That is how my brain works a well when it comes to Americans. I know that they aren’t all removed, but I have a hard time dealing with the country and its politics and just how fucking brainwashed the population is.
I also know that if I had been american, I would have voted for Harris despite haaaaating woke shit. To me those are two very separate things. Woke shit is a social trend where one can argue for and against aspects of it and I expected it to find its middle ground with time once the most obnoxious people and companies got over themselves.
But! Ain’t no fucking way I would ever have voted republican as their politics, no matter how much they have catered to my hateboner for woke bs, is fundamentally against pretty much all of my values. Even the democrats are too right wing for me.
I hate America for how it treats its population. I hate that there isn’t free education and healthcare (to the “noThinG iS fREe” crowd = kindly shut up and go jangle your keys in the corner while the adults are talking) and I cannot fathom the work culture over there. To me it is borderline slavery.
To me those issues outweighs my annoyances with Hollywood’s stubborn decision to pump out cringe woke propaganda and call it movies for ten-ish years. I am legit embarrassed for all the dumbasses who voted for trump because of woke entertainment. There is a level of stupidity there that I can’t even begin to unpack.
They wrote 6 paragraphs and one word is your issue?
If the problem is entirely semantics that’s a very simple fix and it doesn’t seem you really disagree with the content of their comment, just how they said it.
If you were literate, you would be able to discern that the comment that I was originally replying to, in fact brought up wokeness and DEI themselves. You are spreading lies and false narratives to stir up drama where there wasn’t any.
yo go read the comments under the new Snow White movie and the reviews and tell me that’s not Trump voters. You tell me that this man is wrong and that these people weren’t so upset about a couple of movies that they voted to destroy the lives of 8 billion people.
go ask any Republican why they voted Trump and they will say something about trans people something about woke something about Covid something about good for the stock market
Read the fucking comment from Charles Darwin that I replied to initially. He was bringing up wokeness and I just joined in on that conversation. YOU are the one trolling and trying to sow chaos in a calm conversation.
Then you clearly didn’t pay attention to what I wrote, but oh well, it’s also just one comment and not an indepth essay about why I think and feel this or that way about something. It’s not like the world and the people in it has nuance, so enjoy that black and white thinking of yours. I’m sure you will get far in life with that.
No you’re just assuming a bunch of things because I used the word woke in a negative connotation. You didn’t ask for clarifications or anything, you just jumped straight to insults and assumptions instead of being inquisitive as I would have expected people were on this platform. You can scroll down in the thread and see a more indepth explanation of how I think about the subject where I replied to someone who was interested in a discussion instead of knee-jerk reactions like yours.
First of all, you don’t know me and you don’t know what my political views are. You just assume that because I dislike it when diversity is cheap and superficial and all about political agendas instead of telling good stories, that I would vote for trump.
Life is a tad but more nuanced than that. When they cast someone like Sam Jackson to play Nick Fury he was still playing the character. When they cast someone like Zegler to play Snow White it could have been the same, but no. During the promotion they had her come out and talk a bunch of shit on the old movie and making her a target for online hate. They have done shit like this for awhile now. They make movies political and divisive when they didn’t have to be. Sam Jackson as Nick Fury wasn’t promoted as now we get to see Nick Fury as a black man. It was just Nick Fury and he was played by Sam Jackson. That is the difference.
It’s okay if we disagree on the topic, but I would really appreciate you not make your biased assumptions about my character. I could make a bunch of assumptions about you too, but instead I am trying to have a discussion. I don’t know you or what your opinions on this and that is. All I know about you is that you project the same divisive and simplistic mindset that was very off putting to me when people who support trump were talking about diversity in media. It is either you love all of it or you hate all of it and depending on what side I’m on, I’ll judge you to be a nazi or a communist. It’s so fucking stupid to think like that.
But it seems you have made up your mind on who I am and I’m apparently bad because I don’t enjoy a very specific brand of corporate pandering. Disregard everything else I have said and deem me an evil trump supporter. You are being very silly.
The irony about the qons that voted against Kamala because “woke”… I mean, donvict and his demons may go after Hollywood, etc…but the thing is, neither the Democrats nor Kamala were or are responsible for a lot of the culture stuff - meaning Hollywood can crank out “woke” trash that makes almost everyone’s eyes roll as long as they can economically sustain it [1], regardless of who is in office. I guess some of the qons really do want donvict to go full Putin/Hitler and make every aspect of life, including movies, bow to his stupid and backwards will.
Imagine if Hollywood has their arm twisted by the magoffs into just cranking out snow-white super xtian Hallmark movie type of dreck for years…gag. Seriously, who the fuck is going to want to watch any of that beyond just a very narrow and stupid demographic?
I honestly don’t understand what upsets a type of person so very much about godawful cultural content to the point that it changes their vote in the political sphere. Lots of magoffs got very GRRRR mad about the latest Doctor Who, but isn’t that the BBC? What the hell would they expect donvict to do, anyway? Ban it somehow? Invade the UK and make them stop? Same for Disney? Who was making them watch anything from Disney? Don’t these people have choices in what they choose to stream? The movies they pay for? I get it - quite a bit of it is unbelievably terrible, but…I don’t remember anyone making me watch anything. The people think something like The Acolyte “ruined their childhood” and now have the knives out for wokeness and Disney, but I have a newsflash - Episode 1 was complete shit and didn’t need “wokeness” to make it so.
These are the same people that cried for decades that they are “made fun of”. Sure, by some content. But also, lots of content completely caters to flyover country/salt of the Earth narratives and always has.
