Social Is "Woke" going too far?

[RoastBeast]

Right on queue the usual suspects flood the thread to bitch about wokeness

And the usual suspects flood the thread to bitch about people bitching about wokeness.

 

[Scerpi]

The so-called "woke era" is pretty much over in my view. The big entertainment companies are pulling out their support of this stuff because of the enormous financial losses they've accumulated as a result of it.

The dudes who have made a good living out of pointing out "wokeness" in movies or video games or whatever, will still continue to try to make a living out of it, but their act will seem more and more hollow as they pretend to be outraged about stuff that seems pretty casual and not politically motivated to the average viewer.

People will still be trigger happy to call out any implied "wokeness" for a year or two, just because of how obnoxiously and heavy-handedly it was being shoved down people's throats, year after year, but after that it'll probably go away and people will start behaving normal again, no longer losing their shit over every race-swapped character or LGBT person.

This girl might have single-handedly killed it for Disney



Money > Ideology

Well... usually

 

[UberHere]

This girl might have single-handedly killed it for Disney



Money > Ideology

Well... usually

It doesn’t help that she looks like she could play Shrek’s offspring convincingly on top of being a whiny bitch over democrats getting spanked in November

 

[TheGreatA]

This girl might have single-handedly killed it for Disney



Money > Ideology

Well... usually

It was probably dead in the water anyway. She just put the final nail in the coffin.

One thing in common with the recognized "woke" products is that they're generally trash and lack any redeeming qualities. There's plenty of movies and games that do have clear political bias and attempt to morally "educate" the audience, but since they're good, people are willing to overlook that. Not so much when you're being bored to tears while listening to what is basically a lecture, written by immature and ignorant people. There was never really an audience for this, even among the people who might politically align with the views that are being pushed, because of the sheer lack of entertainment value.

 

[Possum Jenkins]

This girl might have single-handedly killed it for Disney



Money > Ideology

Well... usually

Goddamn, a 93% negative rate is pretty brutal.

The weird thing is that she's only a few shades darker than the animated Snow White. Even black Little Mermaid didn't draw this much criticism.

I think it also helped that she's not conventionally good-looking, independent of skin color. Put someone like Camila Cabello there and the moaning would have been much lower.

 

[jeremyemilio]

In particular, I am not a fan of changing the race of a main character for the sole reason to inject diversity into a role. It really pisses me off when it is based upon a book I read multiple times. For example, in Dr sleep, the little girl with all the powers is abra stone and she is desribed as a blonde girl and in the movie, she is black. Regardless, I loved the movie and think it does an excellent job, including the black girl playing abra-but initially, it oissed me off.


The book the passage by Justin Cronin has a little girl with powers named Amy and she is described as being white with dark hair and in the series, she is black. I just hate when you read a book multiple times (just finished listening to it in audio book a few weeks ago and I am working my way through the second book now) and you get a picture in your head and they take that picture and the source material and throw it out the fucking window for the reasons of a diverse cast.

Superman with a black actor?

It happens all the time, except making a black character white-that won’t happen like it did with black face and no movie that did that should be taken seriously. Hell, there was huge controversy over making tilda swinton the ancient one in Dr strange and there is even a name for it-white washing while in the same movie they changed an Asian dude in the source material for a black guy in the movie but there were no cries of black washing

I gotta say, I honestly don't get it. Skin color is such a minor feature of a person. It's literally this small variation in the amount of melanin in someone's skin, and there's such an insanely wide range of variation.

People talk about gender being on a spectrum, which is something I can't wrap my head around for the life of me, and yet everyone, left, right, and center, talks like skin colour is literal black and white.

You could literally line up 10,000 people with the whitest person ever on one end and the darkest person ever on the other, and easily fill in the middle with 9,998 people, arranged lightest to darkest, whose skin tone varied so gradually from one to the next that you wouldn't even be able to spot the difference between any two or three people standing side by side.

Plus things like fairytales and Superman are these broad ranging collaborative pop-culture / folk entities that are constantly in flux. Superman, as originally written, couldn't even fly.

The problem for me comes when some idiot producer thinks that changing the skin colour or cultural background of a character is somehow enough to validate a film as relevant or justify making a new version. You can do that all you want. But you still need to produce something compelling. That's your job. Produce something people will find entertaining and will become emotionally invested in. Do that and very few people are goin to complain very much about these small details.

