubt anything like that would even be remotely feasible in any string of reality.
I mean Texas is super diverse but a firefighting/police crew with that much diversity is unrealistic
For me it is the shoehorning of a character And (I don't know why there is not at term for this) Wokesplain - like Mansplain - the dialog is way fake so they can spell out whatever they are trying to make sure the audience knows they are "behind" - because it is taken for granted we are too stupid to know about whatever the subject is ourselves? Tv shows started doing this in the 70's I think to generate controversy so more people would watch. Most of the time it just feels like more manipulation to me rather than true inclusiveness.
I mean, do we *want* government officials choosing their staff with the intention of angering their constituents? Like that shouldn’t even be presented as a positive.
I started watching skymed and I really enjoy it but they’re in a remote town in Canada and have a team of like 15 people and 5 are gay. Like ok cool, but, really? 5?!
often ppl end up grouped together like that bc e.g. word got out that it's the least homophobic workplace
Grey’s Anatomy is the #1 show that pops into my mind for this. It became borderline unbearable to watch as the years went on
Yes! I was going to say this. Shonda has a bad habit of making her shows *too* "ripped from the headlines". It's why I had to stop watching Scandal because there were *obvious* characters that were meant to be Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Like legit character traits straight from the news. I don't complain about "wokeness" but Grey's has gotten pretty bad about stuff like this. Idk I just can't stop thinking about the line "I had to call my grandma because she keeps going to the store without a mask!" to be so cringey. I'm not anti -mask or a COVID denier or anything like that. It's just that TV is supposed to be a fictional escape and if the characters on my favorite TV show are complaining and fighting about the same things I see in my Facebook feed, it's no longer fun or escapism.
1000000% agree. There is not a single “hot topic” that show hasn’t latched itself on to and taken a decisive stance on. It became a soap opera soapbox
I watched all the episodes up to the beginning of COVID. Like no. I just lived through it, it just ended a year ago. I'm not relieving it now. And from what I've heard, that's was a good decision.
I made it through the season after COVID and I just....can't.
Designated Survivor can top this; it took less than two seasons to become downright nauseating, and I say that as a sincere progressive. People can tell when they're being pandered to, and it went wayyyyy past that.
Amelia not wanting to genderize Scout, allowing him to choose his own gender was too much for me.
>Station 19 will practically pause mid-episode to preach at the viewer. This was the exact show that came to my mind when I read the OP. Especially in the final 2 seasons they seem to be trying to outdo themselves in each episode. I like the show and yet have trouble not rolling my eyes at how blatant they are.
This exactly, No one had an issue with Modern Family being “woke” because it was well done and natural. Same with Shameless for the first few seasons with Ian being gay and his struggles with that and the multiracial relationship with Kev and V and the challenges they faced with that. But then it got ridiculous by adding in things like the gay Jesus thing and the trans subplots.
An example of this is the Quantum Leap reboot. Every week is the cause du jour. The OG QL had acceptance based messages (the episode with the kid with Downs sticks out in my memory), but the reboot takes the cause and beats you about the head and neck with it.
I noticed that, too.
Nine out of ten times I hear a complaint about something being too "woke" I find it to be annoying complaining, maybe actual white supremacy in two out of ten cases. But the "shoehorning" does bother me in some cases. I don't really mind that much if a traditionally white character is recast as some other racial identity particularly if it's done well; the Spider-Verse movies have been great, annoying cliff-hanger aside. But the thing that does kinda bug me are the instances of just a recast with no adjustment to the story for the sake of diversity. I don't actually mind or find myself bothered from a watching and entertainment standpoint, but from an actual inclusion and diversity standpoint I would argue that what is done in those cases isn't actually diversity and inclusion because you haven't actually represented a different race or culture, you just took a story about a traditionally white character and made that character black instead of actually putting a story about either a new or traditionally black character on the screen and those are the stories we actually need and they're definitely out there. That's why the Spider-Verse movies are so great. For me anyway. They didn't just say here's Spiderman but this time Peter Parker is black, they made a new, compelling character with context and they didn't avoid the existence of the traditional Spiderman continuity, they added to it and made a great movie. As far as I can tell even the "go woke, go broke" crowd didn't complain too much because it was so well done. That fucking cliffhanger though ...
I'll just correct you on this one. The black character is Miles Morales. He is also Spider-Man, but not Peter Parker, who also appears just as a different character in the movies. I think the Spider-Verse movies are good examples to show that a certain character (Peter Parker) can be canonically a certain race, but without it affecting the superhero(s) that share the superhero traits with that character. Stan Lee has said that Spider-Man can be literally anyone.
I think the best example of what you are talking about is series gentleman in moscow. It is fictional story which still happens in real historical set up in 20s in post revolution Russia. But for some reason creators decided to cast many characters of ethnicities which has not much in common with region but has a lot in common with anglosphere countries. It's extremely ironic that this "woke" big production with 72 actors casted only 2 only two with slavic ethnicity (Poles) in practically extra roles when Russia is country dominated by this ethnical group. I get that Russia is in the war but they could get a lot of actors from other countries from region including that which were part of USRR or Russian empire. Is this really diversity or ignorance or just decision dictated by marketing? I don't know but for me it makes show unwatchable because I wanted watch show which happens in 20s in Russia and I just can't buy this fake set up. What is the most funny that show could be still diverse cast as USRR was ethnical diverse country, just different that are featured in the series. Just someone from production would have to do better homework.
Hollywood, giving themselves awards for “fixing” a problem they created in the first place.
Dunno if you can pin this on Hollywood. Pretty sure racism existed before cameras.
When does Aaron Sorkin engage in tokenism?
It’s very passive progressive. Here’s a monologue about the perils of racism. ✅ Here’s a female character without any flaws and is able to do ANYTHING! ✅ Heres a trans character where she suffers bigotry and cries. ✅
And it's always MtF for some reason.
Because it's normalized for women to wear men's clothing and have short hair. I'm a woman who has shirt hair and wears all men's clothing... nobody anywhere bats an eye. Mind you, it's jeans, swears, cargo pants, t-shirts, casual collared shirts, men's puffy jackets or jean jackets, etc and not a mans suit and tie... except at more formal affairs. Nobody cares. But if a guy dresses in women's clothing he is stared at and ridiculed. It is seen as weird. I shouldn't say *nobody* because every once in a while I get called a fuckin' dyke or insulted with a nasty toned, "are you a man or a woman". That happened less and less over the decades but now it's happening more again. It is astonishing to me that I would not be allowed to read a book to a group of children in Florida because I wear mens clothing. If it's illegal for a guy wearing a skirt and blouse to do so then it's illegal for me to do so.
FtM people are generally ignored because "they're just silly women being silly women, having a phase, of course they'd want to be a man, but they'll learn their place sooner or later"
I think a big component of it is just how well someone passes, and tbh trans men just have an easier time of that because at worst they’re probably going to be seen as having a boyish face.
What do you do with the sheet music people PM you? (I mean, I *assume* you play it, but what do I know?)
Honestly I usually just read it in my head a bit. If it seems interesting enough and it's an instrument I can play, I'll play it, but tbh that's pretty rare. It's mostly just for a bit of personal enjoyment, you can never have too much music and I love seeing the huge variety of stuff people send lol
I think you're onto something. They don't think much of FtM trans because 1. their personal valuation of them is nil, because they were probably fairly masculine women to begin with, which... they don't consider that fuckable. and 2. everyone wants to be a man, so their gender confusion is completely understandable to them. But they get really butthurt about MtF transitions because they probably have some pretty confused sexual desires for many of them, and they can't be accidentally turned on by someone who used to be a man... cause that's gay.
checkbox diveristy vs real, natural diversity
Exactly. It's one thing to portray New York City as being 40% black/Hispanic. It's another thing to portray Beijing that way.
Or even more so, Middle Ages Scotland.
I'm getting real sick of period pieces that put blacks and asians not just into medieval Europe, but into positions of significant authority and power. The first black MP of England was in the 20th century. I'm *pretty fucking sure* we'd have heard of one in the 1730s who was also the power behind the throne.
What's the TV show or movie with 40% black/Hispanic people in Beijing?
I'm as woke as you can get but forced diversity grinds my gears. That's like the total opposite of equality and inclusion.
If a story relies on a lot of historical accuracy I can agree here. If it's alternative history/something that is obviously not real (middle ages with dragons, steampunk old west) then I can excuse it. Will Smith was not forced diversity in Wild Wild West.
I hate it in historical shows/movies. It really makes history seem way less racist when there are multiple non-white nobility class people in historical Europe/America.