[1] I really don’t understand what the business model is. It looks like Disney especially seems to want to set fire to huge piles of cash? And for what purpose? It almost seems to be creating more reactionaries. And people that they think they are catering to? I don’t know how much they are bound to be customers of things like Star Wars anyway? The term “woke” now is so loaded, unfortunately, but there is miles of distance between having representation and not being nasty to certain marginalized groups, etc., vs hammering in extremely stilted agendas, doing race/gender swapping almost to intentionally alienate the fan base and so on…it’s so cringe that I often wonder if it’s being done in service of oligarchs’ interest in dividing the nation even further, just like corporations doing their silly rainbow/woke-washing stuff.
It almost seems to be creating more reactionaries.
It’s interesting how all of Disney’s “woke” is in those shitty “live action” remakes (+ Star Wars). The live action remakes I don’t think are intended to make money or be good, they seem to be more ways of trying to keep their IPs in perpetuity.
They wouldn’t make Elsa a lesbian, but shoving a girl kiss into Buzz Lightyear was probably the only bit of actual marketing that movie had. Instead of discussions over how tired the remake trope is, chuds froth at the mouth over whatever was going on in Snow White.
It doesn’t seem to be designed to make anyone happy - I’d love to see a queer Disney character, or even just the level of representation there was in Paranorman (character is gay, and it’s just mentioned as an off hand joke at the end). I go back and think about some of the S & P comments about Gravity Falls - how Disney absolutely refused to allow the fact that two gay characters were clearly gay and in a relationship with each other be made outright canon.
Sometimes it feels like sabotage. They don’t seem to want queer stories to succeed. They’ll use them for their tax write offs.
Sometimes it feels like sabotage. They don’t seem to want queer stories to succeed. They’ll use them for their tax write offs.
I’d buy the sabotage angle, and maybe any reactionaries they create is something they consider a bonus? I just don’t understand their intent - it doesn’t seem to be about making money? Unless some of the people involved are just really that out of touch?
The other thing that I’ve noticed is that it’s very hard to tell what is a decent show/movie with things like The Acolyte from reviews, since there are obviously people that are leaping into the fray with a specific agenda, and probably more than a few paid shills - the critic rating is 72% while the all audience rating is 19%? That 72% number seems awfully high, but then 19% is probably due to the brigading of the butthurt “antiwoke” chuds upset that Disney “ruined their childhoods” or something…
I don’t know much about tax write offs or how they work, so I looked around and it seems like they have reduced their tax bill substantially from other shows…
Indeed. It is utterly bizarre how some people turned to Trump because their entertainment got cringe. Personally, I just decided to not watch those movies.
It’s not like I hate diversity 100% and whenever it pops up in media. There is a very clear difference between when companies like Disney do it and when say an indie director does it. Moonlight is one of my favourite movies and that film is about a gay black man. But it is genuinely dealing with a deeply important subject and handles the material gracefully. And I just love Chirone so much.
That’s one of many amazing ways to handle diversity in media and hell, I do it myself as a writer. I write about diverse characters because I want to see them represented but I also want to tell stories where they aren’t just defined by their skin or their sex or sexuality. They are just people, you know. And that is where I hoped diversity would eventually end up after the woke wave had passed, but now we are here.
And like you said, a reactionary anti-woke wave of hallmark type movies with no diversity at all and only conservative values would grate on me just as much because just like woke, that would just be propaganda and not storytelling.
I just want god stories, man. With awesome characters being challenged and overcoming or failing and being consumed. But eh. Hollywood isn’t doing their job and currently it doesn’t matter because America has way bigger problems than some cringe movies no one really likes if they are honest with themselves.
But yeah… it’s one thing to dislike a social trend and to vote a tyrant into power who is forcing- not only Americans, but the rest of the world to eliminate everything diversity from their companies if they want to trade with America. Like what the fuck? Where will that train end btw? Because no one can agree what is and isn’t woke anymore and I’m legit sitting over here like: sooooo… if a company does a campaign for breast cancer, would that fall under diversity and DEI or? How about if they have hired handicapped people and people with a darker skintone? Are they supposed to fire them? Like where the fuck is the line?
It’s not like I hate diversity 100% and whenever it pops up in media. There is a very clear difference between when companies like Disney do it and when say an indie director does it.
I will just say there have been times when watching something and you get this weird experience where something happens…everyone has probably known someone that sells something like Amway or some other MLM bullshit in their lives - one minute you are having a conversation about normal life, then, bam, some very awkward and very forced turn is taken into trying to sell you something…and all you can think is “how did we end up here”? It’s just bad writing, IMHO.
I just want god stories, man. With awesome characters being challenged and overcoming or failing and being consumed. But eh. Hollywood isn’t doing their job and currently it doesn’t matter because America has way bigger problems than some cringe movies no one really likes if they are honest with themselves.
Very true. I’m still able to find lots and lots of content that I want to watch. If people are telling me something is very cringe - for whatever reason - I tend to avoid. I’m a life-long horror fan and there is so much content these days it’s hard to keep up with even just only all the horror content. I would think it’s similar for other genres? And if the well is coming up dry for the current year/month, there is a huuuuge back catalogue of TV shows and movies to mine, both foreign and domestic. For people that are very reactionary, they could watch Leave it to Beaver episodes or whatever and never anything else?
But yeah… it’s one thing to dislike a social trend and to vote a tyrant into power who is forcing- not only Americans, but the rest of the world to eliminate everything diversity from their companies if they want to trade with America.
