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Author Topic: Is Woke media always dreary?  (Read 6283 times)

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #15 on: January 25, 2022, 09:35:41 PM »
As for woke material more broadly, I think two better examples in recent years would be Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and Mad Max: Fury Road. These put woke issues front and center -- and while people here probably don't like them, I didn't think they were dreary.

I actually really enjoyed both those films. If Fury Road had a touch of Wokeness to it in its focus on Furiosa, they at least gave enough action to both her and Max (and cast very talented actors for both) that the story didn't suffer for it.
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jhkim

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #16 on: January 25, 2022, 10:33:03 PM »
As for woke material more broadly, I think two better examples in recent years would be Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and Mad Max: Fury Road. These put woke issues front and center -- and while people here probably don't like them, I didn't think they were dreary.

I actually really enjoyed both those films. If Fury Road had a touch of Wokeness to it in its focus on Furiosa, they at least gave enough action to both her and Max (and cast very talented actors for both) that the story didn't suffer for it.

Cool. I really liked them both too. With Fury Road, I particularly liked the cinematography and special effects. There was a ton of CGI, but it didn't feel like it because the CGI was all about hiding the padding and safety equipment as they did live stunts. It was loaded with lots of neat bits, like when Furiosa first meets Max, and punches him in the face with her stump. It's only there for a second, and it wasn't until I watched it over a second time when I realized how complicated that was to create.


Beyond race swapping spider man (which honestly, given the nature of the multiverse, not even sure it is race swapping) what made Spider man into the spider verse woke?  I am starting to think maybe woke gets tossed around a bit loosely.

Maybe it isn't woke to you. I felt it had a lot of liberal themes. Miles doesn't just happen to have brown colored skin. He's an inner-city kid from Brooklyn who's into tagging, street art, and hip hop - whose uncle is in a gang (but who eventually betrays his white crime boss). Miles' co-star is Spider-Gwen, from a comic that is a feminist reaction to Gwen Stacy's death in the main timeline. Peter Parker is overweight, divorced, and depressed - though ultimately still heroic in helping Miles. It also features a female Doc Ock as the brilliant scientist who heads the evil corporation. And it has a community theme of bringing a multicultural group together to succeed.

Ratman_tf

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #17 on: January 25, 2022, 11:10:46 PM »
My issues with Fury Road isn't it's wokeness. It's that it didn't feel grounded like Road Warrior or Mad Max did.

My neverending nitpick is where the hell does Furiosa get power and maintenence for her prosthetic?
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jhkim

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #18 on: January 25, 2022, 11:57:21 PM »
My issues with Fury Road isn't it's wokeness. It's that it didn't feel grounded like Road Warrior or Mad Max did.

My neverending nitpick is where the hell does Furiosa get power and maintenence for her prosthetic?

I'd agree it is less grounded, but most series get less grounded as they progress - it happened with James Bond, Die Hard, and plenty of others. Road Warrior was less grounded than Mad Max, and Beyond Thunderdome was less grounded than Road Warrior. Furiosa's arm is never explained in detail, but I don't recall she does any fine motor work with it - so I pictured that it just has a pneumatic-powered grip controlled by muscles, not advanced electronics.

It's more advanced and/or less realistic than this 1921-era artificial arm -- but it doesn't strike me as anywhere close to the least plausible part of the movie.



My realism problem with all of the later movies is that gasoline doesn't store very well, and takes a lot of infrastructure to refine. It seems a huge stretch that people would have so much gasoline after the apocalypse and so little of everything else.
« Last Edit: January 26, 2022, 12:00:51 AM by jhkim »

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #19 on: January 26, 2022, 12:36:40 AM »
Beyond race swapping spider man (which honestly, given the nature of the multiverse, not even sure it is race swapping) what made Spider man into the spider verse woke?  I am starting to think maybe woke gets tossed around a bit loosely.

Maybe it isn't woke to you. I felt it had a lot of liberal themes. Miles doesn't just happen to have brown colored skin. He's an inner-city kid from Brooklyn who's into tagging, street art, and hip hop - whose uncle is in a gang (but who eventually betrays his white crime boss). Miles' co-star is Spider-Gwen, from a comic that is a feminist reaction to Gwen Stacy's death in the main timeline. Peter Parker is overweight, divorced, and depressed - though ultimately still heroic in helping Miles. It also features a female Doc Ock as the brilliant scientist who heads the evil corporation. And it has a community theme of bringing a multicultural group together to succeed.
First of all liberal != woke. They're polar opposites, not the same thing.

And Sweet Christmas, your description of Miles is 100% old stereotypes, and completely unrelated to anything woke. Gwen isn't woke, or even particularly feminist. And Parker is given respect and a character arc. Doc Ock is a gender flip, but so? That's been a trope for decades. They do combine to make for a vague multicultural feel, but it's a multidimensional patchwork, so it's a natural consequence of the core plot -- there's an anime girl with a mecha and a talking pig, after all.

You just sound like a bigot who thinks everybody who isn't Woke is from the 1930s and loves the Klan.

S'mon

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #20 on: January 26, 2022, 02:01:05 AM »
First of all liberal != woke. They're polar opposites, not the same thing.