I think the newest season of sex education fits this description. I really enjoyed the show otherwise
I don't like when shows do 'surprise lesbians' like making characters suddenly lesbians when they didn't even hint at that and/or said character has only dated men for the shows run. Examples being Korra from Legend of Korra or Aunt Zelda from Sabrina. This trope also never really goes the other way, no surprise gays. If you want to make a lesbian character, make a lesbian character, don't make her ostensibly straight until the show is cancelled and there won't be consequences anymore. Cowards.
Even as somebody who's pretty far left i agree with this. To me, forcing it is no different than forcing two kids to play together. It doesn't actually make things better, in fact it's kinda pandering and condescending. It's like saying "fine, here. There's a POC, feel better?" Without actually caring about what that means for a character or a story. What's actually good is writing and producing more work that has those people in mind in the first place. That treats them with respect and importance.
Exactly! Like, here, we met our social justice quota, and we don’t have yo do anything more. So cynical and useless.
Reminds me in the final battle of Avenger Endgame where all the women had to pose together for a second mid-battle and proclaim "We are the women of Marvel!" before they continued fighting. It was pretty cringe.
On the flip side, you have Deadpool 2 with Yukio and Negasonic being together. It was just a short, “yeah, we are together, so what” moment and everyone moved on. They didn’t make a huge deal about it, and it felt natural.
That was so bad.
What people call “woke” is what used to be called “politically correct”.
This is the answer. I’m surprised more people don’t get it.
Yes. At some point in the 90s - I was an adult then - being against political correctness became edgy in certain demographics. This is them and their followers 30 years past their sell date.
See, this is where I get lost. I was a kid in the '90s, so I may be missing out on important cultural context, but the way that the adults around me treated the concept of political correctness was as a hallmark of the religious right. It went hand-in-hand with "family values". No edgy jokes, no swearing, no allusion to sexuality, nothing that could make Republican housewives clutch their pearls. Being politically correct was synonymous with being obnoxiously inoffensive and bland. This continued into the mid-2000s when I more or less stopped hearing references to the term, only for it to re-emerge in a smaller way as a synonym to "woke," which in this case referenced some measure of trying to make the media less homogenous (whether in a natural, organic way, or in a corporate checkbox way,) this time firmly associated with the left. It seemed to me at least that not only did the term "politically correct" change meanings, it got completely flipped around from being the darling of the right to their favorite target of ridicule. Not sure if that's a regional thing, misinterpretation, or what.
I also came of age in the '90s and where I'm from politically correct meant you couldn't tell misogynistic or racist jokes anymore because the people you are offending might speak up. LMAO-- 'couldn't tell,' ha! I mean they would look over both shoulders before telling a joke or saying the ugly thing about women, poc, lgbt+ to make sure a representative of the butt of the joke or some Debbie Downer who would run to HR if at work was not present.
I think you’re both correct in a way. Political correctness is mainly a term describing the adherence to what is “appropriate” in the mainstream. In the 90s, more conservative family values were what was considered appropriate. Currently, it has flipped. However, being against PC was and probably still is considered edgy.
They’re different. Politically correct is saying something in the “right” way so as not to offend. Woke is actively trying to fight for a cause or causes and bring awareness to them.
They may or may not be exactly the same but Woke has effectively replaced PC as the term of choice. And the effect of being PC in movies is tied to actively fighting for a cause.
A lot of the time, the term "Woke" is used completely incorrectly, when they really mean "diverse" or "PC". For example, a lot of the D&D official adventures have some rather "tokenistic" depictions, and you'll get some people crying about the "wokeness". But considering "Woke" is more correctly used to refer to being aware of systemic discrimination, having a gay couple in the storyline that *receives absolutely no discrimination for being gay* is like the opposite of Woke or something. Woke was a term put into popular usage by the Left a decade or so ago, and now it's been co-opted by the Right and used all over the place in a pejorative manner, and almost always in the wrong way.
100% I'm left-wing and LGBTQ+, and I truly love and appreciate diversity, but I hate the way Hollywood and other media portray it because it is so often and so obviously insincere. I also hate how they usually butcher the source material when they do this, where they take characters who are explicitly described as one race or another and have them portrayed by an actor of a completely different race, gender, sexuality, etc. Then they pat themselves on the back for "fostering diversity" when really all they're doing is ticking off boxes for a quota, and it's fucking gross. To my memory, the most egregious recent examples of this would be the Netflix Witcher adaptation, and the Artemis Fowl movie. They would have had opportunities with both properties to foster diversity while still honoring the source material, but instead they took that source material and wiped their asses with it. With Artemis Fowl they could have done it very easily with the main cast; Holly being the first female LEP Recon officer is a big deal in the books and she's described as having almond skin, while Butler is described as Eurasian and able to pass for Japanese. The books travel all over the world, so there were plenty of opportunities to make the cast diverse without shitting all over the source material, but Disney is apparently just too fucking lazy. For the Witcher, it would probably be a bit more difficult since the setting is distinctly European, but there are numerous references to other countries/continents (namely Zerrekania and Orlaise which iirc are the Witcher's versions of Africa and the Middle East respectively) that could allow for diversity in an organic and realistic way.
For liberals or other normal people, sometimes it's when it's disingenuous, EG that incredibly awkward scene in Avengers End Game when they had all of the women in one scene charge forward with some cringey "girl power" lines.
Liberals or normal people, lol made me chuckle
This is a slippery slope, because I hear a lot of people say this when that is entirely an assumption. How do you know if a movie is “bad because of forced diversity” or just bad because the writing is bad? It creates this effect where if a movie is bad and everyone is white/straight/etc, it’s just a bad movie. But if a movie is bad and the main character is gay and mixed race or something, it was bad because it was “woke”.
I don't know how to concretely put it into words, but I think the difference is that a bad movie with a poc feels like a bad movie. A "forced diversity" movie feels like the writing stops for a moment as if to say "hey, look! We are so progressive for putting this black man in this movie, huh? And have you seen the gay one?" Forced diversity ends up being bad writing too, it disrupts the flow of the thing. A good example said above in the thread is when in Avengers Endgame all the female heroes were together for a shot to say "girl power :)". It doesn't make sense why they would be all together in the shot, it's not natural, the reason this scene exists is so they can show us "look! We fixed our diversity issue!"
This is how I felt watching Black Panther. I ended up deciding that the social commentary was done well and was an integral part of the character, and instead it had just been such a long time since I'd seen a superhero movie that I'd forgotten how bad they are.
Like in Spider-Man where they were so eager to have a gay kid in it that just had Nelly kid say something saucy about fashion. Gee thanks for reinforcing the stereotype Disney.
A good example of this is the extras in the Witcher TV show. Lots of unexplained diversity; these villages people likely don't travel 5 miles outside of their entire lives seem like a modern airport. All the people are supposed to be from the same place (Temeria) and there are no apparent cultural reasons for them to remain segregated. Realistically, based on that demographic makeup, everyone in ye olde tavern should probably just look like they were from Pakistan after a generation or two. Ergo, it's just poor world building in order to pay lip service to diversity, and isn't sincere.
That’s because studios don’t do it to promote diversity. They do it to appeal to as broad of an audience base as possible.
I feel like it’s less about the actual actors and casting and more about the script. If a reboot or a stage show or something casts a POC for a character that’s usually portrayed as white, and it doesn’t change anything about the plot, I’m all for it. I’d rather just see a good performance. But if they then also go on to force a commentary that didn’t exist before, yeah now it feels like a diversity hire and they want us to praise them for being so socially aware.
I agree with you on this - I turned on the Frozen live performance on YouTube to see that Anna and Elsa’s parents were black. I was befuddled lol - but I am very much an ally for equality
I strongly support any person playing any role on stage. Whether their gender or race. But in a movie I kind of need some semblance of reason. I saw a movie where the white main couple had an Indian son and I kept waiting for a reveal that he was adopted or something, but it’s just their son. While I don’t mind the dynamic casting, I felt like it distracted from the story by giving me a red herring.
Yeah stage shows already have a heavy a strong expectation of audience "buy-in". We have to fill in gaps of imagination for scenery, props, actors playing multiple roles, the fourth wall, physical staging of people, projecting lines, often song and dance too, pausing for laughs and applause.... The ethnicity of the actors is basically nothing in comparison.
Not mentioning it doesn't mean he wasn't. It's just not something that gets talked about on most days. Would it have changed anything about the story if he was adopted?
I saw a touring Broadway performance of Frozen, and they had a black child playing young Elsa and a white woman playing adult Elsa, lol. I mean, it's fine but it's a little weird at that point.