So much agreement here. It’s possible some mainstream movies/shows got cringe as hell for some, but…so what? There are a lot of choices out there. I really do think what the culture is doing caused a lot of people to take this weird turn into voting for the worst people. I think some of it comes down to some of them being enraged that OTHER people might be consuming “woke” media and they cannot have that.
I still don’t know what they thought was going to result with donvict in power? Do some of them really want donvict to nationalize Hollywood or something and start making only right wing cishet xtian white nationalist bullshit? I mean, he already took over the Kennedy Center…I guess I could see the likes of Benny Johnson wanting that, but I think that guy is just a Russian asset getting paid to tear this country to shreds.
It really is bad writing. One example I can come up with atm was the live action adaptation of Winx where in the first five minutes it pivots from being a show about a magical girl doing magical girl stuff with her magical girlfriends into a long-winded manifesto about mansplaining. Did it fit within the story? Nope. Did it contribute to the source material, plot and character? Nope. All it did for me was to make me shut it off immediately. Because yes. It really does feel like you’re just having a good time with someone and all of a sudden they pull out the watch tower and starts asking you about jehova. I baked cookies and everything? The fuck is this? Get out of my house.
There is a right way to handle those topics, but it is always so shoehorned into things that you just end up repulsed by it. I think the new Nosferatu movie dealt with some of these themes of imposing men who don’t respect a woman and her autonomy in a way that made sense both to the story, the source material and that fit well with the characters. Hell, take the old animated Hunchback of Notre Dame movie that Disney released in 96. That movie is pretty much the embodiment of social justice, but it is done correctly because it isn’t preachy. It is compassionate and has a soul.
The very divisive way everything has been politicized in America and how it also bled onto the internet has eroded the ability to talk about important issues on both sides and everyone has been reduced to taking sides and being the embodiment of Bush’s “you’re either with us or you’re against us” speech from back in the day. No nuance. No middle ground. No one is allowed to question or disagree lest they get stamped with a negative label and treated like a leper. So lame.
Dude, I love horror too. I love sharing horror media with other people. I cast my net far and wide in that category. Movies, games, books, short stories, music, podcasts, art installations, internet horror stories, ARG’s, true crime etc. Name a category and I’ll recommend what I know and think is good.
I think you’re right. It’s two authoritarian mindsets that ended up clashing in the end and it has resulted in this weird revenge power trip when coming to voting. Fucking bizarre. There are plenty things on the left in my country that I roll my eyes at and don’t agree with, but just because a minority group in my country wants anarchism doesn’t mean I will start voting on the right-wing parties here. Because fuck man, I don’t agree with the right. I don’t agree with the anarchistic activists either, but they don’t represent all of the leftwing. I like that we have the values we have here. That sick people can get treatment and young people can study without being permanently crippled by debt. If some cringe activitist starts putting up posters about anarchism in my town I’ll just take a picture and move on with my day. They do cool art. Even if the messages on their posters makes me embarrassed for them.
My boyfriend thinks the simple answer as to why people voted for trump is that they probably just don’t care all that much about politics to really understand what they voted for. That some of them live rural enough that politics and societal problems feels far away from them and isn’t something they think about in the same way that city people do. He put it in more eloquent terms and I’m extremely tired after a long day of traveling, so forgive my clunky summary of his words. He has a lot of compassion for all Americans, and I like to listen to his view points when I get ass-mad about the news and am in my emotions. Because I largely agree with him. It’s just hard to be your rational reflected self when you’re in chimp mode because trump or Musk or vance or some other that did another stupid thing today that will have long lasting ramifications for everyone.
Dude, I love horror too. I love sharing horror media with other people. I cast my net far and wide in that category. Movies, games, books, short stories, music, podcasts, art installations, internet horror stories, ARG’s, true crime etc. Name a category and I’ll recommend what I know and think is good.
I tend to lurk on r/horror. Sure, throw some recommends my way!
I’ve watched the bad and the great and most everything in between, from the 1960s and especially the 1970s (probably my overall favorite era) forward to whatever is most recent and available on Netflix, Prime or the high seas…but so often I miss some deep cut or some indie thing in more recent times, so I’m game to hear your input.
There is a right way to handle those topics, but it is always so shoehorned into things that you just end up repulsed by it. I think the new Nosferatu movie dealt with some of these themes of imposing men who don’t respect a woman and her autonomy in a way that made sense both to the story, the source material and that fit well with the characters. Hell, take the old animated Hunchback of Notre Dame movie that Disney released in 96. That movie is pretty much the embodiment of social justice, but it is done correctly because it isn’t preachy. It is compassionate and has a soul.
I have to check that movie out; keep meaning to.
Not horror, but I think one of the best and most natural ways that I saw women’s issues dealt with was in Mad Men. I mean, I remember my mother talking about how you could not have a bank account or a credit card without husband/father’s approval, even into the 70s. Which seems very abstract when she was saying this in the 80s or 90s to me. The show dealt with that kind of thing and so many others and it felt much more natural. It wasn’t this sudden halt in the narrative, with an “insert THE MESSAGE here” kind of feel. But if you were paying attention, it definitely made it clear what was happening and why. Same way they dealt with thing like ecological awareness - that scene where they just dump all the trash in a park after a picnic…I remember that kind of attitude among awful people in the 80s and even 90s all the time. Still see it sometimes - I just see people huck trash out of their car even now…but these characters are supposed to be middle America, and the “right” kind of people doing it…
That some of them live rural enough that politics and societal problems feels far away from them and isn’t something they think about in the same way that city people do.
