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 -
Content advisory: untagged spoilers for like a dozen movies below!
The other day I watched A Man Called Otto, Tom Hanks' 2022 remake of a Swedish movie (En man som heter Ove, based on a book of the same name) about an elderly man whose suicide attempt is interrupted by an Iranian immigrant, who gradually teaches him to live again. The Hanks edition hits a variety of CW notes; the Iranian is replaced with a Hispanic woman, the Swedish ending depicting Ove's reunion with his deceased wife in the afterlife is gone, and a homosexual character is replaced with a trans character (hashtag-gay-erasure). But there is one CW note in particular that really stood out to me. At the end of the movie, Otto dies and leaves his house and his car to the Hispanic woman, as well as enough money to fund the education of her three Hispanic children.
Maybe this would not have stood out to me had I not coincidentally recently re-watched the 2013's middling dystopic sci-fi, Elysium. If you've not seen this one, it is a story about an unusually talented blue collar laborer played by Matt Damon, presumably because everyone liked him as an unusually talented blue collar laborer in Stillwater, Good Will Hunting, and, uh, that artist guy in Titanic maybe? (Kidding!) Anyway this time blue-collared Matt lives in a Los Angeles peopled entirely by Mexicans (except for him), who spend most of their time trying to cross the border of space (illegally) so they can get high-tech medical treatment aboard the space station where all the billionaires moved when Earth got too crowded or warm or, who knows. For unimportant reasons, Matt finds that he's dying, so he goes to his
coyoteuhhuman traffickerspaceship launching ex (crime) boss to... Jesus Christ, who wrote this movie? Anyway, the moral of the story is that Matt gives his life to save the life of a young Hispanic girl while also making everyone on Earth a "citizen" so that suddenly the boundless healthcare resources the billionaires have been hoarding for no reason at all can be immediately deployed to cure all illness on Earth, the end.So this got me thinking about other movies I've seen with the same central beat: selfish single white male with nothing to lose learns to care again by temporarily filling the role of mentor or savior to a not-white young person, then gives (often, loses) everything so the not-white youngster can inherit a brighter future. Gran Torino (2008). Snowpiercer (2013).
But while many lists of "problematic white savior" movies include these titles, I feel like there's a distinction to be drawn where the not-white character is treated as a successor, rather than as a success. In Finding Forrester (2000), there's a not-white successor, but the "white savior" doesn't especially give anything up. In The Blind Side (2009) the "white savior" isn't looking for a successor (despite the professed concerns of the NCAA).
And I don't think that it's quite the same phenomenon as "expendable man dies for the woman he loves." Never mind that I already mentioned Titanic (1997)--the Bond movie No Time To Die (2021) might be what I'm talking about if Bond had died to save Nomi instead of Madeleine, but (to the best of my recollection!) he did not. I suppose Luke Skywalker biting it to preserve Palpatine's bloodline might be an example of what I'm talking about--definitely would if Rey was not-white, and definitely would if the sequels had focused more on Finn becoming a Jedi.
So I feel like I've identified four clear examples of the trope I'm spotting (to review: A Man Called Otto, Elysium, Gran Torino, Snowpiercer). I know better than to expect TVTropes to have a "non-straight-white-hypercapable-male successor" trope, but I did look around and do not think that Changing of the Guard, Take Up My Sword, Taking Up the Mantle, White Man's Burden, or similar tropes quite apply. Likewise, many people will identify the trope I have in mind as a (correspondingly problematic) "white savior" story, except that most "white savior" stories aren't BIPOC successor stories. Rather, this is taking the expendability of men--long a cultural staple in the West--and mixing it up with a not-even-remotely-subtle hint at White Replacement.
