The "woke" discussion thread (Page 1 of 4)

It rarely has to do anything with "diversity" (not counting Egypt suing about Cleopatra level stuff), usually it's about an insult to intelligence, when the woke vomit is being shoved in your face by some "revolutionary" writer/director/studio/investor and that's why such services has a demand and exist.

Will check this out, when I have strong suspicion, to not waste time, I go to IMDB reviews and simply search for "woke" - if it is really bad, somebody will write it in a review There are thousand of other things to watch.

But crying about this is hilarious, you picked a fight - it has a side effect of people actually arriving to that fight It does not work like you declare a victory (while being in a total minority) and that's it.

Lets take this discussion to another thread, i find it interesting to discuss if we can manage it in a civil manner - which sadly humanity seems to be lacking.

Brothers! What we do in life...Echoes in Eternity!

I agree. I don't really care that a black man was cast as Little John or that a girl pretends to be Ralph or a skinny man as Fryar Tuck, it is not reality breaking.
When they cast Historical people such as Kings or Queens incorrectly it shatters the immersion and destroys the narative.
In my modest opinion the Ralph character is not pretending she is a boy as a sexual being she is just avoiding the vulnerabilities that a girl hiding in the forest would expect.

The only thing bothersome to me is the double standard.

As long as there is an unspoken rule that in this day and age you cannot switch a diverse character with a white character, a female with male or a LGBTQ+ character with a straight person...that to me is "woke".

When it's only allowed one way, how is it any different from white actors going Black Face back in the day?

Just to be clear - bothersome doesn't mean I don't watch or enjoy shows because of that

> but I'll be f*cked if I let this one go.
Dude - you do you, but digging in your heals on something like this **that you acknowledge** just makes you that old guy raving about how digital photography isn't real photography, get off my lawn, and all those other tropes of someone refusing to accept a changing world.

Language changes and evolves over time: Accept it.  It really doesn't matter what a word used to mean if that's not the meaning today.  "Gay" used to mean happy, just like in most Christmas songs about "have a gay ole time".  But that's not the meaning it carries today.

> connotations by the 1970s
Hate to break it to you but that was 50 years ago. yeah, it shocks me too.  Words evolve over HALF A CENTURY

Hope no one minds, but I'm gonna jump in to this fascinating conversation... and congratulations on having a civil conversation about such a touchy subject. It's good to see.

I grew up conservative, live among conservatives, and generally sympathize with many of the core components of conservatism, but I don't consider myself either conservative or liberal. I can defend conservatives as a whole because most of my friends and loved ones are conservative and I know where their hearts lie. At the same time, I do NOT feel a need to defend any and all conservative talking points, especially the partisan "team" mentality and the kneejerk reaction of hating everything the left does just because the left does it. I will freely criticize either side when they deserve it and will freely defend either side when they deserve it. I don't tolerate bad logic or dishonest rhetoric and work very hard to avoid it myself as I try to be as objective as possible, although I am human and readily acknowledge my own failings and shortcomings.

Conservatives tend to use the term "woke" as a shorthand for all things connected to the most recent set of ideological rhetoric and tactics used by the left, mostly surrounding topics of race, gender, sexuality, et al (i.e. the ill-named "diversity" groups). While I try to avoid using the term myself, as it is laden with too much baggage to be useful, as it relates to entertainment and the media, this is one topic where I sympathize much more with conservatives than I do with liberals.

A conservative's primary frustration mostly centers on the hyper-fixation on a person's group identity as the most important aspect of who a person is - whether the person in question is a character or the actor behind the character. Conservatives have long been accustomed to characters who were female, gay, minority, etc... Many are well-liked, but when a lead character's primary selling point is their group identity, that's where things become problematic. Shoehorning group identity into every role is bothersome, but especially when it is done to the detriment of the final product. This is particularly true when it damages well-loved franchises and made even worse when one company (Disney) has a virtual monopoly on a large set of formerly male-oriented intellectual property.