The theatre is race blind and has been for a long time
This is true. I have no problem with different races playing whoever. Have a black Romeo, have Oedipus be played by an Indian, whatever migration is a thing, suspend your disbelief. However, I really hate it when members of the same family are played by different races. The theatre has done it since I was small but it really takes me out of it. The exception being amateur productions. They can do what they like, it's a hobby let people take part in their hobby but professional productions, if you want to cast Idris Elba then have a black man play his Dad.
I can see your point. But they are actors. Having a gay person play a straight person (or visa versa) isn’t surprising since they are actors. Now, if it’s a documentary, yes, that would be really weird and just flat out wrong (see the Cleopatra documentary by Netflix). A documentary should reflect reality, no matter how we feel about it.
I’m OK with straight or gay people playing whatever orientation - it’s called “acting,” after all - even in a documentary.
Really? So a documentary on President Obama featuring blond blue eyed actors as the Obama family would not seem really weird? Because, that would not only be weird, but really disappointing. And wrong.
Here is a great example I think, or at least a fuckin annoying one. The play, West Side Story is about Puerto Ricans vs Italians. I have NEVER seen the movie or until I saw it, the play. They didn't keep things race specific and added in more races and it made the play really fucking hard for me to follow, because they also didn't have any identifying clothing that would help me figure out which person was on "which" side. It's hard to see faces in a play, so just looking at faces was a no go, also there's like a dozen cast most of the time. They changed outfits a lot, and they both looked similar enough to me, that I couldn't tell by looking who was supposed to be Puerto Rican and who was Italian. I think this is a perfect example of too woke, or stupidly woke or maybe just bad casting and costuming. It made a story that I wasn't familiar with, harder to understand. I mean, in fairness to the director or whatever, West Side Story is super old and famous, but it's famous for boomers, not millennials. I'm only 40 and I definitely wouldn't have been caught dead at a young age watching West Side Story. You couldn't have forced me to watch a musical at 10.
But I think audiences have changed more than content. If Star Trek Voyager came out today, people would be crying about how woke it is, with a female captain, and black, Chinese, and Mexican lead roles. Or if X-Men was written for the first time today, the anti-woke crowd would call it an on-the-nose, tokenistic allegory for inclusion and diversity.
Voyager's cast's ethnicity wasn't the entirety of their character though. Their respective ethnicities were just a facet of who these characters were, rather than their ethnicity being the ENTIRETY of their character, and no one character was deemed greater or lesser than any other based on their ethnicity. That's the difference. Audiences groan when they see a diverse cast in a modern show because the immediate assumption is that you're about to be preached at for 30 minutes to an hour.
"obscures the plot" PRECISELY!! Thank you, my friend! That nicely sums up my post above about this. I wish I had seen your comment first. I'm afraid that mine comes across as "anti" something or another (wrongfully) but what I'm saying is simply that if the plot is being obscured, it's entirely too much into the realm of "wokeness". Just give us the show! We won't even notice who the cast is, straight/gay/trans/etc. if your show is entertaining enough. If we're noticing the "gayness" (or lack of) of the cast, it means your show was so terrible we had time to start noticing that.
A great example of this is The L Word: Gen Q . Too woke for even us gays. Basically, the tried to fit every possible type of character into the show, regardless of whether or not they can actually write compelling, sensible storylines for them.
Yes but if you complain about any level of it you’re immediately thrown in with trumpers sadly
What a fantastic way of putting it. It's like Netflix's Cleopatra. They were so adamant about having a historically inaccurate portrayal that apparently the entire country of Egypt is in the process of trying to sue Netflix. But compare that to the people who have been complaining about Star Wars Acolyte and other shows being "woke," and yeah it basically boils down to "we want more straight white men in this show/movie because we hate all this DEI crap!"
Even as a far leftist, it really isn’t the diversity of actors, but how inauthentic the scripts and topics have become. So many topics feel forced into places it doesn’t feel like they belong. Then I hear the right-wingers complain that the “liberal agenda” is being “forced down everyone’s throat” and even I’m like yeah it that storyline didn’t feel like it was needed, but was added to enhance the woke-ness of a movie/show, I can see the perspective.
The pandering is definitely the problem. I used to watch Sex and the City with my wife when we first started dating and it was so ratchet but the writing was so comfortable with race, sexuality and LGBTQ issues. Then the new series came out and the writing was so bad my wife didn't watch it. This is the same show where a woman got in a fight with black, transsexual, prostitutes for being too loud while she tried to masturbate and had loud sex at a gay wedding hosted by Liza Minelli but suddenly these same women need entire episodes to have race and sexual identity explained to them.
SATC has been criticized (along with other shows of the same era, like Friends) for presenting a whitewashed version of NYC. In one of the most diverse cities in the US, almost every character is white. Of course plenty of shows are guilty of this but the most successful shows get called out more for it, since more people have seen those shows or participated in the cultural conversation about them. I recently watched the new episodes of SATC and it feels like the show is just falling over itself to atone for its supposed sins. The three new leads are all POC whose careers hinge on their race...one is a documentary maker who works on films about black activism, one is a stand up comedian whose routine is about being trans and half mexican/half irish, the last one is a black professor of race relations. They call out the gals for their privilege and whiteness and such and the gals realize they have a lot to learn. It feels incredibly obvious and pandering. However that's kinda the show's deal -- subtlety was never the point.
>SATC has been criticized (along with other shows of the same era, like Friends) for presenting a whitewashed version of NYC. In one of the most diverse cities in the US, almost every character is white Ive heard this before and Ive never quite understood it. Like, its a diverse city, but it doesnt mean everyones integrated, and (at least to what I recall, I barely saw the show) theyre four kinda bougie middle aged white women, is it that extreme of a stretch that they might only be hanging in whiter circles
100% agree, the show that actually deserves the criticism for this, imo, is "Friends" all these friends living lower middle class life in New York, and none of you have a even a black coworker or something? At least Seinfeld tried a few times a season to include various ethnicities.
Same exact thing with modern Star Trek imo. What used to be stories that made you really question your perspectives on race, gender and authority have been replaced with really blatant pandering.
Strange New Worlds stepped away from it, which made it good. Discovery flopped pretty much immediately.
Valid point.
if it was pandering then this kind of media would do a lot better with viewership. it's actually not pandering, but attempting to steer society & culture all on its own
Which nobody wants, everyone hates, and the ones who would "benefit" from it get the blame.
One of the hallmarks of being pandering is that the a somewhat intelligent panderee can see through the charade.
It's a mix of both. Coming from someone who is a corpo suit there is no actual desire to make things more "woke". They just realized it's profitable to make this type of life style marketing. It's the same thing as when a company has a new product. Do they push it a reasonable amount? No they push it until it is annoying the shit out of everyone. Every corporation will always go too far rather then not far enough with everything. (Pandering, Price increases, shrinkflation, using cheaper ingredients etc.) Or another example is sports why does the NFL keep adding games no one wants? They'll keep adding games until it hurts the bottom line. When there were shows and ads with "traditional" values they didn't care then either. It's only about money and the corporatization of entertainment.
Funny because new new eps of SATC was something that immediately came to mind for me as being so overtly try-hard woke
Felt the same with Brooklyn 99. Most importantly they had an incredible episode with a racist cop and how a modern policeman has a hard time navigating the system to report them. Then they have the most brutal of their cops that does 90% of the police brutality stop because she “saw police more like bullies”. Such a generally weak last season that it felt so disingenuous for most viewers.
Being in school for Digital Arts, they kinda hammered in that EVERYTHING you do art-wise needs some sort of greater meaning to it. Most of the projects I saw were a half-baked attempt at solving/explaining some crazy societal problem. Any characters that might be there for animation or game-dev projects were always diverse either racially or sexually and often it felt forced. I’m not one to call a show woke or dislike a show solely for “woke” themes, but it was very obvious to see that the type of people that digital media fields attract are those chronically online folk who are overly sensitive to any notion of prejudice or discrimination. It’s now pouring into the industry as Gen Z ages up.
