The only legitimate point I saw (when I first heard a co-worker talk about it and complain a little LONG before the wheels fell off the wagon) was that words and ideas like intersectionality were going to be problematic for most people to understand and grasp. I get it, but I guess there is no reason to expect most people (who I'm convinced if asked a vast number of couldn't even pass a basic math, grammar, or civics test) to do so. But it has gone so far beyond the point. There are dozens of Youtube channels devoted to literally nothing bu actively searching out SOME movie, game or other piece of consumable media, scouring it for any hint of what can possibly be conceived as "political", and then beating it mercilessly with a sledgehammer for 5-7 days until the next wave comes.
My favorite incident this year was when they had all convinced themselves that Captain Marvel was going to be a miserable failure because of something the lead actress said that upset them to the point you would have assumed they were going to set fire to the theaters the movie was showing in. Turns out the crusade of a bunch of internet jack-asses were no match for the fact that parents were probably genuinely excited to take their daughters to a Marvel movie with a female lead, and instead of being a disaster, it's right behind E.T. as the 21st highest grossing film in the history of movies. Point being, simply because of the actress and because it was a female lead, the consensus among this crowd was that it was inherently political simply that was how it was being sold. Of course, ground-zero for this nonsense was the Ghostbusters reboot, which instead of being excoriated for simply being one of any dozen shitty remakes that come out in a given year, was singled out because it was a shitty remake that just HAPPENED to have a female ensemble cast. Because I guess it would have been better to have the 3 surviving 65-year old men and Harold Ramis' corpse get the billing instead.
What most of this boil down to is that there are simply OPTIONS (and these are all options) out there now that (gasp!) don't all directly cater to straight, white men. It's ok for something to be for someone else. And you might like it too if you give it a chance. Game of Thrones and Big Little Lies are on the same network, and they sure as shit don't appeal to remotely the same audience, generally speaking. I don't see how this is a problem in any way.
I suppose one could reasonably argue that most "art", if it does have a political message, is probably going to be liberal. That isn't a conspiracy. It's that fact that conservatives generally aren't as interested in pursuing careers in a story-telling medium and that (frankly) they generally aren't as good at it when they try. When a movie or TV show is made to push an explicitly conservative agenda, it is usually (at best) one on the level of quality of the Hallmark or Sci-Fi Channel. I could make a great case that nearly every damn action movie of the '80s and '90s was at least MARGINALLY conservative, and in the case of something like Death Wish or Rambo was ACTIVELY attempting to be conservative. I don't turn off First Blood because of this. But it also doesn't make Rambo 3 or Cobra any less of a garbage movie. The most notable successful example of what I would consider something that succeeded massively BECAUSE it was seen as conservative was the movie American Sniper, but that was mostly because Eastwood is a great director and the movie was a hagiography of a guy who in reality was a pretty repulsive person.
@jjstraka34 I absolutely love your first paragraph, but not for the reasons you might want to. First of all, you seem unable to grasp that the main problem isn't about people not understanding problems that are being inaptly tackled on.
The second thing I love is that you specifically mention YouTube channels that are dedicated to searching for political media to slam them. These exist, true, but if you consider what they are doing bad, then for the sake of consistency you need to recognize the fact that left-leaning sociopaths are actively looking for things to be offended at in media and consider basically everything they don't like problematic, sexist, misogonic, homophobic, abelist etc. Not only they do actively looking for things to be offended at, they also quite often are harassing both actual fans and creators. So I hope for sake of your consistency you also consider then a problem. If not, then we have blatant double standard here.
I am totally fine with there being other options around in storytelling. If you want to aim for very specific demographic, then it's okay. Political activists are free to create their own stories, character etc. But what's that? They change already existing and established characters to suit them, instead of making their own stories instead. I wonder how actual fans of a franchise that's being changed to fit political narratives would find that...
If I had a daughter I'll definitely bring her to see Wonder Women. Or Alita: Battle Angel. Captain Marvel, on the other hand is miserable by comparison. Not subtle, blatantly catering with actress that is actual misandrist, retroactively changes events in MCU, has conflict but not character arc, has very unsatisfaying conclusion etc... And the reason it actually did well is the fact it's between Infinity War and Endgame and it was marketed as Captain Marvel will be crucial to the Endgame.
She's not. She can be written out of the movie and replaced by other, better characters like Valkyrie or Scarlet Witch and it wouldn't make a difference.
So, movie got successful because it was heavily promoted in media and lied about. Neat.
One more thing, willingness to make an piece of art doesn't mean that the person willing to do so is actually capable of doing that. Or should try doing that. Politicial activists specifically are unable to understand human beings, especially those who hold different point of view to themselves. A person who wants to become a good writer would need to do some research on how human psychology works, in order to write a believable, humanized and fleshed-out characters. Political activists wouldn't bother by any of that, not when their retarded politics is the end goal.
The only legitimate point I saw (when I first heard a co-worker talk about it and complain a little LONG before the wheels fell off the wagon) was that words and ideas like intersectionality were going to be problematic for most people to understand and grasp. I get it, but I guess there is no reason to expect most people (who I'm convinced if asked a vast number of couldn't even pass a basic math, grammar, or civics test) to do so.
But it has gone so far beyond the point. There are dozens of Youtube channels devoted to literally nothing bu actively searching out SOME movie, game or other piece of consumable media, scouring it for any hint of what can possibly be conceived as "political", and then beating it mercilessly with a sledgehammer for 5-7 days until the next wave comes.
