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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well ($800+ million gross total , $100+ million open) despite obviously having a female lead.

Woke is defined by presentation, not by having a female lead. Also, the female lead in Wonder Woman is Israeli and Jewish which the woke have really mixed feelings over (as has recently become obvious).

got dogpiled so badly here. even SBF got easier treatment at his trial. I dunno. I feel like if this were 2020 and I made this same comment few would have disagreed so strongly. I am not even sure what people are disagreeing with. i thought my commentary was unopinionated and was not expecting such strong rebuke. feels like a minefield posting here lately.

There's been a lot of heavy news and discussion about Gaza lately. I think there was an appetite for something lighter and you just stumbled into it with some pop culture discussion.

I think the reference to Wonder Woman as a counter argument to the claim that gender pandering/wokeness is killing movies suggests that Wonder Woman is a gender pandering, woke movie, which implies that you think wokeness isn't a leading cause of the failures of the recent movies.

Maybe Wonder Woman is a gender pandering, woke movie (I haven't seen it), but is it as woke or pandering as the movies that are failing today?

There does seem to be a general societal trend against wokeness nowadays. Maybe people are looking to bash anything woke so anything that might go against that narrative can cause more friction that it would have years ago.

Probably should also take into consideration that the economy was doing much better in 2017 and superhero movies were in general doing well. Except for Barbie and Oppenheimer, I'm struggling to recall a recent movie that did well, so perhaps the movie industry as a whole is struggling right now.

Yeah. Woke is not casting a female. Woke is casting a female lead and then making her perfect and the villains exclusively male.

That's just one form of Mary Sue. It's not actually woke until the character herself points this out.