I grew up in a VERY rural area. Probably about 4-to-1 Republican to Democratic voters. And yes, I think it’s a very tribal thing. The Republicans there seem to think Democrats are a bunch of snobby smartypants that think they know what’s best for everyone and wants to disrupt their lifestyle, and that “the cities” were dangerous and filled with scary POC and libertines, with weird food and strange religions. Or no religion. Near as I could tell, it was not much of a lifestyle? The hobbies mostly seemed to boil down to hunting/fishing and drinking/smoking ditchweed. I have some fond memories, but then, I tend to try to make the best of whatever situation I’m in. I think QOL of was actually quite miserable for most of my peers, and more than a few were deep in denial. But they were on their team: daddy and mommy always voted Republican and they always did these low-paying jobs/gig/seasonal type of work even if it was thankless and in some cases pretty dangerous, so we can expect no better for ourselves and we’ll never move out of this place because we have too much family in the area. Death from things like drinking and driving, prison time for various petty crimes was pretty high. I bet anything meth hit the place pretty hard when it was hitting other white rural ares, too, but I mostly lost touch with people that still live there…
That’s not to say that some people living in cities don’t have really skewed ideas about people in the country. While it really does frustrate me of having the idea that people living in the hinterland actually have an outsized influence on out politics, it’s not like they don’t have any legitimate concerns. The thing is, it’s often that Democratic politicians are probably their most likely option for having those concerns heard…I never understood why even the most backwoods of rednecks don’t see right through some of the performative bullshit the Republican hucksters do…donning cowboy hats and boots, firing guns, waving the flag, saluting, talking about “the troops” and so on. It’s so cringe. But they eat it up, I just don’t get that at all.
Oooh, I haven’t seen Mad Men, but I remember it being all the rage back in the day. Sounds like it deserved all the talk it got.
It’s very interesting to hear about your experiences there! We have a very toned down version of that here in Denmark too. Folks living in rural areas tend to skew right wing and people in the cities are more left. Granted, here left and right is different from America. To us, the Democrats in America would also be very much right wing. Farmers like liberals here because they fight for the farmers to have all the money all the rights and none of the responsibility that comes with it. The left wants to force farmers to take responsibility and they don’t like that. Our liberal party recently changed their tune a little bit when it comes to farmers because we are literally killing our ecosystems right as we speak because of the farmers but now the farmers are crying that they don’t get to ride the gravy train anymore. The good news is that younger generations of farmers seem more interested in changing for the benefit of the environment so in a few generations things might look a bit better for everybody. But currently we are dealing with a very spoiled generation og farmers who are welfare queens, possess at least 60 to 70% of the land to grow food for their pigs and then export all that meat to other countries, contributing a whopping 2% to our BNP when all is said and done. They also take the second place on the podium of the biggest polluters in Denmark, only outdone by transportation (planes, trucks, cars).
I grew up in a rural area too and was raised in a very leftwing family and that wasn’t fun when my peers got old enough to understand politics, lol. People I grew up with mostly seem to have stayed in their local area and taken blue collar jobs, which is perfectly fine jobs. I have no contact with any of them and couldn’t tell you how they are doing, but I spoke woth one former classmate some years ago and she told me that the people we used to know and the town is very small town, small minds vibe. Which I can totally believe. No idea how anyone votes, but wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them were on the right. And again, our version of the right wing is a lot tamer than yours. American Republicans are considered extreme and far right in my country. To an almost comical degree. We have a few extreme right wing parties but the only one that has any real traction nowadays is LA = Liberal Alliance which is basically a manosphere party. I can’t stand them lol. Never could. That party is such a shit show.
I also agree with you. There are definitely some goofy opinions held by city people too. I’m in this weird position of holding many left wing views and values, but I also see city people as a bit snobbish sometimes. I have noticed in this thread alone that some Americans on this platform struggle to pin point what type of a person I am and assume I’m a right wing fascist for using the word woke to describe some things. I guess my boyfriend was right that America is currently so polarized that people like me will be whatever they hate and deem the enemy since I don’t fit neatly into this black and white world view. It is very foreign and weird to me how extreme politics is in America and how much worse it has gotten in recent years because where I live, we are still able to communicate and share ideas across the political spectrum without turning it into a bloodbath. It’s very weird talking with people here who seem entirely deaf to anything you say and just label you a fascist because you used a word they don’t like. It’s like they forget there is a world outside of the US that has its own views and impressions on what is happening around it.
There’s a lot of baggage with the term “woke” as it’s levelled here. In North America presently it is the brush that is used to tar anyone who is not white, “conventionally attractive”, skinny, cis, heterosexual or a narrow range of subtypes pandering to those audiences as a means to blanket criticize and apply pressure to remove them unilaterally from public. It’s such a politicized term used for years by an outright supremacist movement and levied as a dogwhistle in outright genocidal political spheres that it has no nuance. If you want to convey nuance it doesn’t work as a term.
Your views do not appear to strictly align with the movements who use “Woke Propaganda Cringe” as a tool of linguistically signaling this cluster of held beliefs in a space. It’s a bit like if you walked into a space where gangs are active and started throwing up specific gang signs. Where you come from those signs might have nuance and usage that is lighthearted and non serious or specific but in spaces where those gangs are active and enacting violence those signs are strict affiliation markers with implied buy in to violence and little allowance for misinterpretation.
If your intention is to not be deliberately incendiary towards the targets of the American far right when dealing with the people in North America it’s probably best to drop the usage of “woke”.