That's ignore the fact that this very trend was in fact, reactionary to a media the LITERALLY pushed one side and cherry picked the worse of the opposing side to show of they showed it at all. I mean it's even still the way now just even worse now that corporations want to play morally righteous instead of just being greedy, just look at silicon valley and the crap they do.
My favorite incident this year was when they had all convinced themselves that Captain Marvel was going to be a miserable failure because of something the lead actress said that upset them to the point you would have assumed they were going to set fire to the theaters the movie was showing in. Turns out the crusade of a bunch of internet jack-asses were no match for the fact that parents were probably genuinely excited to take their daughters to a Marvel movie with a female lead, and instead of being a disaster, it's right behind E.T. as the 21st highest grossing film in the history of movies.
Oh please, leave out the fact that...
1.Captain marvel was riding on the coat tail of 21 success movie cinematic universe.
2. Was literally shoe horned in just before for the most anticipated blockbuster of probably the last 2 decades.
3. Had the entirety of the media machine constantly play on its side of the field, to the point it caused rotten tomato to remove its, " do you want to see this movie" percentage" that's not even counting how they acted like movies such as wonder woman, tomb raider, and the infinite other female lead action movies that came before it just didn't freaking exist.
4. Oh and he constant attack on aletta battle angle which actually had a larger fan score.
That bs about mothers showing their daughters had very little to actually do with that.
But just because marvel movie made money means its good huh. Despite you could stick marvel on anything but it's comics and people will buy it!
Point being, simply because of the actress and because it was a female lead, the consensus among this crowd was that it was inherently political simply that was how it was being sold.
Then where was that for wonder woman? Or lucy? Or atomic blonde? Or alien? Or tomb raider? Or the hunger games? Or killbill? Or underworld?
Of course, ground-zero for this nonsense was the Ghostbusters reboot, which instead of being excoriated for simply being one of any dozen shitty remakes that come out in a given year, was singled out because it was a shitty remake that just HAPPENED to have a female ensemble cast.
You left out the part where the director and cast members directly insulted anyone who literally wasn't interested in the movie or thought it looked bad based on the trailer and then turned around and played victim when the fandom pushed back.
Because I guess it would have been better to have the 3 surviving 65-year old men and Harold Ramis' corpse get the billing instead.
Or maybe you don't make such a drastic change, have no real connections to the original, constantly attack the very people who more than likely will give you their money regardless of how bad it is because that's what fandoms tend to due when not attacked or insulted.
What most of this boil down to is that there are simply OPTIONS (and these are all options) out there now that (gasp!) don't all directly cater to straight, white men. It's ok for something to be for someone else.
Except oh no, blade didn't cater to straight white men and it saved an entire movie genre.
The cosbies did the same.
One of the most loved actors is a black man who's worst if not one of his worst movies still made a 100 million.
You're spouting crap that can and has been proven wrong over and over again. You know how I know this, look at a progressive cartoon that didn't destroy a already established cartoon...
STEVEN UNIVERSE, ignoring its garbage random, people aren't running out and trying to boycott it because they don't care that it exist. It's it own up, it can do what it wants. It's progressive fandom on the other hand thinks its ok to harass a 17 year old kid until Abe tries to kill herself all because she drew a fat character skinny. Which reminds me, I need to go draw the new dark-skinned Pokemon character a little lighter lighter and posted it on Twitter. Well in my case I'm going to draw her white, excuse me.
And you might like it too if you give it a chance. Game of Thrones and Big Little Lies are on the same network, and they sure as shit don't appeal to remotely the same audience, generally speaking. I don't see how this is a problem in any way.
At to break it to you I like good story telling over pushing a progressive narrative. Also I don't watch either of those shows so no comment, but I did hear that game of thrones got worse after Martin left.
suppose one could reasonably argue that most "art", if it does have a political message, is probably going to be liberal.
That isn't a conspiracy. It's that fact that conservatives generally aren't as interested in pursuing careers in a story-telling medium and that (frankly) they generally aren't as good at it when they try.
Liberal isn't synonymous with she or intersectionality.
When a movie or TV show is made to push an explicitly conservative agenda, it is usually (at best) one on the level of quality of the Hallmark or Sci-Fi Channel.
.
could make a great case that nearly every damn action movie of the '80s and '90s was at least MARGINALLY conservative, and in the case of something like Death Wish or Rambo was ACTIVELY attempting to be conservative. I don't turn off First Blood because of this. But it also doesn't make Rambo 3 or Cobra any less of a garbage movie. The most notable successful example of what I would consider something that succeeded massively BECAUSE it was seen as conservative was the movie American Sniper, but that was mostly because Eastwood is a great director and the movie was a hagiography of a guy who in reality was a pretty repulsive person.
There was no plot to begin with. Ignore politics for the time being. Whether anyone has seen it or not, I HATED the way Game of Thrones ended. Hated it. That's one end of the disappointment spectrum. Where you make a couple posts on a forum or YouTube video to vent a bit and then move on with your life. But it doesn't stop there for some. Nope. Some people actually sign a petition asking the entire last season to be re-made less than a week after the last episode aired, as if this had a remote chance of actually taking place. How does this tie into the discussion?? Simple. Fan bases now think they collectively own creative works and should have veto power over how they are handled on-screen.
