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Hand Knit posted:I mean, while words change meaning all the time, I think we can at least distinguish between "woke" as it was used for decades, and "woke" as this new pejorative. I think the newness of the pejorative sense of "woke" also means that the way it's used is in flux and its meaning is pretty sloppy. But there tend to be a few regularities: Wokeness can’t be properly understood outside the context of the collapse of U.S. radical black leftism and the subsequent dawn of neo-liberal hegemony. In turn, its expression of black oppression is unable to address capitalism’s innate production of surplus populations, and it is this gap that opens up the space for it to be co-opted by the ruling class. The emancipatory potential of Frantz Fanon’s conception of recognition through the relations of others is replaced with the call for recognition by the "Big Other". To speak of surface level feminism belies that the category of woman contains heterogeneous multitudes. Is a woman who's against feminism less of a woman? Is a black capitalist less black? So, without a specific articulation of economics/class, how does one render the experience of the woman in the “Humans of the CIA” video invalid? We invariably end up in a circular questioning of authenticity, which smothers the political dimension. To get back to film, this gets to why calling the Black Panther movie an op is insufficient — because the far more likely and scarier thing is that it isn’t an op at all. Wokeness is simply a bad interpretative frame as it’s fixated on the intent of the Author-God, and as such any position one takes is centered on authenticity, which prevents critical engagement with the actual work. But since I’m a very bad poster, I propose the following films to be added to the “Woke Cinema” canon: Dear White People (2014) Queen & Slim (2019) KVeezy3 fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 16:57
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KVeezy3 posted:But since I'm a very bad poster, I propose the following films to be added to the “Woke Cinema” canon: How do you relate Sorry to Bother You to these frameworks? I've thought of Boots Riley as a pretty solidly Black Leftist voice of the current era, explicitly interested in racism as it exists under neoliberal capitalism, and willing to engage with these kinds of intersectional questions. "Is a Black capitalist less Black," etc.
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Aug 19, 2022 02:08
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KVeezy3 posted:Wokeness can’t be properly understood outside the context of the collapse of U.S. radical black leftism and the subsequent dawn of neo-liberal hegemony. In turn, its expression of black oppression is unable to address capitalism’s innate production of surplus populations, and it is this gap that opens up the space for it to be co-opted by the ruling class. The emancipatory potential of Frantz Fanon’s conception of recognition through the relations of others is replaced with the call for recognition by the "Big Other".
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Aug 19, 2022 03:23
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Timeless Appeal posted:I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but you're also able to express all of these ideas without actually using the word "woke." I genuinely don't understand what the point of appropriating a term that outside of cinema is also used to slam actual good policies. Because conservatives appropriated it first. It was formerly used to describe anyone who was aware of systemic injustice, one of the first mainstream usages of the word was in Childish Gambino's "Redbone."
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Aug 19, 2022 07:21
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One big irony here is that there are a subset of reactionaries that make money complaining about the existence of woke movies. Like if they got their monkey paw wish then they themselves would be out of a job, having neither the creative chops to create the drek they want nor anything of value to say about the content that exists because they run out of controversy. The more woke movies, the more they have to complain. Which also means they need to be popular enough to monetize their manufactured controversies yet not influential enough to change anything.
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Aug 19, 2022 11:57
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Pirate Jet posted:Because conservatives appropriated it first. It was formerly used to describe anyone who was aware of systemic injustice, one of the first mainstream usages of the word was in Childish Gambino's "Redbone." It was used in music and writing on and off from like the 30s to the 2000s before him. Erikyah Badu definitely beat him on the musical end for relatively contemporary usage, and hers is more about the major usage at the time as opposed to talking about cheating. "Woke" was basically a response to black people saying to wake up to racial injustice towards them. "Wake up!" is the call, "I'm woke" is the response. Or it was used out of tense in AAVE. BLM protests evolved it with that tense usage, it got passed on social media, the Right picked it up and co-opted finally after 80 years of usage and we are where we are now. I mean, in a horrible twist of irony, the mainstream coinage of the word was attributed to a NYT article that was specifically about white people appropriating black things. https://www.publicbooks.org/if-youre-woke-you-dig-it-william-melvin-kelley/ Black people have already gone through their own mocking and pushback of "woke" people in the 80s and further from black people being performative with the original focus of wokeness. You've got Damon Wayans character on Living Color that misused every word, Conspiracy Brother as Chappelle in Undercover Brother, and the current general disdain for hoteps. Since it's CineD, here's relevance to the general call that most people here should know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg8Oq_Sd3Bw
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Aug 19, 2022 12:19
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Pirate Jet posted:Because conservatives appropriated it first. It was formerly used to describe anyone who was aware of systemic injustice, one of the first mainstream usages of the word was in Childish Gambino's "Redbone." It's like how I understand a Leftist might use Politically Correct in a way to describe a genuine grievance, but I think usage of the word is unnecessary and cedes ground to rightwing moral panics.