I also have a problem with the message that a black kid can't see a white Peter Parker as a role model, or conversely that a white kid can't see a black Peter Parker as a role model. I do understand that the world I grew up in (mid 70s through mid 90s), where pretty much everyone in every commercial or blockbuster film was white is boring and, for children of colour and their parents, a genuine obstacle to seeing yourself as a person that the world views as valid and having potential. So I think that the overall move to add more diversity is a positive one. I just don't think that any specific and particular such adaptation is necessary, on the one hand, or problematic, on the other.

 

[Ezekiel 25:17]

Elba would be my pick for almost anything, although he is too old at this point. He is amazing in everything. Although I will disagree at just making Bond black. Bond is white, like Shaft is black. Like Blade is black. His "whiteness" is very much a part of who he is as he is often undercover in elite crowds where he needs to use his "privilege". What they COULD do is create a new 00 and make that person whatever race they wanted. They tested the waters with a black actress, and she bombed. Elba could have succeeded 10 years ago in my opinion.

Ya, they certainly dropped the ball with that one. Especially with him coming off The Wire and in the midst of Luther and the Thor stuff. He had the look and notoriety for it. I cant picture anyone else today playing a black bond.

 

[Seano]

Any movie/television show etc. is going to be shit if it focuses on diversity before the story.

Also, I think there are a lot of talentless "writers" making films today who disguise their lack of ability by injecting "woke" nonsense into the story. They use the controversy to sell the product more than the story itself.

 

[I Am Legion]

I gotta say, I honestly don't get it. Skin color is such a minor feature of a person. It's literally this small variation in the amount of melanin in someone's skin, and there's such an insanely wide range of variation.

People talk about gender being on a spectrum, which is something I can't wrap my head around for the life of me, and yet everyone, left, right, and center, talks like skin colour is literal black and white.

You could literally line up 10,000 people with the whitest person ever on one end and the darkest person ever on the other, and easily fill in the middle with 9,998 people, arranged lightest to darkest, whose skin tone varied so gradually from one to the next that you wouldn't even be able to spot the difference between any two or three people standing side by side.

Plus things like fairytales and Superman are these broad ranging collaborative pop-culture / folk entities that are constantly in flux. Superman, as originally written, couldn't even fly.

The problem for me comes when some idiot producer thinks that changing the skin colour or cultural background of a character is somehow enough to validate a film as relevant or justify making a new version. You can do that all you want. But you still need to produce something compelling. That's your job. Produce something people will find entertaining and will become emotionally invested in. Do that and very few people are goin to complain very much about these small details.

I also have a problem with the message that a black kid can't see a white Peter Parker as a role model, or conversely that a white kid can't see a black Peter Parker as a role model. I do understand that the world I grew up in (mid 70s through mid 90s), where pretty much everyone in every commercial or blockbuster film was white is boring and, for children of colour and their parents, a genuine obstacle to seeing yourself as a person that the world views as valid and having potential. So I think that the overall move to add more diversity is a positive one. I just don't think that any specific and particular such adaptation is necessary, on the one hand, or problematic, on the other.

I grew up in a suburban hood. You know who black kids idolized? Bruce Lee and Kung Fu masters. When I went to the movies with my black friends, they didn't care there was no black kid in The Goonies. It was a good movie. If the characters are relatable, their race is irrelevant. I am all for diversity, but not for the SAKE of diversity. That is tokenism. Don't race swap...CREATE. Jordan Peele says he isn't interested in telling white stories. Thats fine. As a white dude, I still enjoy his stuff...If John Hughes was making movies today, he shouldn't feel the need to shoehorn diversity in his cast if he draws from an experience that wasn't that diverse. Same goes for Tim Burton.

 

[Ezekiel 25:17]

Goddamn, a 93% negative rate is pretty brutal.

The weird thing is that she's only a few shades darker than the animated Snow White. Even black Little Mermaid didn't draw this much criticism.

I think it also helped that she's not conventionally good-looking, independent of skin color. Put someone like Camila Cabello there and the moaning would have been much lower.

Isnt the point of snow white to be....well.. white, lol. This is what I mean. In some ways, im like...why the fck would they even do that. It doesnt make sense. You can create a whole new disney character, which they do routinely. Why mess with a classic character like that?