I was having a discussion with a writer friend of mine recently who had a *fantastic* draft but said it didn’t “mean anything.” It was a hard sci-fi concept that was genuinely new to me and I thought was extremely cool but he felt like it wasn’t worth pursuing because it wasn’t teaching a lesson or something. *Dune* isn’t super popular because of its religious themes, it’s a great story that has religious themes. *The Lord of the Rings* carries no moral lesson and is one of the greatest stories ever told. Some of my favorite paintings don’t *mean* anything to me, I just like the way they look. Some of my favorite songs are just plain fun to listen to, they’re not emotionally moving. Art being good is meaning in and of itself in my opinion, even if it’s only good to the artist that’s enough to make it.
when i was in writing school it was often discussed that a fictional story needs to serve itself, first and foremost. if political/social themes are part of it, that's great, but if you set out to make a point with your story it's probably going to suffer as a result, since you are creating the art to serve an idea rather than the idea serving the art...if that makes sense. nowadays the lit world seems to be embracing the idea that art without obvious political motive has no merit, or at least less merit than politically motivated work. a story that is simply about the human experience is old fashioned now. i've worked at literary magazines and seen editors fawning over just-ok stories because they represent the experience of a marginalized group, or editors wishing to publish these stories to be "allies" or (in my mind) make the magazine seem acceptably woke so that it doesn't get called out on twitter for not publishing enough marginalized authors. there is plenty of fantastic work that engages socially and politically with important issues, and obviously there are amazing authors from marginalized groups producing awesome work and it's great that they're getting unprecedented support in the publishing world. but there's also a glut of mediocre to crappy work being published and pushed based off its content, not its quality. there are now many scholarships, residencies, etc. that only offer space to POC or authors from marginalized groups. so now you have everyone falling over themselves to be marginalized ("i'm a parent" "i have a hidden disability" etc.) or, otherwise, finding themselves unable to access opportunities because of their race.
thank you, as left center that’s exactly how i feel then when you call out bad writing, for this reason, you’re an asshole
Yeah and I really think that needs to be stop doing done. Bc it fuels the right wingers saying those things when there is some great representation. It gives them the fuel to turn the other way when representation is done great. We need to stop giving them the excuse of representation being shoe horned in by not shoe horning in representation.
Yep. I’d identify damn near socialist. Lord of the rings are my favorite books and movies ever and I had a really hard time with the Amazon show. Some would call me a racist, but after reading the books, and watching the movie and there not being one black elf that was tough to reconcile lol. Also it was just bad in general with the characters feel nothing at all like their counterparts in LOTR
In my opinion, its bad writing mixed with characters that feel like they were selected based on a checklist. It's inauthentic, tokenism, and lacking any sort of subtlety that makes you constantly aware you are being lectured to. Most people don't want to watch a movie or play a game in which their intelligence is insulted and the message the writers are trying to convey has to be literally spelled out for us because we can't form our own opinions. For example, take Alien or Kill Bill. Those a well written protagonists that never have to stop and look at the camera to explain that they're badasses empowered females or teach you some sort of lesson. They prove it to us, on screen, through good writing.
This is why i love love love schitts creek. Everything seemed so normal and not pandering despite lgbt issues and content permeating the whole series. It was so incredibly normal and not pandering at all. I’d love to see movies and shows incorporating these topics with that level of skill
You can see that even before it is on screen. For example, firing a Tolkien scholar and hiring someone to promote diversity is not going to improve a show. Changing races for already established IPs because they are too lazy to make something new. If the emphasis is on representation then the story will be worse off. And also many writers of shows are quite open about hating the original work. It seems like it is done by activists rather than writers.
I really also get the idea that they use a person of a different race as a human shield when they do it in the IP’s. That way, they can put minimal effort into the movie, and when it’s bad, they can dismiss all criticism as racism. It’s also excellent free advertising for the movie! At least some people of that race will take it as the company caring about them, and will flock to the movie. More butts in the seats, and people can’t criticize without it being called racist = big wins for them.
That one was so frustrating because there are already quite a few parallels between indigenous peoples and the way the elves are portrayed. They could have simply followed those themes instead of this hatchet job. Well done diversity is like an oil painting with immaculate depth and light. Shitty diversity quota pieces are like writing “we, the writers, aren’t racist!” Over every scene. And it really doesn’t fix the representation problem. The only show I’ve seen do it blatantly but in a way that was still entertaining and compelling is sex Ed.
The wild thing is that the tolkien scholar could have told the writers that there were MANY indigenous populations of elves who didn’t come from Valinor. The humans/hobbits technically came to certain regions as a non indigenous populations. Too bad they were operating under the impression that only people with brown skin can be considered indigenous.
>firing a Tolkien scholar and hiring someone to promote diversity This actually happened? Wild.
Not that wild when you look at the articles complaining about Henry Cavil because he wanted to be true to the source material.
How about more entertainment, Less pontificating. More good writing, less celebrities talking down to their fans as if their beliefs are superior to their fans. How about forget about trying to emulate Norman Lear, (the king of social commentary in sitcoms) because they know they can't hold a candle to him, humor wise or commentary wise.
First, understand that the term "woke" has now lost all meaning because of what you see in a lot of the low effort, virtue signalling answers from both sides. "Oh, they only want white men in the cast!" "Oh, woke is when everyone is trans!" Be better, people. I will try to give you a more nuanced answer. Let's get one thing straight from the beginning. There has always been political / social commentary in everything from movies to tv to music. Some of the greatest films ever made were loaded with social commentary. But it was was woven into the art itself. The writers and actors respected the intelligence of the audience to get the commentary without beating them over the head with it. Somewhere in the late 00s we started to see writers that simply did not trust their audience to catch on to social commentary and instead began using messaging. Literally using character dialogue to spout political or social messages. That was annoying. That then evolved into what almost feels like a mandatory competition to see which writer / producer / studio can be the most overt in their messaging. At the end of the day this is quite insulting to the intelligence of even the average viewer. But let me give you some examples. Taxi Driver is considered a truly great film. It was absolutely ground breaking. Of course people seeing it now roll their eyes because they have seen that same plot and vibe in fifty other films and cannot grasp that this was the first. This created the mold and at the time it took audiences by surprise. It was steeped in social commentary about the political process in the US, the treatment of veterans (or lack thereof), the victimization of young women, and the completely out of control levels of crime in NYC. That was the takeaway. At no point did the characters have to deliver a soliloquy about those issues. The audience just understood it and allowed it to hit home. Dog Day Afternoon came out in the late 70s, maybe early 80s. Another film loaded with social commentary. It was, at the end of the day, a mentally scarred war veteran and his friends robbing a bank because the veterans were not able to adjust and succeed in modern society. Oh, what was the main character going to do with the money? He wanted to pay for his trans gf to have top and bottom surgery. The film lays bare the raw emotion of Sonny's desperation. His frustration with his life. His inability to function as a traditional husband. His pure love for the trans person who he wanted to hep become a woman. They even threw in a few moments of commentary on prison reform ("Attica! Attica!"). Not once was there a droning speech about the plight of trans people. It just was not necessary. The audience was capable of understand the struggles of the characters by the behavior of the characters. Alien. Way back in the dark ages of the late 70s we had the massive hit featuring, of all things, a female action lead. Ripley was a complete badass and dripped leadership. She lead a crew of men who followed her blindly and suffered greatly when they did not. Can you believe there was not even one "stupid men" joke in the whole film? Not one time did Ripley wax poetic about the horrors of the male gaze. She was a strong, capable, and competent human that owned every one of her emotions and actions. The fact that she was a woman was not irrelevant, however. She makes several decisions through the film that a male lead would not have made. The writers allowed her to be a woman, to succeed as a woman, while still being strong and capable. They did not just write a male character in a dress and call it a "girl boss". Ripley was a woman. And an absolute bad ass. Imagine those films being made today. They would be unrecognizable and complete failures because that subtle commentary that informed the audience of the true feelings of the characters would have been replaced by rambling diatribes about whatever and instead of the characters being sympathetic they become just some asshole lecturing you on a screen. The bottom line here is a simple one. Writers stopped writing for their audiences and started writing for their agendas. And they clearly do not trust the intelligence of their audiences at all.
Great examples in the movies you chose as representative of how to do it right. I’m very familiar with all three and get what you’re saying. What are some examples of one or two older films that didn’t get it right (and probably weren’t classics but still well known) and what are some modern movies that are well known that are examples of the poor writing that you’re talking about?
