The never-ending battle against woke Hollywood and SJW infused entertainment media [trigger warning]

Maybe for the entertainment industry. But maybe not for the children in florida. Think that falls under one of the things that probalby doesn't seem "less bad now."

IMO "a multi billion dollar company likes money" isnt really the newsworthy part of whats being said there. It's the massive government overreach.

 

Their audacity is matched only by their stupidity.

 

... and greed. It's not audacity to pay lip service to identity politics. It's greed.


They'd try harder at making actual good movies/shows or fresh stories that naturally include diverse casts if it was audacity. They don't, because at the end of the day their primary interest is netting a quick buck from an audience they thought was easy to appeal to.

They'll go back to pumping their base with the same rehashed garbage but the characters will be "historically accurate" and the stories will still suck and we'll still have the same problem.

 

An interesting argument for a company who's stock price has gone up 30% in the last 5 years (and thats including the pretty big downswing everything is on right now).

Wish i was that broke

 

I almost got pulled back in.

I'm not interested in having this debate with you. To put it mildly, it was not particularly "fruitful" last time around. You are more than welcome to your view of the world. Believe whatever you wish.

That said, I politely ask that you refrain from tagging or quoting me. You are more than welcome to interact with the thread and others in it, but I respectfully request that you please leave me out of it.

 

Seems like an interesting stance to take when you are actually the OP of the thread. I wasn't aware the point wasn't to drive actual discussion... perhaps the thread title should be more clear? I'm not sure, but it just didn't come across to me as a "let me post my memes in peace" thread. If that was the intention, that's my bad.

I apologized for my previous crassness (something i never got), but regardless, if you don't want to see my posts there's an option built into the function of this forum to accomplish just that.

Since this is a public thread in a public forum and i've taken the previous comments about my actions seriously and have (at least in my opinion) not continued to be inflammatory... i'd like to interact with this thread in any manner I choose, assuming i'm following the rules. I don't believe i've been personal with any of my arguments and have kept the swearing to a minimum. If you disagree there's a report button for that exact situation.

I'd politely suggest not creating controversial topics on public forums if you aren't interested in having conversations (fruitful or not) with people who don't already agree with you.

Again, i apologized for my previous actions and gladly apologize again. The way i phrased my argumentation was obviously out of line.

 

Totally hear you on the literalness of the slogan. I would be interested in any kind of analytical data that shows disney is indeed losing money (and substantially) with these types of "woke" investments.

If it hasn't been clear in my arguments, I don't necessarily like these shows/movies any more than anyone else here. I just attribute their failure to other things (namely poor writing) and when you look at disney more holistically, I think it becomes much harder to make the "they were morally interested in whatever social opinions are behind "going woke"' argument vs the "the consistently try to get the most with the least effort" one. Namely, because i don't think we are necessarily seeing a lot of truly meaningful choices or ideas in the "woke" space and everything comes off as this kind of token "oh we changed a character here" nonsense. And then you have executives that are still donating to politicians who are far from woke... which is kind of another argument entirely since often donations are given to both sides in the attempt to be in favor with whoever happens to be in power. I imagine they think that makes it easier to make money, but who knows!!

I'd be super interested to see if you've read anything or seen anything that indicates its specifically the "woke agenda" that is impacting their bottom line, even in this specific niche of their global enterprise. I always love looking at the data, and think it could paint a much clearer picture in this situation.

For example, the new star wars movies are often cited as part of this "woke" agenda but i dont think anyone is calling them a financial failure. A critical failure definitely (which i'd again attribute to piss poor writing), but each one made over a billion in international box office revenue.

I also think the woke argument tends to mask the real problem with modern entertainment, which does all of us a disservice. It's easy for the powers at be to wave away "oh these people were mad cause x, y, or z member was miscast" and a lot harder to argue around "well no one liked it cause the story was a trash heap."

And last on the stock prices, again, totally hear you. But its also hugely indicative of general investor sentiment... so if the stock prices are high it generally (again, super general high level stuff here) means investors think the direction of the company will continue to be more and more profitable. In some ways, that's almost a more meaningful piece of data than truly what the profits are. If investor sentiment is high, a company usually isn't making a ton of massive, million dollar mistakes.

Anyways, always appreciate the chat! I think maybe because i'm a professional writer i've narrowed in on poor writing being the key problem and i can kinda beat that drum a little too loud at times

edit: final piece! I'd also love to see public domain laws revisited! Really anything to get more new, interesting voices into the entertainment industry. movies have become such massive, multi-million dollar machines it seems like they are almost unwilling to "risk" that investment on something that doesn't already have some kind of preexisting fan base. Makes for some supremely boring entertainment IMO.

