You should give beef another chance; the first episode is mediocre but it gets much better. In fact, a big part of the tension in the main male character’s story is about coming to terms with the pressures of being the oldest son in a strict Korean family. Also in the inciting road rage incident he doesn’t realize his adversary is a woman until later and when he finds out it throws him off. I think it’s commentary on human nature is more or less realistic, and it’s overall a good show, although the ending was a bit disappointing.
Woke probably has contributed somewhat to movies being less original.
The other piece, at least according to Matt Damon, is economics. In his Hot Ones interview, he claimed that the reason studios play things much safer now is because they can't rely on DVD sales to recoup the cost of a film--it HAS to be a blockbuster or it won't be a worthwhile investment.
I've been a reader of your blog for several months now and I appreciate your rational, rather than rabid, rightist positions on some live wire issues. Sometimes I agree with you; sometimes I don't. Sometimes I begin horrified by your position, but with some fomenting thought, come to see a light of truth in what you say. This is sometimes painful and I continue to process.
But I'm compelled to respond to your post, "How Woke Caused Cultural Decadence" because I think here you've gone into some absurd territory (The Lion King, hyenas, oh my.) There're quite a few claims in the post where you go off the track in pursuing what's true, particularly the gender claims.
First, I agree with you that, contrary to the current gender theory idea of innate fluidity, there are hard-wired differences between the sexes that manifest in certain gender traits. My conclusions are largely anecdotal, but it comprises over seven decades of intense 'people watching.'
Put a baby boy and a baby girl, say 9 months old (long before they know or care what color their clothes are), each on a blanket in the middle of a floor. The boy will first check out what's on the blanket with him (a toy?) After some engagement with what's immediately in his reach, he will move on, crawling off the blanket to investigate the cat, the fan, but most definitely anything that moves and/or makes noise. Now look at the baby girl. She is still sitting on the blanket; if she is content, she will just watch. The boy has now grabbed the cat by the tail or has stuck something (his finger?) in the whirling fan. The girl, she is watching.
I am confident in saying I know the feminine mind pretty well. Yes, women love sexual romance. The sexiest encounters are ones where the power is balanced on a knife edge. You meet a player worthy of you.
Here is where I think you've gone off the 'truth rails':
Men and women are so psychologically different that you should expect different kinds of stories to appeal to each sex… One template of a male story is a hero goes out in the world and, through bravery and strength, tries to overcome some obstacle or challenge… The female template is more passive. A girl wants to be pretty, and win over the hero.
No. In the female story, she is a hero who goes out in the world and, through bravery, strength, wit, will, charm, talent or whatever it takes, overcomes some obstacle or challenge. She is not more passive so much as she is more careful because she has watched others make mistakes, she is humbled by facts (such as physics) and understands the value of strategy. Her goal is not always 'getting the guy:' Motivated by saving those she loves, protecting what she values, sexual romance might not be in the picture at all.
[The girl] might have obstacles in her way, but instead of showing physical courage, it’s more about resolving some interpersonal dispute in her favor. Think of Ariel in The Little Mermaid getting away from her overweening father, or Cinderella showing up her stepmom and stepsisters by marrying the handsome prince.
[Pained sigh]. I am not the only woman who is thoroughly annoyed by most Disney 'heroines' and fret at their influence on little girls. Women don't want to be saved, or to be more precise, women don't find being saved sexy or romantic. A woman, or any human, wants to be saved when they are desperate, when they’ve lost agency over their situation. Jesus begged to be saved on the cross - "God, why hast thou forsaken me?" That is not romantic. The 'romantic' plot in Frozen is a travesty. Message to girls: Don't trust the nice, witty guy who you hit it off with and brings out your natural playfulness (because he's really a calculating heel); go for the ornery, stubborn guy who treats you like you're nothing special but who then rescues you from your own naïve and foolish choices. Please!
My first fictional heroine was Eowyn of Rohan from LOTR. I was 12 when I read the passage where she stood on the Plains of Pelennor Fields to defend her king against the Lord of the Nazgul. So brave and mortal. The scene imprinted me for life. And the plot twist was she prevailed not in spite of, but because she was a woman. (A little embarrassed to say I still get verklempt imagining it.)
