It's a common trope that adding Wokeness to an IP, or creating a Woke IP (which hardly ever happens, since Wokesters are parasites) makes it objectively worse. I was wondering whether there are any counter examples, or at least examples of something 'ok' in terms of entertainment value.
I was thinking of a possible contrast between the Black Widow and Captain Marvel MCU films. Black Widow to my mind has basically no redeeming features. Lazy Feminist writing, an incredibly boring Harvey Weinstein-expy villain - played by great character actor Ray Winstone - active discarding of everything that made Black Widow a cool character. It's Woke and it's drek.
I find Captain Marvel much more interesting. As presented, I find the character utterly repellent. Her personality and character arc is much more that of a villain than a hero. The narrative structure is Marxist-Feminist dialectic, like Black Widow. But I find it much better done. This is not a 'lazy' film; the philosophy may be vile, but to my mind it's presented with skill and heaps of enthusiasm, a Totalitarian Left film almost reminiscent of a John Milius film from the Libertarian Right - Conan the Barbarian, say, or Red Dawn. The protagonist is dour, humourless, unpleasant, arrogant, and even sadistic. The scripting and Direction I thought were highly competent. The action is decent. Technically, it is a 'good' superhero film.
I was wondering if anyone else makes a similar distinction between typical bad-and-incompetent Woke, and evil-but-competent Woke. Or is it all just undifferentiated trash to you (or undifferentiated good stuff, if you are pro-Woke)? Are there any other examples of Woke done competently?
It's been a while since I watched it, so don't remember much, but the Netflix series Sense8 was kinda woke from the onset, with lots of "diversity" characters in it (including a transgender character), yet done well. It's basically the only example I've run into of wokesters actually creating something (instead of "subverting" existing IPs) that wasn't just woke garbage. The series was about eight strangers from different countries all over the world who find out that they are "sensates" who possess some sort of psychic bond with each other, allowing them to share memories and skillsets to assist each other in overcoming their problems and fight bad guys who're after their kind.
Season 2 was more woke than season 1, and had a few episodes that made me wanna puke. It eventually got cancelled, though, cuz it was way too expensive to shoot across different countries from all over the world, which was part of the show's premise, but attracted a strong following from woke types, who cried when it was cancelled, because of course they would.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense8
I can safely ignore just about everything shown on CW...although I tolerate Superman & Lois.
I will admit that for me, part of the difficulty of finding counterexamples is that I have become so antipathic to Woke philosophy that its very presence renders any story containing it less entertaining, regardless of whatever craft and quality it may legitimately boast. That said, one of the hallmarks of a great creator is that they can make works which still entertain despite carrying messages, or exemplifying themes or tropes, some may find distasteful. I reject Lovecraft's philosophy across the board but still find his work enjoyable, and I was never really into the neo-Goth scene of the '90s but still loved Poppy Z. Brite's horror. So it can be done.
If I had to think of a fantasy series recently which I enjoyed despite its Wokeness, the Australian author David Hair did two epic fantasy quadrilogies -- the Moontide Quartet and the Sunsurge Quartet -- which have distinct weaknesses deriving at least in part directly from too many of the characters embodying modern Western secular sensibilities in how they think and act. Nonetheless, the books still have enough action, scope, energy and vividness to make them worth reading.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 25, 2022, 11:16:08 AMNonetheless, the books still have enough action, scope, energy and vividness to make them worth reading.
I felt that way about the first book of
His Dark Materials. The trilogy went downhill really fast though - each book a huge drop off from the previous one.
Quote from: S'mon on January 25, 2022, 04:08:57 AMI was thinking of a possible contrast between the Black Widow and Captain Marvel MCU films. Black Widow to my mind has basically no redeeming features. Lazy Feminist writing, an incredibly boring Harvey Weinstein-expy villain - played by great character actor Ray Winstone - active discarding of everything that made Black Widow a cool character. It's Woke and it's drek. ...But I find (Captain Marvel) much better done. This is not a 'lazy' film; the philosophy may be vile, but to my mind it's presented with skill and heaps of enthusiasm, a Totalitarian Left film almost reminiscent of a John Milius film from the Libertarian Right - Conan the Barbarian, say, or Red Dawn. The protagonist is dour, humourless, unpleasant, arrogant, and even sadistic. The scripting and Direction I thought were highly competent. The action is decent. Technically, it is a 'good' superhero film.
