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I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

Other posts have hit elements of this, but part of the problem with trying to define terms for woke as a conservative critique is that it was appropriated by the right specifically to neutralize it as a meaningful concept, and the right does this by confusing and diluting the meaning. You can see this with a number of terms that gained currency over the last decade: social justice warrior, Karen, grooming, crt. The right is very good at detecting messaging or ideas that could threaten them, and they have a habit of turning language against their imagined enemies by aggressively adopting the same language in contradictory or inconsistent ways.

Karen becomes a synonym for bitch and then they call a woman a Karen for protesting police murders, and woke becomes a synonym for anything that feels wrong to the viewer, and now nobody can use those words in their original sense because they have lost any clear meaning through deliberate overuse.

I remember seeing some twitter freak posting about how he was going to misuse crt so aggressively that the very words would become radioactive and people would become averse to using them because of the association. I don’t know the degree to which it is a conscious strategy vs the degree that reactionaries have a fixation on messaging and emotion and just lash out at what doesn’t feel good with what amounts to name-calling.

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Spermando
Jun 13, 2009

Timeless Appeal posted:

This isn't what you're arguing though. I know people who only want to watch stuff by Black creators. I don't necessarily relate to or get that, but it's also valid and that's not the same as them being tricked by companies performing three dimensional chess to create controversies so they become defenders of stuff they wouldn't otherwise like. And if more characters of color are included in films or more Black creators get a voice to woo viewers like them, then well... good?
We've seen two extremely similar examples in the past three months of how easy it is to start something like this, just post a 30-second video with the actor in a truck with sunglasses, wait for two hours, and everything from AVclub to major outlets will have hit pieces on toxic fans. Even people who would normally not watch your show will now attack its critics for free in Resetera or what have you.
That brings me to another somewhat related point which is creators that want to score points with that crowd even though their work is still a power fantasy for the other side, which is what happened with The Boys a few weeks ago. That was as if the director of God of War 2 came out and said "no, you guys are missing the point, you're not supposed to like Kratos; we're making GOW3 extra violent and broad so that you'll hopefully get the point."

quote:

The rest of your argument brings us back to the underlying issues that once you start seeing inclusion as a corporate conspiracy theory, it gives you permission to write off any inclusion you want. Even when the actual evidence is that what you're seeing is creatives fighting to get as much inclusion of queer affection as possible past corporate censorship, and literally the exact opposite of what you're suggesting is true.

This is no way undermines my claim that the corporation gets to score points with the general or more influenceable sectors while at the same time acting very hyprocritically towards those minorities.

Spermando fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Sep 24, 2022

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Spermando posted:

They do exist--Youtube is filled with channels like these and they seem to be pretty successful. One one hand you have neckbeards who encourage boycotting films they haven't seen based on who they cast and on the other you have completely acritical channels where people readily defend the worst corporate drivel based on said casting choices or shallow messaging while strawmanning any critics as white supremacists or mysoginists. All while said corporation edits out those scenes for China and Russia or erases black people from posters. Call me cynical, but I don't believe for one second that the scene in Onward with the cop, who's on screen for 30 seconds, saying she has a girlfriend had any other reason for being there other than as bait for that kind of controversies.
In The Northman thread in this subforum someone posted they were disappointed in the film and their main beef seemed to be there weren't any non-whites. People like that do exist.

These people are an absolutely tiny if very loud minority of extremely online weirdos that no one listens to. There's definitely a lot of extremely quarter-assed tokenism in Hollywood whenever they can think they can get away with it, and attempts to forment a 'backlash' for clickbait, but the cancel culture brigade is an extremely overblown hurricane in a teacup that's actively promoted and invented by the right desperate for a strawman they can use. They exist, but they aren't even half as prominent as they used to be- that whole school of scolding liberal cultural criticism pretty much melted down overnight around when Trump was elected, and has become a complete relic in an era where people are starting to acknowledge class issues too.

