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Narzack posted:It feels like woke tends to be shorthand for any idea that says the status quo is kinda hosed. Well, what happens when "woke" messaging becomes the status quo and most mainstream news publications, moderate democrats, corporations, the CIA, etc. are using it?
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Aug 11, 2022 20:15
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Rental Sting posted:Well, what happens when "woke" messaging becomes the status quo and most mainstream news publications, moderate democrats, corporations, the CIA, etc. are using it? At that point, it feels like things would start to get better.
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Aug 11, 2022 20:18
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I interpret it as a way that's performative and didactic in a way that supports general liberal dogma that doesn't naturally flow from the story. The phenomenon also cuts the other way to conservative media, but idk if there's a word for that specifically. E: Prey, for example, I wouldn't say is woke since the main character is pretty resourceful and displays an ability to learn and adapt, which she takes advantage of across the movie. Even though the way she ends up killing the thing is pretty stupid. Blue Raider fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Aug 11, 2022 |
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Aug 11, 2022 21:32
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Narzack posted:At that point, it feels like things would start to get better. This is the "Hire more women prison guards!" meme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X55JPbAMc9g&t=22s
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Aug 11, 2022 22:36
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Blue Raider posted:
I’m just full on defense mode with this movie but the first Predator was killed by a tree that bonked him on the head.
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Aug 11, 2022 23:27
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The old meme-take for og Predator is that a bunch of big scary dudes are afraid of a vagina. Therefore wouldn’t it kind of make sense for a woman to have at least some advantage?
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Aug 12, 2022 10:53
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Some great responses here. However, the idea that it isn't relevent to evaluate this doesn't feel constructive. I'm in no way assuming in good faith that detractors have some Woke Rubric they refer to when complaining about a movie. But it's fun to see what sets them off and what they conveniently ignore. They also do seem to get enough eyeballs to influence the opinions of others, which could potentially affect what films get funded or made in the long run. It also can obfuscate movies that are mediocre/bad in their own right- I defended the Ghostbusters movie a lot because all the criticism I heard came from terrible people. It's harder to see the quality for what it truly is when people fixate on culture war issues. The LotR series is another example of this-reactionaries are mad about casting choices but also cite Tolkien imploring future storytellers to not diverge from his original work. The costumes look cheap for such a huge budget. And one obvious blind spot reactionaries have with complaining about demographics-whining about the existence of African looking elves or vikings or mermaids assumes that culture is very isolated, xenophobic, or undeveloped. Because a big, powerful far flung empire is going to have "people" from all over. It will be a wealthy cosmopolitan culture that sees a variety of soldiers, statesmen, adventurers, and even criminals among their kind. I know in fantasy/sci fi things tend to get oversimplified (elves are all tall Nordic people, aliens are all a homogenous allegory of some human stereotype) but that always felt boring. Sticking to that homogeny is admitting that the fictional community can't have any growth or change. "But Wakanda!" they'll whine. And yet in the story itself the idea of Wakanda being isolationist was seen as controversial.
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Aug 12, 2022 14:00
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Panfilo posted:The Blade trilogy has a black protagonist yet they wouldn't consider it a woke series. I think that what you're gesturing at here is an interesting point to consider. What is it about these women- and minority-led films which makes them more acceptable to conservatives. One might say that it's mostly a function of nostalgia - movies that came out at a time when the culture war was slightly less "hot" might be more acceptable to them. But that doesn't account for Alita - what, for instance, makes Alita less "woke" than, for instance, Wonder Woman?
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Aug 12, 2022 14:26
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I'm not sure they have an issue with Wonder Woman. In fact, that the actress is Israeli and the target of criticism from the left entices them to use that as 'ammo' for gotchas. Typically they don't have a problem with a female protagonist acting masculine if the character is sufficiently feminine and heterosexual enough. Part of it is definitely nostalgia but I'm sure there's other subtle things. Like sometimes they're fine with minority representation as long as the character isn't "threatening" the chud's own ideology. Ripley: Explicit themes of motherhood in the character, risks her life to save her 'surrogate daughter'. Not woke. Alita: A childlike surrogate daughter to the other protagonist, sufficiently heterosexual, badass without being emasculating to audience. Cara Dune: Actress the victim of "Cancel culture" from the left, sufficiently feminine for audiences without emasculating them. Blade: A black man that isn't "political" in ways that make chuds uncomfortable. Wisecracking sarcasm that has broad appeal. Wiser older white mentor character reassures chuds even a badass black vampire can learn a thing or two from an old white guy.