Interestingly, my reaction was completely the other way around:
Captain Marvel felt like the lazier film by far to me, where the absolute minimum effort necessary was invested at every step to create a product felt necessary by marketing perceptions rather than narrative relevance to the MCU's whole arc. (When your movie is never really clear on who your actual Big Bad is meant to be until the final ten minutes or so and the most important relationship the character has is with a friend she doesn't remember for most of the film, you're not getting anything like worthwhile catharsis out of your story.)
By contrast,
Black Widow, while still feeling like a waste of potential (especially given its placement in Natasha's already established plot arc), felt much more like the writers and actors had thought seriously about the emotional dynamics of family vs. loyalty, and gone out of their way to create both internal and external conflicts. Natasha's free fall dive to rescue Yelena, clunkily as it was executed in the film, felt more emotionally moving than anything in
Captain Marvel. (It also helps that Scarlett Johansson is a better actress than Brie Larson -- Larson is good when given good material, but she hasn't got the knack of being watchable even in a bad script the way Johansson does.) I thought it was a crime how they wasted David Harbour, but Rachel Weisz's scenes with Johansson pretty much made up for everything.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 25, 2022, 03:48:06 PM
(When your movie is never really clear on who your actual Big Bad is meant to be until the final ten minutes or so and the most important relationship the character has is with a friend she doesn't remember for most of the film, you're not getting anything like worthwhile catharsis out of your story.)
I thought that was all intentional and necessary to the narrative - her arc is realising she is being held down by the Patriarchy, and is already perfect in every way. She doesn't need anyone, including friends.
Maybe it helped I watched a Sargon/Carl Benjamin video analysing the dialectic in the film. ;D
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 25, 2022, 03:48:06 PM
Quote from: S'mon on January 25, 2022, 04:08:57 AMI was thinking of a possible contrast between the Black Widow and Captain Marvel MCU films. Black Widow to my mind has basically no redeeming features. Lazy Feminist writing, an incredibly boring Harvey Weinstein-expy villain - played by great character actor Ray Winstone - active discarding of everything that made Black Widow a cool character. It's Woke and it's drek. ...But I find (Captain Marvel) much better done. This is not a 'lazy' film; the philosophy may be vile, but to my mind it's presented with skill and heaps of enthusiasm, a Totalitarian Left film almost reminiscent of a John Milius film from the Libertarian Right - Conan the Barbarian, say, or Red Dawn. The protagonist is dour, humourless, unpleasant, arrogant, and even sadistic. The scripting and Direction I thought were highly competent. The action is decent. Technically, it is a 'good' superhero film.
Interestingly, my reaction was completely the other way around: Captain Marvel felt like the lazier film by far to me, where the absolute minimum effort necessary was invested at every step to create a product felt necessary by marketing perceptions rather than narrative relevance to the MCU's whole arc. (When your movie is never really clear on who your actual Big Bad is meant to be until the final ten minutes or so and the most important relationship the character has is with a friend she doesn't remember for most of the film, you're not getting anything like worthwhile catharsis out of your story.)
By contrast, Black Widow, while still feeling like a waste of potential (especially given its placement in Natasha's already established plot arc), felt much more like the writers and actors had thought seriously about the emotional dynamics of family vs. loyalty, and gone out of their way to create both internal and external conflicts. Natasha's free fall dive to rescue Yelena, clunkily as it was executed in the film, felt more emotionally moving than anything in Captain Marvel. (It also helps that Scarlett Johansson is a better actress than Brie Larson -- Larson is good when given good material, but she hasn't got the knack of being watchable even in a bad script the way Johansson does.) I thought it was a crime how they wasted David Harbour, but Rachel Weisz's scenes with Johansson pretty much made up for everything.