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

I am reminded of a recent conversation I had with a mid-70s male relative I hadn’t seen in probably five years. He ran through right-wing talking points about stupid poo poo and specifically mentioned being angry that the M&Ms mascots had been made less sexy. Then he pivoted seamlessly into complaining about how the California Raisins had been taken off the market in the 90s because people were offended at them being black stereotypes.

It made me wonder how long this reactionary media poo poo has been proliferating, and how it got out into the world 30 years ago. Talk radio? Tv? So much of our current culture war was given form in the early 1990s. I wonder if future historians will identify the start of wherever we are now and where we’re going as the Bush/Clinton transition era.

Das Boo
Jun 9, 2011

There was a GHOST here.
It's gone now.
I can't imagine making Le Fou (The Fool, mind you) "gay" in B&tB was done in an earnest bid for LGBTQ+ representation. There sure we're a lot of articles about it, though!

Feldegast42
Oct 29, 2011

COMMENCE THE RITE OF SHITPOSTING

I AM GRANDO posted:

I am reminded of a recent conversation I had with a mid-70s male relative I hadn’t seen in probably five years. He ran through right-wing talking points about stupid poo poo and specifically mentioned being angry that the M&Ms mascots had been made less sexy. Then he pivoted seamlessly into complaining about how the California Raisins had been taken off the market in the 90s because people were offended at them being black stereotypes.

It made me wonder how long this reactionary media poo poo has been proliferating, and how it got out into the world 30 years ago. Talk radio? Tv? So much of our current culture war was given form in the early 1990s. I wonder if future historians will identify the start of wherever we are now and where we’re going as the Bush/Clinton transition era.

Jeez, talk about old school. Even the sexy M&M thing was at least a decade ago. These folks never loving forget or forgive or move on.

Zogo
Jul 29, 2003

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Basically, there was so much poo poo going against it that no group was going to "defend" it against their "enemies". If there were two poles surrounding the movie, it was Disney vs. several different groups that would usually be at each other's throats.

Ender's Game comes to mind in that regard. Progressives were angry at Orson Scott Card for many of his viewpoints while regressives were angry and/or surprised upon seeing the multiracial/multicultural cast.

I AM GRANDO posted:

It made me wonder how long this reactionary media poo poo has been proliferating, and how it got out into the world 30 years ago. Talk radio? Tv? So much of our current culture war was given form in the early 1990s. I wonder if future historians will identify the start of wherever we are now and where we’re going as the Bush/Clinton transition era.

Yes, it used to be AM radio but before that it was periodicals. Rebranding has always been a thing. Lots of people were angry with Teresa Heinz (wife of John Kerry) in 2004 so W Ketchup was created http://www.wketchup.com/ketchup/order.html so that the US would win the Iraq war IIRC.

Going back much earlier there was a popular brand of potato chips named "Mrs. Japp's" but after the Japanese attacked in 1941 that name was dropped and changed to "Jays."

happyhippy
Feb 21, 2005

Playing games, watching movies, owning goons. 'sup
Pillbug

Feldegast42 posted:

Jeez, talk about old school. Even the sexy M&M thing was at least a decade ago. These folks never loving forget or forgive or move on.

There was a newer one a few months ago, they changed the shoes on the green M&M from stilettos to sneakers I think.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

by Fluffdaddy

happyhippy posted:

There was a newer one a few months ago, they changed the shoes on the green M&M from stilettos to sneakers I think.

Tucker Carlson, unsurprisingly, was extremely mad about it .

Xealot
Nov 25, 2002

Showdown in the Galaxy Era.

I mean if it’s politically incorrect to want to gently caress candy, are we even America anymore?