Guess what, we don't. The only power we hold is whether or not we spend the $10 to get into a multiplex or to pay for the monthly streaming fee. And I suppose we can also make YouTube videos specifically aimed at a disgruntled fans explaining to them why the legacy of such and such a franchise is being "stolen" from them this week. Nothing stopping it I guess. I venture it's a pretty good living. I just have to wonder how long one can wallow in pedantic nonsense like pretending Assassin's Creed Odyssey is problematic because it doesn't have historically accurate gender politics for the time-frame when the game literally features boss battles with a Cyclops and Medusa. I mean, I've watched many of the same videos you have about this stuff. Except I just sit there dumb-founded that the conversations are even taking place, much less being taken seriously by thousands upon thousands of people. And Youtube's algorithms just send you deeper down the rabbit-hole if you even happen across ONE of them.
@O_Bruce I won't say I didn't mean to give offence, because I did, but perhaps I shouldn't respond to goading with goading in return. My apologies.
@jjstraka34 Well, as for just putting down whatever art is offending you, I know some art can be compelling, despite being unpleasant or even offensive. Vulgar art relies on this I think, so an anime like Berserk derives much of it's power from how hard it is to look away, despite things being so ghastly. I know when I was a kid, I would get engrossed by adult movies and watch them, despite not really liking them much, being too young at the time. It was like I couldn't look away, despite mostly wanting to do something else. I'd also watch whatever awful daytime TV was on when I skipped school, some of which might have actually traumatized me (...Leprosy is ****ed up!), yet I would watch it. I doubt I'm unique in this. Thus, we can feel we are a captive of the art.
@DragonKing Fans don't own a franchise, and they should be reminded of this occasionally, and most fans ultimately do not know whats best for their fandom. These should be ignored utterly (unfortunately) to avoid contaminating the good with the bad. They might be very devoted to a franchise, but it's up to a franchise's owners what happens in it, and if Disney thinks Star Wars needs a female main character, then that's damn well what we get, because it's their call. They were willing to take a risk for this principle, so I respect them for it. They spend a fortune on each Star Wars movie, so the fact that they are willing to try to new things is nice, even if the movies are pretty rehashed. I think people are hoping that there will be some LGBTQ stuff in some of the non-core movies at least, maybe the Mandalorian movie thing? Is that still happening even? *checks* Okay, so it's a series? Anyways, finger's crossed, that maybe some of the LGBTQ fans of Star Wars will finally feel included, represented, in their preferred art. I'd love to see that.
I think we all can agree that bad art is bad art, even if it's got a good message, and if its really bad, nobody is going to bother with it. That said, it's still up to a franchise owner if they want to take a risk and try something different, even if it might not be as profitable, perhaps simply to do a good deed for the world. Heck, an owner might even chose to disregard profit completely if very rich, and plenty of right wing companies are known to do this in broadcast, subsidizing what is essentially propaganda for their views, even knowing they will be losing advertisers etc. Is propaganda art? I think so, even if it's obviously a special category.
I'm not terribly good at separating what I like from people I can respect, so I try to avoid art if I know I have issues with the artist. I won't willingly watch a Woody Allen movie now or ever I'd say, for example. But, I also don't make videos about how Woody Allen is a monster, or ruined nebbish men, because I'd probably be institutionalized by my family if I did. Because that's not very healthy behaviour.
Liberal I think has two very separate uses, one is for someone that support small government that is very laissez faire, but this is now archaic I think, so the more popular use seems to be for someone who is a centrist to left, who favours a relatively progressive agenda regarding social rights. How would you define liberal for us, @DragonKing so that we can have a discussion about it?
For what it's worth, the main reason people include female leads and LGBTQ characters is not because they're trying to make some political statement (as if the mere existence of LGBTQ characters was some bold political claim). They do it because fans like it. I constantly hear women talking about how affirming it is to see female characters they can relate to, and I constantly hear LGBTQ folks pointing out an example of LGBTQ inclusion in a story and saying how MUCH it means to them that they're represented. A lot of trans fans love that Marco from Star vs. the Forces of Evil has a feminine side that can be interpreted as a trans identity. It's a huge deal for them. I mean, one of the main reasons I loved the Legend of Zelda so much was because the protagonist was a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who looked just like me.
People like seeing themselves in media, so writers cater to that desire. There's nothing wrong with catering to your fans.
@jjstraka34 "Because I guess it would have been better to have the 3 surviving 65-year old men and Harold Ramis' corpse get the billing instead."
I know this has absolutely nothing to do with your point, but this is a BALLER concept for a Ghostbusters movie. Just picture it. Egon is killed in action, and as a result, the Ghostbusters all retire. Then one day, the ghost of Egon comes back to warn the Ghostbusters of like, Gozer coming back for revenge or something. Maybe something kinda like Bubba Hotep, but actually funny.
For what it's worth, the main reason people include female leads and LGBTQ characters is not because they're trying to make some political statement (as if the mere existence of LGBTQ characters was some bold political claim). They do it because fans like it. I constantly hear women talking about how affirming it is to see female characters they can relate to, and I constantly hear LGBTQ folks pointing out an example of LGBTQ inclusion in a story and saying how MUCH it means to them that they're represented. A lot of trans fans love that Marco from Star vs. the Forces of Evil has a feminine side that can be interpreted as a trans identity. It's a huge deal for them. I mean, one of the main reasons I loved the Legend of Zelda so much was because the protagonist was a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who looked just like me.
People like seeing themselves in media, so writers cater to that desire. There's nothing wrong with catering to your fans.
At the very least (in the US anyway), at least 6% of the population is either gay, bisexual or transgender. That is a MASSIVE number of people to appeal to. It's why corporate America, despite everything else that is wrong with them, have conceded the ground on gay rights and yes, will market and develop products and entertainment that caters to what they like. Because there 20 million of them out there with disposable incomes to spend money on. Women make up MORE than 50% of the population. It would be malpractice from an entertainment business perspective to ignore these groups and cater to (let's be honest) young men. We all know (simply by the demographics polls that took place on this page) that people who dissect entertainment down to it's bone and pick it apart are overwhelmingly male.
