Woke regarding film/TV: is it a big deal?

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

I watch a lot of conservative stuff on YouTube. There's a lot of movie/TV reviews that hate on "woke" movies and "woke" series. I find this frustrating, because it's too vague and anything can be called woke or not woke. I think one animated film I haven't seen but would like to see is Strange World. Some people say it's woke. OK. What does that mean? I'm not going to watch something because woke or because not woke. I honestly don't care. Be specific. Now, some reviews said the main character is gay. OK, now that is a discussion point, and now something can be discussed. Some will be like, "Look, it's being modern, gay main character." Some will be uncomfortable, and just pick a different movie. You might have some parents promoting the movie, other parents condemning the movie. BUT, do you see how there's an actual discussion point?

I can understand being pro-woke or anti-woke in a societal context. However, to just be like, "Woke bad, bye." or "Woke good, yay," it's just overly simplistic, and I feel like it's saying words but not actually saying anything. If you're a YouTuber, and you're doing an hour video on why woke is good, bad, important, doesn't matter, that's fine. Now you're talking about society.

Circling back to film and TV, I like to break it down and explore what makes a film or series good or bad and why. Don't just slap a sticker on it and treat it like product, ya know?

P.S. I don't want to dive into politics, so let's keep "woke" focused purely on film/TV. Thank you!

 

[theenglish]

"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means "

I would suggest diving into what the term actually means and how it has been appropriated as a perjorative. You can dive into pages of old discussions right on this very board.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means "

I would suggest diving into what the term actually means and how it has been appropriated as a perjorative. You can dive into pages of old discussions right on this very board.

I'm pretty sure I already know what it means, but let's double check. When Conservatives throw the word around, it usually is an objection to progressive liberal ideas. Does this sum it up succinctly?

When I watch movies/TV, I don't care if they lean left or right. I just want good story driven by interesting characters.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Yeah, depending on who you ask, 'woke' either means "an awareness of systemic problems, especially towards minorities", or it means "those damn liberal philosophies that keep ruining our movies and video games". Personally I've grown to dislike the word, due to all the baggage that's been thrown on top of it; I don't find it very helpful anymore.

You can break it down into other things and discuss them separately though. Like:

Is it okay for a film to have messages? - I'd be a pretty hypocritical Star Trek fan if I said no.
Is it annoying when a story preaches to its audience? - Yes.
Is forced diversity a bad thing? - Define 'forced'.
Is it right to censor nudity and make characters less sexy? - If it's for kids, maybe.
Is it okay to have a gay main character? - Yes.

And so on.

 

[The Realist]

The best rule is, as soon as someone uses the word "woke" as a pejorative, immediately stop reading/listening to that person. You know at that point they have nothing to contribute worth paying a moment's attention to, and are almost certainly a garbage human being, so you can save yourself the aggravation and waste of your valuable time.

 

[The Lensman]

The best rule is, as soon as someone uses the word "woke" as a pejorative, immediately stop reading/listening to that person. You know at that point they have nothing to contribute worth paying a moment's attention to, and are almost certainly a garbage human being, so you can save yourself the aggravation and waste of your valuable time.

That’s my exact thinking on the subject.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That’s my exact thinking on the subject.

Same, here.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Yeah, depending on who you ask, 'woke' either means "an awareness of systemic problems, especially towards minorities", or it means "those damn liberal philosophies that keep ruining our movies and video games". Personally I've grown to dislike the word, due to all the baggage that's been thrown on top of it; I don't find it very helpful anymore.

You can break it down into other things and discuss them separately though. Like:

Is it okay for a film to have messages? - I'd be a pretty hypocritical Star Trek fan if I said no.
Is it annoying when a story preaches to its audience? - Yes.
Is forced diversity a bad thing? - Define 'forced'.
Is it right to censor nudity and make characters less sexy? - If it's for kids, maybe.
Is it okay to have a gay main character? - Yes.

And so on.

Replace baggage with "words but not saying anything," and I otherwise agree.
I like the question examples you presented.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

The best rule is, as soon as someone uses the word "woke" as a pejorative, immediately stop reading/listening to that person. You know at that point they have nothing to contribute worth paying a moment's attention to, and are almost certainly a garbage human being, so you can save yourself the aggravation and waste of your valuable time.

I don't necessarily agree, I love having discussions and watching/listening to content that I only partially agree with, because I want to learn, grow, and understand other people's perspectives. That said, there's personal expression, and then there's just being hateful. I think we agree to dodge the hateful person.

 

[The Wormhole]

"Woke" is just a modern day buzzword that means something is politically correct. Does it bother you if a show or movie is politically correct? Would you listen to someone whose complaint about something was that it's politically correct?

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

"Woke" is just a modern day buzzword that means something is politically correct. Does it bother you if a show or movie is politically correct? Would you listen to someone whose complaint about something was that it's politically correct?

When I was a kid in the 90's, politically correct was often used in the context of censorship. "You can't say what you want to say, you have to be PC." Is that how it was for you in the 90's if you were around back then?