Women want to be heroes in their story. It is romantic because "power is power" (thank you, Cersei). That power can manifest in any trait or combination of traits - physical, emotional, intellectual. The point is, a woman is won over romantically by feeling empowered. Now I know romantic and sexy are not quite the same thing. But the combination is what every human dreams of finding. The sexy friction between men and women is about a power balance in any of its manifestations.
Sometimes, like in Mad Men, the show can critique a less progressive era, but I think honest viewers know that part of the appeal is that we long for what has been lost. Don Draper can smoke and drink whenever he wants and ogle the secretaries,
I think the "we" in that statement has got to mean only men. Yes, men have lost power over women in the modern business relationship. Show me a woman who longs 'for what has been lost' in the power imbalance of the 1950's office suite. I invite men to consider how much sexier it might be to have a smart, empowered worthy opponent to win over rather than a bunny caught in a trap.
It’s not just that we are different in terms of certain physical, cognitive and psychological traits, but the fact that men and women are so different means that we have separate moralities, values, and ideals.
Again, no. Again, personal experience. I literally met my beloved of 30 years on a level playing field - co-ed touch football on the Ellipse Saturday mornings. He wasn't a superior athlete; he was (is) cute, and his professional career was uncertain. But he was the first man I'd met in 15 years of dating who I was pretty sure was smarter than me - and that was/is very sexy to me. Because I'm old now and I don't have to be coy, I can say I was a 'nine or ten' then - I never before had to work for male attention. But he was so smart I had to be more than pretty - and it was exciting to rise to the challenge of being my best self to win him. He didn't initiate the romance; I did. That was empowering and very sexy for me. He did not save me. Rather, he showed himself to be a dynamic, fun and willing partner. We made each other laugh through our entire first date. We found ourselves worthy of each other (each secretly thinking we got the better deal). Over the 30 years together I have found our moralities, values and ideals to be remarkably aligned. And I think of friends with successful marriages who would say the same. We have raised 3 brilliant, beautiful sons to adulthood (one of whom is a subscriber to your blog which is another reason I'm vested in your getting the gender dynamic right😉)
You complain about 'woke' entertainment, but Shonda Rhimes is onto something. Her Bridgerton series, resoundingly popular with female audiences, features romantic couples in a tense power balance. The vague 'fudge' that Rhimes creates around the fact that black people inhabit this imaginary England as nobles and bourgeoisie doesn't detract from the essence of the story. It adds a little edge, a little conflict, enough to create electricity without shorting out people on what has become a really depressing and demoralizing conversation about race. (Oh, and Rege-Jean Page is gorgeous and India Ria Amarteifio plays a perfectly flawed heroine.) Of note, the men have a weakness: stubborn arrogance hiding an emotional vulnerability. The women's ability to 'crack' through their protective armor is a triumph of love. She saves him. And it's very romantic - to women. If you don't believe a man would find these stories romantic or entertaining, please explain why. I understand some men find it excruciating to admit vulnerabilities but isn't that a matter of maturity?
I just don't see it. I agree that lots of culture has gotten worse, and I also agree that social justice culture is the culprit in some cases, but the idea that the reason for this is that the onscreen world doesn't match human nature just doesn't resonate for me.
I think the reason is much simpler — historically, the best art has explored the universality of human experience, and woke art explicitly sidelines universality in favor of shallow demographic identity and topical political concerns. Think Proust, or George Eliot, or Rashomon — themes of nostalgia, lust, thwarted desires and ambitions, social pressure and exclusion, the unreliability of memory, the way that (real) trauma can ripple through the lives of a whole community.
The great strength of historical works that are *nominally* about identity topics — think August Wilson's "Fences", or The Joy Luck Club — is that they illustrate the sort of unitary tapestry of human experience by showing what these universal themes look like in various less-explored corners of human life. This kind of thing was always interesting for readers and viewers, because they got to see their own experiences reflected through a mirror of a different color. I think this is, not to put too corny a point on it, spiritually enriching.