Roger Ebert said in his review for the seminal Bergman film "Cries and Whispers" that it's very possible the only reason such a complex and emotionally wrenching movie like this one hasn't sprung up the same kind of cult following breaking down it's every movement and nuance like, say, Fight Club has is because it's a movie about 4 women in a house together. Not that a foreign film from the '70s would be in any way as popular, but to point out that, in general, the kind of audience that watches Fight Club is much more likely to become absolutely obsessed with it. And when you take on an obsessed fandom of some piece of art, be it music, movies, TV or games, you will defend it when people are attacking it, and you will rage if you think someone is despoiling it. But the point is is that most of the people who do so ARE men. They aren't ALL men, but the vast majority are. And the cursory glance at any internet forum or Youtube comment section will reveal this. Guys care about pop culture more, and are more interested in discussing it's nuances.
I didn't know there was a demographics poll on this site before last night. When I looked at it, I was not surprised. Obviously, it is a small sample of about 100 people. But I think we can safely place Baldur's Gate and CRPGs (which this forum is based on) in the realm of what has historically been known as "geek culture". In the last decade (I'd argue since the Lord of the Rings movies), this culture has BECOME the mainstream culture in many way. But the people who participate in these massive breakdowns and dissections of it, based on those who participate here are almost EXCLUSIVELY a.) white b.) male and c.) American or European in country of origin.
So what does this tell me?? It tells me that most entertainment HAS been catered to us for most of our lives if we are over 30 years of age. There have been never-ending options for us. And now, things are shifting. As "geek culture" has become culture, everyone is now interested in seeing something THEY can relate to in these mediums. And it's giving the ILLUSION that something is being taken away, when all that is happening is that something is being given to someone else who was previously locked out of these spaces. And there is massive money to be made in doing so. Raging against this is like telling the sun not to rise.
The nerds won. Those guys who made fun of you in high school for listening to Iron Maiden, reading comics or playing D&D instead of whatever else it was you were SUPPOSED to be doing were the first ones in line to take their sons and daughters to the Hobbit movies or newest super-hero blockbuster. What generated in those formative years was a sense that despite the abuse you suffered because of a particular hobby, solace could be taken in that you had a secret knowledge, a pass to something that those people would never know about. Except, now they like it too, because everybody does. And we don't want to let them in. They aren't "real" fans. Whether people know it or not, alot of this just comes down to gate-keeping on the sub-conscious level.
And now I'm +1 annoyed, while I was typing everything just was erased and I have to retype everything again..
You are semi correct, like everything else on this planet and something I'm constantly pointing out on both sides, (currently its more so the left within this last decade) is the there is nuance in all things. Nothing is ever black and white, but few seem to actually want to find that middle ground and work from there.
But more onto your point directly..
No a fandom does not own the ip that is correct, but businesses, not just in the entertainment industry but in general LISTENS to their customer base to not only find out what helps make the product better, but also to find out what the customer wants. They interact with their costumers positively and respectfully. Owning the IP doesn't give anyone in that business the right to attack and insult their customer base, and literally any other industry would have fired the employees for doing half of the crap we've seen these "professionals" do.
You want to mention star wars, the biggest issue with star wars wasn't that the main character was female, it was she was a mary sue and then a media machine pretended there were no strong female characters before she came around, practically erasing Leia and Ashoka every existence.
Then when the fandom speaks with their wallets buy not spending their money on the projects, these "pros" are quick to blame every and everything but themselves. BAming the last failed movies on "star wars fatigue"... It's freaking star wars, this crap literally has a legitimized real world RELIGION! If the movie failed it wasn't because of fatigue! People would literally sit in a line reaching over a block for it... Ok now I'm moving further off topic lets shift back.
Is propaganda art is a whole other discussion in itself, and I would make a joke here but I feel there may be a mod or two who are just itching to pull the trigger on me lmao.
a far as your other point, do you just stop at art with that? If so why? A lot of things we use in everyday life are created, produced, developed through means far worse than half the crap progressives cry about here. From 2-d cartoons that get shipped off and animated on sweatshops in places like china and Korea, to the abused populace's that the components that our computers and cellphone are made from. Do you try to avoid these objects and things as well? Or do you separate the products from the companies, corporations, and exploitation that lead to their creation because you we don't always see why directly goes into the creation of the final product?
Both left and right have three basic divides
The centrist, some sway left and some sway right but the ultimate important is that the solution is by far more important than the bias.
The moderate...
Conservative- holding traditional values and attitudes.
Liberal- but I guess you'd call it classical liberalism now as ot focused on securing the freedoms of the individual and lessoning the control government has on the individual.
The extremes:
The Alt right: this one is actually quite interesting because I've seen it range from just people who only really just believe race realism, Asians are smarter and more mental capabilities, Blacks stronger and have more physical capabilities and such all the way to white supremacy and and ethnostate in the US.
Progressives/intersectionality:...won't make the joke... Won't make the joke... Ed it, this is basically the oppression olympics and the poison that is currently destroying the democratic party and also the VERY REASON we long needed to get rid of the 2 party system!
Ok I'll be nice, this is basically people who are barely any better than the altright, they claim race realism is a pseudoscience while categorizing people based on gender, sex, ethnicity, religion and literally placing them on a who is more oppressed scale. It follows the modern day religion of Intersectionality while tying itself to socialist and even to communist ideas.