Audiences loved Wonder Woman in 2017, but hated Captain Marvel two years later. Is that misogyny or is it bad writing, bad producing, and bad acting? The Miles Morales Spider-Man is well-liked and we have Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Idris Elba as Heimdall, and Jason Momoa as Aquaman, who are all generally well-liked. So, backlash against other race-swapping decisions, such as in The Little Mermaid, is not primarily due to racism. It is opposition to casting and writing decisions that aren't focused on producing good movies and TV shows, but on pushing an ideological agenda that is actively damaging franchises that people have loved for generations. The race swapping mentioned above didn't harm the end product, but that doesn't mean that all race/gender swapping won't harm the end product. And despite the consistency with which such group identity focused media flops, Disney seems completely tone-deaf to why this is happening. They continue to blithely run rough-shod over the expressed wishes of the core fan base. I am reminded of the classic line from Joe Dirt: "It's not what you like, it's the consumer."

I don't need or want a white Black Panther. That would be dumb, but I wish the left would see how equally dumb it is to want a female to arbitrarily replacing a male character or to shoehorn group identity into media that simply doesn't need it. You want a gay/female/minority character? Write a good one and people will flock to see it. But don't hijack or sabotage a white/male/straight character to satisfy the mob, especially if you can't do it without producing garbage in the process.

I don't know who you are talking about, but I do agree with the mindset that historical people shouldn't be race swapped. I think that we need to try to understand why these kind of practices take place and why it's so necessary to be part of our entertainment.

Brothers! What we do in life...Echoes in Eternity!

gosh... I just noticed how long this thread got... I have loads to reply to... bear with me 😊 it'll take some time.

Brothers! What we do in life...Echoes in Eternity!

Perhaps you're all forgetting one thing: it's all about the money. If the production companies can pull in a new audience by changing a character or three? Accounting approves as does Marketing.

It's also about the image. Being, or at least looking, modern. The chance of alienating one group may not matter to them in the interest of drawing in/keeping a younger crowd - who may keep watching for years.

It partially is about money, but the context is different. If woke would be profitable, everybody would do it - like everywhere in every country, but it's not. Some time ago huge money guys started adding conditions to their money - random DEI bs and alike. So, if you wanted their money, you needed to do x, y, z. I don't believe for a second that at least initially that was about saving the planet from something, the only thing that makes sense to me, is to avoid/replace a class war with a culture war. Because in class war the target are those money guys, simple as that And that step by step snowballed into a monstrosity - but the tv/movies manifested that the most, because there is a synergy: those money conditions + "revolutionary" and "enlightened" California/Hollywood. Result a total disaster, Donald in power and ironically there is no promise that in the end all circus anyway won't pivot into a class war direction (Remember Occupy Wall Street? This is what they don't like at all). List of consequences is very long and far reaching. Also I don't even see that this is about to end - what I see is that both ditches will become more and more aggressive and radical.

Could have sworn we all agreed that our problem is with hamfisted politics or religion painting an otherwise good stories and characters. There's a way to do it right, see Hazbin Hotel.

lot of people whining about white historical figures being cast as black but they don't seem to take issue with a white jesus. people have been race-swapping characters - even historical figures - for a looooooong time. maybe we should just accept that when people tell stories they adapt them to make it more salient to their audience and maybe you specifically are not always part of that intended audience and that's fine.

it only becomes an issue when there's power dynamics involved: marginalized groups are further marginalized, cultural appropriation by a dominant group erases authentic cultural expressions, identity traits are used as props or objects of ridicule, stereotypes are used to embolden xenophobia, dominant groups wield their power and connections to exclude other groups from participating fully in society or culture and thereby entrenching an unjust and unjustified social hierarchy based on inherent traits (aka "old boy's clubs"), etc. most "wokery" only seems like a double-standard if you choose to ignore material, social, or historical factors, flatten everything to it's most simplistic, and only engage in extremely superficial analysis

can it go too far? of course it can, and does sometimes. but let's save our criticism for when it actually does, rather than complaining every time a movie remake gets a black character or there's a show about a queer person. otherwise you'll have a real "girl who cries wolf" situation on your hands