Agree with the best overture of all time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRmCEGHt-Qk) on this topic. Black Window was oddly paced, the rest of the Widows outside the artificial nuclear family were nonentities, turning men into jokes or one dimensional villains ended up hurting the story, and they completely failed to exploit the looming knowledge of her fate for pathos, but there was a family dynamic and some emotional stakes. All Captain Marvel had was a really amazing skrull actor and easter eggs.
That reminds me:
A friend of ours saved money for a kind of festival and rented a hall owned by the Church of Scientology (he probably got it for free).
We had to sit through half an hour of Scientology propaganda films. Pretty awful.......but it was well made :D
For me, it's the same with woke stuff; there are degrees of course, but at a certain level there's no saving it.
Quote from: S'mon on January 25, 2022, 04:39:33 PM
Maybe it helped I watched a Sargon/Carl Benjamin video analysing the dialectic in the film. ;D
I'd be interested in seeing that if you happen to have the link handy.
Quote from: S'mon on January 25, 2022, 04:39:33 PMI thought that was all intentional and necessary to the narrative - her arc is realising she is being held down by the Patriarchy, and is already perfect in every way. She doesn't need anyone, including friends.
This is, I think, the biggest way in which Wokism drags down creative storytelling: the problem with Woke narratives is that all their stories follow the same pattern -- a protagonist from a disadvantaged minority group overcomes the institutional prejudice of the privileged majority through excellence, ideally deconstructing
en masse the majority's justification to claim that privilege in the process and helping to forever dissolve the structures maintaining it.
This does not have to make for a bad story in itself, but in Western pop culture the problem is that by now this dynamic is
old -- it's been seen so often that the attempt to keep it fresh, by perpetually finding smaller and more obscurely disadvantaged groups from which to draw the hero, is facing a steep curve of diminishing returns. (I firmly believe part of the reason
Agent Carter failed was because the writers couldn't figure out a way, in Steve Rogers' absence, to give Peggy a meaningful character arc of change and progression while still keeping this same plot dynamic at the heart of the story.)
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 25, 2022, 05:33:06 PM
Quote from: S'mon on January 25, 2022, 04:39:33 PMI thought that was all intentional and necessary to the narrative - her arc is realising she is being held down by the Patriarchy, and is already perfect in every way. She doesn't need anyone, including friends.
This is, I think, the biggest way in which Wokism drags down creative storytelling: the problem with Woke narratives is that all their stories follow the same pattern -- a protagonist from a disadvantaged minority group overcomes the institutional prejudice of the privileged majority through excellence, ideally deconstructing en masse the majority's justification to claim that privilege in the process and helping to forever dissolve the structures maintaining it.
This does not have to make for a bad story in itself, but in Western pop culture the problem is that by now this dynamic is old -- it's been seen so often that the attempt to keep it fresh, by perpetually finding smaller and more obscurely disadvantaged groups from which to draw the hero, is facing a steep curve of diminishing returns. (I firmly believe part of the reason Agent Carter failed was because the writers couldn't figure out a way, in Steve Rogers' absence, to give Peggy a meaningful character arc of change and progression while still keeping this same plot dynamic at the heart of the story.)
Worse, the story rings somewhat hollow in the U.S. as (a) Americans like underdog stories anyways, and (b) a core ideal is that striving to excel is rewarded. Exceptionalism is the term, I believe.
But wokeism actively denies exceptionalism because it clashes with its Marxist roots. So the stories become schizophrenic.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 25, 2022, 03:48:06 PM
Interestingly, my reaction was completely the other way around: Captain Marvel felt like the lazier film by far to me, where the absolute minimum effort necessary was invested at every step to create a product felt necessary by marketing perceptions rather than narrative relevance to the MCU's whole arc. (When your movie is never really clear on who your actual Big Bad is meant to be until the final ten minutes or so and the most important relationship the character has is with a friend she doesn't remember for most of the film, you're not getting anything like worthwhile catharsis out of your story.)