It would be interest if it was just as powerless as the altright, but unlike the altright it currently dominates universities, silicon valley where the tech oligarchy resides, and has split the democratic party into fractures while Republican party still stands strong. It's also currently eating itself alive in places like Europe since you now have the oppressed Muslim community protesting the lgbt curriculum, another oppressed minority class at one school and majority of progressives are remaining silent about it.
Oh that's not even somehow they believe there is no difference between men and women and them simultaneously claim men and women are different and women have special needs... @semiticgod
The alt right might not dominate universities, but it does dominate conservative viewpoints on online venues, particularly Youtube, and has actually impacted national politics and Fox news. They're not a powerless group.
The alt right's preferred candidate is currently the President of the United States. If that's not political power, I don't know what is.
I could understand this argument about the reaction to Rey in the latest trilogy not having to due with her being a woman and it having to do with her being a Mary Sue (which is a term I despise but will use for the purpose of this discussion) IF (and only if) the same standard was applied to Luke. Which it never, ever is.
The sum of Luke's Jedi training amounts to (in totality) a single session of laser tag with a blindfold on the Falcon with Obi-Wan, and however long he was on Dagobah with Yoda. And since Luke's training was clearly happening concurrently with Han and Leia outrunning Star Destroyers, unless you think they were inside that "cave" for months upon months, and that Vader and his Imperial ambush were also hiding in Cloud City for MORE months, he had, AT BEST, a couple weeks of training with Yoda. A month if we are reaching to the absolute cap of generosity. There is NO indication he ever went back between Empire and Jedi (I'm sure there is some expanded universe nonsense where he does, but we aren't dealing with something less than 1% of the people who have seen the movies would know about), yet he somehow managed to become someone who got annihilated by Vader at the end of Empire to someone who wipes the floor with him in Jedi, all with NO additional training. So I have to ask. If Rey is so problematic because of her "lack of training", then why isn't this standard applied to Luke, who by any measure had as bare bones a diet as she did?? That's why I don't buy this argument, because it seems to hinge on pretending the first trilogy was a totally different set of scenarios than it was.
A whole internet culture has sprung up of actively searching for any single thing in these mediums that can be construed as progressive or liberal and then going on a crusade against it until the next Friday when the next patch of movies and games come out that they can (supposedly) blacklist. And the mantra is always that something is being "shoved down their throats". My advise is to either grow up or find something else to pass your time. Because this constant high-alert vigilance for some sort of subliminal political agenda that may or may not actually exist has turned what once have may been a movement that had some legitimate points (though not many) into an absolute parody of itself.
I very much agree, except you seem to be missing the fact your words should also (and primarily) be addressed to the likes of Sarkeesian, Kotaku editors refusing to review Kingdom Come Deliverance, random NPCs complaining about scanty female outfits in Japanese games, and other professional victims of media.
I could understand this argument about the reaction to Rey in the latest trilogy not having to due with her being a woman and it having to do with her being a Mary Sue (which is a term I despise but will use for the purpose of this discussion) IF (and only if) the same standard was applied to Luke. Which it never, ever is.
I hated Rey more than anything for her inablity to keep her damned mouth shut when not talking. I even thought at first if she was being played by Kristen Stewart.
Well, Kotaku is a left-wing video game site. That's what it is. All it's sister sites at the top of the page are as well (Deadspin, The Root, etc). For as much as people on the right-wing side of this gaming debate complain about Kotaku, I would have just assumed they would have stopped going there YEARS ago. I mean, it's not like they don't have infinite options on gaming news that DON'T take the perspective of your average Kotaku article on Youtube. There is a cottage industry on that platform of doing nothing but complaining about Kotaku. They'd have 25% less videos to put out if Kotaku didn't exist. Moreover, there are sites like the RPG Codex, where if you dig deep enough you'd have to question whether you were at a Hitler Youth rally rather than a forum discussing a video game genre. I didn't and don't call for the Codex to be shut down, I just stopped posting and visiting the site when I realized where I was. It wasn't difficult.
To the other points. Again, I would have thought this Anita Sarkeesian boogeyman would have died out by now. The amount of energy put into this one person for so long is just astounding. I suppose Kotaku should have reviewed Kingdom Come Deliverance if only to expose it for the broken, poorly optimized mess that it is. And Japanese games DO have ridiculous caricatures as most of their female representation. I bought Xenoblade Chronicles 2 last year for my Switch and one them was the most absurd thing I've ever seen in my life. I don't really care one way or the other about it, or know if it's a "problem", but it's kinda hard to just ignore outright after awhile. It would be weirder if it WASN'T a topic of conversation.
It's also kinda hard to just ignore when the leading cast of SW:TFA consists of Mary Sue girl who can't shut her mouth, a black imperial trooper turned rebel (if we care about representation then where were other black people?) and psychotic emo boy with skin problem. I'm not even sure if the filmmakers weren't deliberately trolling the audience - the contrast with Luke, Han and Leia characters was simply astounding
The other "SJW-infested" game I played recently was last year's Battletech. I gotta ask, how on frigging earth can developer be so pretentiously inclusive as to add "they" option to chargen, and then make the UI fonts so diminutive I can't read then without straining my eyes??? You'd think a lot higher percentage of gamers has poor vision than gender identity issues. It's fine if you can't cater to everyone, but if you can't then maybe you shouldn't pretend otherwise?
While I don't remember specifically Harebrained being vocal about their views (and so don't actually have an issue with them), I find it highly disturbing when a game or movie gets released, its author not particularly caring about politics, and then gets swarmed with, including their forums even, "your lack of diversity is problematic" bs.