I get that the term came from America but it has been used on the internet by all of us. It was taken by the far right in America to use it in a negative political context for sure, but that doesn’t mean that everybody else in the rest of the world live in the US bubble. To me, woke is forced diversity usually done by big corporations who try to be hip with the kids and either failing to understand what they are doing or deliberately using diversity as a shield against criticism of their shitty product. That is all woke is to me. It has been happening in American media and it has happened in media closer to home as well as it has happened in internet culture which belongs to all of us.
I can’t help that american society is so polarized that you can’t even use words to describe anything anymore without being labeled by reactionary Americans online.
But if it makes you feel any better, I can switch to differentiate between forced diversity and regular diversity even though I have also been yelled at for that in the past. I am just commenting on what I’m seeing happening in media and in politics. I can’t control or help what some people decide to interpret my intentions as.
That is how my brain works a well when it comes to Americans. I know that they aren’t all removed, but I have a hard time dealing with the country and its politics and just how fucking brainwashed the population is.
I also know that if I had been american, I would have voted for Harris despite haaaaating woke shit. To me those are two very separate things. Woke shit is a social trend where one can argue for and against aspects of it and I expected it to find its middle ground with time once the most obnoxious people and companies got over themselves.
But! Ain’t no fucking way I would ever have voted republican as their politics, no matter how much they have catered to my hateboner for woke bs, is fundamentally against pretty much all of my values. Even the democrats are too right wing for me.
I hate America for how it treats its population. I hate that there isn’t free education and healthcare (to the “noThinG iS fREe” crowd = kindly shut up and go jangle your keys in the corner while the adults are talking) and I cannot fathom the work culture over there. To me it is borderline slavery.
To me those issues outweighs my annoyances with Hollywood’s stubborn decision to pump out cringe woke propaganda and call it movies for ten-ish years. I am legit embarrassed for all the dumbasses who voted for trump because of woke entertainment. There is a level of stupidity there that I can’t even begin to unpack.
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They wrote 6 paragraphs and one word is your issue?
If the problem is entirely semantics that’s a very simple fix and it doesn’t seem you really disagree with the content of their comment, just how they said it.
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If you were literate, you would be able to discern that the comment that I was originally replying to, in fact brought up wokeness and DEI themselves. You are spreading lies and false narratives to stir up drama where there wasn’t any.
yo go read the comments under the new Snow White movie and the reviews and tell me that’s not Trump voters. You tell me that this man is wrong and that these people weren’t so upset about a couple of movies that they voted to destroy the lives of 8 billion people.
go ask any Republican why they voted Trump and they will say something about trans people something about woke something about Covid something about good for the stock market
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Read the fucking comment from Charles Darwin that I replied to initially. He was bringing up wokeness and I just joined in on that conversation. YOU are the one trolling and trying to sow chaos in a calm conversation.
You are unbelievably illiterate.
Then you clearly didn’t pay attention to what I wrote, but oh well, it’s also just one comment and not an indepth essay about why I think and feel this or that way about something. It’s not like the world and the people in it has nuance, so enjoy that black and white thinking of yours. I’m sure you will get far in life with that.
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No you’re just assuming a bunch of things because I used the word woke in a negative connotation. You didn’t ask for clarifications or anything, you just jumped straight to insults and assumptions instead of being inquisitive as I would have expected people were on this platform. You can scroll down in the thread and see a more indepth explanation of how I think about the subject where I replied to someone who was interested in a discussion instead of knee-jerk reactions like yours.
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First of all, you don’t know me and you don’t know what my political views are. You just assume that because I dislike it when diversity is cheap and superficial and all about political agendas instead of telling good stories, that I would vote for trump.
Life is a tad but more nuanced than that. When they cast someone like Sam Jackson to play Nick Fury he was still playing the character. When they cast someone like Zegler to play Snow White it could have been the same, but no. During the promotion they had her come out and talk a bunch of shit on the old movie and making her a target for online hate. They have done shit like this for awhile now. They make movies political and divisive when they didn’t have to be. Sam Jackson as Nick Fury wasn’t promoted as now we get to see Nick Fury as a black man. It was just Nick Fury and he was played by Sam Jackson. That is the difference.
It’s okay if we disagree on the topic, but I would really appreciate you not make your biased assumptions about my character. I could make a bunch of assumptions about you too, but instead I am trying to have a discussion. I don’t know you or what your opinions on this and that is. All I know about you is that you project the same divisive and simplistic mindset that was very off putting to me when people who support trump were talking about diversity in media. It is either you love all of it or you hate all of it and depending on what side I’m on, I’ll judge you to be a nazi or a communist. It’s so fucking stupid to think like that.
But it seems you have made up your mind on who I am and I’m apparently bad because I don’t enjoy a very specific brand of corporate pandering. Disregard everything else I have said and deem me an evil trump supporter. You are being very silly.
The irony about the qons that voted against Kamala because “woke”… I mean, donvict and his demons may go after Hollywood, etc…but the thing is, neither the Democrats nor Kamala were or are responsible for a lot of the culture stuff - meaning Hollywood can crank out “woke” trash that makes almost everyone’s eyes roll as long as they can economically sustain it [1], regardless of who is in office. I guess some of the qons really do want donvict to go full Putin/Hitler and make every aspect of life, including movies, bow to his stupid and backwards will.
Imagine if Hollywood has their arm twisted by the magoffs into just cranking out snow-white super xtian Hallmark movie type of dreck for years…gag. Seriously, who the fuck is going to want to watch any of that beyond just a very narrow and stupid demographic?
