The main issue described in all that writing is that studios are risk-averse and won't take any narrative risks. I heavily dislike recent marvel movies, but avengers endgame first movie made a bold choice, and that was the first blockbuster I enjoyed the story of in a long time (I dislike the dedramatization though, so I still think it's a below average movie).
Also, I think narrative is not the main issue with recent blockbusters. Their issues is dedramatization and impersonal stakes, which makes them weaker than movies from 20-30 years ago. I think A24 studio and the Daniels showed you can be goofy and fun while still making the audience care and even cry a bit, so this is probably a skill issue.
I don’t entirely disagree with this criticism, but it also feels to me like - progressivism is the flavor of modern bad studio films, but not a cause of bad media.
Like going back to the early 90’s there was this incredible rash of bad films, especially action movies, and that was just the nature of Hollywood incentives.
Because I think the complaint in some sense isn’t the fact that there are progressive movies, it’s the fact that it’s a layer added to all low risk big budget studio films.
But these movies would likely be bad for other identifiable reasons if not for the sprinkling of diversity. The lord of the rings on Amazon isn’t otherwise great.
So sometimes I think this criticism is just feeding into the very thing it’s trying to fight. Industry is great, and it’s great for the reasons described, but I think the moral ambiguity problem as described isn’t caused by diversity, they’re correlated. Bad movies have less moral ambiguity and use diversity in a hamfisted way.
> The lord of the rings on Amazon isn’t otherwise great.
That really underscores how bad the author’s “drama requires moral ambiguity” argument is. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power did everything it could to inject moral ambiguity into a very unambiguous text—Galadriel is now an obsessive that disregards the cost of her vengeance, Halbrand presents as a possible Aragorn ancestor, Adar is just trying to redeem the Uruk, etc.—but all of it falls flat, none of the reveals land (“I am good!”), and the end result is simply narm. The casting of Arondir and Disa hardly makes a difference in the light of all these writing flaws.
This is one of the most frustrating aspects of modern writing. People think that 'mature' and 'realistic' character is interchangeable with 'a character who is a bit of a piece of trash who is awful for no good reason.' You have ridiculous stances such as 'I had to savage the countryside because people treated me wrong when I was younger.'
It's as childish as the older pure-good vs. pure-evil stories, except that instead of being satisfying in a simple sort of way it's just annoying and bad storytelling.
This sort of progressive activism has an incredibly high cost given what is at stake. (ie, bad movies and bad TV shows)
It's very over-the-top, and very preachy. Once you notice it, it's impossible to stop noticing. "Did you know that people who look like you are bad, and stupid, and laughable, and that people who look different are good, and also you're bad. Did you know you're bad?" I'm sure people are going to issue with that characterization, but it really is everywhere these days, and has been for well over a decade. Are there counter-examples? Yes, but this is really getting tiring.
I claim it has an outsized effect since it doesn't _really_ matter who is represented in movies or TV. If I'm represented poorly in television, it doesn't really have bearing on things that matter; my political rights, my socioeconomic standing, my job prospects, access to health care, etc. But it does push that little tribal button in people's heads. It's lobbing a tribalism grenade. It's hard to ignore, hard not be aggrieved about, etc. Does this mean I am oppressed? No, certainly not. oppression is not people expressing opinions. But damned if it's not annoying and alienating.
And so, for very, very little benefit (ie, representation of ideology in movies) people are fanning the flames of tribalism nearly as aggressively as they can get away with. It's just one more thing inflaming tribal impulses today.
For my part, I really don't watch movies or TV for the most part anymore. I was disappointed, offended, or annoyed too many times and I now I just assume a movie is going to be trash unless it can demonstrate otherwise. Really they have probably done me a favor. I'm just trying to read books as my default leisure.
This does such a profound disservice to non-white actors/actresses, because when the whole "can we make the villain a white guy" mode of thinking takes over, they are essentially typecast for less complex and more predictable roles, and therefore cannot showcase the full range of their talents.
Gradually, over a 2 hour movie, change the protagonist from a white guy into a black woman and the villain from a black man into a white woman without the plot ever accounting for it.
That's actually the point of the post. It's both boring and a disservice when we pretend otherwise. White guy as the main villain? Sure, let's go! Non-white characters _can not_ be bad under any circumstances? Boring and predictable.
I was stuck on a plane years ago and it was the only reason I watched a transformers movie. The back half of the movie had the American villain CEO travel to China, where the pure and correct Chinese CEO discovered the evil corruption of the American CEO, and reluctantly saved the American CEO as he immediately switched from "movie villain" to "cowardly child."
I never did look up if I'd watch an international version, and whether the US release was different, but pandering was quite surprising.