By contrast, Black Widow, while still feeling like a waste of potential (especially given its placement in Natasha's already established plot arc), felt much more like the writers and actors had thought seriously about the emotional dynamics of family vs. loyalty, and gone out of their way to create both internal and external conflicts.
I also liked Black Widow better. I thought the biggest problem with Black Widow was its timing as a prequel. It came out after the main character is killed in the main timeline, dealing with a much bigger-scale plot - which made it feel more like an afterthought. If it had been released before Infinity War and the villain had been integrated into the ongoing plot (as the finish to the Winter Soldier / Civil War plotline), then it could have felt much more emotionally impactful -- and made Natasha's death more poignant as well.
It's interesting to note that all of Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, and Wonder Woman: 1984 were prequels rather than advancing the plot in their respective universes. As a result, I think that made them seem less important.
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.
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.
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.
Quote from: jhkim on January 25, 2022, 07:48:37 PMAs 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.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 25, 2022, 09:35:41 PM
Quote from: jhkim on January 25, 2022, 07:48:37 PMAs 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.
Quote from: oggsmash on January 25, 2022, 08:06:20 PM
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.
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?
Quote from: Ratman_tf 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?
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.
Quote from: jhkim on January 25, 2022, 10:33:03 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on January 25, 2022, 08:06:20 PM
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.
Quote from: Pat on January 26, 2022, 12:36:40 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.
Quote from: Pat on January 26, 2022, 12:36:40 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.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 25, 2022, 08:26:20 PM
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.
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.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 25, 2022, 08:26:20 PM
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.
Quote from: Omega on January 26, 2022, 02:11:39 AM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 25, 2022, 08:26:20 PM
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.
Quote from: Ratman_tf 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?
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.
Quote from: Omega on January 26, 2022, 02:11:39 AM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 25, 2022, 08:26:20 PM
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.
Quote from: oggsmash on January 25, 2022, 08:06:20 PM
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).
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 25, 2022, 09:35:41 PMIf 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.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 26, 2022, 09:30:50 AM
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.
I've only ever seen 'growing up is a bad thing' in 20th century authors like CS Lewis and JM Barrie. I don't think that is a Fairy Tale trope at all. Traditional Fairy Tales are all "The world is a terrible place, kids - you better get ready for it!"
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.https://poets.org/poem/stolen-child - My dad loves that poem. There was a certain sort of mid 20th century post-Empire post-boarding school culture that really wanted to hide from the world.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 26, 2022, 11:44:19 AM
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.
I didn't see that in
Into the Spiderverse. Peter Parker is presented as highly competent. Miles Morales seems to struggle with the role thrust onto him. It didn't feel much like Luke and Rey to me.
I do agree that killing off the white male hero to make way for the Diverse new version is frequently a Woke trope, and I remember feeling iffy about the film pre-viewing for that reason. But the film lacked the hostility I associate with genuine Woke media.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 26, 2022, 03:02:48 AM
Quote from: Omega on January 26, 2022, 02:11:39 AM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 25, 2022, 08:26:20 PM
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.
Of course. Because for these nuts eventually everything they advocate or revile becomes "everything on earth".
Catching up with and/or ignoring most comments by answering the question in the subject.
Yes i think woke media is always dreary because they take things too seriously to have fun and to make things that are fun.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on January 26, 2022, 11:46:41 AMThe 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.
If the vast majority of the men they encountered were like Immortan Joe and his ilk, and I got the pretty clear impression that was the case, it's kinda hard to fault them for that.
Quote from: S'mon on January 26, 2022, 03:04:51 PMI've only ever seen 'growing up is a bad thing' in 20th century authors like CS Lewis and JM Barrie.
And even Lewis and Barrie didn't condemn growing up, they only condemned growing up the wrong way -- becoming fixated on a specific concept of "adulthood" and abandoning the dreams and enthusiasms of childhood that appear to interfere with that, even if they were the things that kept faith and joy alive.
