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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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It's pretending a black guy could be nobility in a white majority place and nobody would even bat an eye, let alone raise objections.

Amusingly, I can think of a major space opera that does exactly this (ok, black girl as queen) and the author is 100% not woke or blank-slatist. The difference is that it's explained in plot and supports larger themes in the story. It's the opposite of "this village hasn't seen an outsider in generations, but might as well be a United Colors of Benetton ad."

Similarly, waif-fu occasionally works--Buffy the Vampire Slayer and River Tam, IMO--but Whedon did the work to explain his special cases. I think this points out one of the central problems with woke in a creative context--all too often, it's intellectually lazy. The blank slate means you don't have to justify casting choices in terms of logic, genetics, population dynamics, etc. So for an audience with even an instinctual grasp of all that--"people who are related to each other tend to look more like each other!"--you lose verisimilitude and immersion in the story.

Amusingly, I can think of a major space opera that does exactly this (ok, black girl as queen) and the author is 100% not woke or blank-slatist.

Honorverse, I presume?

Indeed.

(For those unfamiliar: Honor Harrington series by David Weber; first book is On Basilisk Station. Often described as "Horatio Hornblower in space.")

Honor Harrington universe? I didn't consider that a "major" space opera.

all too often, it's intellectually lazy.

Sometimes the impression I get from a lot of "content" is that the writers are deeply disinterested in the subject matter of what they're working on. The people involved who are into wokeness insert wokeness, no one else cares enough to stop them.

You don't have to be particularly technically skilled in order to make something be woke; you just need familiarity with wokeness, so it's a great way for unskilled writers to pretend to contribute.

Sometimes I can watch Scarlett Johannsenn beat up men and it works, because she takes them by surprise or fights smarter than them.

But often she just punches them out and I am just jarred out of the experience. "Why can she do this? Did I miss her getting super-powers?" I stop watching the movie and get lost in my thoughts.

Daredevil's hallway scene is really good for many reasons, but I just want to focus on the obvious fight. You have a guy who has no physical powers like strength or speed or agility. He does have super-senses, and he has to use them because any straight-on fight is too likely to end up with him injured. He keeps an advantage but the tension is still high because if he loses that advantage at all he stands a good chance of dying.

These days it is just assumed he can take on a couple henchmen goons at once without a problem.

This is bad, but it is not woke.

I blame anime ala dragonball z for the infinite power creep of action movies.

Eh, I personally can't see that unless you want to try drawing a through-line that includes the Wachowskis (who were heavily, heavily influenced by Ghost In The Shell, which isn't the same genre as DBZ, in the making of The Matrix). Or at least, I don't think Dragon Ball: Evolution really had any lasting impact on action cinema.

Amusingly, I can think of a major space opera that does exactly this (ok, black girl as queen) and the author is 100% not woke or blank-slatist. The difference is that it's explained in plot and supports larger themes in the story.

There are historical examples of feuding tribes choosing a foreigner with no tribal affiliation to rule over them.

even in the Medieval era elective monarchies like Bohemia and Poland practically preferred to pick foreigners rather than from among their own nobles

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