Though both those works discuss racism against black people and Asian-Americans, the characters themselves are real, not simply mouthpieces for The Moral of the Story. I think it would have been possible to tell the story of the later seasons of Game of Thrones well, even as a story of glass-ceiling-breaking female empowerment, but it fails as art (in the eyes of many) for the same reason that Jack Reacher does: there is nothing fundamentally, relatably human about relentlessly winning and crushing your enemies.
It's the need to use characters and plots to serve political and rhetorical ends that compromises woke fiction: something can't be both an argument and a piece of art.
Great piece. I rewatch classic 80s/90s movies all the time because they are just so much better. The characters are more fleshed out and believable and the plots are far more interesting. Sexual dynamics between characters are done with more accuracy to real life (can you imagine "The Piano" being made now??)
I mostly can't watch any modern cinema. It makes my skin crawl. I'm tired of watching petite chicks physically kicking the ass of six men three times their size. They're all the same "strong" character with the same stupid battles that they easily overcome. The men are generally written as incompetent or stupid (or both). It's boring, it's overdone, and it's so outside of reality as to be laughable. The CGI is boring too. I will forgive silly special effects if the story is well-done, but most of these special effects is like putting icing on a really bad-tasting cake.
I think most on the right would be quick to blame the left for stifling art, and that this isn't a phenomenon which is unique to wokeness, either. It's a pretty predictable result of rigid political orthodoxy that values propaganda above other considerations such as entertainment, creativity, or etc. Same reason why the USSR didn't make good movies--the government only allowed propaganda to be made. Attempts at creating "Christian" popular culture are usually cringey and go nowhere for the same reason. It's too obvious that they're just made to propagandize on behalf of Christianity, not to actually entertain you.
Since my originally comment got eaten I'll be short. Hanania is wrong. I don't mean his opinion is wrong (though that too) but his facts are wrong. Completely. Traditional stories were not divided by sexes the way he describes and in "fairy tales" the adventuring soul was as likely to be female, even a young female as male. Almost never was a fully adult male just FYI. This distinction was Hollywood, and post 1940's Hollywood at that. As for the little Mermaid. Her father was not a suburban married monogamous father never venturing outside ethnic group for mates. The sea king traditionally gets around, with or without consent. Audiences were just fine with that and had no trouble accepting that Poseidon not only had sex with his mother, his sister, his niece, his 9 nyads, but also such an array of others that he produced as children cyclops, charybdis and a small horse. Traditionally, people were just fine with this wild array and the idea he might have had sex and produced a child from their neighbors down south among others would not have had them blink an eye. So he's full of it. Supernatural beings do supernatural things. They are representatives of ideas. Everyone knows that.
This idea that women and men are poles apart in temperament, so poles apart they never share the same story preference because men just want to win flies in the face of everything we know about stories. Or people. It is very clear the author has never actually met a women because he knows so little about them.
And also, for the record the Star Wars movies have the same ratio of male/female heros from first trilogy to last. I'd say it is possible that the last have more males than females. But people like our author are just mad a girl got to hold the lightsaber...and that, not the movie is a sign of adolescence delayed and dare I say it decadence.
First, music seems relatively non-woke compared to other popular media. I mean the lyrics to popular songs. There’s a lot of girl power, but that isn’t really new. I don’t hear a lot about BLM or being trans in songs. Maybe I’m just not hearing what’s out there, but none of the songs Apple Music recommends for me have explicitly woke messaging. I take this a good sign that woke messaging isn’t actually that popular.
Second, it is hard for me to consume media now that I’m old because I can’t take anything at face value and I’m always thinking about what’s behind something. When I was a kid, Dan Quayle accused Murphy Brown of pushing an agenda. I did not notice that as a kid, but certainly I can now. Maybe a better example is Who’s the Boss. I never for one second thought that show was about pushing a girl power narrative, I thought it was just a funny show with a funny housekeeper guy. I watched it and enjoyed it. Today I would probably hate it. That’s unfortunate, but there’s no going back.