TLDR: I agree the slogan isn't meant to (and shouldn't be) taken literally. But i've also yet to see any truly substantial data showing that this type of general woke sentiment thats going on in entertainment has specifically had a noticeable impact on revenue or profits. I think a lot of the things that are often referred to as an argument could just as easily be (and sometimes more easily be) an argument for a general lack of quality writing and fresh storytelling, something i personally find to be a much, much larger problem.

 

That's super interesting. Is there any place I can read on this further? On the surface, i could definitely see people falling into that trap. I've worked with a lot of professionals that will do just about anything to cover up a lack of quality.

I haven't seen it, but from what I understand the new batman movie has had some moderate "woke" criticisms and it's been received pretty well.

But i guess a lot of that would just depend on what you do and do not qualify as a "woke" movie.

I don't think anyone would disagree that the general writing and storytelling quality of the new trilogy also went downhill and ghostbusters 2016 was a dumpster fire from start to finish.

That's kind of where i'm coming from. If we can't pinpoint the "wokeness" as being the downfall of those movies, I personally have a hard time isolating the argument to just that.

I pointed out earlier in this thread that there was a lot of criticisms about the LOTR movies and how they were "unfaithful" to the original books and lore. If you go back through that 2000's era Tolkien forum, you'll see a lot of similar style comments pop up then as they are now. They weren't necessarily always of this type of "woke" nature, but there was a lot of anger over a lot of things and you generally don't see that sentiment now because the movies were well received and the quality of the movie overcame the fact that Orks grew in pods in the wall or whatever.

Denzel literally just played Macbeth to rave reviews. I don't know if anyone is criticizing that movie for being woke by "miscasting" one of the most famous characters in english literature. The rant a page or so back about Netflix new Vikings show basically argued that is problematic and "woke" so why isn't the criticism leveled equally at both instances?

I tend to believe that good storytelling, quality writing, and talented acting will overcome just about anything. I think that's a much easier trend to point to, personally.

edit: that Tolkien forum can be found in my post here:

 

Ah, fair enough. If i have time i might poke around and see if i can get the cliff notes of his argument.

Agree completely with Denzel being one of the best actors alive, and i think that kind of reiterates my larger point that quality tends to overcome all things. Also, it seems okay for a black actor to play MacBeth because we as a society have simply accepted its okay. Why is it okay to change the race of one of those most famous men in english literature, but not okay to change a dwarf from the lore of a fantasy book? Because its been done before? That means at some point, it had to be done first.

I can't help but feel like "historical" or "lore appropriate" accuracy is an argument for this type of woke agenda ruining things when its convenient and an easy punching bag. It's easy to criticize Netflix and it's generally lackluster writing/storytelling and much harder to criticize Denzel and literal MacBeth. It's easy to point at the trash heap that was Ghostbusters 2016 and much harder to point at The Batman.

I'll still go back to, it feels like a much more consistent argument is that when the quality is there, you don't see the criticism and when its not the criticism comes out in droves. And then when there's a reasonable situation of a quality film/show/whatever that does have a historically inaccurate casting or what have you, that situation doesn't count as "woke" for x, y, or z reason.

When trying to discuss this, it comes across as a bit of goalpost moving. It becomes very hard to argue against or even understand, the woke agenda ruining (or evening having a noticeable impact) on anything when anything with quality somehow avoids that tag. there might be very good reasons for that, but to someone who's not consuming every nugget of the argument and is only getting the broad strokes from something like this forum it feels like a pretty arbitrary distinction between why its okay for MacBeth or Batman or Peter's Lord of the Rings to having seemingly "woke" elements and why its not for Star Wars or Vikings.

I can definitely see where you're coming from, but i'd still argue that a show that puts politics (of any kind) before writing, acting, and storytelling is still inherently suffering from bad writing/acting/storytelling. The political nature wasn't its downfall, the lack of everything that needs to surround it is.

There are tons of extremely politically charged movies that are well written and deeply moving that don't face this type of woke criticism. Three Billboards is unquestionably a politically charged movie, one that also deals with the shortcomings and failures of a police system and was simply put, phenomenal. I'm sure i don't need to outline every example for you.

And if one character doesn't make a show woke, i'd still go back to the rant about the black woman playing a viking. It seems to have made that show woke, or at least get criticized for being it.

If the argument is as nuanced as you're saying, we should treat it that way. Which means this constant outrage cycle of "look at this new thing that has some kind of questionable casting, lets all laugh and point and hate on it" has also got to go.