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Aug 19, 2022 13:29
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Woke-as-pejorative is only understandable in the context of the slogan “go woke go broke”. Who is at threat of going broke? And where is this statement being made? The answer is that white male nerds are specifically using social media to continually propose/demand an alliance with major corporations like Disney and Sony. (The claims of ‘wokeness’ are always in regards to big-name multimedia nerd franchises; nobody complains that Titane or Slash/Back are (or will be) ‘woke’). These reactionary nerds hope to use a rudimentary free-market logic of supply and demand to exert indirect control over culture: “if we complain enough to the corporations that control culture, culture will remain ‘white’. And, in exchange, the corporations will get increased profits via our money.” It’s treating corporate rule as unavoidable and unquestionable; all they can hope for is a vote-with-your-wallet false democracy. This is of course, more accurately, a form of prayer and offerings to their gods. Reactionary nerds got this idea, though, because it appears to have worked for their nerd enemies. Liberal nerds do see corporations like Disney and WB as allies, and these corporations are perfectly happy to sell that back to them. (See: Josstice League, born of assertions that BVS could and should have made three billion dollars). So today’s right-wing are specifically deranged liberals who watch things like Black Panther and corporate pride and say “me too” - adopting the language of multiculturalism to call for a separate-but-equal white ethnostate and ‘straight pride’, or whatever else. (This is why Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists are particularly virulent: it’s specifically ‘trans pride’ for cis women.) The only way out of this is to note that nobody’s actually happy with ‘pure’ multiculturalism, divorced from socioeconomic justice. Nerds are chasing a feeling of impossible fulfillment and contentment that simply cannot be achieved. Certainly not in this manner.
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Aug 19, 2022 14:10
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Woke-as-pejorative is only understandable in the context of the slogan “go woke go broke”. Who is at threat of going broke? And where is this statement being made? I don't think this is quite right. There's no appeal to any sort of alliance or working together or even any sort of action. Rather, it's just another way of phrasing the common right-wing (and populist/pseudo-populist) idea that the majority of people secretly agree with them. Sure it's reference to God Money but it's not any sort of appeal, just an attempted statement that the people and thus the market are on their side, so transgressions will be punished. KVeezy3 posted:To speak of surface level feminism belies that the category of woman contains heterogeneous multitudes. I'm having a very hard time understanding what you've written, but maybe I can just clarify something. When I wrote "surface-level feminism" I didn't mean it with the implication that there was nothing beyond the surface. That was bad phrasing on my part, sorry. I just meant that the movies that draw this kind of attention are the ones where the feminism is easy to spot, right up there on the surface and usually in a big brand. So there will be the foot-stomping about Captain Marvel and Prey but not, as SMG mentioned, Titane or Slash/Back. So when I say they're easy to criticize as insincere, it's because these movies (Captain Marvel, etc) are the creations of giant corporations whose first loyalty is to profit, which makes it easy to accuse the filmmakers of only invoking feminist ideas insofar as they expect to make money.
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Aug 20, 2022 00:29
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Hand Knit posted:So when I say they're easy to criticize as insincere, it's because these movies (Captain Marvel, etc) are the creations of giant corporations whose first loyalty is to profit, which makes it easy to accuse the filmmakers of only invoking feminist ideas insofar as they expect to make money. To make money, but also to take a genuine systemic complaint that [feminist, anti-racist, pro-queer voices] might make and reduce it to pure aesthetic. Captain Marvel is basically pro-military propaganda that "feels" feminist due to licensed girl rock (Garbage, No Doubt, Hole), coupled with generic platitudes about "standing up" or "believing in yourself." There's not really a specific target of its feminist critique, or any specific indictment of something real on a systemic level, which accomplishes Disney's goal of marketing to politicized audiences while staying "apolitical" and not offending anyone who matters.