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Aug 12, 2022 15:33
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And as some examples of "woke" female protagonists: Carol Danvers: Actress had open contempt for chud audiences. Protagonist emasculates male antagonists. New Avenger introduced who is on the very high end of the power scale with little development making her seem like a Mary Sue. Rey: A Luke Skywalker analogue with none of the struggle they feel Luke went through to deserve his power and status. Another Mary Sue buried in an already badly written trilogy. She-Ra: Not feminine or heterosexual enough, appearance deviated too much from "source material". Teela: Not heterosexual enough and what's worse, a scold towards other characters without deserved justification. Chuds hate the idea of women telling men what to do but even worse they hate when that character didn't do anything to "deserve" their sense of authority, they just treat the female protagonist as a shrill Karen.
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Aug 12, 2022 15:59
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I just googled "most woke movies" and it gave me these recommendations: Charlies angels reboot (rah rah feminism, short haircuts) Terminator dark fate (kinda avoided this one so i don't know what exactly to pin it on. Older female lead? But i would imagine terminator 2 doesn't get the same flack?) MIB international (recasting a series with previouslu a male lead) WW 1984 (female led blockbuster with already poor reception) Hustle (no idea what this is about) Lady ghostbusters (recasting etc) Captain marvel (rah rah feminism, especially in the marketing The last jedi (recasting, lots of specific factors since its such a huge franchise and film) Get out (highly acclaimed black-led film leading to accusations of liberal overrating) (curious to be how peele's movies seem to generate less of this with each one but maybe I'm just less aware of it) Birds of prey (rah rah girlbosses, modern haircuts) What men want (genderswapped remake) Wrinkle in time (casting actors of color in a role generally assumed to be white) Hidden figures (highly acclaimed black film etc, rah rah feminism) The google list starts to include a lot more stuff i haven't seen after that. Definitely some trends though. I'm curious where the margins lie. Ww1984 seems to get more antiwoke hate than the first ww, which I'd chalk up being downstream from it simply being a worse film. Jordan peele's now recent films seem to get less rw hate, maybe because get out is the only one that is explicitly about black/white antagonism? And the films that get the most antifeminist hate seem to be the ones that use girlboss marketing the most which seems pretty straightforward and why stuff like alita doesn't trigger them. I'm trying to think of the earliest examples of this kind of anger being real prevalent and first thing i think of is battlestar galactica getting some crap for rebooting characters as non white/men. Did chuds get mad back in the day about predator 2?
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Aug 12, 2022 16:00
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An interesting correlate to the question of whether a woman/minority character is "woke" or not is the identity of the film/series' directors and writers. Just looking at Panflio's list: Ripley - D: Ridley Scott, W: Dan O'Bannon Alita - D: Robert Rodriguez, W: James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis Cara Dune - D: lots of people, W: Mostly Jon Favreau Blade: D: Stephen Norrington, W: David Goyer fairly obvious, but it seems like female/minority characters who are written and directed by white guys tend to be labeled less "woke," than, for instance, Captain Marvel, She-ra, Charlie's angels reboot, etc, which have prominent female creators. of course this isn't everything, there are plenty of white man-created content that is "woke," but it's relevant.
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Aug 12, 2022 16:16
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BiggestBatman posted:And the films that get the most antifeminist hate seem to be the ones that use girlboss marketing the most which seems pretty straightforward and why stuff like alita doesn't trigger them. I think you're on to something here.
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Aug 12, 2022 16:16
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smug n stuff posted:An interesting correlate to the question of whether a woman/minority character is "woke" or not is the identity of the film/series' directors and writers. Just looking at Panflio's list: There's also obfuscation that happens. Remakes/late-quels cash in on nostalgia but by and large they aren't as critically popular as the original. They mainly have the advantage of a greater advertising budget and social media to signal boost what might have been originally just a cult classic popular in video rental stores. But they're derivative by design and hampered by that. So any arbitrary changes made aren't really going to make it any worse. Top Gun:Maverick was an exception and I figured it wouldn't be any more popular than Independence Day 2 or Creed; same story beats with old cast members returning and new characters being the children of dead/absent characters. But since it did well and didn't have offensive cast opinions or unacceptable lines they praised it for being anti woke.