Quote from: Pat on January 26, 2022, 12:36:40 AM
Quote from: jhkim on January 25, 2022, 10:33:03 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on January 25, 2022, 08:06:20 PM
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.
This was the feeling I was getting from the odd interpretation that a liberal concept/idea is some how automatically woke. I guess if I had grown up in what was essentially an echo chamber of uber liberal thinking, I would be inclined to be as jhkim, and assume the rest of country is a bunch of inbred red necks who can not wait to off some coloreds.
Quote from: oggsmash on January 26, 2022, 05:01:55 PM
This was the feeling I was getting from the odd interpretation that a liberal concept/idea is some how automatically woke. I guess if I had grown up in what was essentially an echo chamber of uber liberal thinking, I would be inclined to be as jhkim, and assume the rest of country is a bunch of inbred red necks who can not wait to off some coloreds.
So, hedgehobbit at least agrees with me that "Into the Spider-verse" and "Fury Road" are woke. Over on the main RPG forums, GeekyBugle expressed similar sentiments:
Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 25, 2022, 05:12:26 PM
As fot the Tom Holland movies: I fucking hate them, I'm done with the gender bending/race swaping, fuck them.
Into the Spiderverse, tokenized Spider-Man... Hard Pass.
While you may disagree with us, I don't think hedgehobbit and GeekyBugle are the products of liberal echo chambers. As for living in an echo chamber -- I've been an active member of this forum for over 15 years, and read plenty of conservative media, and engage with conservative family and acquaintances in other walks of life.
Are we at least agreed that Fury Road is feminist? That seems like a no-brainer to me. There's the old women that hedgehobbit notes, and the plot of rescuing an enslaved harem from a crazed dictator.
As for _Into the Spider-Verse_...
Quote from: S'mon on January 26, 2022, 02:01:05 AM
Quote from: Pat on January 26, 2022, 12:36:40 AM
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!'
Saying "woke is about hate" seems close to making the original question tautological -- i.e. if it isn't dreary and hateful, then by definition, it isn't Woke. For example, it seems common to call things "woke" if they're full of touchy-feely coming together of minority, female, and/or LGBT heroes with flowers and participation prizes. It doesn't require hate being shown to call such works "woke". Actually, that description reminds me of the Steven Universe series, which I would call woke.
A theme of "let's all work together, we're all equally valuable" isn't by definition woke - but combined with enough other markers, I think it does contribute to a feel. In "Into the Spider-Verse", Pat notes how there is a multicultural feel - but he calls it a "natural consequence" of the core plot. I see it as the other way around. Having a diverse cast of heroes and multicultural feel was a goal of the film-makers, and the universe-switching was a plot device picked to make that happen.
I think enough markers give a woke feel - like highlighting minority, female, and/or LGBT heroes; a traditional-seeming white male villain; pulling together a diverse community; etc.
Has anyone read the Spider-Gwen comic? I've only read a bit. While I'm not 100%, it seems like it is squarely in the genre of recent Marvel comics that many posters here have been complaining about.
Quote from: Ratman_tf 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.....
I agree with this. I actually enjoyed Fury Road though. The "wokeness" could go both ways. It also had hot girls hosing each other down, a naked woman being used as bait, and rape (ghasp) strongly implied. There's a reason why Anita Sarkeesian hated it.
The real reason why many woke people accepted and lauded it as a "woke" movie was really because some MRAs hated it, apparently. The narrative took off from there.
Quote from: jhkim on January 26, 2022, 05:32:55 PM
Quote from: oggsmash on January 26, 2022, 05:01:55 PM
This was the feeling I was getting from the odd interpretation that a liberal concept/idea is some how automatically woke. I guess if I had grown up in what was essentially an echo chamber of uber liberal thinking, I would be inclined to be as jhkim, and assume the rest of country is a bunch of inbred red necks who can not wait to off some coloreds.