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Aug 20, 2022 01:35
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Xealot posted:To make money, but also to take a genuine systemic complaint that [feminist, anti-racist, pro-queer voices] might make and reduce it to pure aesthetic. Captain Marvel is basically pro-military propaganda that "feels" feminist due to licensed girl rock (Garbage, No Doubt, Hole), coupled with generic platitudes about "standing up" or "believing in yourself." There's not really a specific target of its feminist critique, or any specific indictment of something real on a systemic level, which accomplishes Disney's goal of marketing to politicized audiences while staying "apolitical" and not offending anyone who matters. Yeah, there's all sorts of available criticisms of most of these big-budget franchises, and reactionary terms like this sense of "woke" ride their coat tails. As with so much reactionary language, it takes reasonable criticism and redirects it towards the right wing's various imagined enemies.
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Aug 20, 2022 01:39
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Hand Knit posted:There's no appeal to any sort of alliance or working together or even any sort of action. Rather, it's just another way of phrasing the common right-wing (and populist/pseudo-populist) idea that the majority of people secretly agree with them. Same difference. The impotent whining is the flipside of the populist ‘threat’. Despite the agressive tone, the nerds are literally saying “please stop! Please! We’ll give you money!” (We all know Disney and the rest are at no actual risk of ‘going broke’. The entire point of the complaints is that reactionary nerds feel excluded from the success of the monopoly!) Like, if you do the math, guess what? Ghostbusters 3: Afterlife sold fewer tickets than the ‘feminist’ Ghostbusters remake. The corporations’ ultimate response to the ‘controversy’ was to slash the budget of the subsequent film, making it more profitable despite objectively lower popularity. Popularity is besides the point; the goal of the nerds is to be sold to.
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Aug 20, 2022 18:18
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Xealot posted:How do you relate Sorry to Bother You to these frameworks? I've thought of Boots Riley as a pretty solidly Black Leftist voice of the current era, explicitly interested in racism as it exists under neoliberal capitalism, and willing to engage with these kinds of intersectional questions. "Is a Black capitalist less Black," etc. Timeless Appeal posted:I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but you're also able to express all of these ideas without actually using the word "woke." I genuinely don't understand what the point of appropriating a term that outside of cinema is also used to slam actual good policies. My intention is not to in any way disregard the hard work and sacrifices made by the loose movement of wokeness. Police brutality and murder has obviously always been a known fact within the black community, and the movement was critical in making this truth register on a historic scale. Neither did this amorphous movement ask to become a robust lens to critique film, heal society, or abolish capitalism. As well, I am aware that the radical U.S. left, including those who may critique the movement, are in dire straits by almost any measure, and as such seem like a bunch of ivory towered theorists talking down to people actually getting something done. Nevertheless I still think it’s important to produce a leftist critique because I believe there are fundamental limitations. When I wrote of wokeness’s limit, this wasn’t to denigrate it, as neo-liberalism is hegemonic. After all, we are talking about a society where one can study economics and not encounter the word "capitalism" once. To get to the point, what wokeness lacks is a direct critique of racism itself; inheriting the discourse of critical race theory, it offers countless empirical examples, but doesn’t question why it exists/subsists. In turn, this prevents the concept of black oppression from escaping its specific and subaltern position. To contrast, Frantz Fanon took the concept of black oppression and produced a universal critique of humanity. Hand Knit posted:I'm having a very hard time understanding what you've written, but maybe I can just clarify something. When I wrote "surface-level feminism" I didn't mean it with the implication that there was nothing beyond the surface. That was bad phrasing on my part, sorry. I just meant that the movies that draw this kind of attention are the ones where the feminism is easy to spot, right up there on the surface and usually in a big brand. So there will be the foot-stomping about Captain Marvel and Prey but not, as SMG mentioned, Titane or Slash/Back. So when I say they're easy to criticize as insincere, it's because these movies (Captain Marvel, etc) are the creations of giant corporations whose first loyalty is to profit, which makes it easy to accuse the filmmakers of only invoking feminist ideas insofar as they expect to make money. What I mean is that this method of analysis, in its explicit cynicism, lets the work off of the hook too easily in its preoccupation with an imagined viewer being tricked. As posters discussed earlier, when a woman/minority gets casted in