I honestly don’t understand what upsets a type of person so very much about godawful cultural content to the point that it changes their vote in the political sphere. Lots of magoffs got very GRRRR mad about the latest Doctor Who, but isn’t that the BBC? What the hell would they expect donvict to do, anyway? Ban it somehow? Invade the UK and make them stop? Same for Disney? Who was making them watch anything from Disney? Don’t these people have choices in what they choose to stream? The movies they pay for? I get it - quite a bit of it is unbelievably terrible, but…I don’t remember anyone making me watch anything. The people think something like The Acolyte “ruined their childhood” and now have the knives out for wokeness and Disney, but I have a newsflash - Episode 1 was complete shit and didn’t need “wokeness” to make it so.
These are the same people that cried for decades that they are “made fun of”. Sure, by some content. But also, lots of content completely caters to flyover country/salt of the Earth narratives and always has.
[1] I really don’t understand what the business model is. It looks like Disney especially seems to want to set fire to huge piles of cash? And for what purpose? It almost seems to be creating more reactionaries. And people that they think they are catering to? I don’t know how much they are bound to be customers of things like Star Wars anyway? The term “woke” now is so loaded, unfortunately, but there is miles of distance between having representation and not being nasty to certain marginalized groups, etc., vs hammering in extremely stilted agendas, doing race/gender swapping almost to intentionally alienate the fan base and so on…it’s so cringe that I often wonder if it’s being done in service of oligarchs’ interest in dividing the nation even further, just like corporations doing their silly rainbow/woke-washing stuff.
It’s interesting how all of Disney’s “woke” is in those shitty “live action” remakes (+ Star Wars). The live action remakes I don’t think are intended to make money or be good, they seem to be more ways of trying to keep their IPs in perpetuity.
They wouldn’t make Elsa a lesbian, but shoving a girl kiss into Buzz Lightyear was probably the only bit of actual marketing that movie had. Instead of discussions over how tired the remake trope is, chuds froth at the mouth over whatever was going on in Snow White.
It doesn’t seem to be designed to make anyone happy - I’d love to see a queer Disney character, or even just the level of representation there was in Paranorman (character is gay, and it’s just mentioned as an off hand joke at the end). I go back and think about some of the S & P comments about Gravity Falls - how Disney absolutely refused to allow the fact that two gay characters were clearly gay and in a relationship with each other be made outright canon.
Sometimes it feels like sabotage. They don’t seem to want queer stories to succeed. They’ll use them for their tax write offs.
I’d buy the sabotage angle, and maybe any reactionaries they create is something they consider a bonus? I just don’t understand their intent - it doesn’t seem to be about making money? Unless some of the people involved are just really that out of touch?
The other thing that I’ve noticed is that it’s very hard to tell what is a decent show/movie with things like The Acolyte from reviews, since there are obviously people that are leaping into the fray with a specific agenda, and probably more than a few paid shills - the critic rating is 72% while the all audience rating is 19%? That 72% number seems awfully high, but then 19% is probably due to the brigading of the butthurt “antiwoke” chuds upset that Disney “ruined their childhoods” or something…
I don’t know much about tax write offs or how they work, so I looked around and it seems like they have reduced their tax bill substantially from other shows…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2024/09/26/disney-reveals-star-wars-show-the-acolyte-was-over-budget-at-230-million/
Indeed. It is utterly bizarre how some people turned to Trump because their entertainment got cringe. Personally, I just decided to not watch those movies.
It’s not like I hate diversity 100% and whenever it pops up in media. There is a very clear difference between when companies like Disney do it and when say an indie director does it. Moonlight is one of my favourite movies and that film is about a gay black man. But it is genuinely dealing with a deeply important subject and handles the material gracefully. And I just love Chirone so much.
That’s one of many amazing ways to handle diversity in media and hell, I do it myself as a writer. I write about diverse characters because I want to see them represented but I also want to tell stories where they aren’t just defined by their skin or their sex or sexuality. They are just people, you know. And that is where I hoped diversity would eventually end up after the woke wave had passed, but now we are here.
And like you said, a reactionary anti-woke wave of hallmark type movies with no diversity at all and only conservative values would grate on me just as much because just like woke, that would just be propaganda and not storytelling.
I just want god stories, man. With awesome characters being challenged and overcoming or failing and being consumed. But eh. Hollywood isn’t doing their job and currently it doesn’t matter because America has way bigger problems than some cringe movies no one really likes if they are honest with themselves.
But yeah… it’s one thing to dislike a social trend and to vote a tyrant into power who is forcing- not only Americans, but the rest of the world to eliminate everything diversity from their companies if they want to trade with America. Like what the fuck? Where will that train end btw? Because no one can agree what is and isn’t woke anymore and I’m legit sitting over here like: sooooo… if a company does a campaign for breast cancer, would that fall under diversity and DEI or? How about if they have hired handicapped people and people with a darker skintone? Are they supposed to fire them? Like where the fuck is the line?
Urgh.
I will just say there have been times when watching something and you get this weird experience where something happens…everyone has probably known someone that sells something like Amway or some other MLM bullshit in their lives - one minute you are having a conversation about normal life, then, bam, some very awkward and very forced turn is taken into trying to sell you something…and all you can think is “how did we end up here”? It’s just bad writing, IMHO.
Very true. I’m still able to find lots and lots of content that I want to watch. If people are telling me something is very cringe - for whatever reason - I tend to avoid. I’m a life-long horror fan and there is so much content these days it’s hard to keep up with even just only all the horror content. I would think it’s similar for other genres? And if the well is coming up dry for the current year/month, there is a huuuuge back catalogue of TV shows and movies to mine, both foreign and domestic. For people that are very reactionary, they could watch Leave it to Beaver episodes or whatever and never anything else?