> One template of a male story is a hero goes out in the world and, through bravery and strength, tries to overcome some obstacle or challenge. At the end, through this process he finally saves or wins over the girl of his dreams. Think the original Star Wars
Have you noticed how Luke and Han absolutely fail their rescue and it is Leia who ends up rescuing their asses? And how Luke is overall a whiny teenager with nothing standardly-masculine about him other than genitals? It may start as a "standardly-gendered" story, but it actually reverses it pretty quickly, and it doesn't make it worse.
More generally, it is just not true that a story works universally worse if you replace a male hero with a female one or a woman in distress with a man in distress (or both). I would absolutely watch that The Lion Queen movie. I think you overgeneralize your own state of mind (as predicted by Scott Alexander for everyone and anyone) - even if we do have a tendency for having a group of "strong characters" and a group of "characters in distress", it is just not universally true for humans that people with boobs automatically get assigned to the latter and people with beards to the former - this sentiment is culturally acquired, and I (as well as many, many other people) flat-out failed to acquire it. (Continuing Star Wars line - even being 8yo, I found absolutely disgusting the forced kiss between Han and Leia in Episode V, my literal first reaction was "how the hell doesn't she knee him in the groin", except, of course, in Russian and possibly without a swearword.)
That said, the point about verisimilitude (aka "if X, why not also Y") does strike true, it's a bad argument.
I think your argument, Richard, comes down to this:
1) Most people prefer stories with strong conformance to sexual norms.
2) There is pressure on storytellers to defy sexual tropes and this is significantly stronger with a new story.
3) This pressure comes from woke ideology
4) This mechanism is a significant contributer to the strong sequal-bias in recent movies.
I think 2) is true.
1) may be true, but I think it is much less true than you think and your brain is wired in such a way as to have a particularly strong preference in this direction. It definitely is not true for me (I especially love stories in which women act in masculine ways), and I think at least a significant minority of people would claim confidently that it is not true of them either.
3) I would dispute. As a conservative you probably consider all progressive thinking to be "woke". As a non-woke progressive I would say that woke ideology absolutely does not preach that all people are individuals and sex (and race) are irrelevant. Quite the reverse, in fact- woke ideology hates gender and racial-blindness. The pressure to defy sexual norms is more related to 70/80s feminism (which *did* preach this sort of thing and which is still around and probably more popular in the general population than wokism) than woke ideology.
Racially inaccurate casting in many genres does not bother me in the slightest. If someone is a good actor they are a good actor. Of course context matters and the Wire would make zero sense artistically if you reversed the black and white characters. But for all fantasy and anything set before about a hundred years ago racial casting just doesn't matter. I caught glimpses of Bridgerton as my wife and daughter watched it and black actors in a stylized version of Regency England didn't detract from it whatsoever. I can't stand LOTR either way and the physical features of the actor don't matter.
Implausible gender casting is much more annoying. I am just really sick of watching a 60kg female beat up teams of men who are each twice her weight. And Richard is right about "Beef" - the whole thing would have been much more credible if the feud had been between two men or two women - I gave up watching too.
"The female template is more passive. A girl wants to be pretty, and win over the hero. She might have obstacles in her way, but instead of showing physical courage, it’s more about resolving some interpersonal dispute in her favor."
Incomplete or inaccurate. Female archetypes historically showcased virtues like chastity, honesty, cunning, or kindness and highlighted external beauty as a deserved manifestation/marker of these traits. Think Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
Let's stop beating around the bush. The cause of woke, the cause of epistemological sink, political sink, and aesthetic collapse, the death of free speech, the rise of cancel culture, the cause all of it has been the feminization of culture. Women have wanted more of a voice and a say in decision-making at the top of every institution and sector we have. And men, because we're men, said ok. We took a step back, and opened everything up to women. And now everything is done as a woman would do it. and none of it works very well.
Oh, and there's no less war, which is something they always promised.
You should give beef another chance; the first episode is mediocre but it gets much better. In fact, a big part of the tension in the main male character’s story is about coming to terms with the pressures of being the oldest son in a strict Korean family. Also in the inciting road rage incident he doesn’t realize his adversary is a woman until later and when he finds out it throws him off. I think it’s commentary on human nature is more or less realistic, and it’s overall a good show, although the ending was a bit disappointing.