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

Das Boo posted:

I can't imagine making Le Fou (The Fool, mind you) "gay" in B&tB was done in an earnest bid for LGBTQ+ representation. There sure we're a lot of articles about it, though!
And yet it was earnest, a decision that was rooted in collaboration between Gad and the director. Doesn't make it a great decision--the redemption of the townsfolk in general undermines the edge of the original--and Disney absolutely did try to capitalize on something minor while simultaneously tamping down attempts at more broad queerness. But just like that, every attempt at queer affection in Pixar, the queer coding in Captain Marvel, Loki being pansexual, in all of these examples it is creators pushing against the company for something, not the company cynically designing their big queer moment regardless if the company decides to try to capitalize on it later.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




I think the M&M controversy is an argument against corporations manufacturing controversy. It's impossible to predict what right wingers will be upset about, like i'm pretty sure no one knew that they secretly wanted to gently caress a piece of candy.

BioEnchanted
Aug 9, 2011

He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.

Timeless Appeal posted:

And yet it was earnest, a decision that was rooted in collaboration between Gad and the director. Doesn't make it a great decision--the redemption of the townsfolk in general undermines the edge of the original--and Disney absolutely did try to capitalize on something minor while simultaneously tamping down attempts at more broad queerness. But just like that, every attempt at queer affection in Pixar, the queer coding in Captain Marvel, Loki being pansexual, in all of these examples it is creators pushing against the company for something, not the company cynically designing their big queer moment regardless if the company decides to try to capitalize on it later.

Both movies kind of cheap out at the end with that because the Townspeople never have to deal with the whole angry mob thing, as the original movie kind of writes them out after the foyer battle. I kind of want to see a sequel story where Belle's just being really snippy with them a couple of years later and they can't say anything back because they know that she's right to be really angry with them. She now only goes into town for necessities, doesn't talk to anyone, and her and her father have joined the former-Beast/Adam just hanging out at the castle, entertaining the few friends that DIDN'T try to kill them.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

BioEnchanted posted:

Both movies kind of cheap out at the end with that because the Townspeople never have to deal with the whole angry mob thing, as the original movie kind of writes them out after the foyer battle. I kind of want to see a sequel story where Belle's just being really snippy with them a couple of years later and they can't say anything back because they know that she's right to be really angry with them. She now only goes into town for necessities, doesn't talk to anyone, and her and her father have joined the former-Beast/Adam just hanging out at the castle, entertaining the few friends that DIDN'T try to kill them.
I mean with the original, the townspeople genuinely are just genuinely terrible people who Belle is right to abandon. Beyond becoming an angry mob who sing that they're going to kill the Beast because they don't like what they don't understand, they're pretty complicit with Gaston's evil plan. The original also operates on a fairy tale logic where the logistics of nobody remembering Prince Adam doesn't really matter and in the end, him and Belle just hang out with other nebulous fairy tale royalty and it's fine because it's a children's story/gay allegory.

The remake gets so caught up in trying to make logical sense of the story they end up just over complicating things with the townspeople being cast as amnesiacs who all had interpersonal relationships with the denizens of the castle. It ends up humanizing characters who literally sing :

quote:

We don't like what we don't...
understand and in fact it scares us,
and this monster is mysterious at least.

[...]

here we come we're fifty strong.
And fifty frenchmen can't be wrong,
let's kill the beast!

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

Belle gets to rule over the peasants as her very own Lady Bathroy if she wants at the end. They’re at her total mercy. At least until 1789.

YaketySass
Jan 15, 2019

Blind Idiot Dog
B&tB is an introvert power fantasy of rising above the dumb normies

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

I think it’s a marriage manual for girls to teach them that it’s easier to get along with your abusive husband you can never escape if you’re pleasant to him and try to get along. The original children’s story, anyway.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

I AM GRANDO posted:

I think it’s a marriage manual for girls to teach them that it’s easier to get along with your abusive husband you can never escape if you’re pleasant to him and try to get along. The original children’s story, anyway.
Relevant to this thread, but I actually do enjoy Lindsay Ellis's piece on 2000s era critiques of Little Mermaid and the Beauty and the Beast in this vein not really connecting with what actually happens in the movies (Example: Belle doesn't really try to be pleasant to the Beast in order to appease him) and how it leads to try to blame sexism on poo poo little girls like instead of the systems of power that actually oppress them.