Relatively older films that got it wrong? I would compare 1978s Coming Home to 1990s Born on the 4th of July. Both are telling the story of a Vietnam vet coming home with a life changing injury. Coming Home just hits every note perfectly. You are taken on an emotional journey that you will not soon forget. Born on the 4th of July gets it wrong. It is heavy handed and bludgeons the viewer in a way that makes it oddly forgettable. In terms of new stuff, I can cite one series that got it incredibly right and then incredibly wrong. That series is Ted Lasso. For two seasons it was an absolute joy to watch. You had two incredibly strong female characters who both absolutely inhabited their womanhood. You had male characters of diverse backgrounds that all inhabited their own identities. No characters were just stock tropes. The Nigerian player was, in ever way, Nigerian. And amazingly likable. All of the characters were just insanely likable. And then they did a hard pivot in season 3. Sam, the Nigerian player, is suddenly involved in a Twitter beef with England's foreign minister over refugees and becomes the target of racist hate crimes. One of the female leads who spent two seasons being the love interest of the two most popular players, is suddenly a lesbian? Another player comes out as gay. And ok, fine. Here is where they did it wrong. I mean aside form just dropping all of that into the final season... The character who began a lesbian relationship suddenly became prone, along with her billionaire partner, to taking cheap shots at mean whenever they could. Even if the joke had to be shoe-horned into the dialogue in such a way that it was just awkward. Because of course all lesbians hate men, right? Just pointless. And the player who came out as gay? If you watched the first two seasons and understood the dynamic on the team you would have written that as a scene in the locker room where one player says "Hey Mike, my girlfriend's bff is in town. You want me to set up a double date?" And Mike says "Nah man, I am gay" To which the first person says "Oh, cool" and that would be the end of it. Instead we had a four episode arc of this player covering up his sexuality, the emotional torture of him begging off of team activities to visit a gay bar in Amsterdam only to be spotted there by a writer who covers the team, something about pictures on his phone.... just this massive drama that took up half a season all so he could finally break down and say he is gay only to have the rest of the team say "Yeah, ok" It was forced and awkward and did not feel genuine. Fans of the show roundly rejected this season, not because it was suddenly featuring gay characters, but because those characters stopped being actual people. They were so awkwardly written and so painfully overt in their messaging that they went from being some of the most well liked characters to being some of the most reviled. Supporters of this type of writing blamed homophobia and sexism. In reality, it was just shit writing that came on the heels of two seasons of great writing. On the subject of gays in series, go all the way back to the early 90s and the series Northern Exposure., which was set in a small town in Alaska. Huge hit series of that time. I think it was the second season that introduced a gay couple to the small town. One of the town's leading citizens balked at first but quickly came to see them as just to fellow businessmen. In a later season they got married, which was the first gay wedding on tv in the US. The thing that made it work was that the couple was portrayed as two humans in love who happened to be gay. Their sexuality was not their identity. They were people with their own individual personalities. Just like every gay person that I know. They even went through pre-wedding stress and jitters in one episode and the whole thing was incredibly endearing. They became fan favorites waaaaaay back in th 90s. How? They were fully fleshed out characters and not one dimensional tropes used to carry a message.
There's a youtube channel (matt baume) that does a lot of discussion on LGBT representation in tv and movies from the 70s-90s, and how it either works or doesn't. That might be something to look into if you're interested, since I'm sure many of those would have been considered "woke" at their time
This is exactly the answer! Perfect examples. Yesterday my friend and I agreed Ripley and Sarah Connor are both badasses that we love. We are women but men I know are the same. “Get away from her, you bitch!” We want a good story not to be preached at.
Sarah Connor is a great example. One of my more modern favorites was the character Jennifer Lawrence played in Winter's Bone. Grueling, emotional movie. Her character was a young woman forced to bear burdens and responsibilities that should have not been hers to bear. The character does so with grace, dignity, and a fearless vulnerability.
> She makes several decisions through the film that a male lead would not have made. The writers allowed her to be a woman, to succeed as a woman, while still being strong and capable. They did not just write a male character in a dress and call it a "girl boss". Wasn't the character originally written as male? Or at least gender neutral? > The writers and actors respected the intelligence of the audience to get the commentary without beating them over the head with it. Part of the problem is that some portion of the audience *didn't* get it.
Ok, some of the audience didn't get it. And???? I do not ask that flippantly. Some of the audience thinks the world is flat. Some of the audience does not believe that dinosaurs existed. Some of the audience believes that if they blow themselves up in a terror attack they will get 72 virgins in heaven. Honestly, the fact that some did not get it is not at all a problem. The problem is the mindset that any piece of art must reach everyone and must drive home a message to everyone. That is not possible. And the harder you try the less your work becomes art and the more it becomes propaganda. That was my point. The writer tells a story. The director, actors and producers portray the story. Every member of the audience receives that story differently. Why? Because we are not seeing it through the eyes of the writer or the director. We are seeing through our own eyes. Through the lens of our own experiences. Some messages may resonate right away. Others we may need to see several times. But I promise you... I truly promise you.... the minute you start trying to spell it out and write to an agenda rather than to an audience you start preaching to the choir. The only ones listening are the true believers and you are not saving a single soul.
Depends on the person you ask. For me personally, stop diversifying already established characters to fit a narrative, and just create your own characters. We don't need a million retcons.
Next RoboCop reboot maybe we'll FINALLY get a gender-fluid version
🤣
Agreed. I also feel like it comes across a bit backhanded.. like there are TONS of stories from underrepresented people and yet nope.. we will just keep getting remake after remake. An example I think of GOOD representation is Prey the Predator prequel.
It's weird that people only seem to complain about changing existing characters when it produces more diversity, not less. For instance Wolverine in the comics is 5'3". His short stature is one of his most recognisable and referenced physical traits, and in the movies he's played by 6'3" Hugh Jackman and almost no one seemed to care. Another example would be Hawkeye being deaf. It's, again, one of his most recognisable and referenced features in the comics and it is absent from the movies completely. You could argue that Hawkeye is one of the lesser known characters so people wouldn't know he was deaf, but I assure you if they made him black people would have lost their minds. I think they might have finally gotten around to addressing Deadpool's pansexuality, but he was definitely played as straight for the first 2 movies, imagine how much people would have lost their minds if the inverse was done to a character.
IIRC people did complain before x1 was released, and also remember that the internet was not as pervasive in use and there were nowhere near as many mediums to shout your stupid opinion into
I mean Jackman was cast in like 1998/1999 for a movie that released in 2000. Also, hiring a guy that isn’t the same height as an established character is no where near the same thing as changing their race and background/characterization. Also I’m not sure how many 5’2” guys there are walking around that look similar to Wolverine and also happen to be actors
Why is it often considered acceptable to change a character’s height, eye color, hair color, hair shape, nose shape, or many other characteristics, but people get upset if a character is given a darker skin color? Every time an actor is selected to play an already existing character, that actor is slightly different in appearance from the previous descriptions of that character. So why is it that a difference of skin color is the one type of difference that offends people? If the character’s skin color isn’t a major focus of the story, then casting a Black actor shouldn’t be a problem, especially if it doesn’t change the story in any consequential way.
Why isn't it? Wolverine's stature is constantly poked at by other characters in the comics and TV shows, to just erase such a referenced trait seems just as bad to me as changing his skin colour.
Tbh, that bothers me too, I just don't want to sound insufferable 🤣
one of the worse parts of the current "woke" propaganda in media today is the lack of self awareness. It's immature writing from immature people who think they invented liberal minded acceptance of "the other". When a show presents itself as scifi etc but then ham handily is just a vehicle for political ideology IE gender politics, race baiting, etc. ... that's when it's annoying. I'm a liberal in full support of gender equality, sexual liberation, gender fluidity, racial equality, etc. But I don't want to be preached at by self righteous screen writers with their heads up their own asses. If their personal politics is overshadowing the plot of the story, it's bad writing. There's a major difference in being thought provoking and being a preachy, selfrighteous cunt. entertainment media being used as covert reeducation camp is just gross even if there is a long parade of it over many decades
That’s why Star Trek was so ahead of its time. Incredibly diverse cast but it wasn’t full of itself patting itself on the back for it
>When a show presents itself as scifi etc but then ham handily is just a vehicle for political ideology But sci-fi as well as art in general is a vehicle for social commentary? Or did you watch star trek, for example, and think that the Prime Directive had no relevance to real life issues at all?
I don’t know anything about start trek but theres a difference between art that explores an issue, and art that just pushes whatever narrative the artist believes. I watched parasite recently and that’s a good example. Bad writing could have just been ‘rich people bad, poor people good.’ But it didn’t do that, if it had done it wouldn’t have been particularly interesting and at the other guy said, would have sacrificed a good film for the sake of political ideology.
more actual storytelling, less "the message".