My point was you seemed to imply only neckbeard losers whine about social politics in media, instead of just moving along. Which is not true in the slightest, I've seen about as much rich leftist kids whining how someone dared to not include them.
The alt right might not dominate universities, but it does dominate conservative viewpoints on online venues, particularly Youtube, and has actually impacted national politics and Fox news.
Guess I have to say this now...
Conservative is not synonymous with the alt right... That's literally doing the same thing as conflating liberal with progressive...
Secondly, conservatives, HAD found a home on YouTube, before the media started calling all their opposition I. YouTube altright and started directly attacking YouTube over and over again until it started attacking he very people that are youtube what it is. They are on the forth adpocalypse and they are out right deleting even none political channels. One of the most notable was a history teacher's channel that archived ww2. Another being black legion speaks, a CONSERVATIVE not Alt right. Many conservatives even within fox news has denounced the altright, but the big difference here is fox news personalities like tucker Carlson, and many centrist and conservative YouTubers have no problem inviting ANYONE onto their show you discuss or even debate their viewpoint. The left prefers to try and deplatform and censor people they don't like or agree with and we saw it time and time again he biggest one being Alex Johns who got unpersoned despite anyone with a brain knows the man is a living meme.
That's also ignoring the fact, the left claims everyone is altright, going as far as claiming Phily D, the largest alternative news source as alt right, one of the most liberal guys on the planet. That's also not even taking into the account, YouTube recommends the left, twice as much as it do the right or even centrist. (https://medium.com/@markoledwich/we-have-been-misled-about-non-pc-youtube-b6ffea5e34fa)
What have they as a group done? What industry bent to what they wanted? Progressive have taken over schools, have gotten laws rewritten, have gotten just regular conservatives banned off platforms, fired from jobs and even gotten the violence of antifa down played in nearly every mainstream liberal media. What have the alt right actually done to show that have actual power?
The alt right's preferred candidate is currently the President of the United States. If that's not political power, I don't know what is.
Logical fallacy:
A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that renders an argument invalid. Also called a fallacy, an informal logical fallacy, and an informal fallacy. In a broad sense, all logical fallacies are non sequiturs—arguments in which in which a conclusion doesn't follow logically from what preceded it.
Poisoning the well:
To commit a preemptive ad hominem attack against an opponent. That is, to prime the audience with adverse information about the opponent from the start, in q attempt to make your claim more acceptable or discount the credibility of your opponent’s claim.
Now let me do what you just did...
The black nationalist preferred candidate was President Obama of the United States. If that's not political power, I don't know what is...
You literally claiming that you have power because you like someone in power. By that logic, EVERYONE has political power and some and the so called under represented/privileged groups aren't underrepresented/privileged because they supported the black president.
The sum of Luke's Jedi training amounts to (in totality) a single session of laser tag with a blindfold on the Falcon with Obi-Wan, and however long he was on Dagobah with Yoda. And since Luke's training was clearly happening concurrently with Han and Leia outrunning Star Destroyers, unless you think they were inside that "cave" for months upon months, and that Vader and his Imperial ambush were also hiding in Cloud City for MORE months, he had, AT BEST, a couple weeks of training with Yoda. A month if we are reaching to the absolute cap of generosity. There is NO indication he ever went back between Empire and Jedi (I'm sure there is some expanded universe nonsense where he does, but we aren't dealing with something less than 1% of the people who have seen the movies would know about), yet he somehow managed to become someone who got annihilated by Vader at the end of Empire to someone who wipes the floor with him in Jedi, all with NO additional training.
You're asking the wrong person because the person you are talking to right now, agrees he's also a Gary Stu. I'm not an original trilogy super fan, in fact I am part of the unholy few who actually like the prequels more. That's also part of the reason I made no references to the original.
I can't think of anything Obama did that was unique to black nationalists. Trump has been retweeting conspiracy theories from alt-right circles for a long time, yet I can't think of any far-left ideas espoused by Obama.
It is reasonable to call Obama the "Democratic candidate" because he generally agreed with mainstream Democratic party views. Calling him the "black nationalist candidate" would only be accurate, for example, if we saw him echoing views unique to black nationalists--that is, views that you could NOT find among liberals who weren't black nationalists.
Contrast with Trump, who has repeatedly railed against the media and the "deep state," which only a small portion of GOP figures did before 2016. This was not a mainstream Republican concept; it was more of a fringe idea.
We saw very clearly during the 2016 primaries that a lot of folks on the right disagreed with Trump and were willing to condemn him before he secured the nomination--Trump was not the GOP mainstream at the time. Conservatives themselves were one of the first people to say that Trump was not a regular Republican politician. Today, however, GOP figures generally hesitate to condemn him, to the extent that even Lindsay Graham seldom ever does. It's my understanding that GOP politicians who did criticize Trump were more likely to lose re-election campaigns than those who supported Trump--definitely a clear demonstration of the power of Trump supporters in the GOP.
To put my position in a single sentence: I call Trump the "alt-right candidate" specifically BECAUSE I draw a distinction between regular Republicans and the alt-right.
@semiticgod
Wait before I continue with this anymore, shouldn't this topic be happening in the politics channel at this point? I assumed this was was specifically meant for politics in art, or the political of art. We've quite literally moved away from the art and went into just general politics.
And honestly I don't really feeling going into a Obama/Trump discussion.