Now, they wanna introduce afro-puerto rican version of spiderman...cool! Go for it. Things change in comics every year, especially with all the multiverse stuff. But they kept og spiderman and didnt try to outright replace him either.

 

[ColemanwastheGOAT]

It was probably dead in the water anyway. She just put the final nail in the coffin.

One thing in common with the recognized "woke" products is that they're generally trash and lack any redeeming qualities. There's plenty of movies and games that do have clear political bias and attempt to morally "educate" the audience, but since they're good, people are willing to overlook that. Not so much when you're being bored to tears while listening to what is basically a lecture, written by immature and ignorant people. There was never really an audience for this, even among the people who might politically align with the views that are being pushed, because of the sheer lack of entertainment value.

I saw someone recently trying to say what we call 'woke' nowadays used to just be called 'social commentary' and that's just absolute bullshit imo.

Syriana is an example of a movie that works as a thought provoking social commentary which actually made 20 year old me question my very dumb takes on US foreign policy.

Woke movies don't do that. Woke movies don't ask questions or force you to question your beliefs. Woke movies just lecture. Usually from an obviously illogical position.

 

[avenue94]

I saw someone recently trying to say what we call 'woke' nowadays used to just be called 'social commentary' and that's just absolute bullshit imo.

Syriana is an example of a movie that works as a thought provoking social commentary which actually made 20 year old me question my very dumb takes on US foreign policy.

Woke movies don't do that. Woke movies don't ask questions or force you to question your beliefs. Woke movies just lecture. Usually from an obviously illogical position.

Heavy-handed and poorly done entertainment has existed for as long as the mediums have existed. Narnia isn't exactly subtle, nor was Birth of a Nation, nor was Wizard of Oz.

Isnt the point of snow white to be....well.. white, lol. This is what I mean. In some ways, im like...why the fck would they even do that. It doesnt make sense. You can create a whole new disney character, which they do routinely. Why mess with a classic character like that?

The white is a purely superficial description, not an ethnic one. You guys care way too much about mediocre entertainment made for audiences that aren't you (aka kids in this case).

 

[Fury]

However that doesn't mean I have somehow forfeited the right to talk about these things

It's not that I mind people discussing it, or even doing so myself, it's when people seem to think I need to pick a side in what they think is a culture war.

Mostly, I'd vote for more original ideas than remakes, whether those are true to the source, "modernized" or woke remakes.

 

[nhbbear]

I gotta say, I honestly don't get it. Skin color is such a minor feature of a person. It's literally this small variation in the amount of melanin in someone's skin, and there's such an insanely wide range of variation.

People talk about gender being on a spectrum, which is something I can't wrap my head around for the life of me, and yet everyone, left, right, and center, talks like skin colour is literal black and white.

You could literally line up 10,000 people with the whitest person ever on one end and the darkest person ever on the other, and easily fill in the middle with 9,998 people, arranged lightest to darkest, whose skin tone varied so gradually from one to the next that you wouldn't even be able to spot the difference between any two or three people standing side by side.

Plus things like fairytales and Superman are these broad ranging collaborative pop-culture / folk entities that are constantly in flux. Superman, as originally written, couldn't even fly.

The problem for me comes when some idiot producer thinks that changing the skin colour or cultural background of a character is somehow enough to validate a film as relevant or justify making a new version. You can do that all you want. But you still need to produce something compelling. That's your job. Produce something people will find entertaining and will become emotionally invested in. Do that and very few people are goin to complain very much about these small details.

I also have a problem with the message that a black kid can't see a white Peter Parker as a role model, or conversely that a white kid can't see a black Peter Parker as a role model. I do understand that the world I grew up in (mid 70s through mid 90s), where pretty much everyone in every commercial or blockbuster film was white is boring and, for children of colour and their parents, a genuine obstacle to seeing yourself as a person that the world views as valid and having potential. So I think that the overall move to add more diversity is a positive one. I just don't think that any specific and particular such adaptation is necessary, on the one hand, or problematic, on the other.

For me, had I not read the books and knew the characters, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But since I read and loved the source material, changing the race of characters pissed me off. Hell, if they would have made one a brunette when she was supposed to be blonde, I would have mentioned it, but a whole race change?

If there is no source material, then by all means, make up, change whatever the fuck you want. But throwing in a black oerson here or there Willy nilly helps nothing and doing it to “be edgy” like they are trying with Superman is a lame stunt. I hate watching shows that are all one race, but I hate when they just wedge a minority in all of a sudden for diversity sakes. It’s shitty writing.