Woke probably has contributed somewhat to movies being less original.
The other piece, at least according to Matt Damon, is economics. In his Hot Ones interview, he claimed that the reason studios play things much safer now is because they can't rely on DVD sales to recoup the cost of a film--it HAS to be a blockbuster or it won't be a worthwhile investment.
I've been a reader of your blog for several months now and I appreciate your rational, rather than rabid, rightist positions on some live wire issues. Sometimes I agree with you; sometimes I don't. Sometimes I begin horrified by your position, but with some fomenting thought, come to see a light of truth in what you say. This is sometimes painful and I continue to process.
But I'm compelled to respond to your post, "How Woke Caused Cultural Decadence" because I think here you've gone into some absurd territory (The Lion King, hyenas, oh my.) There're quite a few claims in the post where you go off the track in pursuing what's true, particularly the gender claims.
First, I agree with you that, contrary to the current gender theory idea of innate fluidity, there are hard-wired differences between the sexes that manifest in certain gender traits. My conclusions are largely anecdotal, but it comprises over seven decades of intense 'people watching.'
Put a baby boy and a baby girl, say 9 months old (long before they know or care what color their clothes are), each on a blanket in the middle of a floor. The boy will first check out what's on the blanket with him (a toy?) After some engagement with what's immediately in his reach, he will move on, crawling off the blanket to investigate the cat, the fan, but most definitely anything that moves and/or makes noise. Now look at the baby girl. She is still sitting on the blanket; if she is content, she will just watch. The boy has now grabbed the cat by the tail or has stuck something (his finger?) in the whirling fan. The girl, she is watching.
I am confident in saying I know the feminine mind pretty well. Yes, women love sexual romance. The sexiest encounters are ones where the power is balanced on a knife edge. You meet a player worthy of you.
Here is where I think you've gone off the 'truth rails':
Men and women are so psychologically different that you should expect different kinds of stories to appeal to each sex… One template of a male story is a hero goes out in the world and, through bravery and strength, tries to overcome some obstacle or challenge… The female template is more passive. A girl wants to be pretty, and win over the hero.
No. In the female story, she is a hero who goes out in the world and, through bravery, strength, wit, will, charm, talent or whatever it takes, overcomes some obstacle or challenge. She is not more passive so much as she is more careful because she has watched others make mistakes, she is humbled by facts (such as physics) and understands the value of strategy. Her goal is not always 'getting the guy:' Motivated by saving those she loves, protecting what she values, sexual romance might not be in the picture at all.
[The girl] might have obstacles in her way, but instead of showing physical courage, it’s more about resolving some interpersonal dispute in her favor. Think of Ariel in The Little Mermaid getting away from her overweening father, or Cinderella showing up her stepmom and stepsisters by marrying the handsome prince.
[Pained sigh]. I am not the only woman who is thoroughly annoyed by most Disney 'heroines' and fret at their influence on little girls. Women don't want to be saved, or to be more precise, women don't find being saved sexy or romantic. A woman, or any human, wants to be saved when they are desperate, when they’ve lost agency over their situation. Jesus begged to be saved on the cross - "God, why hast thou forsaken me?" That is not romantic. The 'romantic' plot in Frozen is a travesty. Message to girls: Don't trust the nice, witty guy who you hit it off with and brings out your natural playfulness (because he's really a calculating heel); go for the ornery, stubborn guy who treats you like you're nothing special but who then rescues you from your own naïve and foolish choices. Please!
My first fictional heroine was Eowyn of Rohan from LOTR. I was 12 when I read the passage where she stood on the Plains of Pelennor Fields to defend her king against the Lord of the Nazgul. So brave and mortal. The scene imprinted me for life. And the plot twist was she prevailed not in spite of, but because she was a woman. (A little embarrassed to say I still get verklempt imagining it.)