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Aug 12, 2022 17:10
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smug n stuff posted:But that doesn't account for Alita - what, for instance, makes Alita less "woke" than, for instance, Wonder Woman? Alita has an edgier aesthetic, is more hard-boiled and has more pathos than most of the comic films lately. A lot think recent films are just too watered down etc. BiggestBatman posted:Terminator dark fate (kinda avoided this one so i don't know what exactly to pin it on. Older female lead? But i would imagine terminator 2 doesn't get the same flack?) Probably Mackenzie Davis not being feminine enough for their liking. In T2 Linda Hamilton is tough but also has moments of weakness. I think some of the WW 1984 hate wasn't even related to wokeness but subconsciously some viewers identified with the villain more than the heroes and they found it revolting.
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Aug 12, 2022 21:32
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Someone called dark fate sjw feminist woke or whatever once and I think the reason is simply because the main three characters are women and John Connor is dead and now the real savior of the future is a Latina woman. However the person who said this to me was Asian so I don’t know
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Aug 12, 2022 21:38
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I do wonder how much of Ghostbusters reception was due to its connection to modern day SNL, which I understand chuds see as a "lib" show. I'm not sure of the timeline (I'm not from the US), but was Kate McKinnon doing her whole Hilary bit by this point?
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Aug 12, 2022 21:41
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My recollection, which I will admit could be totally off-base, is that the Nu-Ghostbusters backlash initially was focused almost entirely on Leslie Jones - she had a scene in an early trailer that really bothered some people - and then a lot of the rest of the culture war flowed from that, reactions to that, reactions to reactions, etc. Again, could be misremembering.
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Aug 12, 2022 21:48
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Girl Ghostbusters made people mad initially because no one wanted a reboot. They just wanted the original 4 back again while they were still alive. But that got molded and distorted into “women are bad” which got molded into “watching this movie is feminism” thanks too rapists like devin faraci
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Aug 12, 2022 21:52
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Alita is an anime/manga property and alt right youtubers are used to petite feminine heroines in anime. The only other people that would call it woke are fox news pundits and I don’t think they know it even exists. This really doesn’t seem like a big mystery to me.
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Aug 12, 2022 21:58
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Terminator Dark Fate has a scene where the Latino protagonists escape from an ICE detention center iirc, which is more than it usually takes for chuds to label something “woke”. Related to this topic, there is a phenomenon in recent years where a studio will cast a woman or a person of color in a role specifically to stir up poo poo and get free marketing off the back of the “controversy” (which they then amplify). To be clear, I’m all for casting more women and POCs in leading roles, but I feel that often (but not always) the controversy around these things is really just a handful of online psychos who get put on blast to create a narrative that seeing and liking X movie is a virtuous act and a rejection of prejudice.
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Aug 12, 2022 21:59
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Drunkboxer posted:Alita is an anime/manga property and alt right youtubers are used to petite feminine heroines in anime. But isn’t this the exact objection rightists are lodging against Prey? That the female protagonist is too “petite?” Maybe I’m misunderstanding. E: is the claim that they accept small women in anime specifically?
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Aug 12, 2022 22:08
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BiggestBatman posted:I'm trying to think of the earliest examples of this kind of anger being real prevalent and first thing i think of is battlestar galactica getting some crap for rebooting characters as non white/men. Did chuds get mad back in the day about predator 2? I don't recall that kind of hate back in 1990. A lot of that film has pretty conventional cop film dynamics and Danny Glover plays a minority cop just trying to do his job and avoid the angry boss. He wasn't lecturing anyone from what I remember. So that wouldn't be bothersome to that audience. Back in the 1990s the movie rental places and the VHS box art could be really segregated. There were lots of minority genre films but the general assumption was that they were only for black audiences. Many VHS covers had prominent black actors on them or had obvious names like Mo' Money, Boyz N The Hood or Mo' Better Blues. I don't think white folks weren't renting too many of them so they could easily ignore topics/people they didn't want to hear about. Things have slowly merged together more and the lines have blurred. Now when someone goes to see a big budget film they don't know what ideology they'll see and that's where a big problem arises. Lots don't want to be exposed to stuff that can't be explained with the conventional rating system. Actually if the MAGA crowd ran Hollywood they might have created some kind of political rating system at this point to simplify things. I do know that the antiwoke audience would be bothered by the genderbending films coming out in that era but that was more of a niche that could be ignored rather than a huge film release. TLDR: I don't remember a single watershed film that's perfectly emblematic. Broadly, I think a lot of the antiwoke backlash was really borne out of Obama's election and crystalized and solidified during those eight years. "This is the end of America!" and all those kind of notions. The entire film industry being just another battleground in the growing culture wars. Zogo fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Aug 12, 2022 |