So, hedgehobbit at least agrees with me that "Into the Spider-verse" and "Fury Road" are woke. Over on the main RPG forums, GeekyBugle expressed similar sentiments:
Quote from: GeekyBugle on January 25, 2022, 05:12:26 PM
As fot the Tom Holland movies: I fucking hate them, I'm done with the gender bending/race swaping, fuck them.
Into the Spiderverse, tokenized Spider-Man... Hard Pass.
While you may disagree with us, I don't think hedgehobbit and GeekyBugle are the products of liberal echo chambers. As for living in an echo chamber -- I've been an active member of this forum for over 15 years, and read plenty of conservative media, and engage with conservative family and acquaintances in other walks of life.
If you say so.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 26, 2022, 03:20:34 PM
Quote from: S'mon on January 26, 2022, 03:04:51 PMI've only ever seen 'growing up is a bad thing' in 20th century authors like CS Lewis and JM Barrie.
And even Lewis and Barrie didn't condemn growing up, they only condemned growing up the wrong way -- becoming fixated on a specific concept of "adulthood" and abandoning the dreams and enthusiasms of childhood that appear to interfere with that, even if they were the things that kept faith and joy alive.
Fair point!
Quote from: jhkim on January 26, 2022, 06:06:35 PM
Are we at least agreed that Fury Road is feminist? That seems like a no-brainer to me. There's the old women that hedgehobbit notes, and the plot of rescuing an enslaved harem from a crazed dictator.
As for _Into the Spider-Verse_...
Quote from: S'mon on January 26, 2022, 02:01:05 AM
Quote from: Pat on January 26, 2022, 12:36:40 AM
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!'
Saying "woke is about hate" seems close to making the original question tautological -- i.e. if it isn't dreary and hateful, then by definition, it isn't Woke. For example, it seems common to call things "woke" if they're full of touchy-feely coming together of minority, female, and/or LGBT heroes with flowers and participation prizes. It doesn't require hate being shown to call such works "woke". Actually, that description reminds me of the Steven Universe series, which I would call woke.
A theme of "let's all work together, we're all equally valuable" isn't by definition woke - but combined with enough other markers, I think it does contribute to a feel. In "Into the Spider-Verse", Pat notes how there is a multicultural feel - but he calls it a "natural consequence" of the core plot. I see it as the other way around. Having a diverse cast of heroes and multicultural feel was a goal of the film-makers, and the universe-switching was a plot device picked to make that happen.
I think enough markers give a woke feel - like highlighting minority, female, and/or LGBT heroes; a traditional-seeming white male villain; pulling together a diverse community; etc.
Has anyone read the Spider-Gwen comic? I've only read a bit. While I'm not 100%, it seems like it is squarely in the genre of recent Marvel comics that many posters here have been complaining about.
The originators of the term meant Woke as wakening up - being woke - to the 'realities' of systemic oppression. To be Woke you have to believe in race, gender, LGBT oppression by the straight white male Patriarchy. You can't just be a liberal, even a left-liberal.
Some people here call anything left-liberal Woke, just like some on the left call anything right-liberal Fascist or Alt-Right. So what?
Quote from: jhkim on January 26, 2022, 06:06:35 PM
Saying "woke is about hate" seems close to making the original question tautological -- i.e. if it isn't dreary and hateful, then by definition, it isn't Woke.
Why do you think hate is necessarily dreary? I thought Captain Marvel was full of hate (which is not what 'hateful' means, BTW) but not dreary, or at least much less dreary than I expected. Black Widow had a lot less generalised hate, while I found it a lot drearier. I guess my expectations were higher, though.
Leaving aside Wokery, plenty of films are full of hate but not dreary. Braveheart has a huge hate-on for the English, it's pretty entertaining IMO. Conan the Barbarian hates on hippies and implies it's a short step from flower power to Manson Family; it's one of my favourite films.
Quote from: Trond on January 26, 2022, 09:04:06 PM
Quote from: Ratman_tf 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.....
I agree with this. I actually enjoyed Fury Road though.
Oh, yeah. I thoroughly enjoyed it for what it was.
