This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm just scrolling through the recent female contestants on female-coded shows like Love Island, The Bachelor, Too Hot To Handle, Love is Blind, etc. and I'm not sure what kind of normie women TV you are watching.
I suppose that's a fair point, although I'd suggest treating the genre of reality TV, of which I scarcely know anything, as a wholly different matter. I'm assuming this sort of stuff is usually consumed by Boomer or GenX women and is, as you said, female-coded to begin with. On the other hand, my argument concerns younger women and products that are mainly male-oriented.
Younger Woman
Take these numbers with grain of salt though, the median numbers don't make sense with the age distribution as presented.
Anyway, I only hear about these shows because the normie and liberal women I know (30 and below) talk about them and so I can assure you these are not consumed just by Boomer/GenX women.
products that are mainly male-oriented
I'm not really sure what you're saying, are you saying that recent Western/US male-oriented products are made with less "conventionally attractive, sexually alluring, non-girlboss female characters"? I think this is going to depend on your definition of "non-girlboss" and "male-oriented products". Maybe can you present an example that you can think of? I can, on the top of my head, think of Penelope (Anne Hathaway) in The Odyssey, Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) in the Spiderman movies, Nikki (Inde Navarrette) in Obsession from the movies just this year.
I'd argue that recent Western/US male-oriented products (mainstream movies, TV series and video games that are marketed mostly to men) are made with fewer "conventionally attractive, sexually alluring, non-girlboss female characters" than before (before 2010 or so), as a reaction to the preferences of feminist-adjacent normie women, who find the presence of such content off-putting, repellent and cringe, and who want to police the cultural consumption of men (especially young single men) accordingly, similarly to the antics of the church ladies of the old days.
I would like to point out that maybe the only aspect of female representation in Western/US male-oriented products that went down in numbers would be the "non-girlboss" part. Most female representation in Western/US male-oriented products are still "conventionally attractive" and "sexually alluring". Sex sells after all.
Which kinda begs the question as what is "non-girlboss" in your eyes?
I think this is only true in the most vapid of ways, where we can say that someone being selected to feature in a major media product at all is almost definitely in the top 50% of attractiveness (probably top 20%), male or female. But this doesn't really touch on the phenomenon, where stars who headlined major works would often be in the top 5% of attractiveness, and this has expanded to something closer to top 20%, if not top 50%, and the gap between 95th and 80th - to say nothing of 50th - is absolutely ginormous.
And there's the phenomenon in video games, where, technologically, there's no technological reason why every female character can't have attractiveness that matches that of Eve from Stellar Blade or 2B from Nier: Automata, and yet devs insist on modeling many major ones after real-life actresses and capturing their looks in a rugged, gritty, realistic way like in recent God of War or Halo games, instead of sexifying them like with Eve and her (IIRC) 3 human models in Stellar Blade. Or just overtly choosing norm-defying types of characters like many of the woman characters from Sony's $100MM+ failure (as you write, sex sells; and some devs sometimes seem to have decided that not selling is worth the not sex) Concord or one of the protagonists of The Last of Us 2.
I think @Botond173 is going beyond that, I think they're arguing that "feminist-adjacent normie women" is policing US/Western media output so that the top 5% in attractiveness can't headline major works in fear of triggering "antics of the church ladies of the old days". I posit this is untrue because sex sells. Or maybe all the top 5% are having a great time being OnlyFans and influencers and don't need to slave themselves to the media industry.
Your argument of expansion of attractiveness representation is fair and I understand that, though I don't see that really being a problem that normie woman exercise their preferences. With enough economic cycles, an equilibrium will be found and like you summed it, I'm sure "someone being selected to feature in a major media product" will still land north of the median attractive person for the rest of time.
I will concede on this one. I do think that economic pressures (maybe it's cheaper to just take the real life mocap actresses and don't touch them up? idk) or economic demands (female audience don't get jealous, female audience sees more representation of their level of attractiveness, etc. means more people buy the game or at least don't disparage it) leads to video games having an expansion in allowable female character attractiveness.
But then is it really that bad? it's not "man walking into traffic while distracted by woman" level of beauty but only "man would be down to bed her no alcohol required" level of beauty. Is this some danger to society?
This doesn't match my perception of their argument, but they can speak for themselves.
It's not that normie women are exercising their preferences, though. It's creators who overtly admit to buying into a particular ideology overtly designing women in a certain way that fits their ideology.
Mocap is something else, having to do with animation, rather than scanning the person's likeness in. Mocap actors often don't look like the characters they're portraying. In terms of scanning real people in, I'm pretty sure it's more expensive to do that than just to create a model from scratch, especially the work involved in getting the specific details to match the actor just right. And certainly, the caliber of actors they're hiring (Hollywood-level actors, mostly B-list, but the occasional A-listers like Keanu Reeves or Idris Elba) are not known for being cheap - a cost that wouldn't exist at all from scratch. In the case of Stellar Blade, IIRC Shift Up hired some models who have some celebrity stature but are certainly far from Hollywood-level.
This was an argument made regularly 10-20 years ago about changing gaming. The argument was... questionable then, and today, after games have changed, it just doesn't hold any water, given the way the market has responded. Jealousy by female audiences or liking more representation or whatever simply aren't significant factors in the market for video games, particularly the mainstream AAA titles that people are mostly concerned with. Someone who believes that, by doing this, they can make their mainstream gamer-targeting game more economically successful is someone whose beliefs are defined by ideology, not by reality.
It's only a danger to society like any other media like OnlyFans or Andrew Tate are: i.e. in some crazy Six-Degrees-of-Seven-Bacon way about various downstream effects with very questionable veracity. But in terms of it being really that bad, yes, it's really that bad. Denying the creation and dissemination of greater beauty when it would cost nothing more than less, just to feed some ideological commitments, is a travesty.
Hmmmm, I think your argument differs from @Botond173 in that so far they seem to imply a normie-women-demand-driven-policing of cultural output, while you are saying that ideologically-driven-supply-policing is going on. Sure I can buy that, but can you go into a little more detail on why this is a travesty? Seems to me like it's more an irritation than some kind of societal harm. I suppose in contrast, arguments can be made that OnlyFans leads to financial exploitation of lonely men, and Andrew Tate is....also financial exploitation of lonely men.
And there is a charitable take where many of these games (TLOU, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc.) have a particular aesthetic (more photorealistic, more gritty, etc.) that benefits more from NOT having supernatural-level of beauty. When there are games that benefit from having characters that are supposed to be pretty look pretty they still look quite top 5% pretty (Dispatch, Tomb Raider, Clair Obscur, Witcher, etc.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link