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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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I broadly agree with many people here that this is more indicative of wokeness having completely won rather than of it being in decline. To use the same metaphor as someone else here, there's no need to hammer down nails when none are sticking up.

But one area where I think we may be seeing signs of the start of a decline is in certain areas of pop culture. The complete failure of efforts to boycott Hogwarts Legacy based on Rowling's refusal to tow the woke line on trans issues has been discussed plenty here, and that follows a number of other high profile woke failures.

About a month ago, HBO released Velma, a cartoon spinoff/reimagining/prequel of Scooby Doo featuring Velma as the protagonist, along with all the main cast members of the show (except the dog himself, who is completely absent) go through high school (in modern times with smartphones and all that). It was very openly woke with every character being race-swapped except Fred, and the show starting off with Velma narrating that this is her origin story and that "normally origin stories are about tall handsome guys struggling with a burden of being handed even more power," and by all accounts that tone only got more heavy-handed as the show went on. It was also completely panned by critics and fans alike, receiving some of the lowest scores ever from both in places like Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB. This doesn't mean it was a failure, and it seems to have been renewed for a 2nd season - possibly due to "hatewatching," possibly due to a 2nd season already being too far along in the pipeline - but at least it indicates that it's something the general audience doesn't really want to tolerate.

Before that, last year there was Saints Row, a video game reboot of the Saints Row franchise, which was initially a sort of GTA clone back in the day designed to appeal to a more edgy crowd (I never played any of the Saints Row games, so I'm going off 2nd hand information). The woke messaging in this was pretty minor by all accounts, but it featured a lot of changes to the franchise clearly designed to appeal to that crowd, including making the protagonists a diverse set of 20-something recent college graduates trying to make it in an expensive city, who start the eponymous Saints Row gang in part as an effort to pay back their student loans while also fighting for enacting what they see as justice in the world. While in the original, I believe that the protagonist was just a random guy working his way up the gang hierarchy and becoming a ruthless kingpin because he wanted power and money and women. They also changed some running jokes in the franchise presumably for sensitivity reasons, including changing a mechanic shop name from "Rim Jobs" to "Jim Robs," and a fast food chain from "Freckle Bitches" to just "FB's." The game was roundly rejected by both critics and fans, and seems to have bombed financially. Much of the criticisms had to do with the game's buggy state and poorly designed/implemented game mechanics, but, of course, those are not characteristics that exist independently of it being "woke."

Late last year, there was also Rings of Power, a prequel TV show to Lord of the Rings based on some supplementary material by JRR Tolkien, which Amazon famously spent $1bn+ for production and made a big deal of including diverse racial representation in populations where it wouldn't make sense from an anthropological perspective. It also featured as the protagonist Galadriel, an elf who appeared in the Lord of the Rings and who was clearly better than others in almost every way including her fighting skills and intuitions about Sauron's return while also being highly aggressive and abrasive towards others in displaying that superiority. The show was mostly rejected by critics and fans. I don't think Amazon released viewership numbers, but I recall reading that after the initial 2 episodes which were released together, the show's viewership dropped precipitously.

Also late last year, there was the TV show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law on Disney+, which featured quite a bit of woke messaging, such as a monologue in the 1st episode where She-Hulk goes off on the Hulk: "Here's the thing, Bruce. I'm great at controlling my anger. I do it all the time. When I'm catcalled in the street. When incompetent men explain my own area of expertise to me. I do it pretty much every day because if I don't I will be called emotional or difficult or... might just literally get murdered. So, I'm an expert at controlling my anger because I do infinitely more than you!" Along with the main plot point of the season being about a group of angry men trolling She-Hulk online, culminating in them crashing a ceremony for her winning a "Best Female Lawyer" award and playing embarrassing videos of her for the audience. This one had a bit more critic support, but fans seemed to pan it for various issues, including the woke messaging, poor use of breaking the 4th wall, and bad CGI.

Now, woke works in pop culture failing is nothing new; in the past, we've had films like Terminator: Dark Fate or the Charlie's Angels (Elizabeth Banks version) or TV shows like Batgirl bombing. Even The Last Jedi counts despite the massive amounts of money it made, because of how it poisoned the franchise, preventing it from making as much money as Disney clearly expected to make from buying that franchise from Lucas. But generally those works still got massive support from critics with the bigoted fans being reprimanded for not supporting these great progressive works of art. Some of that happened in these cases, with probably Rings of Power the biggest example. But it seems to me that there's more rejection of works like this by critics than ever before, and they're no longer so willing to circle the wagons to protect some work if it clearly lacks the basic fundamentals of what makes works of fiction like these actually good. And I can't recall ever seeing so much rejection like this happening back-to-back-to-back so quickly.

Maybe it's just a blip, and maybe it's just a tiny bit of overreach being pulled back before "progress" continues unabated, but I think there's an optimists' case to be made that this might be a turning point. The Hogwarts Legacy situation feels like it could be a sort of Emperor Has No Clothes moment as the masses realize just how much power the woke have with them going all-in on trying to "cancel" the game and having essentially negligible - and possibly positive - impact on its sales.