QuoteThe "wokeness" could go both ways. It also had hot girls hosing each other down, a naked woman being used as bait, and rape (ghasp) strongly implied. There's a reason why Anita Sarkeesian hated it.
The real reason why many woke people accepted and lauded it as a "woke" movie was really because some MRAs hated it, apparently. The narrative took off from there.
There's this bizzare "jockeying for position" moment in modern media where everyone starts picking a side when a movie comes out. Sometimes it's immediate like with Captain Marvel. I don't think Fury Road was intended as one thing or another. (Tough female character, damsels in distress, bad guys drinking milk forced out of women because post holocaust food supplies, Max helps women out because personal reasons) so people had to figure out which side of be on concerning whether the movie supported their particular -ism or not.
Quote from: jhkim on January 26, 2022, 06:06:35 PM
Are we at least agreed that Fury Road is feminist? That seems like a no-brainer to me. There's the old women that hedgehobbit notes, and the plot of rescuing an enslaved harem from a crazed dictator.
I don't think Fury Road was particuarly pro or anti feminist. I think it was a lot of-
With a seasoning of modern politics movie tropes that one can ignore or point at as they see fit.
(I did find the concept in the movie of young men being used by society as disposable cannon fodder to be a pretty MRA stance. Though I doubt the writers thought of it that way, since Max was portrayed as a good guy due to his value to the women in the film.)
Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 27, 2022, 05:37:57 PM
There's this bizzare "jockeying for position" moment in modern media where everyone starts picking a side when a movie comes out. Sometimes it's immediate like with Captain Marvel. I don't think Fury Road was intended as one thing or another. (Tough female character, damsels in distress, bad guys drinking milk forced out of women because post holocaust food supplies, Max helps women out because personal reasons) so people had to figure out which side of be on concerning whether the movie supported their particular -ism or not.
I think a lot of the Woke classification has nothing to do with the thing in question, and everything to do with the behavior of those involved. If you have a producer or an actor posting shit about the thing on Twitter that's so racist it would make a Klansman blush, it's probably going to be classified as Woke.
Quote from: S'mon on January 27, 2022, 04:35:42 PM
Quote from: jhkim on January 26, 2022, 06:06:35 PM
Saying "woke is about hate" seems close to making the original question tautological -- i.e. if it isn't dreary and hateful, then by definition, it isn't Woke.
Why do you think hate is necessarily dreary? I thought Captain Marvel was full of hate (which is not what 'hateful' means, BTW) but not dreary, or at least much less dreary than I expected. Black Widow had a lot less generalised hate, while I found it a lot drearier. I guess my expectations were higher, though.
Leaving aside Wokery, plenty of films are full of hate but not dreary. Braveheart has a huge hate-on for the English, it's pretty entertaining IMO. Conan the Barbarian hates on hippies and implies it's a short step from flower power to Manson Family; it's one of my favourite films.
OK, fair enough. I feel like the categories here are very subjective, but I guess that is inherent in the topic. As I said before, I thought of "woke" as something applied to stuff like touchy-feely snowflake participation prizes -- whereas you consider it to be specifically about hate.
Overall, I don't feel like I have a good grasp on what you consider to be woke. I mentioned Steven Universe before - that seems very woke to me, but not hate filled or dreary. On the other end, what do you think about black revenge films - like Django Unchained (2012) or the Birth of a Nation (2016)? Would you consider them to be woke and/or dreary?
Quote from: Pat on January 27, 2022, 06:12:37 PM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 27, 2022, 05:37:57 PM
There's this bizzare "jockeying for position" moment in modern media where everyone starts picking a side when a movie comes out. Sometimes it's immediate like with Captain Marvel. I don't think Fury Road was intended as one thing or another. (Tough female character, damsels in distress, bad guys drinking milk forced out of women because post holocaust food supplies, Max helps women out because personal reasons) so people had to figure out which side of be on concerning whether the movie supported their particular -ism or not.