So much agreement here. It’s possible some mainstream movies/shows got cringe as hell for some, but…so what? There are a lot of choices out there. I really do think what the culture is doing caused a lot of people to take this weird turn into voting for the worst people. I think some of it comes down to some of them being enraged that OTHER people might be consuming “woke” media and they cannot have that.
I still don’t know what they thought was going to result with donvict in power? Do some of them really want donvict to nationalize Hollywood or something and start making only right wing cishet xtian white nationalist bullshit? I mean, he already took over the Kennedy Center…I guess I could see the likes of Benny Johnson wanting that, but I think that guy is just a Russian asset getting paid to tear this country to shreds.
It really is bad writing. One example I can come up with atm was the live action adaptation of Winx where in the first five minutes it pivots from being a show about a magical girl doing magical girl stuff with her magical girlfriends into a long-winded manifesto about mansplaining. Did it fit within the story? Nope. Did it contribute to the source material, plot and character? Nope. All it did for me was to make me shut it off immediately. Because yes. It really does feel like you’re just having a good time with someone and all of a sudden they pull out the watch tower and starts asking you about jehova. I baked cookies and everything? The fuck is this? Get out of my house.
There is a right way to handle those topics, but it is always so shoehorned into things that you just end up repulsed by it. I think the new Nosferatu movie dealt with some of these themes of imposing men who don’t respect a woman and her autonomy in a way that made sense both to the story, the source material and that fit well with the characters. Hell, take the old animated Hunchback of Notre Dame movie that Disney released in 96. That movie is pretty much the embodiment of social justice, but it is done correctly because it isn’t preachy. It is compassionate and has a soul.
The very divisive way everything has been politicized in America and how it also bled onto the internet has eroded the ability to talk about important issues on both sides and everyone has been reduced to taking sides and being the embodiment of Bush’s “you’re either with us or you’re against us” speech from back in the day. No nuance. No middle ground. No one is allowed to question or disagree lest they get stamped with a negative label and treated like a leper. So lame.
Dude, I love horror too. I love sharing horror media with other people. I cast my net far and wide in that category. Movies, games, books, short stories, music, podcasts, art installations, internet horror stories, ARG’s, true crime etc. Name a category and I’ll recommend what I know and think is good.
I think you’re right. It’s two authoritarian mindsets that ended up clashing in the end and it has resulted in this weird revenge power trip when coming to voting. Fucking bizarre. There are plenty things on the left in my country that I roll my eyes at and don’t agree with, but just because a minority group in my country wants anarchism doesn’t mean I will start voting on the right-wing parties here. Because fuck man, I don’t agree with the right. I don’t agree with the anarchistic activists either, but they don’t represent all of the leftwing. I like that we have the values we have here. That sick people can get treatment and young people can study without being permanently crippled by debt. If some cringe activitist starts putting up posters about anarchism in my town I’ll just take a picture and move on with my day. They do cool art. Even if the messages on their posters makes me embarrassed for them.
My boyfriend thinks the simple answer as to why people voted for trump is that they probably just don’t care all that much about politics to really understand what they voted for. That some of them live rural enough that politics and societal problems feels far away from them and isn’t something they think about in the same way that city people do. He put it in more eloquent terms and I’m extremely tired after a long day of traveling, so forgive my clunky summary of his words. He has a lot of compassion for all Americans, and I like to listen to his view points when I get ass-mad about the news and am in my emotions. Because I largely agree with him. It’s just hard to be your rational reflected self when you’re in chimp mode because trump or Musk or vance or some other that did another stupid thing today that will have long lasting ramifications for everyone.
I tend to lurk on r/horror. Sure, throw some recommends my way!
I’ve watched the bad and the great and most everything in between, from the 1960s and especially the 1970s (probably my overall favorite era) forward to whatever is most recent and available on Netflix, Prime or the high seas…but so often I miss some deep cut or some indie thing in more recent times, so I’m game to hear your input.
I have to check that movie out; keep meaning to.
Not horror, but I think one of the best and most natural ways that I saw women’s issues dealt with was in Mad Men. I mean, I remember my mother talking about how you could not have a bank account or a credit card without husband/father’s approval, even into the 70s. Which seems very abstract when she was saying this in the 80s or 90s to me. The show dealt with that kind of thing and so many others and it felt much more natural. It wasn’t this sudden halt in the narrative, with an “insert THE MESSAGE here” kind of feel. But if you were paying attention, it definitely made it clear what was happening and why. Same way they dealt with thing like ecological awareness - that scene where they just dump all the trash in a park after a picnic…I remember that kind of attitude among awful people in the 80s and even 90s all the time. Still see it sometimes - I just see people huck trash out of their car even now…but these characters are supposed to be middle America, and the “right” kind of people doing it…
I grew up in a VERY rural area. Probably about 4-to-1 Republican to Democratic voters. And yes, I think it’s a very tribal thing. The Republicans there seem to think Democrats are a bunch of snobby smartypants that think they know what’s best for everyone and wants to disrupt their lifestyle, and that “the cities” were dangerous and filled with scary POC and libertines, with weird food and strange religions. Or no religion. Near as I could tell, it was not much of a lifestyle? The hobbies mostly seemed to boil down to hunting/fishing and drinking/smoking ditchweed. I have some fond memories, but then, I tend to try to make the best of whatever situation I’m in. I think QOL of was actually quite miserable for most of my peers, and more than a few were deep in denial. But they were on their team: daddy and mommy always voted Republican and they always did these low-paying jobs/gig/seasonal type of work even if it was thankless and in some cases pretty dangerous, so we can expect no better for ourselves and we’ll never move out of this place because we have too much family in the area. Death from things like drinking and driving, prison time for various petty crimes was pretty high. I bet anything meth hit the place pretty hard when it was hitting other white rural ares, too, but I mostly lost touch with people that still live there…
That’s not to say that some people living in cities don’t have really skewed ideas about people in the country. While it really does frustrate me of having the idea that people living in the hinterland actually have an outsized influence on out politics, it’s not like they don’t have any legitimate concerns. The thing is, it’s often that Democratic politicians are probably their most likely option for having those concerns heard…I never understood why even the most backwoods of rednecks don’t see right through some of the performative bullshit the Republican hucksters do…donning cowboy hats and boots, firing guns, waving the flag, saluting, talking about “the troops” and so on. It’s so cringe. But they eat it up, I just don’t get that at all.