Bit of a tangent but can we all appreciate Lethal Weapon 2 where the antagonists would machine gun a guy in the face, say "diplomatic immunity" with a smug smirk and then walk away?
no strong opinions on the article since I don't watch TV or go to movies often, but I do recall the in the "Solo" movie thinking that when the female (if I'm remembering correctly) abandons Han for the other guy it was surprising because she was not only behaving badly, but behaving badly in a specifically feminine way, rather than aping male misbehavior
i have no idea if this is relevant to the article or not
"one protagonist (who we know is good) and one antagonist (who we know is evil)"
The protagonist is merely the main character, while the antagonist is the person or group standing in their way.
There are many stories where the protagonist is evil/bad. Like I hope people don't think Walter White was good, while ASAC Schrader was bad.
And FWIW, while the pendulum went far into the "all non-whites are morally superior", just a couple of decades earlier minorities were almost always the bad guy. Like in the 80s an Arab or clearly Muslim character = terrorist. It was a lazy shortcut, just like the current waning "put in a black woman and she'll be superior to everyone" thing is a lazy shortcut.
If you're tired of modern American film tropes, there's a world of cinema to explore and enjoy from other cultures.
Give Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Korean, British, Japanese, Hongkonger, Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai, etc films are try. If you're like me, you'll be delighted with the change of pace and focus on more human-centered stories and grounded portrayals of characters and relationships.
American cinema feels so uncanny and sterile by comparison.
It's quite a feat to see a trend towards predictable content that came from "second screen-ability", committees, laying off writers, large mergers, less money for indies, and walk away with this and go yeah it's woke that's destroying this. And to have zero data backing this claim up.
And we have this underlying assumption that no one of the left has ever wanted this sort of representation, is just a massive straw-man for this entire argument.
I have to disagree. Multiracial casts are a relatively new convention, so I think it's premature to draw conclusions on casing patterns generally. But casting a heterosexual white man is representative of the real world. Who has all the power in the real world? What race is your congress person, your states federal judges, the supreme court... all but one president in American history...
There are degrees of power, of course. All white men aren't at the pinnacle of power, and many are truly disadvantaged, but they collectively share a disproportionate amount of power in the world given how few of them there are.
It's not a fallacy if the parent is not making some point about "benefit for other white men", which you seemed to have injected from somewhere. They simply said that the most powerful individuals having the most disproportionate power being white men is not inconsistent with matters in the real world, however few there are.
> "But casting <a> heterosexual white man is representative of the real world. <Who> has all the power in the real world?"
The original comment obviously did in fact try to make a point about heterosexual white men in general. No mention was made of how few there might be, you're in fact the one interjecting new content from somewhere.
I have very little sympathy for “You couldn’t write X today” arguments. Here, X is The Wire.
There is a spiritual successor to The Wire: 2022’s miniseries We Own This City. Same complicated representation of Baltimore. Same complicated representation of American policing. Good critical reception, but less widely-known than a legendary show that ran for six years and sixty episodes.
The substantive difference between the two is that 2020’s-era HBO doesn’t make long-running serials like The Wire and The Sopranos anymore (Hacks is a notable exception).
That’s not a political change forced on them by unnamed leftists. That’s a change in business model.
Most of this article is tilting at windmills. It's notable that they present a number of examples of minority villains pre-woke, and then decry that that can't happen anymore because of woke, but they also stop presenting examples.
Like, they show Giancarlo Esposito from Breaking Bad, saying what a good villain he was. And then they imply it can't happen again. But he was another fantastic villain in The Boys, which just ended its run.
> It means that if a black woman in a wheelchair shows up, you know exactly what role she’ll play; the supportive best friend, but never the lying, betraying femme fatale.
Maybe, but the real source of this is: black women in wheelchairs rarely get any parts at all.
Maybe I don't watch enough movies, but I don't think this page makes a good enough case that it's actually happening. As it is, it reads like something they thought up to get angry about.
I really hate it when articles refer to “woke” as if it was a thing. I’ve never heard a consistent definition of that word, to the point it just seems like it means whatever the author doesn’t like
I see it as a generic name for the set of modern ideologies that determine someone’s morality based on how many immutable characteristics they share with people who have historically been oppressed.
The main issue described in all that writing is that studios are risk-averse and won't take any narrative risks. I heavily dislike recent marvel movies, but avengers endgame first movie made a bold choice, and that was the first blockbuster I enjoyed the story of in a long time (I dislike the dedramatization though, so I still think it's a below average movie).
Also, I think narrative is not the main issue with recent blockbusters. Their issues is dedramatization and impersonal stakes, which makes them weaker than movies from 20-30 years ago. I think A24 studio and the Daniels showed you can be goofy and fun while still making the audience care and even cry a bit, so this is probably a skill issue.
I don’t entirely disagree with this criticism, but it also feels to me like - progressivism is the flavor of modern bad studio films, but not a cause of bad media.
Like going back to the early 90’s there was this incredible rash of bad films, especially action movies, and that was just the nature of Hollywood incentives.