 

[FPAlpha]

Woke in the original meaning is having sensitivity and respect towards other cultures and ways of life and adapting your own ways accordingly such as calling people by their preferred pronouns. It is a sign of respect to minorities usually that otherwise, in previous decades and centuries, were buried by the ( usually white) dominant culture.

When it comes to TV/movies it means that casts, especially in urban shows, are now much more diverse in race, sexuality and other aspects when compared to previous years and decades. Sometimes old shows like Friends get criticized for being less diverse but it's a strawman argument because these shows were made before diversity came into the spotlight and Hollywood started to pay more attention to it.

The criticism from usually conservatives comes from the volume of it by claiming Hollywood goes too far in its quest to "push DEI down everyone's throat". One can argue that point and personally i think there could be cases where it seems productions just worked off a checklist to include maximum diversity in settings that are not as diverse such as more rural areas that are traditionally more homogenous ( usually caucasian) but still has gay, asian and black characters alongside white characters where that would be on average uncommon.

Unfortunately due to the intense schism in US society the term woke has become a catch all slur to conservatives to label anything they don't like even going so far to boycott products if they see them as "too woke" ( Bud Light for example).

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Woke in the original meaning is having sensitivity and respect towards other cultures and ways of life and adapting your own ways accordingly such as calling people by their preferred pronouns. It is a sign of respect to minorities usually that otherwise, in previous decades and centuries, were buried by the ( usually white) dominant culture.

When it comes to TV/movies it means that casts, especially in urban shows, are now much more diverse in race, sexuality and other aspects when compared to previous years and decades. Sometimes old shows like Friends get criticized for being less diverse but it's a strawman argument because these shows were made before diversity came into the spotlight and Hollywood started to pay more attention to it.

The criticism from usually conservatives comes from the volume of it by claiming Hollywood goes too far in its quest to "push DEI down everyone's throat". One can argue that point and personally i think there could be cases where it seems productions just worked off a checklist to include maximum diversity in settings that are not as diverse such as more rural areas that are traditionally more homogenous ( usually caucasian) but still has gay, asian and black characters alongside white characters where that would be on average uncommon.

Unfortunately due to the intense schism in US society the term woke has become a catch all slur to conservatives to label anything they don't like even going so far to boycott products if they see them as "too woke" ( Bud Light for example).

Thank you for walking through this. It's a good explanation on woke societally and regarding the discussion topic: film and TV. Regarding film and TV, do you think people are getting too focused on diversity? I think it's important on something like Star Trek where the starship crew is international plus aliens: everyone goes to space! However, in something like Stranger Things, a show set in a small rural town in the 1980's, your cast is gonna be mostly white with a few black people thrown in, and the show does well to reflect that. I think if you go for realism and keep it simple, people will watch. Save the "diversity" for when the plot calls for it, and if the plot calls for it, people probably won't care. What do you think?

P.S. I wish the left and right could just chill out and talk things out. Both sides lose their minds over things that can be solved in calm conversation.

 

[FPAlpha]

Thank you for walking through this. It's a good explanation on woke societally and regarding the discussion topic: film and TV. Regarding film and TV, do you think people are getting too focused on diversity? I think it's important on something like Star Trek where the starship crew is international plus aliens: everyone goes to space! However, in something like Stranger Things, a show set in a small rural town in the 1980's, your cast is gonna be mostly white with a few black people thrown in, and the show does well to reflect that. I think if you go for realism and keep it simple, people will watch. Save the "diversity" for when the plot calls for it, and if the plot calls for it, people probably won't care. What do you think?

P.S. I wish the left and right could just chill out and talk things out. Both sides lose their minds over things that can be solved in calm conversation.

Both sides use it as a combatitive term. The show Shogun is a period piece set in 1600 Japan and the producers went out of their way to make it authentic yet there were people getting angry it wasn't diverse enough which is the other side of the whole discussion.

Entertainment has become just another battleground in the wider struggle between conservatives and liberals in the US and since Hollywood dominates the entertainment industry in most of the world it gets exported to everybody. Personally i am ok with with few exceptions and it is just representative to where society moves while others want to stay where they are or even revert back to where their privileges went unchallenged.


As a society we develop - decades ago it was ok to call black people the N-word openly, nowadays in most parts it is a social and professional career ender so there's that. Give this another 10-20 years and it'll be normal to people and won't make big waves anymore.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Both sides use it as a combatitive term. The show Shogun is a period piece set in 1600 Japan and the producers went out of their way to make it authentic yet there were people getting angry it wasn't diverse enough which is the other side of the whole discussion.

Entertainment has become just another battleground in the wider struggle between conservatives and liberals in the US and since Hollywood dominates the entertainment industry in most of the world it gets exported to everybody. Personally i am ok with with few exceptions and it is just representative to where society moves while others want to stay where they are or even revert back to where their privileges went unchallenged.