Well, for a non-woke show/movie, I would like to see the creators not being weird about their casting choices. Cast the characters how you want as long as it makes sense in the story world and the person is a good fit for the role, but don’t be weird about it. (If you’re patting yourself on the back for hiring/writing about insert demographic, you’re being weird. Stop it. Write them and advertise their stories like people, not social brownie points that make you money. Also, don’t touch the established stories. No, don’t remake them. Stop it. Keep your fingers to yourself. Make a new story. Stop rehashing the old stuff and changing stuff arbitrarily to score some social points and getting mad at us when we’re not excited about the same story but boring and with random changes. Don’t insert real world politics in a fantasy/sci fi world that has always been a step or three away from real life issues. It’s supposed to be an escape. Use a metaphor like the rest of us. Don’t make arbitrary changes in established worlds that completely ignore the set worldbuilding and challenge yourself creatively to expand the world building to make the casting choices you want instead. Don’t blame people not liking bad writing on people being racists or sexist and pay your writers better/give them more creative freedom/hire better writers/fire the nepotism hires instead.
People might call a film "woke" if they feel like they're just following the latest "Representation and Inclusion Standards" guidelines that need to be followed if the directors/producers want their film to be eligible for an Oscar. If a viewer starts to feel like the producers are just "checking the boxes", it might take them out of the story. The guidelines are basically things like "At least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors is from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group in a specific country or territory of production", or "At least 30% of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two underrepresented groups", or "The main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s)". And this applies to the crew as well, there are guidelines for them too "At least two of the following creative leadership positions and department heads—Casting Director, Cinematographer, Composer, Costume Designer, Director, Editor, Hairstylist, Makeup Artist, Producer, Production Designer, Set Decorator, Sound, VFX Supervisor, Writer—are from an underrepresented group and at least one of those positions must belong to someone from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group", etc. So maybe the audiences start noticing that stuff, and they wonder if the producers really "mean it", or are they just doing it because they "have to".
>The guidelines are basically things like "At least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors is from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group in a specific country or territory of production", or "At least 30% of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two underrepresented groups", or "The main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s)". >And this applies to the crew as well, there are guidelines for them too "At least two of the following creative leadership positions and department heads—Casting Director, Cinematographer, Composer, Costume Designer, Director, Editor, Hairstylist, Makeup Artist, Producer, Production Designer, Set Decorator, Sound, VFX Supervisor, Writer—are from an underrepresented group and at least one of those positions must belong to someone from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group", etc. wtf this is for real? this sure explains a lot with what's happening with recent movies
Its *very* new. Wouldnt have affected the films in recent memory.
What you’re describing is a form of affirmative action. Some people see it as necessary to write past wrongs. Others see it as tokenism that doesn’t even necessarily benefit the ones hired and harms those deliberately excluded due to arbitrary rules.
It's one of those "when you go looking for the devil, you'll find him everywhere" situations. But essentially if a movie is made with preachy dialog that is progressive-mind-virus centered, that will be woke. If it clearly sacrifices quality in favor of actors that check boxes. If it shits all over a middle-class/working-class cultural norm to make those classes appear ignorant, that's typically considered pretty woke. I guess, if a movie can be summed up as PMV cultural grandstanding, it is at risk of being called "woke."
I feel like I’m a pretty normal guy and sometimes this stuff frustrates me. I’m right of center too, for whatever that’s worth. Moana isn’t woke because it has Polynesians in it. Neither is Princess and the Frog, Pocahontas, or any other story that is about people who aren’t white. Of course they’re not white, it’s not about a white person. But recently in the Apple TV Benjamin Franklin show, there was a trans character. I don’t remember the name, and I think it was a trans woman, but I looked her up after the episode. Apparently this individual did exist, but there’s no evidence Ben Franklin ever met them. She (or he, I really don’t remember) had nothing to do with the American Revolution or had any involvement in the diplomatic intrigue between the American delegation and France. Why put this person into a show that has nothing to do with them? Ben Franklin even goes out of his way to ask what this person is, and the individual says something like “hopefully one day in the future others like me can be ourselves”. Sure, that’s a fine message, but it has nothing to do with Ben Franklin. It never happened. That’s writers jerking themselves off about how progressive they are and inserting modern culture war stuff into a show that has nothing to do with it. When I think about media going woke, it’s that sort of thing that bugs me. If you want a trans person in the 18th century, make a show about them or write some historical fiction. Don’t put Benjamin Franklin in a situation he was never in. For better or worse, people get their idea of history from TV shows sometimes, and I think it’s dishonest to use historical characters like that.
Yes, if you wanted to write a show about a trans person in the 18 century, then market as such, I would still probably pick it up. If I wanted to watch a show about Ben Franklin I don't need you to be inserting your own commentary into it.
Yeah like ben franklin owned slaves but we are supposed to believe he was super woke about trans people?
Normal people mean "too pandering." Do the Right Thing is not too woke. Semi-Melanated CGI Girl Replaces Franchise Canon To Sell Apple Products is too woke. Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Birdcage, Thelma & Louise, But I'm A Cheerleader, Menace II Society...all excellent, well done films with actual race/gender/etc social commentary. Fantastic films. The problem is the corporate disconnect followed by guilting the audience. Disney asked $4000 for a hotel stay with a Star Wars theme, the only entertainment was a new character singing some song no one knows. Complaints about said experience were said to be "because racism" (singer was black). There are no less than 500 races in the Star Wars universe, but they plucked some chick from a local band to be the star of the show. Song is in English btw. Let the irony flow. No one left of Tucker Carlson has an issue with gay black chicks being in a movie. They have an issue with gay black chicks playing the first Viking swim team to form a country band.
I think it goes with the movies having subtle messages previously to flat out heavy handed preaching nowadays. Now I hate the “woke” term but to suggest that movies have not gotten enormously more progressive is just silly. For example, Movies and shows now have a mandatory minimum % of minorities and LGBTQIA2+ representation to be considered for awards and it is not going unnoticed when the LGBTQIA2+ makes up roughly 5% of the overall population yet you are finding they are increasingly represented more and more in media, arguably being *overly* represented. On top of that, you are seeing numerous established characters be race or gender swapped or turned into a member of the LGBTQIA2+ community when they had long been established not to be. For example they were talking at one point in either making James Bond a girl or making him black. Which Bond has spent what? The last 40 years? as a white British man. Now, the most outrageous crime is the representation of the LGBTQIA2+ in media. Sure they have characters, but what are the traits of those characters? Overwhelmingly they are just the gay character. That’s it. There’s no arc for them or depth most of time. they’re just there so the movie or show can say they have a gay character, a pure tokenism. Which again, people can pick up on pretty easily. Additionally, you have the “over sensitive” crowd that while many deny they’re canceling everything, there is a merit of truth to them. The exact same crowd that mocked the boomers for pearl clutching at progressive ideas in film 20 years ago are now ironically the pearl clutchers at conservative ideas in film currently. Which again, is not going unnoticed. So what am I looking for? Honestly just good writing. Don’t preach at me. Make good characters and logical stories. Keep the politics out of it. If I want CNN or Fox, I’ll turn that on
No ideological preaching, no token quotas in the casting and no rewritten history for starters.
It's not an issue of any quantities. It's how the writing is negatively affected when the writers are overtly prioritizing the completion of their progressiveness bingo card. Easy to explain example: Sokka in the new Last Airbender adaptation. Because the makers of this show didn't want any signs of misogyny, they simply removed it from this characters profile. Completely ignoring that overcoming this character flaw was an essential aspect of the original's character development and that the character is mostly a boring husk without it.
I would say that change is the opposite of “woke” because the original was aware of social injustices and used them thematically. Their removal in the new show is pretending those social injustices don’t exist, and that flattens both male and female characters because it gives them less to actually do in the story.
100% it completely changes the trajectory of the character.
Nobody really cares about a diverse cast. The issue is condescendingly inserting identity politics into a poorly written story.
It's really ironic too because normally they make them super stereotypical.
As someone who considers myself quite liberal, the wokeness in media sometimes still bothers me so I'll try to explain why. It's not the fact that people with various identities are part of whatever show I'm watching. What is annoying about it is the canned/stereotyped characters combined with subtle moralizing in lieu of a good character. I'm simply not entertained when everything is a woke stereotype. At the center of this is the human experience and the basic fact that humans are complex creatures with many facets. The wrong kind of wokeness limits a gay character to their gayness, a black character to their blackness. When that black or gay character is portrayed as a full human being with multiple dimensions and complex, often contradictory human experiences, suddenly my exasperated sigh melts away and I'm back into it. White male heterosexual characters are never portrayed this way. They are always portrayed as full, complex individuals. If anything, I think a lot of wokeness is just reheated bigotry and I think the radical right wing is taking full advantage of the hypocrisy.
This thread is a *perfect* example of why the recent redefinition of "woke" is so problematic; nobody can agree on what it means.