BioEnchanted
Aug 9, 2011

He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.

Timeless Appeal posted:

Relevant to this thread, but I actually do enjoy Lindsay Ellis's piece on 2000s era critiques of Little Mermaid and the Beauty and the Beast in this vein not really connecting with what actually happens in the movies (Example: Belle doesn't really try to be pleasant to the Beast in order to appease him) and how it leads to try to blame sexism on poo poo little girls like instead of the systems of power that actually oppress them.

Yeah, Ariel's infatuation with the human world starts way before she starts getting hot for Eric, and clearly extends beyond him. He starts becoming genuinely attracted to her even when voiceless because of her boundless enthusiasm for trying new things. Focusing on Eric is what Ursula does to try to manipulate the situation. It was never about Eric.

Disco Pope
Dec 6, 2004

Top Class!
One thing that I think is understated in the current understanding of "wokism" is that the idea of who's out there with big censor stamp has changed a lot over time. Stereotypes of joyless feminists have existed since the 70s and kind of uneasily merged with the religious right in the 80s. The religious right got a lot of backlash and parody and became a bit of a stock figure of fun for gen x, but the idea of the pearl clutching church mouse seems to have died out completely and been supplanted completely by purple-hair-septum-piercing girl. If anything, as someone approaching my 40s with friends in that age group, I run into this weird reflexive/defensive urge to defend free expression and the right to offend from otherwise left-leaning people who still seem to think someone is coming for their Evil Dead VHS tapes or GWAR records, or even their Grand Theft Auto games (how odd it's the nu-right who are mad about a female player character!)

I think there's also a clear streak of misogyny that runs through all these stereotypes that it's real easy to get Freudian about, though.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
What might be called the Tipper Gore alliance of pearl-clutching liberals with the moralising right is something that's had a lasting legacy. Remember Hillary Clinton teaming up with Jack Thompson? Unfortunately the idea of ignorant and hysterical critics demanding ham-fisted censorship of media based on mostly imagined unjustifiable violence and depravity is still fresh in the minds of a lot of nerds, and there's still a sliver of truth to it.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

When I want to relax, I read an essay by Engels. When I want something more serious, I read Corto Maltese.

Disco Pope posted:

One thing that I think is understated in the current understanding of "wokism" is that the idea of who's out there with big censor stamp has changed a lot over time. Stereotypes of joyless feminists have existed since the 70s and kind of uneasily merged with the religious right in the 80s. The religious right got a lot of backlash and parody and became a bit of a stock figure of fun for gen x, but the idea of the pearl clutching church mouse seems to have died out completely and been supplanted completely by purple-hair-septum-piercing girl. If anything, as someone approaching my 40s with friends in that age group, I run into this weird reflexive/defensive urge to defend free expression and the right to offend from otherwise left-leaning people who still seem to think someone is coming for their Evil Dead VHS tapes or GWAR records, or even their Grand Theft Auto games (how odd it's the nu-right who are mad about a female player character!)

I think there's also a clear streak of misogyny that runs through all these stereotypes that it's real easy to get Freudian about, though.

Not that I disagree with you entirely, but I wouldn't say it's a 1:1 supplanting, at least as I've seen it. To be sure, there are the nutters who say it's the rainbow-haired feminists who try and get things censored, but they also accuse the same group of championing causes that should be censored as a threat to... I dunno, traditional values.

I don't remember (although, I have to admit, there's a good chance I didn't see it when I was younger) the latter accusation or an equivalent to it being attributed to the pearl-clutchers.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink

Ghost Leviathan posted:

What might be called the Tipper Gore alliance of pearl-clutching liberals with the moralising right is something that's had a lasting legacy. Remember Hillary Clinton teaming up with Jack Thompson? Unfortunately the idea of ignorant and hysterical critics demanding ham-fisted censorship of media based on mostly imagined unjustifiable violence and depravity is still fresh in the minds of a lot of nerds, and there's still a sliver of truth to it.