a film, well-meaning people question whether the “essence” is being properly expressed or was it just to win points. Aside from this perspective limiting the number of roles women/minorities can play, it essentializes these categories of people. I recently read a news article about an actor, in an effort to defend the TV show Friends’ unbearable whiteness while being set in New York, pontificate about how the white writers/producers didn’t have the lived experiences of minorities, and therefore had no business representing them onscreen. The mind reels. I haven’t seen Captain Marvel, but as described, nothing prevents it from being a genuine work of liberal/bourgeoise feminism, but it is rendered inauthentic relative to a presupposed & unexpressed position. I made this point not to be pedantic, but to connect it to the overall discussion. Specifically this hearkens back to the Lucy Parsons/Emma Goldman feminism divide: Parsons articulated the oppression of women with respect to capitalism, and Goldman’s approach was to center the woman foremost. Goldman’s position, despite Goldman herself also being a committed anti-capitalist leftist radical, invariably became a bourgeoise one by leaving out the process of production. So this isn't to call the feminism of Goldman inauthentic nor disregard its massive sacrifices/achievements, but to specifically articulate her failure of theory.
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Aug 23, 2022 19:00
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Panfilo posted:One big irony here is that there are a subset of reactionaries that make money complaining about the existence of woke movies. Like if they got their monkey paw wish then they themselves would be out of a job, having neither the creative chops to create the drek they want nor anything of value to say about the content that exists because they run out of controversy. The more woke movies, the more they have to complain. It's true that many are blind to the interrelationships but a lot of those people are playing off of it and making a career out of it. Taking a broad bird's-eye view it makes sense. Yin-yang, polarity, symbiosis and parasitism is everywhere. There's a timeless reality that within every society all kinds of these perpetual dichotomies exist.
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Aug 23, 2022 23:53
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This is the type of peanut gallery I'm talking about : https://twitter.com/TheCriticalDri2/status/1561683690673037312?t=xXqreW0JiqOJsZ0-miugaQ&s=19
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Aug 26, 2022 09:28
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critical drinker sucks but he's right about all those lovely mcu shows/movies. in conclusion waking life is a land of contrasts.
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Aug 26, 2022 09:44
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I use to love the CD, funny and sarcastic. Now he whines. Just loving constantly. Every review. Non stop.
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Aug 26, 2022 09:53
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They Live is my favorite woke film
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Aug 26, 2022 18:50
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ruddiger posted:They Live is my favorite woke film Zizek, as well.
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Aug 26, 2022 21:08
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Extra row of tits posted:I use to love the CD, funny and sarcastic. One day I found his channel at random on youtube and lasted exactly two videos. First one I don't even remember, but the second one was about Master & Commander. He was very positive about it (as he should, it owns), but then completely out of nowhere went on along the lines of "... of course this is a movie from a different era, you don't get movies like this these days cause they're too busy putting women and gays into everything.". That was when I bailed on that channel immediately. Perestroika fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Aug 27, 2022 |
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Aug 27, 2022 12:01
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Perestroika posted:One day I found his channel at random on youtube and lasted exactly two videos. First one I don't even remember, but the second one was about Master & Commander. He was very positive about it (as he should, it owns), but then completely out of nowhere went on along the lines of "... of course this is a movie from a different era, you don't get movies like this these days cause they're too busy putting women and gays into everything.". That's was when I bailed on that channel immediately. Pandering to incels, racists and general creepmos (but I repeat myself) is just more profitable than simply being a goofy gimmick reviewer on YouTube. 
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Aug 27, 2022 12:17
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saying the word "woke" is the perfect way to get me to talk to someone else instantly it's a real timesaver
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Aug 27, 2022 17:31
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zer0spunk posted:saying the word "woke" is the perfect way to get me to talk to someone else instantly "...." "Wait, where are you going??"