I said it before, but it just feels like an unwinnable scenario. You can't miscast historical characters (vikings)... except when you can (macbeth). You can't miscast beloved fictional characters (lotr dwarf)... except when you can (catwomen). Don't co-opt existing characters, create "fresh" or "unexplored" characters from an LGBTQ perspective... but that's also problematic (son of superman). The argument that makes sense to me is "don't make poor quality entertainment... make good quality entertainment." Its consistent, and applies applicably to everything without a bunch of qualifiers.

At a certain point it feels like the argument isn't actually super nuanced and its just the most obvious criticism for a lot of small failings in quality... and what's easier and pithier to make a youtube video about? It isn't nuanced details about storytelling, thats for sure.

 

I appreciate the clarification. I can definitely see the differences your explaining, but it still feels... a little arbitrary to me but only because of the context. When SO much of the argumentation seems to be around the casting and not the nuances of different types of media, it's easy to forget it exists. Ultimately, i agree that there's more importance on maintaining the historical accuracy of a character if the intent is to present a historically accurate story. Is that the intent of Vikings? I genuinely don't know, i've never seen it. I thought it was a work of fiction loosely based on a few key historical characters and their escapades.

If we focus on LOTR/Catwoman, it seems like the main difference is we're used to catwoman being cast differently. She's shown up in so many various forms over the years, its more accepted when a contemporary casting doesn't fit in with a historical one.

I'd still argue, that does mean at some point someone had to do it first. We're used to this diversification of catwoman because at one point someone wanted to do exactly that. Someone tweaked her "historical" character this way or that, until she was more of a construct of a character that can fit in and out of any batman story than a rigid one.

Is it unrealistic or wrong to assume the same can't be eventually said for LOTR? And i mean this genuinely, what is it specifically about that world that would make "looser" interpretations of how characters should be represented not okay?

As i pointed out before, Tolkien fans weren't exactly thrilled about how the movies represented their favorite characters but i think eventually those criticisms have drifted off because of the pure quality of those movies.

I don't think it's completely unreasonable to see if the same can't happen now?

edit: just wanted to say, hopefully this is an interesting discussion for people and doesn't feel unnecessarily argumentative. As i mentioned before, If this is more of a "lets post fun memes and videos" thread then i won't get in the way of that. It's just something that i find genuinely interesting and enjoy discussing. Just don't want my fun to come at everyone elses expense!

 

+1

Brooklyn 99 had a fantastic balance on integrating various gay, lesbian, etc. issues on the show without making it seem like it was just an info-mercial of some kind.

The crash came when they changed to NBC. But I don't know why that was exactly. I stopped watching after viewing the first couple of episodes.

Like so many things, to me it comes down to writing a good story. I've seen "woke" elements in stories and haven't blinked an eyelid as I don't have any issues with any individual point. It's when they either 1) have crap writers who just rely on whatever is the current public outrage point or 2) re-write something just to make it "modern" and insert a bunch of woke points in it.

I hate to say it, as I really like Will Smith, but I saw the trailer for Fresh Prince of Bel Air and it looks like he's done the same thing.

 

Correction...

Unexpected.

I made a very simple and respectful request of you, to leave me out of it...

You lasted 21 minutes before denying my peaceful attempt at bowing out. Much less even, when we factor in that it would have taken you a certain number of minutes to write your response. So be it.

With the my diplomatic attempt rejected, let's put our cards on the table more forcefully. No more hiding behind niceties and decorum. There are many reasons why I do not wish to engage with you on this topic.

Firstly, on the other thread you posted this:

While it was not in direct reference to the discussion on this forum, it is most definitely inter-related. No offense, but I have an extremely good idea of where you lie. There are key markers that give away those that reside on that side of the aisle. While forum rules prevent me from placing a specific label such as SJW, liberal, left-leaning, extreme left, NPC or the like, I think it is fair to say that I know roughly where you fall.

How can I tell? The most obvious give away was the way in which you entered this discussion (way back in mid-February). Despite the trigger warning in the forum title, you instantly demonstrated that you entered the fray emotionally charged. Unprovoked, you immediately started throwing verbal punches at me. If you were strictly approaching the subject from a viewpoint that is free from political ideology, then you would have interacted with this topic with a more level-head (at least at the onset) rather than semi-aggressive instigation. It wasn't an intellectual disagreement that you had with the topic; instead it wounded you right from the start. The kind of wound that is political in nature. It wasn't in disagreement with some analytical viewpoint you held, but something with a deeper personal meaning. The second give away, is that the two sides differ on the importance placed upon facts versus feelings. I'll leave it at that.