Women want to be heroes in their story. It is romantic because "power is power" (thank you, Cersei). That power can manifest in any trait or combination of traits - physical, emotional, intellectual. The point is, a woman is won over romantically by feeling empowered. Now I know romantic and sexy are not quite the same thing. But the combination is what every human dreams of finding. The sexy friction between men and women is about a power balance in any of its manifestations.
Sometimes, like in Mad Men, the show can critique a less progressive era, but I think honest viewers know that part of the appeal is that we long for what has been lost. Don Draper can smoke and drink whenever he wants and ogle the secretaries,
I think the "we" in that statement has got to mean only men. Yes, men have lost power over women in the modern business relationship. Show me a woman who longs 'for what has been lost' in the power imbalance of the 1950's office suite. I invite men to consider how much sexier it might be to have a smart, empowered worthy opponent to win over rather than a bunny caught in a trap.
It’s not just that we are different in terms of certain physical, cognitive and psychological traits, but the fact that men and women are so different means that we have separate moralities, values, and ideals.
Again, no. Again, personal experience. I literally met my beloved of 30 years on a level playing field - co-ed touch football on the Ellipse Saturday mornings. He wasn't a superior athlete; he was (is) cute, and his professional career was uncertain. But he was the first man I'd met in 15 years of dating who I was pretty sure was smarter than me - and that was/is very sexy to me. Because I'm old now and I don't have to be coy, I can say I was a 'nine or ten' then - I never before had to work for male attention. But he was so smart I had to be more than pretty - and it was exciting to rise to the challenge of being my best self to win him. He didn't initiate the romance; I did. That was empowering and very sexy for me. He did not save me. Rather, he showed himself to be a dynamic, fun and willing partner. We made each other laugh through our entire first date. We found ourselves worthy of each other (each secretly thinking we got the better deal). Over the 30 years together I have found our moralities, values and ideals to be remarkably aligned. And I think of friends with successful marriages who would say the same. We have raised 3 brilliant, beautiful sons to adulthood (one of whom is a subscriber to your blog which is another reason I'm vested in your getting the gender dynamic right😉)
You complain about 'woke' entertainment, but Shonda Rhimes is onto something. Her Bridgerton series, resoundingly popular with female audiences, features romantic couples in a tense power balance. The vague 'fudge' that Rhimes creates around the fact that black people inhabit this imaginary England as nobles and bourgeoisie doesn't detract from the essence of the story. It adds a little edge, a little conflict, enough to create electricity without shorting out people on what has become a really depressing and demoralizing conversation about race. (Oh, and Rege-Jean Page is gorgeous and India Ria Amarteifio plays a perfectly flawed heroine.) Of note, the men have a weakness: stubborn arrogance hiding an emotional vulnerability. The women's ability to 'crack' through their protective armor is a triumph of love. She saves him. And it's very romantic - to women. If you don't believe a man would find these stories romantic or entertaining, please explain why. I understand some men find it excruciating to admit vulnerabilities but isn't that a matter of maturity?
I just don't see it. I agree that lots of culture has gotten worse, and I also agree that social justice culture is the culprit in some cases, but the idea that the reason for this is that the onscreen world doesn't match human nature just doesn't resonate for me.
I think the reason is much simpler — historically, the best art has explored the universality of human experience, and woke art explicitly sidelines universality in favor of shallow demographic identity and topical political concerns. Think Proust, or George Eliot, or Rashomon — themes of nostalgia, lust, thwarted desires and ambitions, social pressure and exclusion, the unreliability of memory, the way that (real) trauma can ripple through the lives of a whole community.
The great strength of historical works that are *nominally* about identity topics — think August Wilson's "Fences", or The Joy Luck Club — is that they illustrate the sort of unitary tapestry of human experience by showing what these universal themes look like in various less-explored corners of human life. This kind of thing was always interesting for readers and viewers, because they got to see their own experiences reflected through a mirror of a different color. I think this is, not to put too corny a point on it, spiritually enriching.
Though both those works discuss racism against black people and Asian-Americans, the characters themselves are real, not simply mouthpieces for The Moral of the Story. I think it would have been possible to tell the story of the later seasons of Game of Thrones well, even as a story of glass-ceiling-breaking female empowerment, but it fails as art (in the eyes of many) for the same reason that Jack Reacher does: there is nothing fundamentally, relatably human about relentlessly winning and crushing your enemies.