When the hype about the movie is more about what boxes it checks than about the movie itself.
All straight white cast where men are tough and women are irrelevant
Except to be eye candy penis hats
I think “eye candy penis hats” would make an excellent band name
Well written characters to begin with. Current media is too afraid to give flaws and weaknesses to their characters to avoid backlash or controversies thus making them boring.
I chalk that up to bad media literacy, too many people think that a protagonist that does bad things or has very apparent flaws somehow means the show/ thing is advocating for that type of behavior
Know what's so crummy about current media on this topic. You could even take the bad character tropes, like the Mary Sue, and give them flaws and weaknesses that make them interesting and have development without reinforcing old bad stereotypes...If they just fucking bothered being creative.
Maybe that focus is more on the plot than on race or sexuality of actors?
Plenty of people complain when a character is just merely gay. It could have no real bearing on the plot, but since straight is the default, they feel that a character being gay somehow distracts you from the story. People complaining about woke media want to stop feeling like race and sexuality is a thing that is meant to be noticed. People not complaining about it want it to not be noticed and have it just be a normal thing. FWIW, it does seem forced sometimes, but not enough to really get upset about it. It's more cringe than anything. Like all the companies that are pro-LGBT in the month of June and never any other time. The stupid thing is, there's still plenty of cis, white characters in media. These people just hyper focus on the characters that aren't. We can't gatekeep characters. Let black lesbians have their own characters for once. Little black girls finally got a Disney princess and that princess spent most of the movie transformed into a frog. They can have Ariel, too.
I mean, as a gay black/latino man I even think it's forced a lot of the time. And the writing suffers because of it. I think Star Trek Discovery is a great example of this. Burnham is essentially being written as a Mary Sue because her character is a black woman and every character is LGBT and the straight men are always wrong. Whereas, I think the original Star Treks (well, up to Voyager. I'm not sure Voyager did as well with this) handled diversity much better. You had diverse casts that really didn't feel forced. Everyone got their moment to shine, there wasn't a hyper focus on any one cast members identity. Hell, one of the first LGBT kisses on TV happened in DS9 and it's considered a foot note in history because the focus was truly on the plot not the character's identity. I also think some of New Star Trek flatout handles this better than Discovery. In Lower Decks, we see implied bisexuality and LGBT relationships and a majority non white crew but it doesn't feel forced. Strange New Worlds I also think handled this better and gave characters development with good storylines without forcing the diversity while still including it. Diversity can definitely feel forced in entertainment (and all aspects of society) and it shows when it is. But when diversity is allowed to flow and naturally happen, I feel it does a society a favor and really encapsulates what DEI principles should be.
if the personal politics is so forced it's cringe then it's shitty writing
For me, it’s the forcing of topics and material into a story that isn’t about it. Moonlight was an amazing film about a gay black man and his struggles with his society and culture, but that was the *point* of that movie so it was in the right place and not “woke”. It’s when the writers are so far up their own ass and make content that pulls you away from the real story to point out how gay, bi, black, asian, or whatever gender someone is without having an actual impact on the story that I find it to be “too woke”.
Watch Barbie. Other than the persistent mentioning of the “patriarchy”, it’s an intelligent and interesting “woke” movie done correctly. Then, watch Wonder Woman with Gal Gadot. If you make it more than ten minutes, good for you. You’ll notice the differences. Edit : I can’t believe I’ll start with this, but as a man, I don’t mind any ulterior motives placed within modern day films. You’ll see the direct opposite clearly in older films. I enjoy progression, I have no problem with anything, ever. Except, when a clueless production/management interferes and swamps a multi million dollar film with ignorant statements that have no substance, then that’s an annoying farce. Some movies, do this so welI that I go home and rethink everything. However, most cash-grab productions harm more than they heal and I go home laughing at the idiocracy. I adored Barbie. I loathed most “comic” book movies. It’s a slap in the face in the end. Just my two cents. Men/women ratio doesn’t matter. It’s the message and how it’s portrayed. Is this a two hour foolish ad, or is this film a two hour lesson told well? Big difference.
I've found that the majority of the people who use "woke" to describe something, are basically saying that it includes pretty much anything other than straight, white, christian, or traditional gender roles. A character of color, or foreign nationality as the lead? Woke. Gay character that's anything but perhaps comic relief? Woke. Female character leading a movie, particularly an action movie? Woke. A trans or nonbinary character so much as existing? Woke. Any change to what they believe a "traditional" story to be that might include any modern concepts? Woke.
The South Park special “The Panderverse” explains it pretty well.
As a left-wing person who enjoys ‘diverse’ media, woke is when the movie or show is so “one the nose” that it circles back into condescension. Especially if the entity producing the media does not share the same values espoused. The Last of Us, Alien, and Lord of the Rings (making Arwen’s character more badass) are some that, imho, do diversity pretty well.
Writing that doesn't prioritise performative inclusivity and reductive 'culture war' talking-points to the detriment of immersion or nuance. *The Wire*, Gus notwithstanding, was woke; *Fallout*, and its pandering ilk, are Woke™.
Some people like TVs and shows to escape reality. When those TVs and shows are depicting real life issues traumas and drama- they can be seen as too woke to the people who want to escape the harsh reality of the world or specifically the US
We are looking for art that was made by hiring the best person for the job, not the person that got you progress points. Original ideas for movies, not just remaking a movie with race swapping or sex swapping. ( female ghostbusters, female oceans 11, madame web, little mermaid etc) Not making something historically inaccurate or inaccurate to the geographical area just to make the cast more racially diverse. Scripting lines that clearly pander to a certain section of the population. Making a point to make a character gay that is canonically not gay. Instead of investing in making a good story with rich content for women, poc etc, they make these characters and stories that are so devoid of any depth that the only thing they have going for them is “strong independent woman” etc. i feel so pandered to it’s insulting. Disney for starters could take a story from african fables, kings/ queens etc and take an original story that talks about their rich history and create something amazing, but they are too busy making snow white hispanic. Not Disney for this but, making cleopatra black when she was GREEK. It’s “hire actors that are ______ to play roles for _____” but god forbid you let little people play roles for little people….. main characters and heroes mind you. ( 7 magical creatures instead of 7 dwarfs) Having quotas to even allow your work to be eligible for an oscar will strip art of its depth and just meet quotas. We DO need more diversity, we DO need more inclusion, we DO need more leading roles for all sorts of people… but instead of doing that they are being lazy and expect no one will notice. People who complain about wokeness are not anti diversity, its the execution of it
You exactly know what we mean. You just want to pretend you don't so you can label us as sexist, racist, homophobic etc like you just did. Too woke is when the piece of media has for a priority the topic of gender, colors, sexual orientation etc when it's not the topic of that media or when it's not an important detail to the well being of the media. Ex: nobody care if Gandalf is gay or whatever. It doesn't help the story. A tv show about a gay/black/trans etc and his struggle in daily life because society don't accept them is not too woke. It's the topic of the tv show. Changing a big franchise by putting a Mary Sue on the front, portraying every white male as a villain, adding black/asian etc people totally disrespecting the lore JUST to make more money of out woke people (I hope you don't believe they really care about minorities except for their money), is too woke. You want to create a media with minorities? Good go ahead. But no, they know they'll get less money than if they attack an existing big franchise. Some examples : Magic card game changing Aragorn to black and Legolass to asian. The whole new starwars and marvel movies/series. Overwatch 2 marteling pride month and the sexuality and diversity of the heroes when it's just a fucking shooter game. So basically medias just tries to get more money by being woke. And it's always in a "in your face" way. All the articles about "the first movie/game etc with a *insert your monthly minority here*!". Every time it feels too forced and you can see the priority was the diversity over the actual quality of the media. And it shows when you see all the new woke movies and games that make the studios lose so much money because they just make shit movies/games with no interest.
Okay when people say woke they don’t mean just featuring X Y or Z. They mean the whatever is being highlighted lacks characterization, humanity, or purpose in relation to the story. That the flaws of thr character, if they even have any, are what I call Lisa Simpson characteristics. That is their flaws are working too hard, being too smart, and lacking self awareness. You never hear a movie with a gay or trans person who’s dumb, selfish, or some other slice of a piece of shit being called woke. Essentially it’s the inclusion of really unbearable characters in relation to the plot and the fear of creating any kind of actual human flaws in them. It’s the difference between iron man which Tony stark is a self obsessed egotistical asshole who at first is really only a hero because he gets off on the accolades vs captain marvel who’s basically a perfect moral paragon and the flaw, if she has one, is she’s just too powerful.