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Aug 27, 2022 19:38
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Perestroika posted:One day I found his channel at random on youtube and lasted exactly two videos. First one I don't even remember, but the second one was about Master & Commander. He was very positive about it (as he should, it owns), but then completely out of nowhere went on along the lines of "... of course this is a movie from a different era, you don't get movies like this these days cause they're too busy putting women and gays into everything.". That was when I bailed on that channel immediately. I never care enough to try to prove my point, and I know they're arguing in bad faith regardless, but sometimes it feels cathartic to imagine bringing up all the contemporary examples of movies 'you can't make anymore' . I mean you telling me there's just no Age of Sail movies or epics that are a pure sausagefest? There's just no anti-woke directors or producers, they're all in sjw jail for wrongthink?
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Aug 27, 2022 21:39
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Perestroika posted:One day I found his channel at random on youtube and lasted exactly two videos. First one I don't even remember, but the second one was about Master & Commander. He was very positive about it (as he should, it owns), but then completely out of nowhere went on along the lines of "... of course this is a movie from a different era, you don't get movies like this these days cause they're too busy putting women and gays into everything.". That was when I bailed on that channel immediately. Yep, thats what drove me away as well. All his videos are like this. Even in glowing reviews of classic movies that no one can complain about he will compare it to other movies to have a good whine.
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Aug 29, 2022 05:10
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Think we may have hit bedrock here https://twitter.com/HailEternal/status/1566872429007347713?t=wXwaiE64i_AD-qNuFKzatA&s=19
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Sep 6, 2022 21:33
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Reminds me of the guy who responded “are they going to ruin it and make it political?” when told about the Candyman reboot.
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Sep 6, 2022 21:48
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Das Boo posted:I can't talk from a minority standpoint so I'm mostly writing this from an ace woman's perspective of woke: This is such a good post. Thank you.
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Sep 6, 2022 22:58
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Das Boo posted:I can't talk from a minority standpoint so I'm mostly writing this from an ace woman's perspective of woke: What feminity does cap reject anyway? She acts a certain way but I never got the feeling it was a deliberate affectation either. Or embracing masculinity, which I still don't understand. Cause she's stoic and guarded?
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Sep 9, 2022 17:57
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I dont remember much of it but I recall Captain Marvel as being written pretty sexlessly tbh
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Sep 10, 2022 14:12
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massive spider posted:I dont remember much of it but I recall Captain Marvel as being written pretty sexlessly tbh A recent movie that I did like which dealt with patriarchal critiques was Fresh as it actually does deal with racial inequities. Our white heroine (Big spoiler, but not a twist or anything) has to literally eat part of her Black friend in order to survive.
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Sep 10, 2022 14:29
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keet posted:What feminity does cap reject anyway? She acts a certain way but I never got the feeling it was a deliberate affectation either. Or embracing masculinity, which I still don't understand. Cause she's stoic and guarded? Bear in mind that I think gendered activities and interests are dumb as hell, but I'm considering this from the perspective of a corporation that's all about segregating genders and the old white men who run it. Her traditionally masculine traits/interests: - Military - Motorcycles - Dive bars and beer - Attire (Leather jacket/ NIN shirt, military fatigues ) - Anger is the only valid emotion - Breaking things to win an argument - Being quick to violence as a demonstration of badassery - Taunting people for their weaknesses And again! I emphasize that bikes, military careers, and band shirts are acceptable things for any woman to enjoy in real life. It's that these are used as ways to illustrate that Carol isn't like other girls that's frustrating. She's better than other girls because she can keep up with all the things traditionally gendered norms say guys should do and be into. And yeah, the not-lesbians thing was... hm. I don't think swinging hard in the other direction or hyper-sexualized femininity like Catwoman is the answer, either. Both are masuline and feminine "ideals." If I had to pick a comparable superhero that balances gender norms the best, I'd say Spiderman?