Because I think the complaint in some sense isn’t the fact that there are progressive movies, it’s the fact that it’s a layer added to all low risk big budget studio films.
But these movies would likely be bad for other identifiable reasons if not for the sprinkling of diversity. The lord of the rings on Amazon isn’t otherwise great.
So sometimes I think this criticism is just feeding into the very thing it’s trying to fight. Industry is great, and it’s great for the reasons described, but I think the moral ambiguity problem as described isn’t caused by diversity, they’re correlated. Bad movies have less moral ambiguity and use diversity in a hamfisted way.
Completely agree with you, it's not progressivism itself making bad films, it's bad films going through a checkbox exercise to tick things off a list.
It feels worse because it's a mindless, careless addition to check the "diversity" box. If it was made with effort it wouldn't feel this way.
> The lord of the rings on Amazon isn’t otherwise great.
That really underscores how bad the author’s “drama requires moral ambiguity” argument is. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power did everything it could to inject moral ambiguity into a very unambiguous text—Galadriel is now an obsessive that disregards the cost of her vengeance, Halbrand presents as a possible Aragorn ancestor, Adar is just trying to redeem the Uruk, etc.—but all of it falls flat, none of the reveals land (“I am good!”), and the end result is simply narm. The casting of Arondir and Disa hardly makes a difference in the light of all these writing flaws.
This is one of the most frustrating aspects of modern writing. People think that 'mature' and 'realistic' character is interchangeable with 'a character who is a bit of a piece of trash who is awful for no good reason.' You have ridiculous stances such as 'I had to savage the countryside because people treated me wrong when I was younger.'
It's as childish as the older pure-good vs. pure-evil stories, except that instead of being satisfying in a simple sort of way it's just annoying and bad storytelling.
This sort of progressive activism has an incredibly high cost given what is at stake. (ie, bad movies and bad TV shows)
It's very over-the-top, and very preachy. Once you notice it, it's impossible to stop noticing. "Did you know that people who look like you are bad, and stupid, and laughable, and that people who look different are good, and also you're bad. Did you know you're bad?" I'm sure people are going to issue with that characterization, but it really is everywhere these days, and has been for well over a decade. Are there counter-examples? Yes, but this is really getting tiring.
I claim it has an outsized effect since it doesn't _really_ matter who is represented in movies or TV. If I'm represented poorly in television, it doesn't really have bearing on things that matter; my political rights, my socioeconomic standing, my job prospects, access to health care, etc. But it does push that little tribal button in people's heads. It's lobbing a tribalism grenade. It's hard to ignore, hard not be aggrieved about, etc. Does this mean I am oppressed? No, certainly not. oppression is not people expressing opinions. But damned if it's not annoying and alienating.
And so, for very, very little benefit (ie, representation of ideology in movies) people are fanning the flames of tribalism nearly as aggressively as they can get away with. It's just one more thing inflaming tribal impulses today.
For my part, I really don't watch movies or TV for the most part anymore. I was disappointed, offended, or annoyed too many times and I now I just assume a movie is going to be trash unless it can demonstrate otherwise. Really they have probably done me a favor. I'm just trying to read books as my default leisure.
This does such a profound disservice to non-white actors/actresses, because when the whole "can we make the villain a white guy" mode of thinking takes over, they are essentially typecast for less complex and more predictable roles, and therefore cannot showcase the full range of their talents.
Gradually, over a 2 hour movie, change the protagonist from a white guy into a black woman and the villain from a black man into a white woman without the plot ever accounting for it.
I had to stop watching one of the Transformers movies when in the opening conflict they had to go beat up on some Muslims.
And those French gangster movies where the Turkish guy is the cool villain eroding lawful civic French values.
I find it refreshing when a plot is balanced with a white guy antagonist undermining the lawful order.
Whatever you think feel or believe, evil lurks within every kind of person. Our entertainment would reflect this as all forms of art imitate life.
That's actually the point of the post. It's both boring and a disservice when we pretend otherwise. White guy as the main villain? Sure, let's go! Non-white characters _can not_ be bad under any circumstances? Boring and predictable.
I was stuck on a plane years ago and it was the only reason I watched a transformers movie. The back half of the movie had the American villain CEO travel to China, where the pure and correct Chinese CEO discovered the evil corruption of the American CEO, and reluctantly saved the American CEO as he immediately switched from "movie villain" to "cowardly child."
I never did look up if I'd watch an international version, and whether the US release was different, but pandering was quite surprising.