I think the reason I even noticed the pattern is that I have a long fascination with Rudyard Kipling's infamous poem, "The White Man's Burden." Specifically, the people I know who regard the poem as highly racist almost always also talk a great deal about "privilege," without ever seeming to notice the noblesse oblige implied by the idea of checking that privilege. There seems to be a deeply unresolved contradiction in "woke" spaces, whereby whites are simultaneously obligated to elevate others, and forbidden from even imagining they have the capacity to do so. In the trope I'm trying to track, the acceptable excuse seems to be that the (grizzled, lonely, etc.) white man gets something from the successor, namely a "new lease on life," such that he can then return the favor by then literally dying and dedicating his entire legacy to assure the future of someone else's children, children who are not even his co-ethnics.
(TVTropes does have a Cuckold page, but this is also not quite what I'm talking about... I think!)
So here are your discussion questions for the day:
Is there a name for this trope already? Have I missed a TVTropes pages somewhere? A RibbonFarm article? An obscure media studies dissertation?
I can't watch every movie, or even remember all the movies I've watched. Can you think of any other movies/TV shows/other media to add to the four I've identified?
I also can't think of any inverted examples. Can you think of any media in which the trope is inverted? How often do hypercompetent heroes "of color" learn to love whites and then give up their lives to ensure that several white children can afford to go to college? (Does the Wizard from Shazam! count, maybe, kinda?)
Perhaps most importantly... is there any possibility at all that the phenomenon isn't blatantly deliberate agenda-pushing?
Naturally, you are not limited to these questions--this is a discussion board, not a MOOC. But I've managed to stump myself so I'm interested in what you all make of this.
I think it's an interaction of a few things, a big one being an old trope about an old bear male figure coming out of retirement for one last score/mission/whatever. Most of the Bond films, most of Eastwood's ouvre, Taken, Black Samurai, True Grit, Nobody, etc. This is, at core, a male fantasy of an aging yet skilled/dangerous man become cynical about the structure his violence has served. He finds a new mission, a new cause and allows himself to be consumed by it, because it wasn't the cause itself he cared about, just the fight. Possible death is treated as penance for any misdeeds or guilt held over from the first, less moral cause, an opportunity for redemption. It's a moralistic view of male violence, a feeling that those who live by the sword should die by it.
Now let's add to this Hollywood's complete inventive drought. They have no ideas and so are resurrecting old franchises left and right to try to get some content. This means a lot of old white male protagonists who have to be dealt with somehow, and half the story is already written. So, Han/Luke have to hand things off to new actors. Cheaper actors. Newer actors who fit the social and political prejudices of the elites, which is mostly anti-white racism and class snobbery.
It is sometimes done well (Gran Torino is a top-5 all timer IMO). But these days, few directors have the chops of Eastwood, the writing has gone to hell in a handbasket, and so we get this cheap propaganda about how all the old heroes are shit and need to be replaced by strangely competent kids who somehow never have a thing to learn or struggle at. This is then sometimes mapped onto racial lines because, well, racist elites. But they do it with gender as well, see the aforementioned Star Wars, the current Indiana Jones etc.
This pattern repeats. An old property, a white male protagonist and some sort of minority successor. We started with Harrison Ford, but we're getting Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and just the name tells you everything you need to know. The woke-washing is at least partially a defense mechanism because they know the products are terrible and rehashed, likely to generate criticism. Moralizing about their artistic vapidity is the best defense they have.
For Otto and Gran Torino, I think there's actually a more specific sub-trope here about a widowed, childless (or at least functionally childless), outwardly-seen-as-cantankerous old man resigned to retirement and death revealed to be complex and charitable to a younger character in need of a father figure, ultimately becoming the loving parent of an ad-hoc family. My initial thought on watching Otto was to compare it to Pixar's Up, which hits many of the same plot beats, but the resulting family consists of a (white) eight-year-old and a talking dog.
In this case, I think at least part of OP's trope may be that modern Hollywood is very reluctant to portray minorities (and also women) with strong negative personality traits: I have trouble imagining a film portraying a minority lead as "cantankerous" or "grumpy" regardless of later character development without accusations of racism. Honestly I'd be happy to watch such a movie, but I can't think of an example.
I believe the kid in Up is actually Asian (at least, I and others read his appearance as Asian and the character's voice actor is Asian).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link