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Aug 12, 2022 22:19
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smug n stuff posted:But isn’t this the exact objection rightists are lodging against Prey? That the female protagonist is too “petite?” Maybe I’m misunderstanding. Yeah, anime
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Aug 12, 2022 22:50
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Timeless Appeal posted:Woke originally just meant being aware of racists systems of oppression about police, more in the sense of being cautious. Its reemergence in the 2010s with the BLM movement led to a broader adoption of understanding systems of oppression by anyone and less about specific marginalized groups being careful. And then it adopted by Conservatives as just a blanket term that basically just means PC. This is the best point to be made about it. "Woke" has no coherent definition by the people who use it critically, it's just a loaded dogwhistle term thrown at anything and everything conservatives don't like to force it into this completely imaginary culture war they're waging. The part I find most frustrating is that the term always implies some kind of comprehensive top-down intent. Like, it's impossible that a movie has a [nonwhite/female/queer] character at its center for some organic or good faith reason. It's necessarily a choice nobody would make unless they had nefarious or political motivations, unless their goal was to make propaganda designed to degrade and humiliate straight white men. In that sense, I pretty much always read the term as a projection of white masculine fragility. They no longer have to answer questions of bias or lack of empathy. "It's not that I'm racist or sexist, I just refuse to be suckered by the New World Order!" With its transparent attempts to....brainwash kids? Turn men into cucks? Lull society into accepting White Genocide?
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Aug 12, 2022 23:16
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Drunkboxer posted:Yeah, anime well, that's an interesting point in and of itself, right? Like, how did anime/manga get to be known by certain people to be like definitionally non-woke, even though series frequently have "strong female characters" and not infrequently lgbt stuff?
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Aug 12, 2022 23:29
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smug n stuff posted:well, that's an interesting point in and of itself, right? Like, how did anime/manga get to be known by certain people to be like definitionally non-woke, even though series frequently have "strong female characters" and not infrequently lgbt stuff? bc lots of anime panders to horny straight men who want a waifu
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Aug 12, 2022 23:49
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Cephas posted:bc lots of anime panders to horny straight men who want a waifu Definitely true that lots of anime does that. But lots of western live-action movies do, too.
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Aug 12, 2022 23:56
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"Hollyweird" and "New York Values" dominating the LA film scene are perennial issues, like child molestation and heathens in schools. Long Live President 2nd Amendment fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Aug 13, 2022 |
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Aug 13, 2022 03:55
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Xealot posted:This is the best point to be made about it. "Woke" has no coherent definition by the people who use it critically, it's just a loaded dogwhistle term thrown at anything and everything conservatives don't like to force it into this completely imaginary culture war they're waging. smug n stuff posted:well, that's an interesting point in and of itself, right? Like, how did anime/manga get to be known by certain people to be like definitionally non-woke, even though series frequently have "strong female characters" and not infrequently lgbt stuff?
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Aug 13, 2022 03:59
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2nd Amendment posted:"Hollyweird" and "New York Values" dominating the LA film scene are perennial issues, like child molestation and heathens in schools. This is another part of it that ties into their hatred of what I think defines postmodernism? Like the Hollywood types to them are all these gross degenerates who arbitrarily define all their sick and unnatural tastes as "normal" and attack traditional values as being outdated and bigoted. You see this a lot in pureflix type films, that try so hard to be "anti woke" to the point it comes off as parody to an outside viewer. The content never stands on its own, the scripts feel written by some angry Karen talking to the manager of the Hollywood establishment.
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Aug 13, 2022 04:05
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I mean, Japan is conservative as gently caress. While there is liberation to be found in US 70s era sexploitation films, that's after effect. Female led anime works the same way.
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Aug 13, 2022 04:10
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Panfilo posted:This is another part of it that ties into their hatred of what they think defines postmodernism? Like the Hollywood types to them are all these gross degenerates who arbitrarily define all their sick and unnatural tastes as "normal" and attack traditional values as being outdated and bigoted. FTFY quote:You see this a lot in pureflix type films, that try so hard to be "anti woke" to the point it comes off as parody to an outside viewer. The content never stands on its own, the scripts feel written by some angry Karen talking to the manager of the Hollywood establishment. They are just doing what they think/project the other side is doing: starting with an agenda and crafting a story around that. Like, making "Lt Ripley" "Lt Ellen Ripley" is unthinkable for them. You start with ""Lt Ellen" and build from there.