I think there's more than a sliver of truth, it's just the targets have changed. (And so older nerds with older nerd interests (ie: us folks) are largely off the hook.)

Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons, and Grand Theft Auto are safe but media aimed at the YA audience — especially novels and cartoons, and especially especially when it features queer/feminist/"woke" themes — is a loving minefield. This goes hand-in-hand with a sentiment in these circles that liking the wrong books/movies/games/whatever is evidence against a person's moral character.


(Max Graves is the artist/author of What Happens Next)

A lot of this is aided by a youth culture that feels a strong need to self-police. A critic isn't going to convince anyone to censor something simply for having queer characters, but if they can make the argument that those characters are bad representation...

Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Sep 27, 2022

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

Disco Pope posted:

I think there's also a clear streak of misogyny that runs through all these stereotypes that it's real easy to get Freudian about, though.

Definitely.

Zogo
Jul 29, 2003

Wokeness continues to evolve.

Beyond Meat, other plant-based brands struggle due to ‘woke’ image, steep prices: analysts
https://nypost.com/2022/09/26/beyond-meat-impossible-struggle-due-to-woke-perception-analysts/

It appears the meat as awoken.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

What might be called the Tipper Gore alliance of pearl-clutching liberals with the moralising right is something that's had a lasting legacy. Remember Hillary Clinton teaming up with Jack Thompson? Unfortunately the idea of ignorant and hysterical critics demanding ham-fisted censorship of media based on mostly imagined unjustifiable violence and depravity is still fresh in the minds of a lot of nerds, and there's still a sliver of truth to it.

Yes, there's another parallel with conspiratorial rightists. Many of the planks and tenets of QAnon feel like fantastical regurgitations of the outcry over heavy metal CDs, PMRC* and the satanic panic of the 1980s. Judas Priest was put on trial and Rob Halford literally had to sing for his freedom.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

Schwarzwald posted:

I think there's more than a sliver of truth, it's just the targets have changed. (And so older nerds with older nerd interests (ie: us folks) are largely off the hook.)

Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons, and Grand Theft Auto are safe but media aimed at the YA audience — especially novels and cartoons, and especially especially when it features queer/feminist/"woke" themes — is a loving minefield. This goes hand-in-hand with a sentiment in these circles that liking the wrong books/movies/games/whatever is evidence against a person's moral character.


(Max Graves is the artist/author of What Happens Next)

A lot of this is aided by a youth culture that feels a strong need to self-police. A critic isn't going to convince anyone to censor something simply for having queer characters, but if they can make the argument that those characters are bad representation...

There’s also that bizarre dynamic with the right where reactionaries claim that the censorious left wants to meddle with your life while the right gives you license to have fun and say swears, even as they’re palling around with nazis and banning abortion.

I don’t think the left has ever truly been “censorious” so much as certain silly things get isolated, circulated, and identified as characteristic of the left because it serves the status quo to make left ideas as ridiculous as possible and indeed synonymous with ridiculous ideas.

Like so much else, I want to claim it was set by the 80s/90s post-cold war consensus and how everything shifted so far to the right. The reactionary media machine in its current form really dates from that time, which is what gives the right freedom to set the terms on which the left and politics generally are understood.

King Vidiot
Feb 17, 2007

You think you can take me at Satan's Hollow? Go 'head on!

I AM GRANDO posted:

There’s also that bizarre dynamic with the right where reactionaries claim that the censorious left wants to meddle with your life while the right gives you license to have fun and say swears, even as they’re palling around with nazis and banning abortion.

