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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28478 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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I'm actually really happy when #currentyear writes women and minorities as bad people.

I would be happy, but I typically find that the writer themselves or the fictional world around the characters don't notice that they're bad people and just Yass Queen at everything.

This seems a really common criticism of these types of characters. I've heard people say about characters like She-Hulk, Galadriel from Rings of Power, Velma, and Echo that they start the show as aggressive, unlikable people, as if they're setting up for some sort of redemption or growth character arc, but instead it's the rest of the world that bends around her to make everything work out. And fans don't seem to connect with it. What I don't get is that this could've been predicted by anyone who took an intro to writing fiction class. When there are millions of dollars on the line with these productions, how is it that the people in charge allow this level of incompetence or unprofessionalism to be present in the script, the heart and soul of almost any movie or show?

Then again, I think I may be having some version of Gell-Mann amnesia about the standards of writing in Hollywood, because one of my amusing recurring thoughts is how many people at Lucasfilm & Disney must've read the Rise of Skywalker script and decided that they would proudly work on and forever attach their names to the film that used "somehow" as basically the entirety of the explanation for reviving the main bad guy from the first trilogy.

The standard psychoanalysis review is that stuff like She-Hulk is written by narcissistic women for narcissistic women. Which is an easy/lazy dunk.

As far as I know screenwriting is a skill that is mostly on the basis of doing what someone else tells you to- in other words, a director or producer or somebody comes up with the plot, characters, vibe, etc, and the actual job of the writer is to ghostwrite the script in a format that makes it easy to film. So the question is why directors and producers are pushing such bad plots and unlikeable characters.

I'm under the impression that directors tend to have fairly limited influence over the more corporate film products (as has always been the case), and the writers we get nowadays are largely just mercenaries answering to the suits. Directors these days probably are more in lock-step with the producers, but that's both because of the insular nature of Hollywood culture and probably also the studios pushing away any directors too cavalier to follow orders.

they start the show as aggressive, unlikable people, as if they're setting up for some sort of redemption or growth character arc, but instead it's the rest of the world that bends around her to make everything work out

But I mean, that is their understanding of the human condition. They tell you every day. It's not immoral to hate your oppressor. The world does need to change. These are their fantasies playing out. I don't think there is anything mysterious or baffling about it. They have no other understanding of the world. Check any of their twitter pages.

I constantly have this problem as well. For the same reason the successor ideology has destroyed parody, and everything you write comes true two weeks later, they've destroyed villains. I was watching some BBC show about a female doctor who discovers her husband is cheating and knocked up his mistress. She goes completely unhinged, breaks all sorts of laws, nearly forces her ex husband to commit suicide, and I'm watching this wondering if the writers/producers are aware this woman is a psycho? Or are they just "Yass Queen"ing the whole time?

Honestly it's a coin flip. The end of the show seems to show some self awareness that all her actions were ultimately self destructive because now her son wants nothing to do with her. But she kept her job, her house, her friends, etc, unlike the poor ex-husband she utterly destroyed. So yeah, I have no idea.

I wish I could remember the name of that show.

Doctor Foster? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Foster_(TV_series)

Yeah, that's the one.

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