It's the need to use characters and plots to serve political and rhetorical ends that compromises woke fiction: something can't be both an argument and a piece of art.
Great piece. I rewatch classic 80s/90s movies all the time because they are just so much better. The characters are more fleshed out and believable and the plots are far more interesting. Sexual dynamics between characters are done with more accuracy to real life (can you imagine "The Piano" being made now??)
I mostly can't watch any modern cinema. It makes my skin crawl. I'm tired of watching petite chicks physically kicking the ass of six men three times their size. They're all the same "strong" character with the same stupid battles that they easily overcome. The men are generally written as incompetent or stupid (or both). It's boring, it's overdone, and it's so outside of reality as to be laughable. The CGI is boring too. I will forgive silly special effects if the story is well-done, but most of these special effects is like putting icing on a really bad-tasting cake.
I think most on the right would be quick to blame the left for stifling art, and that this isn't a phenomenon which is unique to wokeness, either. It's a pretty predictable result of rigid political orthodoxy that values propaganda above other considerations such as entertainment, creativity, or etc. Same reason why the USSR didn't make good movies--the government only allowed propaganda to be made. Attempts at creating "Christian" popular culture are usually cringey and go nowhere for the same reason. It's too obvious that they're just made to propagandize on behalf of Christianity, not to actually entertain you.
Since my originally comment got eaten I'll be short. Hanania is wrong. I don't mean his opinion is wrong (though that too) but his facts are wrong. Completely. Traditional stories were not divided by sexes the way he describes and in "fairy tales" the adventuring soul was as likely to be female, even a young female as male. Almost never was a fully adult male just FYI. This distinction was Hollywood, and post 1940's Hollywood at that. As for the little Mermaid. Her father was not a suburban married monogamous father never venturing outside ethnic group for mates. The sea king traditionally gets around, with or without consent. Audiences were just fine with that and had no trouble accepting that Poseidon not only had sex with his mother, his sister, his niece, his 9 nyads, but also such an array of others that he produced as children cyclops, charybdis and a small horse. Traditionally, people were just fine with this wild array and the idea he might have had sex and produced a child from their neighbors down south among others would not have had them blink an eye. So he's full of it. Supernatural beings do supernatural things. They are representatives of ideas. Everyone knows that.
This idea that women and men are poles apart in temperament, so poles apart they never share the same story preference because men just want to win flies in the face of everything we know about stories. Or people. It is very clear the author has never actually met a women because he knows so little about them.
And also, for the record the Star Wars movies have the same ratio of male/female heros from first trilogy to last. I'd say it is possible that the last have more males than females. But people like our author are just mad a girl got to hold the lightsaber...and that, not the movie is a sign of adolescence delayed and dare I say it decadence.
Two unrelated contributions to this discussion:
First, music seems relatively non-woke compared to other popular media. I mean the lyrics to popular songs. There’s a lot of girl power, but that isn’t really new. I don’t hear a lot about BLM or being trans in songs. Maybe I’m just not hearing what’s out there, but none of the songs Apple Music recommends for me have explicitly woke messaging. I take this a good sign that woke messaging isn’t actually that popular.
Second, it is hard for me to consume media now that I’m old because I can’t take anything at face value and I’m always thinking about what’s behind something. When I was a kid, Dan Quayle accused Murphy Brown of pushing an agenda. I did not notice that as a kid, but certainly I can now. Maybe a better example is Who’s the Boss. I never for one second thought that show was about pushing a girl power narrative, I thought it was just a funny show with a funny housekeeper guy. I watched it and enjoyed it. Today I would probably hate it. That’s unfortunate, but there’s no going back.
What do you think is the role of technology, particularly digital communities? Does it accelerate this trend, hedge against it, or both?