@DragonKing I think that's a valid point, if a company never listens to it's customers, it will be very vulnerable to competition of any kind, but I think we have to let business' make their own choices sometimes. I don't like many aspects of big business, especially how exploitative it is, but I think on some things we have to let a company have a brand image, and if I don't like it, I don't have to do business with them generally, since competition is reasonably present. So, I think if a company wants the image of being compassionate, like Disney, they are going to want to be as 'woke' on certain higher profile issues as possible. It's not like we're tripping over trans representation, and it's not like the trans woman community isn't extremely well known for being artsy and industrious, having for sure disproportionate numbers of talented individuals in many performative arts for example, so their is no real excuse other than deliberately excluding trans people from the work pool. Arguable trans man are even more excluded, as at least at this point, drag queens are very trendy (not necessarily trans, but there is a lot of overlapping concerns, and overlapping hatred of both groups), while drag kings are even more niche I would argue than drag queens were 20 years ago.
Now, I think I would have to admit that I'd be quick to criticize a company for abysmal human rights records, but I think taking offence at the increased presence of 'non-traditional' characters, even if they aren't fully LGBTQ really isn't the same. One side wants to move towards equality, or at least be shown to exist, while the other wants to pretend that only a certain number of demographics should exist in entertainment, and I think that's why I can have a double standard and not feel like it's, well, unfair.
As far as blaming goes, I know several have blamed the large, angry online 'movement', which amounts to complaining about their being non-cis/white/male characters playing roles that would normally go to cis/white/male actors. I dunno, I don't find these groups to be all that reasonable, but I think they should feel free to not spend on an IP, without going apeshit and posting great heaps of what is often questionable criticisms, such as many complaints about the new Star Wars movies. There are issues with all movies, but most of the complaints are silly that I've read, and since Star Wars has never made a great deal of sense (if you think it does, I recommend taking a closer look), and it was never a very well managed IP after the EU started expanding, with tons of rubbish made, yet Rey is the one thing in Star Wars that 'ruined' it for you? I don't get this.
IMHO, about everyone in Star Wars is a Mary/Marty Stu, and almost nothing really holds up to serious scrutiny, everything in Star Wars is Rule of Cool. It's not even considered science fiction by lots of critics, they classify it as science fantasy, because it is so very loose with science. It's certainly true that the whole plot features comical levels of plot armour, so much so that the most conflicts are decided purely by plot armour or 'A Jedi Did It'. It's annoying, but it's not new to episode 7. Regarding the premise that the Star Wars IP is in any trouble, the only unsuccessful movie they made was Solo, which is only a flop because it had to be made twice after the director change.
I don't know of anyone that puts people on an oppression scale really, but I do know of tons of harmed groups trying to gain recognition for their struggles, be they Armenians, Jews, any indigenous people in colonized territory, etc. Claiming that progressives use pseudoscience is laughable on the whole, because guess what, science itself is progressive, always looking to improve on things. The academic community btw tends to be left leaning because it's more educated, and educated people are less likely to be ruled by their emotional mind and believe silliness like 'race realism', which should just be called 'racism', because that's all it is. Anyone who thinks any large population of humans varies all that much from any other from a genetic perspective does not understand science, because humans are not even a genetically diverse species. Two frogs in the same isolated pond will generally be more genetically diverse than any two humans you could find.
@Ardanis Are you joking? Rey is almost a cookie cutter of Luke (total Sue), and Finn is totally Han, being a former Imperial turned Rebel, but being ever so complex and edgy, like stealing the ship. Kylo is very reminiscent of Ep 2 and 3 Anakin, being clearly inspired by this rather unpopular character, featuring the same annoying emo-ness and whining. I don't see much contrast here really, it's the same character nearly, with a few small changes. Hence the popularity of the movies I guess, which is very high.
I think you're being disingenuous here, it's not unreasonable for the substantial portion of the population to be represented in games/movies/books etc, not just white people. Anyone who thinks they can make art and not get criticized is insane, if they want that they can go the live in a ****ing cave already.
I agree with @semiticgod that you can safely say that the power base of conversativism in the USA is in the hands of the alt-right, and they are a significant power group in the US, and are definitely not subject to any real discrimination, as they are rarely minorities or other dis-empowered groups. Meanwhile, the Democratic party in the US is by international or traditional standards (you can chose either) a centrist party, not a left wing one, and that means you have a far right run party that spreads conspiracy non-sense and has more than 10k public lies from it's leader I've heard while their is no left wing competitor. Apparently the Republican party has consistently moved to the right over the years, while the left has more or less stayed where it was. I think the looseness with the facts that the president has embraced has really spread in the Right quite like a weed, and it's disappointing to see.
It seems to me that at least "The Force Awakens" was pretty much an exact carbon copy of a "A New Hope" with a shiny new coat of paint. Which is, frankly, what everyone (or most people) wanted after the prequels, which were only saved (insomuch as they were redeemable at all) by a scene-chewing performance by Ian McDiarmid in "Revenge of the Sith". I also have to wonder if there had been internet access back in 1980 if "The Empire Strikes Back" would have gotten pretty much the exact same reaction as "The Last Jedi" did given the same circumstances. Because the % of box office drop-off was pretty much exactly the same. We can expect at this point that "Rise of Skywalker" (which at the moment is just a terrible name, but let's see what happens) will be better received and do slightly better at the box office.