Hollywood movies pandering to China often results in movies that are parodies of themselves
Usually a South African :)
Bit of a tangent but can we all appreciate Lethal Weapon 2 where the antagonists would machine gun a guy in the face, say "diplomatic immunity" with a smug smirk and then walk away?
no strong opinions on the article since I don't watch TV or go to movies often, but I do recall the in the "Solo" movie thinking that when the female (if I'm remembering correctly) abandons Han for the other guy it was surprising because she was not only behaving badly, but behaving badly in a specifically feminine way, rather than aping male misbehavior
i have no idea if this is relevant to the article or not
"one protagonist (who we know is good) and one antagonist (who we know is evil)"
The protagonist is merely the main character, while the antagonist is the person or group standing in their way.
There are many stories where the protagonist is evil/bad. Like I hope people don't think Walter White was good, while ASAC Schrader was bad.
And FWIW, while the pendulum went far into the "all non-whites are morally superior", just a couple of decades earlier minorities were almost always the bad guy. Like in the 80s an Arab or clearly Muslim character = terrorist. It was a lazy shortcut, just like the current waning "put in a black woman and she'll be superior to everyone" thing is a lazy shortcut.
If you're tired of modern American film tropes, there's a world of cinema to explore and enjoy from other cultures.
Give Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Korean, British, Japanese, Hongkonger, Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai, etc films are try. If you're like me, you'll be delighted with the change of pace and focus on more human-centered stories and grounded portrayals of characters and relationships.
American cinema feels so uncanny and sterile by comparison.
It's quite a feat to see a trend towards predictable content that came from "second screen-ability", committees, laying off writers, large mergers, less money for indies, and walk away with this and go yeah it's woke that's destroying this. And to have zero data backing this claim up.
And we have this underlying assumption that no one of the left has ever wanted this sort of representation, is just a massive straw-man for this entire argument.
I have to disagree. Multiracial casts are a relatively new convention, so I think it's premature to draw conclusions on casing patterns generally. But casting a heterosexual white man is representative of the real world. Who has all the power in the real world? What race is your congress person, your states federal judges, the supreme court... all but one president in American history...
Classical apex fallacy. Just because 0.0001% of white men have a lot of power doesn’t mean there is any benefit for other white men.
There are degrees of power, of course. All white men aren't at the pinnacle of power, and many are truly disadvantaged, but they collectively share a disproportionate amount of power in the world given how few of them there are.
It's not a fallacy if the parent is not making some point about "benefit for other white men", which you seemed to have injected from somewhere. They simply said that the most powerful individuals having the most disproportionate power being white men is not inconsistent with matters in the real world, however few there are.
> "But casting <a> heterosexual white man is representative of the real world. <Who> has all the power in the real world?"
The original comment obviously did in fact try to make a point about heterosexual white men in general. No mention was made of how few there might be, you're in fact the one interjecting new content from somewhere.
> Multiracial casts are a relatively new convention
I'm 47 and no it is not.
I have very little sympathy for “You couldn’t write X today” arguments. Here, X is The Wire.
There is a spiritual successor to The Wire: 2022’s miniseries We Own This City. Same complicated representation of Baltimore. Same complicated representation of American policing. Good critical reception, but less widely-known than a legendary show that ran for six years and sixty episodes.
The substantive difference between the two is that 2020’s-era HBO doesn’t make long-running serials like The Wire and The Sopranos anymore (Hacks is a notable exception).
That’s not a political change forced on them by unnamed leftists. That’s a change in business model.
> 2020’s-era HBO doesn’t make long-running serials
1. Succession
2. Curb you Enthusiasm
3. Westworld
4. Euporia
5. The White Lotus
6. The Last of Us
7. House of the Dragon
8. Industry
Couldn't agree more. Fiction should be fictional and not be forced to carry today's immoral panic with it.
So you feel like a white villain is only possible in fiction?
> Fiction should be fictional and not be forced to carry today's immoral panic with it.
What time period do you feel that took place?
Most of this article is tilting at windmills. It's notable that they present a number of examples of minority villains pre-woke, and then decry that that can't happen anymore because of woke, but they also stop presenting examples.
Like, they show Giancarlo Esposito from Breaking Bad, saying what a good villain he was. And then they imply it can't happen again. But he was another fantastic villain in The Boys, which just ended its run.
> It means that if a black woman in a wheelchair shows up, you know exactly what role she’ll play; the supportive best friend, but never the lying, betraying femme fatale.
Maybe, but the real source of this is: black women in wheelchairs rarely get any parts at all.
Maybe I don't watch enough movies, but I don't think this page makes a good enough case that it's actually happening. As it is, it reads like something they thought up to get angry about.
I'm significantly more tired of the reactionary whinge machine re: 'progressive storytelling', to be perfectly honest.
I really hate it when articles refer to “woke” as if it was a thing. I’ve never heard a consistent definition of that word, to the point it just seems like it means whatever the author doesn’t like
I see it as a generic name for the set of modern ideologies that determine someone’s morality based on how many immutable characteristics they share with people who have historically been oppressed.
Except in this case the author presents a detailed breakdown of precisely what they are criticizing