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Aug 13, 2022 04:13
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Anime gets a get out off woke free card just bc the current crop of ruling class liberals are still too old to get it.
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Aug 13, 2022 06:04
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Panfilo posted:They think there's a sea change happening that will completely eliminate content they like. They seriously believe you'll inevitably have female protagonists that are all dumpy fat purple haired lesbian scolds that exist to knock straight men down culturally. That's why they get so freaked out about representation. A lot of the stuff that the antiwoke crowd misses in films just gradually disappeared and by the time they realized it all they could do was commiserate and attack caricatures of those they didn't like. Most viewers don't care but legit far right people would be ecstatic if unbridled racist characters were inserted back into modern films occasionally. An extreme example would be Vic Morrow's character in the 1983 Twilight Zone film or Frederic Forrest's character in Falling Down. Or Peter Boyle's character in Joe (1970). Anyone who follows the news knows that people like that just didn't disappear from the US one day. They were deleted from the scripts. Another more recent thing is that a lot of people are complaining about the controversy of actors/actresses playing characters outside of their race/gender. Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Terminator Dark Fate has a scene where the Latino protagonists escape from an ICE detention center iirc, which is more than it usually takes for chuds to label something “woke”. Yeah, compare the ICE imagery to something like Sarah Connor's attack on Miles Dyson's house in T2.
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Aug 14, 2022 23:53
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2nd Amendment posted:Long Live President  Panfilo posted:You see this a lot in pureflix type films, that try so hard to be "anti woke" to the point it comes off as parody to an outside viewer. The content never stands on its own, the scripts feel written by some angry Karen talking to the manager of the Hollywood establishment. Yes, it's important to note that white Christians are now a minority in the US for the first time in hundreds of years. That fact scares a lot of people and is the source for some of great replacement/genocide stuff. So there's been a response in their film industry. Some of that has been replaced by the MAGA ethos rather than Christendom.
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Aug 15, 2022 00:03
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Terminator Dark Fate was dumb woke poo poo because it killed John Connor to replace him with a female POC character who basically re-enacted his arc. Just like how it replaced Skynet with Legion. I imagine people got upset about Grace, too, but I think it's that first point that gets it classed as woke bullshit or whatever and is worth interrogating as part of Hollywood's attempt to appear progressive
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Aug 15, 2022 01:20
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Horizon Burning posted:Terminator Dark Fate was dumb woke poo poo because it killed John Connor to replace him with a female POC character who basically re-enacted his arc. Just like how it replaced Skynet with Legion. I imagine people got upset about Grace, too, but I think it's that first point that gets it classed as woke bullshit or whatever and is worth interrogating as part of Hollywood's attempt to appear progressive But your post is just an example of how absurd woke is being used. Like if the main character of the film was not Latina would that improve the film in any way? Because she is Latina though you create this absurd conspiracy theory entirely divorced from the reality of a film made by human beings.
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Aug 15, 2022 02:04
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If they replaced John Connor with another annoying white boy it would be okay you see
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Aug 15, 2022 02:17
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I can't talk from a minority standpoint so I'm mostly writing this from an ace woman's perspective of woke: I guess I'm too leftist to think of anything as "too woke," but I do dislike "dishonestly woke." Disney is dishonestly woke and they bug the ever-loving poo poo out of me. You don't get to participate in gay erasure while selling rainbow merch. Instead of just having minorities, women, LGBTQ+ in stories because they're regular-rear end flavors of a person, they're trying to sell you the idea that their company is somehow exceptional so daring to include them in stories. All while abusing them. I do consider Captain Marvel particularly unfeminist and dishonestly woke. She's not written as a human being, but an avatar of women. I loving hate that. I loving hate that women can't be characters; they have to be representation of a whole, like women are somehow a hive mind whose method of communication is having a vagina. I also don't particularly enjoy that the character's rejection of all things traditionally feminine and her blatant embrace of masculinity are what make her "strong." Meanwhile, I consider Ripley feminist and woke. She's rational, she's emotional, her blue-collar job supports her skills within the film, she has strong maternal instincts. She breaks, she cries, she rages, she jokes, she's gentle, she's stern, she's afraid, she's brave... She's written as a human being with a wide range of thoughts and emotions. Writing a woman as a human is woke, which is a terrifyingly low bar to clear. Imagine having to worry about 50% of the populace not seeing you as a human being! It sucks! I also agree that stopping the story to preach, for whatever reason and whether or not I agree, is bad.
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Aug 15, 2022 03:01
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