What made me laugh about the abra stone character (Dr sleep) is that Stephen king was saying how he loved the idea of changing her race and he would like to see more diversity in his movies…..mother fucker-you wrote that shit. Take your woke ads and write some more black characters if you feel so strongly about it

 

[ShadowRun]

Eh to the OP, it wasn’t about the character in wicked I think it was the interviews form the actors if I remember right ..

But does this count ? Over glorifying their roles or no ?

 

[Scerpi]

It doesn’t help that she looks like she could play Shrek’s offspring convincingly on top of being a whiny bitch over democrats getting spanked in November

Yeah.. she ugly

Hilarious to think she’s hotter than Gal Gadot

It’s not even close

 

[Scerpi]

I gotta say, I honestly don't get it. Skin color is such a minor feature of a person. It's literally this small variation in the amount of melanin in someone's skin, and there's such an insanely wide range of variation.

People talk about gender being on a spectrum, which is something I can't wrap my head around for the life of me, and yet everyone, left, right, and center, talks like skin colour is literal black and white.

You could literally line up 10,000 people with the whitest person ever on one end and the darkest person ever on the other, and easily fill in the middle with 9,998 people, arranged lightest to darkest, whose skin tone varied so gradually from one to the next that you wouldn't even be able to spot the difference between any two or three people standing side by side.

Plus things like fairytales and Superman are these broad ranging collaborative pop-culture / folk entities that are constantly in flux. Superman, as originally written, couldn't even fly.

The problem for me comes when some idiot producer thinks that changing the skin colour or cultural background of a character is somehow enough to validate a film as relevant or justify making a new version. You can do that all you want. But you still need to produce something compelling. That's your job. Produce something people will find entertaining and will become emotionally invested in. Do that and very few people are goin to complain very much about these small details.

I also have a problem with the message that a black kid can't see a white Peter Parker as a role model, or conversely that a white kid can't see a black Peter Parker as a role model. I do understand that the world I grew up in (mid 70s through mid 90s), where pretty much everyone in every commercial or blockbuster film was white is boring and, for children of colour and their parents, a genuine obstacle to seeing yourself as a person that the world views as valid and having potential. So I think that the overall move to add more diversity is a positive one. I just don't think that any specific and particular such adaptation is necessary, on the one hand, or problematic, on the other.

We need an Asian Black Panther…

Talk about under represented

 

[mkess101]

A black James Bond in the 1960s would have been unrealistic, that's true. But there are certainly a few black people in 21st century, posh English spaces (thanks, wokeism!) so a black James Bond in, say, the late 2000s would not have been out of place.

He had the look, the elegance, the name/face recognition.

I do agree that he's too old now. Can't really think of anyone that could do it now.

Daniel Kaluuya? At first glance maybe doesn't seem like he has the polish of someone like Elba but imo Kaluuya is one of the most underrated actors alive and could pull it off. Have never seen him in anything that I didn't think he was great in.

 

[Ezekiel 25:17]

I grew up in a suburban hood. You know who black kids idolized? Bruce Lee and Kung Fu masters. When I went to the movies with my black friends, they didn't care there was no black kid in The Goonies. It was a good movie. If the characters are relatable, their race is irrelevant. I am all for diversity, but not for the SAKE of diversity. That is tokenism. Don't race swap...CREATE. Jordan Peele says he isn't interested in telling white stories. Thats fine. As a white dude, I still enjoy his stuff...If John Hughes was making movies today, he shouldn't feel the need to shoehorn diversity in his cast if he draws from an experience that wasn't that diverse. Same goes for Tim Burton.

Its like Spike Lee. He always makes movies with majority black characters and theres no problem with it. Its what he relates to and enjoys doing. You create what you feel or what you want to, not what you feel forced or obligated to.

 

[PBAC]

It originally means awake. So the term is to imply that i am an active person in an active world and others are active people in an active world who carry our own individual identies. This is why the woke tend to associate with inner personal strenght over collective group dynamics. Hence why they tend to support rights in the name of the shared agreement guaranteed by laws and constitutions as opposed to collective gatherings and cult like appraisal.

The current usage of woke is just flat out broken by both sides. It always feels like 10 percent of people pushing against another 10 percent while everyone in between tries to figure out whats going on.