Not even that, you have little nasally nerds like Ben Shapiro having (fake) conniption fits over the lyrics to WAP. If anybody can watch Benny Shaps have a meltdown over women talking explicitly about their pussies and still think that the right are the Cool, Fun-having Swear Gang... well they're a loving idiot.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Schwarzwald posted:

I think there's more than a sliver of truth, it's just the targets have changed. (And so older nerds with older nerd interests (ie: us folks) are largely off the hook.)

Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons, and Grand Theft Auto are safe but media aimed at the YA audience — especially novels and cartoons, and especially especially when it features queer/feminist/"woke" themes — is a loving minefield. This goes hand-in-hand with a sentiment in these circles that liking the wrong books/movies/games/whatever is evidence against a person's moral character.


(Max Graves is the artist/author of What Happens Next)

A lot of this is aided by a youth culture that feels a strong need to self-police. A critic isn't going to convince anyone to censor something simply for having queer characters, but if they can make the argument that those characters are bad representation...

Since 2016 pretty much obliterated whatever credibility and institutional support that strain of post-tumblr bougie liberal ever had and the actual left started making a comeback, it's more that the remaining think-of-the-children liberals retreated into that particular space to more or less entirely target each other and engage in something between a circular firing squad and knife fight in a phone booth. I still remember the quote from someone who got out of that; "I've never seen social dynamics this hosed up, and I've been in prison."

That or they went and became TERFs, where pretty much all the gender essentialist 'feminists' end up.

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Spermando posted:

They do exist--Youtube is filled with channels like these and they seem to be pretty successful. One one hand you have neckbeards who encourage boycotting films they haven't seen based on who they cast and on the other you have completely acritical channels where people readily defend the worst corporate drivel based on said casting choices or shallow messaging while strawmanning any critics as white supremacists or mysoginists. All while said corporation edits out those scenes for China and Russia or erases black people from posters. Call me cynical, but I don't believe for one second that the scene in Onward with the cop, who's on screen for 30 seconds, saying she has a girlfriend had any other reason for being there other than as bait for that kind of controversies.

"They're putting inclusivity in the movie just to rile people up" doesn't work if those people aren't riled up, which they are, by literally anything. You seem to be saying that people doing things to rile up racists is the problem, not that racists existing is.

quote:

In The Northman thread in this subforum someone posted they were disappointed in the film and their main beef seemed to be there weren't any non-whites. People like that do exist.

There not being any non-whites in that movie is a valid criticism.

Spermando posted:

We've seen two extremely similar examples in the past three months of how easy it is to start something like this, just post a 30-second video with the actor in a truck with sunglasses, wait for two hours, and everything from AVclub to major outlets will have hit pieces on toxic fans. Even people who would normally not watch your show will now attack its critics for free in Resetera or what have you.

Are you implying that toxic fanbases are some sort of astroturf? Because, LOL, no, they exist and they're pretty prevalent. People are just mad that they're getting called out

quote:

That brings me to another somewhat related point which is creators that want to score points with that crowd even though their work is still a power fantasy for the other side, which is what happened with The Boys a few weeks ago. That was as if the director of God of War 2 came out and said "no, you guys are missing the point, you're not supposed to like Kratos; we're making GOW3 extra violent and broad so that you'll hopefully get the point."

LOL the entire subtext of the character isn't "scoring points". It's just fascists not recognizing that fascism is bad.

Like, to this day people think that Walter White is the hero and that Skyler was a joyless bitch, despite, them going out of their way to point out, from some of the first episodes of the series, that WW was the villain.

quote:

This is no way undermines my claim that the corporation gets to score points with the general or more influenceable sectors while at the same time acting very hyprocritically towards those minorities.

Your other points massively undermine your claim to care about that because, like most other people I've encountered pushing back on criticism of toxic fanbases, you only bring that point to balance out your other terrible points.

You don't go into any sort of depth.

If I was seeing you also talk about, say, colorism in Bridgerton, maybe, but what I'm seeing you do is complaining that the openly fascist main character in the boys was correctly identified as fascist by the person who created him.

Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Sep 29, 2022

Hand Knit
Oct 24, 2005

Beer Loses more than a game Sunday ...
We lost our Captain, our Teammate, our Friend Kelly Calabro...
Rest in Peace my friend you will be greatly missed..

I AM GRANDO posted:

There’s also that bizarre dynamic with the right where reactionaries claim that the censorious left wants to meddle with your life while the right gives you license to have fun and say swears, even as they’re palling around with nazis and banning abortion.

I don’t think the left has ever truly been “censorious” so much as certain silly things get isolated, circulated, and identified as characteristic of the left because it serves the status quo to make left ideas as ridiculous as possible and indeed synonymous with ridiculous ideas.

It makes more sense if you think of there as being a kind of natural order of things you're supposed to be allowed to say, and things you're not. Intervening to stop things you're supposed to be allowed to say is violating free speech. Intervening to stop things that you're not supposed to be allow to say isn't really an intervention at all. (In fact, saying things you're not allowed to say is a violation of free speech if you're really committed to this line.) What makes the left "censorious" in this way, then, isn't that they stop people from speaking in general but that they specifically stop things that people should be allowed to say.

Then you take this and staple it to the regular culture war dynamic where reactionaries invest mundane everyday objects or occurrences with existential stakes, so as to try and create an alliance between normal people (who otherwise would have little to nothing in common with insane Rufo-style reactionaries) and insane reactionaries.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

Hand Knit posted:

It makes more sense if you think of there as being a kind of natural order of things you're supposed to be allowed to say, and things you're not. Intervening to stop things you're supposed to be allowed to say is violating free speech. Intervening to stop things that you're not supposed to be allow to say isn't really an intervention at all. (In fact, saying things you're not allowed to say is a violation of free speech if you're really committed to this line.) What makes the left "censorious" in this way, then, isn't that they stop people from speaking in general but that they specifically stop things that people should be allowed to say.

Then you take this and staple it to the regular culture war dynamic where reactionaries invest mundane everyday objects or occurrences with existential stakes, so as to try and create an alliance between normal people (who otherwise would have little to nothing in common with insane Rufo-style reactionaries) and insane reactionaries.
This is really the premise of the intellectual darkweb altogether

The poor are poor because they're lazy
Women don't belong in the workforce
Rape culture doesn't exist
Some people are genetically inferior by race
Trans people are mentally ill

For the intellectual darkweb and their acolytes, these ideas are just common sense. They're not things they discover by inquiry although they like to cosplay as smart people. They're just ugly bigotries that these people assume that everyone really thinks and is just too scared to say. It doesn't matter that all of these ideas sort of fall apart at different levels of actual inquiry (And like... not much inquiry for most of this), they have convinced themselves that their beliefs are as simple as 2+2=4 and any challenge to them is authoritarian insanity.

That's how you get Jordan Peterson crying on television about Olivia Wilde being mean to him and incels because--a minor Canadian professor who because famous for sexually harassing a trans student--he thought the marginalized were supposed to have a voice.

KVeezy3
Aug 18, 2005

Airport Music for Black Folk

Jaxyon posted:

There not being any non-whites in that movie is a valid criticism.

No, that's a complaint. What's the valid criticism?

Madkal
Feb 11, 2008

Fallen Rib
Speaking of a movie being "woke" my buddies and I just watched First Blood and I was wondering if it came out today would people on the right be calling it "woke"? It's anti-cop, anti-military and I know people think of Rambo from the sequels where Rambo is an action hero all American Patriot but in the first he is a very damaged person.

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

KVeezy3 posted:

No, that's a complaint. What's the valid criticism?

It's both.

Why does the entire cast need to be white?

Zogo
Jul 29, 2003

Madkal posted:

Speaking of a movie being "woke" my buddies and I just watched First Blood and I was wondering if it came out today would people on the right be calling it "woke"? It's anti-cop, anti-military and I know people think of Rambo from the sequels where Rambo is an action hero all American Patriot but in the first he is a very damaged person.