I think a lot of the Woke classification has nothing to do with the thing in question, and everything to do with the behavior of those involved. If you have a producer or an actor posting shit about the thing on Twitter that's so racist it would make a Klansman blush, it's probably going to be classified as Woke.
I agree about the behavior, but I don't think it has nothing to do with the thing in question. There's the feminist trope in quite a few films where the woman is already extremely powerful, she's just held back by the oppressive mens in her life. Which isn't necessarily a bad story, except when the woman character is a bit (or a lot) of an asshole and is intended to be a hero.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 27, 2022, 07:38:40 PM
Quote from: Pat on January 27, 2022, 06:12:37 PM
Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 27, 2022, 05:37:57 PM
There's this bizzare "jockeying for position" moment in modern media where everyone starts picking a side when a movie comes out. Sometimes it's immediate like with Captain Marvel. I don't think Fury Road was intended as one thing or another. (Tough female character, damsels in distress, bad guys drinking milk forced out of women because post holocaust food supplies, Max helps women out because personal reasons) so people had to figure out which side of be on concerning whether the movie supported their particular -ism or not.
I think a lot of the Woke classification has nothing to do with the thing in question, and everything to do with the behavior of those involved. If you have a producer or an actor posting shit about the thing on Twitter that's so racist it would make a Klansman blush, it's probably going to be classified as Woke.
I agree about the behavior, but I don't think it has nothing to do with the thing in question. There's the feminist trope in quite a few films where the woman is already extremely powerful, she's just held back by the oppressive mens in her life. Which isn't necessarily a bad story, except when the woman character is a bit (or a lot) of an asshole and is intended to be a hero.
Yeah, but you can only remake "9-to-5" so many times before it gets stale.
Quote from: jhkim on January 27, 2022, 07:10:52 PM
Overall, I don't feel like I have a good grasp on what you consider to be woke. I mentioned Steven Universe before - that seems very woke to me, but not hate filled or dreary. On the other end, what do you think about black revenge films - like Django Unchained (2012) or the Birth of a Nation (2016)? Would you consider them to be woke and/or dreary?
I've not watched any of these, my understanding is that the latter two are certainly Woke. I guess Steven Universe is woke at least somewhat. But not having seen these I'm just guessing from what I've read.
Edit: I may have seen a tiny bit of Steven Universe. I seem to recall it employed Marxist-Feminist dialectic, which would make it gender-Woke. But my memory is prettty dim. I tend to avoid 'race-hate porn' so I didn't watch Get Out, Django, Machete, etc etc. Not that I believe Tarantino is genuinely Woke, he just loves pornographic violence/gore/torture and Woke gives him a great excuse to indulge.
Quote from: Pat on January 27, 2022, 06:12:37 PMIf you have a producer or an actor posting shit about the thing on Twitter that's so racist it would make a Klansman blush, it's probably going to be classified as Woke.
And the irony is that that usually worsens reactions, by priming people to look for messaging they might quite cheerfully not have noticed without it or even to infer a hostile message where it wasn't actually intended.
I personally think
Captain Marvel would still have struck me as a poorly written film whatever its hype said, but Brie Larson's rather vocal pro-feminist promotion sent me into the theatre braced for sucker punches rather than relaxed and willing to cut it slack.
Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 28, 2022, 01:42:15 AM
Quote from: Pat on January 27, 2022, 06:12:37 PMIf you have a producer or an actor posting shit about the thing on Twitter that's so racist it would make a Klansman blush, it's probably going to be classified as Woke.
And the irony is that that usually worsens reactions, by priming people to look for messaging they might quite cheerfully not have noticed without it or even to infer a hostile message where it wasn't actually intended.
I personally think Captain Marvel would still have struck me as a poorly written film whatever its hype said, but Brie Larson's rather vocal pro-feminist promotion sent me into the theatre braced for sucker punches rather than relaxed and willing to cut it slack.
While I didn't go to the theater, wouldn't even pirate it. The first because I won't give money to people that hate me and the latter because watching it isn't neccesary to understanding the Meh finalle of the MCU.