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Notes -
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
So far, I don't really agree that "Last of Us" (I've watched through episode 3) is a woke show. To be, the important thing about woke content is that it lies to us about the natural relationships between people. Instead it substitutes a fake, aspirational, version of reality where, for example, a woman is just as strong as man. Woke content is especially awful when it distorts the plot or makes its characters mere shells who exist to hammer a political point down the viewers throats.
There's nothing in the love story in episode 3 that felt unnatural or weird to me, and the characters felt like real people. The creators had a good story to tell and they told it - without drifting into politics. They could have thrown in a few sneer lines about the red tribe or bigots or something. They didn't. I enjoyed the episode a lot and I have a very low tolerance for woke content of any sort.
Breaking off into gay love story in the third episode lost some momentum for the overall story. Perhaps it’s too low of bar to call something woke for adding a gay love story. And this is more of a 20 years ago liberal theme that’s now mainstream accepted.
There’s a bit of semantics I’m picking up in the comments that anything that feels well done and natural by definition can’t be woke. Woke by definition can only be things we don’t like. If we like it then it’s good pre-wokism liberal.
I own a bunch of wbd stock. It’s been cheaper than Netflix for a while but I’ve always had a thesis HBO has much better content (and the other brands they’ve rolled up). I had about 2 years where I didn’t like anything new HBO made. So I’m glad to see them hitting on characters again.
I agree the episode slowed the momentum of the overall story, but I enjoyed it for its world-building. It showed that besides the authoritarian enclaves and lawless bandit ridden country outside of them, there were tiny pockets of civilisation that resourceful and competent people had made for themselves.
Pretty believable to see how he created his own little paradise, and the non-romance aspects of this episode is really red meat to certain red tribe 'prepper' aligned types. It was great that the prepper knew what he'd built was a target for raiding from the start rather than having a scene of him trusting someone to have them pull a gun on him like in similar media (like The Walking Dead) where protagonists need to be taught what kind of world they're living in now. Pre-apocalypse, this attitude would be seen as delusional paranoia, but it was clearly what saved him from the FEDRA death squads. He also immediately sees the truth in Joel's advice of 'They'll come at night, quiet and armed'.
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