> One template of a male story is a hero goes out in the world and, through bravery and strength, tries to overcome some obstacle or challenge. At the end, through this process he finally saves or wins over the girl of his dreams. Think the original Star Wars
Have you noticed how Luke and Han absolutely fail their rescue and it is Leia who ends up rescuing their asses? And how Luke is overall a whiny teenager with nothing standardly-masculine about him other than genitals? It may start as a "standardly-gendered" story, but it actually reverses it pretty quickly, and it doesn't make it worse.
More generally, it is just not true that a story works universally worse if you replace a male hero with a female one or a woman in distress with a man in distress (or both). I would absolutely watch that The Lion Queen movie. I think you overgeneralize your own state of mind (as predicted by Scott Alexander for everyone and anyone) - even if we do have a tendency for having a group of "strong characters" and a group of "characters in distress", it is just not universally true for humans that people with boobs automatically get assigned to the latter and people with beards to the former - this sentiment is culturally acquired, and I (as well as many, many other people) flat-out failed to acquire it. (Continuing Star Wars line - even being 8yo, I found absolutely disgusting the forced kiss between Han and Leia in Episode V, my literal first reaction was "how the hell doesn't she knee him in the groin", except, of course, in Russian and possibly without a swearword.)
That said, the point about verisimilitude (aka "if X, why not also Y") does strike true, it's a bad argument.
I think your argument, Richard, comes down to this:
1) Most people prefer stories with strong conformance to sexual norms.
2) There is pressure on storytellers to defy sexual tropes and this is significantly stronger with a new story.
3) This pressure comes from woke ideology
4) This mechanism is a significant contributer to the strong sequal-bias in recent movies.
I think 2) is true.
1) may be true, but I think it is much less true than you think and your brain is wired in such a way as to have a particularly strong preference in this direction. It definitely is not true for me (I especially love stories in which women act in masculine ways), and I think at least a significant minority of people would claim confidently that it is not true of them either.
3) I would dispute. As a conservative you probably consider all progressive thinking to be "woke". As a non-woke progressive I would say that woke ideology absolutely does not preach that all people are individuals and sex (and race) are irrelevant. Quite the reverse, in fact- woke ideology hates gender and racial-blindness. The pressure to defy sexual norms is more related to 70/80s feminism (which *did* preach this sort of thing and which is still around and probably more popular in the general population than wokism) than woke ideology.
4) I think is almost certainly nonsense.
This is the kind of content that keeps people coming back even when you troll the sh*t out of them half the time. Bravo.
Richard, you should check out The Critical Drinker on YouTube. Particularly his review of the new LOTR as he hits a lot of the same points.
On another note, you could write a separate piece just on how woke commercials became post-2020. The audience-baiting is so tiresome.
Racially inaccurate casting in many genres does not bother me in the slightest. If someone is a good actor they are a good actor. Of course context matters and the Wire would make zero sense artistically if you reversed the black and white characters. But for all fantasy and anything set before about a hundred years ago racial casting just doesn't matter. I caught glimpses of Bridgerton as my wife and daughter watched it and black actors in a stylized version of Regency England didn't detract from it whatsoever. I can't stand LOTR either way and the physical features of the actor don't matter.
Implausible gender casting is much more annoying. I am just really sick of watching a 60kg female beat up teams of men who are each twice her weight. And Richard is right about "Beef" - the whole thing would have been much more credible if the feud had been between two men or two women - I gave up watching too.
"The female template is more passive. A girl wants to be pretty, and win over the hero. She might have obstacles in her way, but instead of showing physical courage, it’s more about resolving some interpersonal dispute in her favor."
Incomplete or inaccurate. Female archetypes historically showcased virtues like chastity, honesty, cunning, or kindness and highlighted external beauty as a deserved manifestation/marker of these traits. Think Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
Let's stop beating around the bush. The cause of woke, the cause of epistemological sink, political sink, and aesthetic collapse, the death of free speech, the rise of cancel culture, the cause all of it has been the feminization of culture. Women have wanted more of a voice and a say in decision-making at the top of every institution and sector we have. And men, because we're men, said ok. We took a step back, and opened everything up to women. And now everything is done as a woman would do it. and none of it works very well.
Oh, and there's no less war, which is something they always promised.