Some would but it'd be a divisive entry that'd fluctuate based on the political climate. If the viewer can label the characters as D cops and D military operatives and D government agents then it can safely avoid the woke label. However, if viewed broadly then the military, government and police are all at odds and have one of those ideological circular firing squads going. It's the same dynamic going on when many vacillate year to year on how they view government agencies etc.

It's a good example of a film that still confounds most today. It subverts expectations across the board (not just for rightists). Rambo's evolution in later films into this and this washes away a lot of the confusion. He's been rehabilitated. All's well that ends well.

PS If you ask some Vietnam veterans today they're still conflicted on Jane Fonda and her viewpoints. Many veterans view The Green Berets (1968) as the most authentic film on the war.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Rambo's a literal Mortal Kombat character now.

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Jaxyon posted:

It's both.

Why does the entire cast need to be white?
Isn't the movie set in like the whitest part of the world? The vikings interacted with the broader world, but basically no one from the broader world would want to go there because it was like the periphery of the periphery. Not being diverse is kind of part of the setting, indicating a society somewhat divorced from the developments of the wider world.

It's not really different from a movie set in other isolated parts of the world being cast with actors visually congruent with the societies portrayed.

Mr. Grapes!
Feb 12, 2007
Mr. who?

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Isn't the movie set in like the whitest part of the world? The vikings interacted with the broader world, but basically no one from the broader world would want to go there because it was like the periphery of the periphery. Not being diverse is kind of part of the setting, indicating a society somewhat divorced from the developments of the wider world.

It's not really different from a movie set in other isolated parts of the world being cast with actors visually congruent with the societies portrayed.

Maybe it makes me racist but yes it would have been kind of jarring to me to have some black dudes just growing crops in the rear end end of Iceland.

I understand some old timey style movies whitewash history, in that yes there would have been Black/Arab traders, travelers, merchants, mercenaries etc hanging about towns, but isolated farming villages are isolated - they don't have much diversity because there often isn't a real lucrative reason for some dude from Baghdad to end up there. A movie set in Renaissance Italy absolutely should have loads of non-white folks around because the Mediterranean was deeply connected to the wider world.

I would find it jarring to have random white guys just tilling farms in a movie set in ancient China as well. I'm sure there were some, somewhere, but that would be in places that saw lots of trade, travel, and warfare.

I do think it is a little odd when movies are trying to portray an area as backwards and isolated but everyone is a complete mishmash of ethnicities - because in that case the casting is going against the themes of the film. If the film is trying to show "This place is poor, remote, hostile, and isolated" then you probably shouldn't make it visually evident that people move there from very far away quite routinely.

Ultimately, I don't really care, in that I'll still watch things regardless of casting, but it sometimes irks me and it would irk me the same to have random white guys rolling around Qin Dynasty China with no one remarking on their strangeness.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




A Buttery Pastry posted:

Isn't the movie set in like the whitest part of the world? The vikings interacted with the broader world, but basically no one from the broader world would want to go there because it was like the periphery of the periphery. Not being diverse is kind of part of the setting, indicating a society somewhat divorced from the developments of the wider world.

It's not really different from a movie set in other isolated parts of the world being cast with actors visually congruent with the societies portrayed.

The Great has a diverse cast even though it's set in Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great. It works.

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A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Alhazred posted:

The Great has a diverse cast even though it's set in Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great. It works.
I think that's a pretty bad example, given that the imperial court in Russia had already had African members in the court before she was even born. This is really what I am trying to get at, that casting can tell you a lot about the setting of the story - and perhaps even a little about history if you're talking historical dramas. I'd argue that just ignoring history all together to make a "suitably diverse cast" in places where it doesn't make sense, can actually serve to undermine the actual telling of real history. You yourself seem to present it as a counter-example, like the Russian court was this lily-white thing, when (black) Africans and their descendants were already cementing their intellectual influence on fledgling European nation states before America went independent - never mind had its civil war.

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