Putting the shitty reactionary channels aside (Critical Drinker and Think Before You Sleep are borderline fascist; dunno about the other two), I will say that there’s a point to be made here:
Liberal establishment is actively attempting to insert feminism, “wokeness”, racial issues, etc, into everything they do, including media. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’d say on it’s own it’s a good thing.
Many such efforts are done very badly, and end up backfiring. Bad writing, hamfisting the message, messing with established canon, etc, are destined to create backlash in the audience. A lot of the reaction being generated here is caused by the inability to mesh message with story. For example, 1960s Star Trek was well written, and its messages were widely accepted by most people (except in very extreme cases). The more recent Queen’s Gambit was universally praised, because it had excellent writing, despite boasting a very strong female lead and centering on men attempting to control women. On the other hand, even a half-decent show like Jessica Jones will generate controversy, when every single male character in the show is shown to be an asshole, whether their screen time spans multiple episodes or only happens for a few seconds. That’s just not good writing. But when most people’s brains notices this stuff, they don’t immediately blame the writing, but rather resort to more instinctive accusations.
Because of #2, reactionary channels such as Critical Drinker, are having a field day by producing content that combines disaster porn and persecution syndrome with true-sounding criticism of such films and series. Thus, they are able to accumulate a critical mass of subscribers and spread their reactionary fascist propaganda to people who are largely not politically educated. Bad efforts to spread an otherwise good message have always been and always will be hurting the cause rather than helping it. When you were just getting into communism, have you tried telling your friends about it? So many times that they started shutting down every time you brought it up? This is the same effect on a larger scale.
Because the message is coming from liberals, the way it’s presented is also liberal. That means there’s a serious lack of context and thought in the way it’s presented. Usually it ends up being coated in layers of moral superiority and snickering, which makes things even worse.
A bunch of grifters are taking advantage of this wave of progressiveness to make money. For example, you have companies who specialize on “woke consulting”. What these companies do is that they come in to production companies of various media and tell them “Oh this thing you are producing doesn’t have enough equality in it. Pay us so we can tell you how to fix it”. And when the company doesn’t pay, they’ll use sockpuppets, bots, and other social media manipulation to generate “controversy”, which then plays badly for the upcoming release, and the producers end up paying to make the problem go away. As audiences are becoming aware of this, it’s making things worse, by giving credence to the idea of a “woke agenda trying to control our culture”.
At the end, perhaps creating controversy is exactly the purpose here. The “culture wars” might be nothing more than an orchestrated effort to direct eyes, ears and brains away from inequality in real life, climate change issues, wars, corruption, the failures of capitalism, the ever-expanding totalitarianism of the West, etc etc. Moreover, slimes like the Democrats are taking advantage of these “wars” to score cheap political points without actually doing anything tangible.
Sorry for the long rant. I didn’t mean to initially. It just got out, because I’ve had these thoughts milling in my head for a while now.
And just to be clear, these channels can go fuck themselves.
Is the culture wars a unique phenomenon in the US? How significant is in the other parts of the West and the American satellite states? I’ve grown up in my country (Vietnam) my whole life and have never observe such bizarre phenomenon. When I was a student, all the students around me believed that feminism is a good thing, they believed that we must combat climate change. All the media and newspapers (save for US sponsored ones) have the same worldview. But when I getting better at English and exposing myself to English-speaking media, I was shocked.
It is mostly a Western phenomenon. The worst of it is in the US and UK. Less so in the rest of Europe, but still exists. It’s mostly propagated through the internet.
So I’ll probably gather some hate for this post.
Putting the shitty reactionary channels aside (Critical Drinker and Think Before You Sleep are borderline fascist; dunno about the other two), I will say that there’s a point to be made here:
Liberal establishment is actively attempting to insert feminism, “wokeness”, racial issues, etc, into everything they do, including media. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’d say on it’s own it’s a good thing.
Many such efforts are done very badly, and end up backfiring. Bad writing, hamfisting the message, messing with established canon, etc, are destined to create backlash in the audience. A lot of the reaction being generated here is caused by the inability to mesh message with story. For example, 1960s Star Trek was well written, and its messages were widely accepted by most people (except in very extreme cases). The more recent Queen’s Gambit was universally praised, because it had excellent writing, despite boasting a very strong female lead and centering on men attempting to control women. On the other hand, even a half-decent show like Jessica Jones will generate controversy, when every single male character in the show is shown to be an asshole, whether their screen time spans multiple episodes or only happens for a few seconds. That’s just not good writing. But when most people’s brains notices this stuff, they don’t immediately blame the writing, but rather resort to more instinctive accusations.
Because of #2, reactionary channels such as Critical Drinker, are having a field day by producing content that combines disaster porn and persecution syndrome with true-sounding criticism of such films and series. Thus, they are able to accumulate a critical mass of subscribers and spread their reactionary fascist propaganda to people who are largely not politically educated. Bad efforts to spread an otherwise good message have always been and always will be hurting the cause rather than helping it. When you were just getting into communism, have you tried telling your friends about it? So many times that they started shutting down every time you brought it up? This is the same effect on a larger scale.
Because the message is coming from liberals, the way it’s presented is also liberal. That means there’s a serious lack of context and thought in the way it’s presented. Usually it ends up being coated in layers of moral superiority and snickering, which makes things even worse.
A bunch of grifters are taking advantage of this wave of progressiveness to make money. For example, you have companies who specialize on “woke consulting”. What these companies do is that they come in to production companies of various media and tell them “Oh this thing you are producing doesn’t have enough equality in it. Pay us so we can tell you how to fix it”. And when the company doesn’t pay, they’ll use sockpuppets, bots, and other social media manipulation to generate “controversy”, which then plays badly for the upcoming release, and the producers end up paying to make the problem go away. As audiences are becoming aware of this, it’s making things worse, by giving credence to the idea of a “woke agenda trying to control our culture”.
At the end, perhaps creating controversy is exactly the purpose here. The “culture wars” might be nothing more than an orchestrated effort to direct eyes, ears and brains away from inequality in real life, climate change issues, wars, corruption, the failures of capitalism, the ever-expanding totalitarianism of the West, etc etc. Moreover, slimes like the Democrats are taking advantage of these “wars” to score cheap political points without actually doing anything tangible.
Sorry for the long rant. I didn’t mean to initially. It just got out, because I’ve had these thoughts milling in my head for a while now.
And just to be clear, these channels can go fuck themselves.
Is the culture wars a unique phenomenon in the US? How significant is in the other parts of the West and the American satellite states? I’ve grown up in my country (Vietnam) my whole life and have never observe such bizarre phenomenon. When I was a student, all the students around me believed that feminism is a good thing, they believed that we must combat climate change. All the media and newspapers (save for US sponsored ones) have the same worldview. But when I getting better at English and exposing myself to English-speaking media, I was shocked.
It is mostly a Western phenomenon. The worst of it is in the US and UK. Less so in the rest of Europe, but still exists. It’s mostly propagated through the internet.