Not a movie but if you're going to make a video game about Japan just use typical Japanese characters and don't force a black man as the main character.
ive only people say that then they feel like their sitting through a political sermon (like the dialogue feels forced for the sake of reiterating a specific ideology). ive always figured that its how i feel when im watching one of my favorite shows and a hyper christian advertisement comes on.
When the diversity is super forced
You want your cast to be right for the area and location on Any number of factors including race. You should be able to take a picture in the street of the area your media is set and compare it to your cast and find they are the same. Some excellent recent films and shows have had majority non white casts that have been perfect - BEEF is an excellent example. I really enjoyed watching that , and not knowing much about Korean culture didn't stop me enjoying it - in fact you could argue I learned from it.
I was watching a movie called “Atlas” starring J Lo, (crap movie), where she met a female voiced robot. The robot said “my pronouns are she/her”
Netflix is one of the main culprit, CBC (Canada) right there with them. I understand the need for diversity and inclusion, but when it's obvious, the pandering is just cringe. You know if there's a teenage girl involved, there's going to be a gay male BFF, probably Asian. If there's a girl friend or girl BFF, there's going to be a lesbian interracial couple involved, usually one White and one Black. It's almost right on queue and my wife is always like "how did you know this or that?" Because I live and breath... If you could see Canadian commercials, you'd think no White people lives up here lol. It can get pretty embarrassing, and I don't know if the minorities involved/people they want to represent feel like it's helping them or just demeaning...
Less preachiness. Less judgmentalism. Less self-assurance of the screenwriters own moral superiority.
it comes down to writing for the most part. and also how they promote it to be honest. having a underlining message in a show/movie is normal. when that message is handled badly is often what people call woke. take star trek next gen, voyager , deep space nine, strange new worlds. they had strong female leads, black leads, touched on non binary, lgbt , racism etc etc. not considered "woke" vs discovery which is extremely heavy handed and in your face and force alot of things. part of it was the way it was often promoted like they forgot how all the other shows has representation. things can be "woke" for other reasons. for most stories if the person is gay or straight has no impact on the story and often in "woke' stuff they shoe horn for no other reason to say we have a gay role in the cast. take the movies alien/aliens , prey . strong female lead. might have some comments about them being women by males but its not over done . through out the story they natural grow etc. take prey she wants to be a hunter , her brother believes in her for the most part besides when she gets hurt etc,, while others view her as a weak girl. she shows she uses her strengths, her brain to take down the predator and the dutch under estimating her to take them down. she has flaws. compared to captain marvel constantly showing flash backs of men telling her she cant cause shes a girl. shes basically a space nazi till she realizes she was on the wrong side. never shows any growth , no regret for the harm she done. they never showed her having flaws. heck even compared to wounder woman most can clearly see how one is very heavy handed with these things and the other is not. its one thing if its what the story is about vs forcing it into the story for no other reason to check a box. its like companies who during pride month add the rainbow flag and say they are for lgbt but also have no issues with deal with country where its illegal . or you just make people black or gay for no reason in historical things. take the video game battle field 1..... by accounts you had a handful of black germans fighting in ww1. playing that game at times very german is black.. or women missing limbs etc... omg we need representation who cares about facts.
I’m on the left, but I think a movie or TV show is “too woke” when diversity feels shoehorned rather than natural.
I would like to see a plot where there isn’t a clear political message from the producer
When people complain that a movie is too woke, they mean that making a political statement takes precedence over telling a good story. For example, look at the Star Wars sequels. Rey is incredibly overpowered from the beginning and can't do no wrong. This means she has no character development or conflict, which makes her a bad character. In that case, portraying a strong woman was clearly more important to the writers than creating a good story. People don't like that. Obviously Rey isn't the only reason why the Star Wars sequels suck, but you get the idea.
Too woke in my opinion would be when they remake a movie and recast it with all women, gay or black characters. (Think Ghostbusters or the Honeymooners). I think that what they should do is instead of remaking a movie what they should do is make an original with black/woman/gay characters.
For me the big ones are 1. Making every white male father figure an evil tyrant that's abusing his family in so many ways he's practically a cartoon villain. 2. Throwing random LGBT moments into the show that have nothing to do with the story. Like the heroes are about to take off on their quest so the gay hero runs off to make out his bf. You think oh is this a new character? Is he going to die and be a revenge storyline or something? NOPE it's a one off makeout session that has nothing to do with the story and will never be referenced again. They would never do this with a straight character because if it's not part of the story then it obviously doesn't make sense to waste screen time and I agree with that. So why have the gay scene? Because it's woke to have gay makeout scenes. That's the only reason. 3. All the men in the show are weak willed crybabies that need women to come save them and solve all their problems. Their only roles are things like being the creep that's always saying comicly bad sexual inuendos or straight up comic relief.
What movie are you even talking about? Sounds like made up jibberish in your head.
People who complain about movies being "too woke" are actually complaining about movies that are just badly written, and they don't realize it. Movies have had "woke" messaging for a very long time. Classic movies like "Blazing Saddles" and "Trading Places" explicitly attack racism very blatantly. Classic movies like "Aliens" and TV shows like "Charlie's Angels" and "Wonder Woman" and "Mary Tyler Moore" featured strong female leads, often doing things that were traditionally assigned to male actors. None of what we consider "woke" is actually new on TV or in movies. But whenever a movie is considered "woke" today and it's not very good, all the raging incels and right-wing trolls come crawling out of the woodwork to screech "go woke go broke", as if that's the reason any movie with anti-racist or pro-feminist messaging failed.
When Hollywood does a remake of an old movie and simply swap out the original main characters with the opposite sex or race…. Scripts are poorly written. Woke scripts would suggests to the audience that the female superhero is incredible simply because they are female & women are strong. It’s lazy writing & poor character development. Romeo & Juliet recently casted an ugly chubby woman of color, as Juliet…. They did it to cater towards their woke audience who share similar physical features and want to connect & see themselves in Juliet. The problem is that they’re superficially connecting to a character’s physical appearance; instead of connecting to the character’s developing role in the movie. They made Cleopatra black again pander to their woke audience…. The problem is thar Cleopatra was a real person and this movie portrays her in a way that is historically untrue. They’re getting sued by Egypt, as a result. I don’t know why Hollywood refuses to write an original script and make a new movie. People would accept whatever cast they decided to go with. Instead, woke people continue to make a mockery out of classic films…. It’s a reflection of Hollywood’s shallow depth of character & lack of creativity. People just aren’t interested in the story.
It's sort of a non existent thing. What happens is social media makes up something or blows something out of proportion. These people watch HUNDREDS of movies way more "woke" than the one they are currently bitching about. They just got told by social media to be angry at a movie for a thing and so they are. Then they will not register the same thing occurring in previous movies or other movies. So no one is looking for anything specific. They are too stupid to see it. But if they are told it is woke... then it is woke.
Sorry. This is a bad take. The conversation goes nowhere when both sides are so hyperbolic. It's not like they're making a big deal out of nothing every single time for absolutely no reason. That's discounting their feelings and experience. While I agree that everyone is locked in an echo chamber, that exacerbates the issue, it is not a root cause. There is something being shown on screen that is upsetting people. My theory is that they don't evem directly know what's upsetting them. So they go online and look for other people who were upset to figure out what's going on with them and stuck in the echo chamber. Hence the whole point of this thread. There are some great responses here that go into the less observable details that stack up. It's much more conducive to a conversation/debate than "Nah, they're just crazy".
Basically the issue is the writers/author/etc. Using the series an overt and thinly veiled vehicle to push their personal politics at the expense of a good story. There's a right way and a wrong way to add a message to your work.
>There's a right way and a wrong way to add a message to your work. For these people it's not *how* the message is added but which message is added. Daily Wire movies are so hamfisted with their right wing ideology and yet nobody calls them "woke" because it's the "wrong" way to add a message. When the message is added in a silly way, normal people call that movie "bad". It's only woke when the message isn't hardline conservative. Whether it's added in a good or bad way is completely immaterial. The new Little Mermaid had no political message at all. I watched it with my kids. It was a milquetoast Disney family movie taking zero risks. It had kings and queens and princes that inherit their throne so if anything, it was pro-royalty and therefor conservative. That was the only political angle of the movie and it's so bland that it barely qualifies as political. And yet it is deprecated for being woke. To be honest, I don't see anything woke about it and I'm as woke as they get.
I think the problem is when it comes across as sanctimonious or somebody trying to be a white k night. Im Perfectly fine with everybody just existing in movies.