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I found the first “wokish” show that I enjoy. The Last of Us based on a video game it’s basically your typically zombie show. But unlike a lot of woke stuff I found myself identifying with characters and enjoying it. Curious if other people would give similar reviews and this is light for a top level posts. While theirs culture war and I’ll be against those ideologies because I believe their bad - I’ve also found modern movies/shows to be unwatchable. There’s something about inserting woke into shows that I believe the issue is it makes characters not believable. (Some spoilers to follow)
In the third episode it was primarily about the love relationship of a gay couple. One was a typical red tribe prepper type who had a good set-up for a zombie apocalypse. Then one day a guy shows up outside his electric fence and to summarize they fall in love and they spend the next 20 or so years together.
In some ways since they were gay and I wasn’t physically interested in his new partner it made the story better. It made me see the human parts of caring about someone and the process of growing older.
Obviously for a zombie show you can just insert any character you want. It’s not like game of thrones the dragon show where you make the characters black when they were super concerned about family purity feels off and unbelievable. I’m calling this show woke because they specifically chose to add a gay love story early which I think is reasonable.
I personally don’t use certain brands because of their ideology (nike, Disney, etc) and will not watch some media if I think it’s something I don’t believe in. But there’s also a lot of movies/shows I don’t enjoy because of ideology. Foundation along with the new thrones would be examples of this to me. Maybe I’ll get trashed for saying I enjoyed the show but it’s the first time I watched something woke and felt like it didn’t ruin the ability to identify with characters. Certain shows like The Wire could never be made in a woke a world. How do you show black drug dealers doing black drug dealer stuff in a world where black people cant do bad things?
I know the old filmmakers many of them were socialist and had ideologies I disagreed with but they still made great art. A criticism of woke has been that the art sucks which in my opinion this didn’t suck but was solid something to watch (not must watch but for laziness).
Also interested in if their are other “wokish” films that are enjoyable to watch
I think The Last of Us is almost right wing in that so far it's largely about the necessity of restricting your circle of empathy to an extremely small group of found family. Many Left wing projects rely on group solidarity and extending empathy to the other but all large scale cooperative groups in TLOU (so far) are authoritarian and dysfunctional and the main character eschews involvement with them in favor of protecting his (found) nuclear family.
Heck, even the gay love story in Epsiode 3 takes this form. Nick Offerman's as character is sitting on a tremendous amount of resources that could presumably be used to help others but him fencing it all off so that he can live in comparative luxury with his lover is heroism. There's even a bit in Offerman's character's letter to Joel about men finding purpose as protectors (of specific individual not a group), which is a conservative value.
I don't think the creators of TLOU are ideologically right wing, just that the post apocalyptic genre plus individualistic culture lends itself to that sort of story. A small set of characters set against the world of fascists and raiders is more compelling than a large commune of reasonable people figuring out how to do agriculture and rebuild generators in the post apocalypse.
This reminded me of the co-op garden that was set up in CHAZ and almost immediately destroyed.
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It was certainly portrayed that way, but it struck me as pretty horrific. They have an entire small town boarded off with all sorts of amenities, and they can't seem to share it with anyone. Even if you don't want to share, that's the perfect setup to get something good done--maybe man a radio tower, do some research into the disease, synthesize insulin, etc. Anyone who hangs up their coat at that point and says "I've done enough" is neglecting their duties towards humanity.
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