Oooh, I haven’t seen Mad Men, but I remember it being all the rage back in the day. Sounds like it deserved all the talk it got.
It’s very interesting to hear about your experiences there! We have a very toned down version of that here in Denmark too. Folks living in rural areas tend to skew right wing and people in the cities are more left. Granted, here left and right is different from America. To us, the Democrats in America would also be very much right wing. Farmers like liberals here because they fight for the farmers to have all the money all the rights and none of the responsibility that comes with it. The left wants to force farmers to take responsibility and they don’t like that. Our liberal party recently changed their tune a little bit when it comes to farmers because we are literally killing our ecosystems right as we speak because of the farmers but now the farmers are crying that they don’t get to ride the gravy train anymore. The good news is that younger generations of farmers seem more interested in changing for the benefit of the environment so in a few generations things might look a bit better for everybody. But currently we are dealing with a very spoiled generation og farmers who are welfare queens, possess at least 60 to 70% of the land to grow food for their pigs and then export all that meat to other countries, contributing a whopping 2% to our BNP when all is said and done. They also take the second place on the podium of the biggest polluters in Denmark, only outdone by transportation (planes, trucks, cars).
I grew up in a rural area too and was raised in a very leftwing family and that wasn’t fun when my peers got old enough to understand politics, lol. People I grew up with mostly seem to have stayed in their local area and taken blue collar jobs, which is perfectly fine jobs. I have no contact with any of them and couldn’t tell you how they are doing, but I spoke woth one former classmate some years ago and she told me that the people we used to know and the town is very small town, small minds vibe. Which I can totally believe. No idea how anyone votes, but wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them were on the right. And again, our version of the right wing is a lot tamer than yours. American Republicans are considered extreme and far right in my country. To an almost comical degree. We have a few extreme right wing parties but the only one that has any real traction nowadays is LA = Liberal Alliance which is basically a manosphere party. I can’t stand them lol. Never could. That party is such a shit show.
I also agree with you. There are definitely some goofy opinions held by city people too. I’m in this weird position of holding many left wing views and values, but I also see city people as a bit snobbish sometimes. I have noticed in this thread alone that some Americans on this platform struggle to pin point what type of a person I am and assume I’m a right wing fascist for using the word woke to describe some things. I guess my boyfriend was right that America is currently so polarized that people like me will be whatever they hate and deem the enemy since I don’t fit neatly into this black and white world view. It is very foreign and weird to me how extreme politics is in America and how much worse it has gotten in recent years because where I live, we are still able to communicate and share ideas across the political spectrum without turning it into a bloodbath. It’s very weird talking with people here who seem entirely deaf to anything you say and just label you a fascist because you used a word they don’t like. It’s like they forget there is a world outside of the US that has its own views and impressions on what is happening around it.
There’s a lot of baggage with the term “woke” as it’s levelled here. In North America presently it is the brush that is used to tar anyone who is not white, “conventionally attractive”, skinny, cis, heterosexual or a narrow range of subtypes pandering to those audiences as a means to blanket criticize and apply pressure to remove them unilaterally from public. It’s such a politicized term used for years by an outright supremacist movement and levied as a dogwhistle in outright genocidal political spheres that it has no nuance. If you want to convey nuance it doesn’t work as a term.
Your views do not appear to strictly align with the movements who use “Woke Propaganda Cringe” as a tool of linguistically signaling this cluster of held beliefs in a space. It’s a bit like if you walked into a space where gangs are active and started throwing up specific gang signs. Where you come from those signs might have nuance and usage that is lighthearted and non serious or specific but in spaces where those gangs are active and enacting violence those signs are strict affiliation markers with implied buy in to violence and little allowance for misinterpretation.
If your intention is to not be deliberately incendiary towards the targets of the American far right when dealing with the people in North America it’s probably best to drop the usage of “woke”.
I get that the term came from America but it has been used on the internet by all of us. It was taken by the far right in America to use it in a negative political context for sure, but that doesn’t mean that everybody else in the rest of the world live in the US bubble. To me, woke is forced diversity usually done by big corporations who try to be hip with the kids and either failing to understand what they are doing or deliberately using diversity as a shield against criticism of their shitty product. That is all woke is to me. It has been happening in American media and it has happened in media closer to home as well as it has happened in internet culture which belongs to all of us.
I can’t help that american society is so polarized that you can’t even use words to describe anything anymore without being labeled by reactionary Americans online.
But if it makes you feel any better, I can switch to differentiate between forced diversity and regular diversity even though I have also been yelled at for that in the past. I am just commenting on what I’m seeing happening in media and in politics. I can’t control or help what some people decide to interpret my intentions as.
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