With that said, here are the reasons why I don't want to engage with you on this topic:

1. Social Justice playbook: I've heard these arguments before countless times. You have presented nothing new. Depending on where one draws the line, you'd be the forum's 5th iteration of a person taking up that side of the argument. Others have already presented your arguments and have done so more effectively and with less unprovoked hostility. It's unstimulating, tiresome and a waste of my energy. No learning opportunities are granted by it and I stand to gain nothing.

2. It will only lead to arguments: I gave you the benefit of the doubt and you immediately proved to be unworthy of civil discourse. It's one thing to have a discussion slowly escalate, where each person builds upon the other, but you threw shots at me right away. If it turned nasty the first time (when everything was completely peaceful prior to your arrival) then it will probably turn nasty when we engage in the next round with prior animus from our last little verbal dance. The first time I engaged with you wishing to have a civil dialogue, and in all honesty, I don't have that same feeling this time around (which is why a tried to peacefully withdraw).

3. It's a pointless waste of time: The way I see it, there are only two reasons to have these kinds of discussions/debates. The first [and vastly more preferable option], is an honest exchange of ideas, where it is hoped that each person has the opportunity to learn, grown and become intellectually better for it. As I said before, there is nothing new being presented here and only one side is bolstering their side of the argument with any sort of factual support. The second reason is to verbally decapitate your opponent and throw their metaphorical severed head across the room for all to see; an aggressive win-at-all costs debate. In such a cutthroat debate, feelings are always vulnerable to being hurt and forum etiquette is quickly skirted, eroded and broken. So neither option is of particular interest and I can better spend my time elsewhere.

With all that said, is it simply too much that I ask to be left alone?

Something you never got? Why should you have? You instigated that entire episode. The discussion was perfectly peaceful before you interjected yourself into the thread. With all due respect, you were at fault and I was not. Why would I apologize for being transgressed against when you were the transgressor? Why would you even expect an apology in that instance? Please note however, that once you called off your attack, I immediately ceased all hostilities.

You pushed. I held my ground. I make no apologies for that.

I have never expressed qualms about you engaging with the thread. If you read my post carefully (*bolded retroactively for emphasis*)....

I view that to be pretty simple and reasonable.

The day the NIGHTBRINGER needs a report button to deal with Putzfrau. Don't misconstrue my attempt to leave things be peacefully with an attempt to protect myself from you.

You realize that "fruitful" was just my polite and diplomatic way of saying a discussion where you broke all kinds of forum rules. I'd politely suggest that you don't politely suggest what topics or forums I should create. It was you that proved yourself emotionally incapable of handling the thread, not me.

Just because I create a thread, doesn't mean that I wish to interact with each and every person who joins it. If I were to host an astronomy conference, it wouldn't mean that I had a desire to debate the flat-earther who invited himself in. For clarity, I'm not implying that you are a flat-earther, I have no idea where you stand in regards to the oblate spheroid nature of our lovely planet.

Also, I remember you stating:

You made that post way back on February 14; a full 23 days ago. Yet here you are still interacting with the thread. Not only interacting with the thread, but badgering another forumite for interaction after he politely asked that you leave him out of it.

Why waste so much of your time on a garbage heap of a thread? Were you initially being dishonest in your assessment, or do you legitimately have nothing better to do?



So where does that leave us? I guess I would reiterate my request that you leave me out of your discussions, especially seeing that there are others that are willing to engage with you. The way I see it, our little back and forth ends in one of three ways:

1. You respect my wishes, leave me alone and I in turn respectfully leave you alone. We go our separate ways. [NIGHTBRINGER's recommended option].
2. You disregard my wishes, this escalates to "mostly peaceful" (pun intended) and the mods intervene
3. The mods, upon reading this (admittedly "questionable", but provoked) counter, intervene right here and now [probably the most likely outcome, and I wouldn't blame them, but at least it is settled]

So what will it be? Are you willing to leave this amicably?


P.S. I was wrong about this being totally worthless and without merit. At some point in time, @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl will come by and state something along the lines of "I leave you guys alone for a couple of days and look what happens!" In all honesty, I'm looking forward to it, always a nice way to bring some levity into an otherwise tense situation. As long as he doesn't remind me that I could have spent this time on my Lore of Metal Deep Dive (and he wouldn't be wrong )

 

My mistake, genuinely wasn't my intention troll. If the thread isnt for debate, it isnt for debate.

Sorry for disrupting the conversation.