this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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[–] hesusingthespiritbomb 10 points 1 week ago (22 children)

Woke isn't being progressive. It's being progressive to an extent beyond any sort of logic, virtue signaling constantly, and then calling anyone who disagrees with you morally or intellectually inferior.

In entertainment, that often results in some really annoying elements that I think we can all acknowledge are a thing after almost a decade of this:

  • There is a minority protagonist. Said protagonist is disproportionately a straight coded conventionally attractive white women in their 20s.
  • The only flaw the protagonist will have is not being confident enough
  • There is then a minority side character. Said character will disproportionately be a black woman obviously less attractive than the protagonist, or a upper middle class gay fuckboi.
  • If there is not one of these two things, a minority side character will be shoehorned in somewhere. The character will feel visibly out of place, and no explanation will be given. For example, they'll do some random black character in a fantasy setting that's clearly based off Scotland in the 1200s.
  • Important character goes on a monologue that feels like a political PSA
  • The IP's understanding of progressive politics and social justice is roughly equivalent to Tumblr circa 2013.
  • Absolutely terrible writing. Even if you swapped all the "woke" elements for generic entertainment elements, the IP would still be terrible.
  • Likewise, the IP itself is often put together in an extremely lazy and mediocre way. If said "woke" content was not there, it would be universally panned for its low quality.
  • Amazing reviews. All aspects of the IP get 10/10 from the "professional" critics. All the reviews are similar enough that the critics either collaborated or read off the press release.
  • The critics care more about the social justice aspect than the game itself.
  • You get the sense both the creators and the critics of the IP not only don't consume this type of IP in their spare time, but actively resent people who do.
  • Constant fucking gaslighting. Anyone who doesn't like this ultimately mediocre IP is either morally and intellectually inferior. This usually comes in the form of accusations of being a bigot, a Nazi, or a Trump supporter.
  • Bigots, Nazis, and Trump supporters will then try to recruit people who are pissed about the gaslighting.
  • At some point the IP itself fades into the background, and it just becomes yet another culture war battleground.

I think there's a reason Star Wars gets more shit for being woke than Spiderverse, or that Arcane hasn't become a culture war battleground in the same way She-Hulk did. The reason being those shows are actually good, and most people are happy to watch good shows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Great comment, you've nailed it.

I think there’s a reason Star Wars gets more shit for being woke than Spiderverse

Funny enough even within the Star Wars universe there are good and bad things. Mandalorian and Rogue One? Pretty great. Episode 7+ and Acolyte? Pretty shit. You'll notice though that the more forced the progressivism is in a given piece of content, the more it sucks. In other words: bad writing doesn't just fuck the story up, it bakes in messaging that doesn't even make sense contextually.

Anyone who has ever read the Sword of Truth series and encountered the author's obsession with hating socialism has seen what happens when right-wing folk do it: it ruins the experience. Why would we excuse it from progressives?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I disagree with your premise that that "forced progressivism" messes things up. Andor, for example, is the most progressive Star Wars media ever, and it's amazing for it. (It's literally about a leftist, or at least leftist coded, rebellion against Fascists, and wears it proudly.) The reason is because the people making it were allowed to be creative and were passionate about what they were making.

Its the lack of creative freedom and passion that kills things. Most things with a lot of money put into them are directed by suits, not creatives. They don't want to take risks, so they just follow trends and formulas. This leads to the media not having anything to actually say, and just a veneer of trying to appeal to certain people, without actually doing anything with it.

[–] hesusingthespiritbomb 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I generally agree with you, with some caveats.

I think that most IPs have subtext, and a lot of time this is in the form of a deeper political message. I think it would be silly to say progressivism in IPs is always a bad thing. That's part of the reason I mentioned Arcane and Spiderverse by name.

The problem comes from the fact that IPs are supposed to be entertainment first, messaging second. A lot of creators make a lazy and mediocre product, and somewhere in there is a ham-fisted political message. Some creators also seem to be making IPs bad on purpose as a fuck you to their target audience, which is an absolutely baffling choice.

There's also the concept of nuance that's sort of been lost. A lot of the creators will write something in some super reductive black/white way that's basically guaranteed to turn off everyone who doesn't already emphatically agree with them. This is a huge departure from a lot of older movies. For example Forrest Gump is a Republican movie, but doesn't just portray republicans as automatically good or liberals as automatically bad. The end result is that there are a lot of liberals who love Forrest Gump.

The part that I strongly disagree on is that you seem to be blaming the corporations. I think ultimately a lot of the problem here is at the fault of the creators. There have been a lot of high profile cases where studios don't interfere, give the creators a massive budget, and have their backs when controversy hits. The creators will still end up making mediocre culture war content. Todd Philips was allowed to do whatever he wanted in Joker 2. It turns out what Todd Philips wanted was for the Joker to be permanently defeated by the power of prison rape. There's no studio head in the world who would have told him to do that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I disagree with this:

The problem comes from the fact that IPs are supposed to be entertainment first, messaging second.

Maybe you just want entertainment, but the purpose of art has almost always been message-first. If a piece of art isn't trying to say something, what's the point? People trying to act like gaming, or any other form of art, should only focus on entertaining, and always has, are not very media-literate. I can't think of a single classically well received movie that doesn't have a message it's trying to tell.

Nuance, yeah. That's important. The goal of art is to get someone to feel like the idea you're trying to give them came from themselves. That's when it's effective. It doesn't really work when you're just telling them how to think. It just annoys people.

Also, of course some garbage will also be made when people are allowed freedom to be creative. The difference is that good things can be made in that situation, not that it always will. It pretty much never will if everything is targeted towards mass appeal. That ensures no one in particular will care because there isn't a target. They do it because it's a safe bet. This implies the alternative is more risky, meaning more failures (like Joker 2), but also the opportunity for greatness.

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