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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35439 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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This just seems like the adage go woke go broke. And it’s not just Amazon it’s a universal issue.

Amazon is at no risk of going broke. How many companies went woke and actually went broke as a result. I cannot think of any. Mailchimp went woke and got bought out.

Yeah, sadly wishful thinking on many people’s part. A lot of alleged examples are really cases where companies were going broke (or failing with a product) and attempted to hide under the skirts of wokism (“our shitty product isn’t selling because our critics are transphobes”).

At the end of the day most people don’t notice this shit, they just like the explosions and dragons. How many people who watched Game of Thrones all the way through could even tell you who Jon Snow’s parents were? Most stuff in media in shit, and we’re coming out of a TV golden age in the early 2000s and a silver age in the 2010s, regressing back towards the mean. On top of that, wokism is trendy, especially among media circles, so they weave it in. But I don’t think the shitty state of entertainment would be significantly better just by virtue of trimming away the woke stuff.

Woke stuff isn't just jamming minorities into things or ostentatiously displaying your acceptance though. It's the blank slate philosophy which says that everyone is the same inside with only cosmetic differences on the surface. It's pretending a black guy could be nobility in a white majority place and nobody would even bat an eye, let alone raise objections. It is assuming a 5"4 girl can beat up half a dozen 7" monster men without breaking a sweat. And it's going out of your way to ensure only white men are villains, while treating women and minorities as flawless angels who are in the right even when they do monstrous shit for terrible reasons. It is privileging ideology over storytelling, and the woke seem incapable of doing otherwise. Removing woke from the equation would have a huge impact on the quality of current year entertainment.

It is assuming a 5"4 girl can beat up half a dozen 7" monster men without breaking a sweat.

I think this is perfectly realistic. A few good kicks/stomps should easily take care of the ankle high monster men

Lollll I would like to say its because I haven't used imperial measurements in a decade, but the truth is I always got them mixed up.

It is assuming a 5"4 girl can beat up half a dozen 7" monster men without breaking a sweat.

I mean, if this is "woke" then literally all of American television and cinema is woke.

This seems to have been a battle won thoroughly enough that it isn't really even being debated that much anymore (unlike race-changing a white character to a black one).

It's pretending a black guy could be nobility in a white majority place and nobody would even bat an eye, let alone raise objections.

Amusingly, I can think of a major space opera that does exactly this (ok, black girl as queen) and the author is 100% not woke or blank-slatist. The difference is that it's explained in plot and supports larger themes in the story. It's the opposite of "this village hasn't seen an outsider in generations, but might as well be a United Colors of Benetton ad."

Similarly, waif-fu occasionally works--Buffy the Vampire Slayer and River Tam, IMO--but Whedon did the work to explain his special cases. I think this points out one of the central problems with woke in a creative context--all too often, it's intellectually lazy. The blank slate means you don't have to justify casting choices in terms of logic, genetics, population dynamics, etc. So for an audience with even an instinctual grasp of all that--"people who are related to each other tend to look more like each other!"--you lose verisimilitude and immersion in the story.

Amusingly, I can think of a major space opera that does exactly this (ok, black girl as queen) and the author is 100% not woke or blank-slatist.

Honorverse, I presume?

Indeed.

(For those unfamiliar: Honor Harrington series by David Weber; first book is On Basilisk Station. Often described as "Horatio Hornblower in space.")

Honor Harrington universe? I didn't consider that a "major" space opera.

all too often, it's intellectually lazy.

Sometimes the impression I get from a lot of "content" is that the writers are deeply disinterested in the subject matter of what they're working on. The people involved who are into wokeness insert wokeness, no one else cares enough to stop them.

You don't have to be particularly technically skilled in order to make something be woke; you just need familiarity with wokeness, so it's a great way for unskilled writers to pretend to contribute.

Sometimes I can watch Scarlett Johannsenn beat up men and it works, because she takes them by surprise or fights smarter than them.

But often she just punches them out and I am just jarred out of the experience. "Why can she do this? Did I miss her getting super-powers?" I stop watching the movie and get lost in my thoughts.

Daredevil's hallway scene is really good for many reasons, but I just want to focus on the obvious fight. You have a guy who has no physical powers like strength or speed or agility. He does have super-senses, and he has to use them because any straight-on fight is too likely to end up with him injured. He keeps an advantage but the tension is still high because if he loses that advantage at all he stands a good chance of dying.

These days it is just assumed he can take on a couple henchmen goons at once without a problem.

This is bad, but it is not woke.

I blame anime ala dragonball z for the infinite power creep of action movies.

Eh, I personally can't see that unless you want to try drawing a through-line that includes the Wachowskis (who were heavily, heavily influenced by Ghost In The Shell, which isn't the same genre as DBZ, in the making of The Matrix). Or at least, I don't think Dragon Ball: Evolution really had any lasting impact on action cinema.

Amusingly, I can think of a major space opera that does exactly this (ok, black girl as queen) and the author is 100% not woke or blank-slatist. The difference is that it's explained in plot and supports larger themes in the story.

There are historical examples of feuding tribes choosing a foreigner with no tribal affiliation to rule over them.

even in the Medieval era elective monarchies like Bohemia and Poland practically preferred to pick foreigners rather than from among their own nobles

I can't remember my grammas name, why should I remember whose the fictional parents of a fictional show I watched over a few years?

In a similar vien ive read the entire Malazan Book of the Fallen series twice and I can't currently think of a single character.

I have such an influx of things to entertain me that I just don't care about keeping that sort of information.

I can't remember my grammas name, why should I remember whose the fictional parents of a fictional show I watched over a few years?

Seriously?

Yes - I know my dad and mom's name even tho it's Polish but my gramma & grampas Polish names are basically a meme and I always just called them certain pet names and now they're dead.

I'm Michael - or Michal in Polish. I lucked out I guess.

I don't have strong familial connections in any case.

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