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Sep 10, 2022 18:41
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Women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ people appear in it and aren't treated as objects. That's it. That's all there is. Anything else there is is to engage in discourse with those who would hate what they consider "woke" no matter the answer to their superficial complaints. "Woke" is just the new "SJW." This applies: "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." -- Jean-Paul Sartre
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Sep 10, 2022 19:50
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For me at least something is 'woke' in the perjorative sense when it reeks of some kind of corporate mandate from above to earn some of those wokebucks from progressive people in the laziest way possible. Some of these movies turn out good, regardless, but I still kind of sigh when I see it. Disney is a good example. Like, Star Wars, for instance. In the past, the Empire was made up of purely stodgy white guys because they were in my mind at least trying to sell you on the idea that these are space Nazis and that they are probably sexist and racist, even if they don't call Lando the N word or whatever. The rebels got all sorts of aliens and stuff mixed in. It seemed like it was meant to be a contrast. New Star Wars adds a bunch of women and minorities to the Empire. It doesn't address this whatsoever, they are just there - the Empire just got 'woke'. I've never looked at the expanded material so it could have made an interesting point about them trying to be the 'new' Empire and adopting some more tolerant policies in order to become more popular with the masses, or maybe they are scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel and need to widen their recruitment nets, but no, it's just some window dressing for a Disney movie. Does it make me bad to think it's weird? I'm quite happy for there to be black female Imperial officers or whatever, I just wish the movie had the balls to address the fact that this is something new, and hell, maybe give them some screen time and speaking lines. Star Wars just sticks a lot of brown people into the background but most of them still don't get to do anything interesting. A lot of modern stuff seems to just aim for the imagery of being woke without actually doing any work in showing these new perspectives. They can stick a gay couple embracing into the background but make sure not to feature them too heavily or China might get mad or something. Another Woke Thing would be movies starring Strong Female Character, who exists entirely to be Strong Female Character without anything remotely interesting about her. This is usually done with some sort of self-pat on the back for doing it, like it is some sort of progressive accomplishment to put an attractive woman in a movie acting blandly but punching a lot of men to show how strong she is. This is often done in some sort of reboot or legacy sequel where they just replace the previous character with his daughter or something and don't really do anything to make this character sympathetic or engaging beyond being Strong Female Character. Action movies starring bland boring white guys with zero dimension were also boring too - it's not like it gets any better when the studio just does the same poo poo with a woman. Furiosa is interesting in a way that Rey Skywalker is not. Rey Skywalker felt like a business decision to score some wokepoints but then Disney didn't have the balls to actually let Finn have an interesting story. A question has just come to mind: How much of this criticism is a result of the modern internet which is full of the creators of something constantly going on about it in interviews and videos? In the past I'd be more likely to just see a movie with zero knowledge of the creators or their intent - I'd have to discern it from watching. But nowadays the creators are often patting themselves on the back way ahead of release for being very progressive and diverse and when the movie comes out and it's just the usual lovely remake with a new cast it seems like that gets some of the blame rather than it being 90% garbage like everything else, woke or not? Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Sep 12, 2022 |
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Sep 12, 2022 11:46
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That's definitely something I've wondered too. It's went I'm skeptical about the female protagonists that reactionaries claim to like.
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Sep 12, 2022 12:21
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Woke-as-pejorative is only understandable in the context of the slogan “go woke go broke”. Who is at threat of going broke? And where is this statement being made? A good example of this is the ComicsGate thing, where the validity of American comics are judged solely on volumes sold. Like, you will get guys pulling up comic sale spreadsheets from the last 30 years, point to falling sales and connect it to gay representation, the pushing of "degenerate values", etcetera. The desired outcome is the increase of sales through removal of the offending material and a return to "normalcy". I hadn't considered the alliance angle before!