And Sweet Christmas, your description of Miles is 100% old stereotypes, and completely unrelated to anything woke. Gwen isn't woke, or even particularly feminist. And Parker is given respect and a character arc. Doc Ock is a gender flip, but so? That's been a trope for decades. They do combine to make for a vague multicultural feel, but it's a multidimensional patchwork, so it's a natural consequence of the core plot -- there's an anime girl with a mecha and a talking pig, after all.

That was my impression. I didn't see* any Woke/neo-Marxist elements in the film. Woke is about hate, not 'let's all work together, we're all equally valuable!'

*And I am pretty sensitised to these things these days after being deluged with them so long. I was certainly on the lookout for Woke elements, eg if old white Spidey had tried to keep down/dismiss/denigrate new non-white Spidey.

Omega

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #21 on: January 26, 2022, 02:02:38 AM »
You just sound like a bigot who thinks everybody who isn't Woke is from the 1930s and loves the Klan.

Thats because all he can do is copy-paste the woke agenda screeds anymore.

S'mon

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #22 on: January 26, 2022, 02:04:34 AM »
Older stories like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth are much better written and genuinely feminist than modern drek. In those films the heroines actually go thru arcs.

Normal women love Labyrinth as a coming of age film. To Wokesters it's 'creepy' and 'rapey'. And Wokesters don't do subtlety, so the idea of the protagonist emerging from childhood and defeating the sexual lure/threat on her way to maturity as being a positive thing isn't something they can grok.

Omega

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #23 on: January 26, 2022, 02:09:33 AM »
Yes they are all dreary and ham-handed. And this was the case back in the 90s iteration and probably the 70s too.

Yes some of them can be colourfull and have action or a story. But the enjoyment is always blunted by the agenda.

Captain Underpants is a prome example of the agenda sucking all the life from the show. Moreso the Ghost Busters Which was offensive on so many levels. Avengers End Game was packed with agenda too. Some shows the agenda is low level or just really one big screed and then not so bad. Terminator 2 had to stop and go into a creed about how men cant create or know life blah blah blah.

Omega

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #24 on: January 26, 2022, 02:11:39 AM »
Yup.

Older stories like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth are much better written and genuinely feminist than modern drek. In those films the heroines actually go thru arcs.

Thing is. Labyrinth is not a feminist tale at all. They might claim it is. But its very not.

Having a female protagonist does not make a show feminist.

Ratman_tf

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #25 on: January 26, 2022, 03:02:48 AM »
Yup.

Older stories like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth are much better written and genuinely feminist than modern drek. In those films the heroines actually go thru arcs.

Thing is. Labyrinth is not a feminist tale at all. They might claim it is. But its very not.

Having a female protagonist does not make a show feminist.

Well, then we get into the definition of Feminism, which has so many definitions as to almost be a useless term.
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Ghostmaker

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #26 on: January 26, 2022, 08:45:08 AM »
My issues with Fury Road isn't it's wokeness. It's that it didn't feel grounded like Road Warrior or Mad Max did.

My neverending nitpick is where the hell does Furiosa get power and maintenence for her prosthetic?
From what I saw the prosthetic wasn't particularly advanced -- it looked like a mechanical, spring-driven device, not any kind of super-sophisticated cyberware or myoelectric system.




BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #27 on: January 26, 2022, 09:30:50 AM »
Yup.

Older stories like Jim Henson’s Labyrinth are much better written and genuinely feminist than modern drek. In those films the heroines actually go thru arcs.

Thing is. Labyrinth is not a feminist tale at all. They might claim it is. But its very not.

Having a female protagonist does not make a show feminist.
The plot is about a girl rescuing her baby brother from a fairy king representing her ideals of men, who she defeats by rejecting his advances. Her stepmother isn't wicked, and in fact encourages her to grow up and become her own person. She rejects infantilization in favor of growing up, while at the same time not discarding her dreams. These are deliberate rejections of fairy tale archetypes intended to maintain patriarchy. If that isn't feminist, then I don't know what is.

hedgehobbit

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #28 on: January 26, 2022, 11:44:19 AM »
Beyond race swapping spider man (which honestly, given the nature of the multiverse, not even sure it is race swapping) what made Spider man into the spider verse woke?

The main source of wokeness for Into the Spider-verse comes from it following the woke trope of killing off the white male character only to have him replaced by a "diverse" character that is better in every way. Remember that this movie came out less then a year after the same thing happened to Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi.

But now, the wokeists have caught on that we have caught on and now they just emasculate the male character and have him voluntarily give up his "mantle" (forex Thor, Hawkeye, He-Man, et al).
« Last Edit: January 26, 2022, 11:48:42 AM by hedgehobbit »

hedgehobbit

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Re: Is Woke media always dreary?
« Reply #29 on: January 26, 2022, 11:46:41 AM »
If Fury Road had a touch of Wokeness to it in its focus on Furiosa, they at least gave enough action to both her and Max (and cast very talented actors for both) that the story didn't suffer for it.

The wokest part of Fury Road wasn't Furiosa, it was the pack of old women that murder and eat any man they come across and yet they are portrayed as the good guys. And, yes, the story did suffer because of that piece of idiocy.