As a society we develop - decades ago it was ok to call black people the N-word openly, nowadays in most parts it is a social and professional career ender so there's that. Give this another 10-20 years and it'll be normal to people and won't make big waves anymore.

Overall, do you think there's still good films and TV that don't get caught up in the "too woke" vs. "not woke enough" craziness? I love what the Netflix remake of Lost in Space did. Mixed family, Judy is from a previous marriage. Mom and dad are about to divorce, but maybe not. Dr. Smith... whoa, that actress had too much fun, and I had fun watching. It was a great way to modernize the show without getting caught u in politics, DEI, woke, and all of that. They just made a fun sci-fi show in space. We need more of this.

 

[UssGlenn]

I think if you go for realism and keep it simple, people will watch. Save the "diversity" for when the plot calls for it, and if the plot calls for it, people probably won't care. What do you think?

I think that's a solid assessment. To go back to your example of Strange World, the fact the main character is gay has no relevance to the plot. So it feels like an artificial decision. It's sort of like revealing a character is a black belt in Karate and then never having them fight, why include the detail at all? Its an unfired Chekhovs Gun. Compare that to something like "For all Mankind" where the fact that some of the characters are gay has major impacts on their choices and the plot of the show.

 

[FPAlpha]

Of couse there are, even shows that seem to be going through a DEI checklist can still be good. It's people that make this distinction and get worked up over it but reality is that we are far closer to the way shows are done right now than we ever were, especially if one lives in large urban areas like New York or Los Angeles.

Lost in Space is a good example of a modernization of an old concept, Battlestar Galactica from the early 00s is another. I still remember the outrage of fans when it became known that the character Starbuck would be a woman now but it turns out that Katee Sackhoff and the writers knocked it out of the park with this one.

Then there's other examples like the all female Ghostbusters or the all female Ocean's 8 movies that simply were not good movies but any critique of them would get an accusation of misogyny. This is unfortunately a side effect of the whole issue and comes back to both sides using it to fight each other.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

I think that's a solid assessment. To go back to your example of Strange World, the fact the main character is gay has no relevance to the plot. So it feels like an artificial decision. It's sort of like revealing a character is a black belt in Karate and then never having them fight, why include the detail at all? Its an unfired Chekhovs Gun. Compare that to something like "For all Mankind" where the fact that some of the characters are gay has major impacts on their choices and the plot of the show.

Something similar happened on Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. In S4 or S5, two of the three female characters turn out to be lesbian. No one acts surprised, and the other four regulars are supportive. It came out of the sky blue. No one even acted surprised, given there was zero hint in S1-3 that either girl "likes girls." If you're going to build up toward a reveal like this, don't just drop it out of the sky like a bird dropping a snake on a middle-aged woman.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Of couse there are, even shows that seem to be going through a DEI checklist can still be good. It's people that make this distinction and get worked up over it but reality is that we are far closer to the way shows are done right now than we ever were, especially if one lives in large urban areas like New York or Los Angeles.

Lost in Space is a good example of a modernization of an old concept, Battlestar Galactica from the early 00s is another. I still remember the outrage of fans when it became known that the character Starbuck would be a woman now but it turns out that Katee Sackhoff and the writers knocked it out of the park with this one.

Then there's other examples like the all female Ghostbusters or the all female Ocean's 8 movies that simply were not good movies but any critique of them would get an accusation of misogyny. This is unfortunately a side effect of the whole issue and comes back to both sides using it to fight each other.

Love the LIS Netflix remake. I actually like the GB reboot with the women. I think the movie failed for 3 simple reasons. First, fans wanted part 3 with the original cast, not a remake. Second, the director just doesn't get GB, should have hired a different director. Third, it was a parody of a dark comedy, that doesn't work. I like it for what it was trying to be.

 

[JD]

Overall, do you think there's still good films and TV that don't get caught up in the "too woke" vs. "not woke enough" craziness? I love what the Netflix remake of Lost in Space did. Mixed family, Judy is from a previous marriage. Mom and dad are about to divorce, but maybe not. Dr. Smith... whoa, that actress had too much fun, and I had fun watching. It was a great way to modernize the show without getting caught u in politics, DEI, woke, and all of that. They just made a fun sci-fi show in space. We need more of this.

The problem is to anti-"woke" crowd just having characters like these versions of Judy and "Dr. Smith" is "too woke".

I think that's a solid assessment. To go back to your example of Strange World, the fact the main character is gay has no relevance to the plot. So it feels like an artificial decision. It's sort of like revealing a character is a black belt in Karate and then never having them fight, why include the detail at all? Its an unfired Chekhovs Gun. Compare that to something like "For all Mankind" where the fact that some of the characters are gay has major impacts on their choices and the plot of the show.

I feel the opposite, I actually prefer to see a character being gay treated the way it was in Strange World. There's no reason a character being gay should be a big deal at this, it really shouldn't have to be approached any different than you would a straight character or any other part of the character. We've been getting gay characters in media long enough now that they shouldn't have to make a big deal about.