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Sep 12, 2022 14:44
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Like, Star Wars, for instance. In the past, the Empire was made up of purely stodgy white guys because they were in my mind at least trying to sell you on the idea that these are space Nazis and that they are probably sexist and racist, even if they don't call Lando the N word or whatever. The rebels got all sorts of aliens and stuff mixed in. It seemed like it was meant to be a contrast. Yes. It's partly a riff on westerns, the border worlds with crazy aliens and robots and stuff, but it's also a riff on the kind of ragtag crew you'd see in a WW2 movie, or the setting of Casablanca. The movie didn't have to be explicit about the Empire's ideology, because the look and feel of the world kind of said it already: the galaxy is a thriving, interesting place that the Empire seeks to crush into solemn uniformity. It doesn't feel coincidental that the Empire is mostly stern white dudes in a galaxy that is not. It's fiction, so the The thing is, most people complaining about "woke Disney" don't actually care if the casting is motivated or not. Like, Little Mermaid is about a mermaid from a fish kingdom who falls in love with a human prince. There's already an explicit component of ethnic difference to the story; the character being Black actually serves this better. Likewise, racists are making GBS threads the bed over House of the Dragon, where Corlys Velaryon is "suddenly" Black...but the fact he's perceived as an outsider is explicit to the story, so the choice makes a lot of sense. These are examples where "race-bending" the character makes the story way stronger, isn't "race-blind" at all, but naturally these people are still mad because it was never about what they said it was about. It was about their bullshit culture war.
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Sep 12, 2022 20:21
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Xealot posted:. These are examples where "race-bending" the character makes the story way stronger, There's an argument to be made that if you put a transparent allegory where there were none, you are asking the film to be analysed through that lens and subverting an original work by adding an element of intentionality which the author of the original deliberately avoided. Or if the messaging was already there, that you're making it less tasteful and too apparent, to the detriment of the other elements of the story. Stage productions do this all the time and it sometimes turns artworks from the 19th century into pamphlets for modern ideologies, so it's not a new thing, but I am very distrustful of the fact that injecting transparent messaging into existing artworks is starting to be considered as a net improvement or correction and hate that it's starting to take over pop culture discourse. Maybe the message of The Little Mermaid doesn't need to be anything other than "you shouldn't sacrifice your personality for the sake of love" and that's fine (I like the girl they cast, I'm talking about the angle of your post about what it "adds" to the film). The fact that it's really difficult to criticise certain properties without someone immediately projecting all sorts of poo poo which the producers made the faintest gestures against should be fairly apparent at this point. Spermando fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Sep 12, 2022 |
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Sep 12, 2022 22:43
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Once On This Island did a Broadway, black-led The Little Mermaid over 30 years ago. More representation is good, but I also feel a little like we're celebrating grandpa being cordial with a black person. On one hand, thank god. On the other, goddamn.
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Sep 12, 2022 23:05
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Das Boo posted:Once On This Island did a Broadway, black-led The Little Mermaid over 30 years ago. I mean, Disney did a Little Mermaid Live! television special in 2019 with Auli'i Cravalho (who is mixed race) as Ariel, and Queen Latifah (who is black) as Ursula. The news of a black person in a starring role for a Disney movie in 2022 as if it's ~*the socially right thing to do*~ is just aggravatingly stupid. Content: I'm Mexican-American. For a period in the '80s and '90s, there was a bustling Chicano movie scene. Zoot Suit, Stand and Deliver, La Bamba, American Me, Blood In Blood Out, Mi Vida Loca, My Family... nothing listed was ever woke to me because I've lived it, so to me they are simply windows into my world made for a mass audience. Modern day society would consider these movies woke simply because they have a majority brown cast of characters instead of looking at the movies deeper and for what they are. Each of them have a rich tapestry of individual personalities and upbringings full of people that experience character building, growth, and eventual rewards through life's hardships and setbacks. Okay, let's be honest here, that could literally be any movie with any group of characters and not just one marketed to my skin color, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Immersing oneself into an interesting and relatable character doesn't make them or the movie anymore woke than City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold. Nowadays, character building and growth are thrown out the window for cheap and insincere representation, so you're left with a woman/POC/LGBTQ+ person who is devoid of character and is perfect from the start, because to give them a stimulating backstory so the viewer can relate to them would be asking too much. What we end up with is a "strong WOMAN/POC/LGBTQ+ character" instead of a "STRONG woman/POC/LGBTQ+ CHARACTER". Those are secondary traits that, unless they are actually relevant to the story or to other characters, shouldn't even matter. First and foremost, the primary trait of any movie or TV character is that they are a person like you and me, and then you work from there. You Are A Werewolf fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Sep 13, 2022 |
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Sep 13, 2022 01:38
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