It seems to me that at least "The Force Awakens" was pretty much an exact carbon copy of a "A New Hope" with a shiny new coat of paint. Which is, frankly, what everyone (or most people) wanted after the prequels, which were only saved (insomuch as they were redeemable at all) by a scene-chewing performance by Ian McDiarmid in "Revenge of the Sith". I also have to wonder if there had been internet access back in 1980 if "The Empire Strikes Back" would have gotten pretty much the exact same reaction as "The Last Jedi" did given the same circumstances. Because the % of box office drop-off was pretty much exactly the same. We can expect at this point that "Rise of Skywalker" (which at the moment is just a terrible name, but let's see what happens) will be better received and do slightly better at the box office.
In The Last Jedi there was the AT-AT approach/battle with speeders that goes fairly badly, in which people crash their speeder, and everyone flees in the Millenium Falcon... and going to Cloud City = going to random ass Casino Land, etc etc. They are sometimes jumbled up in order, but they are VERY lifted from the original trilogy. I'm sure there was plenty of outrage over the parentage reveal (...Rey's parents too?), it felt very contrived, and I'm not certain it really helped the story in the end, but that's what we get to go with. There was even a drawn out chase scene, thought I guess it lacked asteroids. I wanted to throw something at the movie screen when Leia started floating back in TLJ... that was the dumbest moment in Star Wars history, and Star Wars has done some dumb things. Why can't the Rancor be called a Bantha!? WHY NOT!? I'll show those jerks what rancor really means!
Well, I won't argue about similarities or differences between SW 4 and SW 7.
But I nevertheless understand perfectly why some can see Rey being a woman a problem and propaganda. It's a very simple test - will anything in the plot change or look strange if you replace her with a guy? No, nothing will.
Will anything look out of place if you change Diana (Wonder Woman 2017) to a guy? Hell yeah, it will.
Which means, while Diana is indeed a female lead, Rey is not - she's just a lead. Question - what was the purpose of making her female then? To inspire young girls with a brave and strong character they can empathize with, or to show off what a progressive kid you are by creating a dude-in-a-skirt token? That's a rhetoric question
I don't particularly mind the latter - freedom of speech, everyone is free to embarrass themselves as much as they like. Just shouldn't be surprised when public laughs at immature attempts to look creative when you've got no real talent.
Well, I won't argue about similarities or differences between SW 4 and SW 7.
But I nevertheless understand perfectly why some can see Rey being a woman a problem and propaganda. It's a very simple test - will anything in the plot change or look strange if you replace her with a guy? No, nothing will.
Will anything look out of place if you change Diana (Wonder Woman 2017) to a guy? Hell yeah, it will.
Which means, while Diana is indeed a female lead, Rey is not - she's just a lead. Question - what was the purpose of making her female then? To inspire young girls with a brave and strong character they can empathize with, or to show off what a progressive kid you are by creating a dude-in-a-skirt token? That's a rhetoric question
I don't particularly mind the latter - freedom of speech, everyone is free to embarrass themselves as much as they like. Just shouldn't be surprised when public laughs at immature attempts to look creative when you've got no real talent.
Or maybe since the general population is 50% female and the sex didn't matter, there was a 50% chance the 'lead' would be female?
Sex won't matter once both men and women will start producing naturally equal amounts of testosterone and estrogen. Until then it's gonna matter very much.
Yeah, but you could have changed Luke to a woman, whom I think is a much closer parallel, having also grown up as a semi-outcast on a desert planet despite being traditional quite good looking. IMHO, the big similarity between Wonder Woman and Rey is that they are both female, I don't think they have very much in common really. Can you give some examples of why you see them as comparable?
BTW, you can easily reverse your position, if all these characters that are written in as male, but could very easily be switched to female (with minimal rewriting needed tbh), why do they all need to be male? Honestly, beyond sexual preference, and some folks are not straight, most characters COULD be gender switched up. Frankly, how do you know we're not creating endless women in pants, by masculinizing roles that might have been more interesting with a female lead? I know from personal examination that I'd love to see way more female leads, and I don't mind if they, like many male characters, could easily be gender swapped. The idea of male as neutral is actually unscientific, with X being the actual default chromosome. For the record, I don't think anyone can claim the 'public laughed' at Rey's character, since she has been one of the most successful characters so far in film, and apparently Disney is looking at more movies featuring her character, after 9.
I think it's actually higher than 50% in most cultures, as in, men are typically less common. Male babies require more from their mother's actually, just like with lions and most other mammals, so the default is females. Interesting how that switch happened I'm sure, since many earlier non-mammals have the opposite form of sexual dimorphism, with females being larger. Either way, I'll be much happier when everyone just moves on and accepts that women, LGBTQ people, minorities etc are all here to stay, and are all going to receive games, movies, books, etc all directed at them, and staring them.
@Ardanis can you prove that hormones are more significant than socialization in determining behavior? I have naturally very large muscles in androgen receptive areas (IE I have a very bulky upper body, with relatively little effort beyond good diet), suggesting very high testosterone levels, yet I have a nearly non-existent sex drive, which suggests very low levels. I'm also taller than average, and while I can sing as low or lower than average, I can also sing very, very high, higher than many women can do so easily. These suggest abnormally high estrogen, not testosterone. So, what exactly is my hormone profile? It would be pretty unusual to be abnormally high in both I'd expect, since they are supposedly associated with gender so strongly. *shrugs*
Regarding physical differences, who cares at this point, other than women that are constantly harassed on the street and athletes? Very, very few jobs require more upper body strength than the average woman can achieve with a small amount of effort, while men are actually becoming less suitable for the 'traditional' male roles anyways, since testosterone production is dropping consistently remember. I'd wager it's as much because of inactivity as pollution, since testosterone levels spike with hard exercise like used to be common in daily life.
IMHO, the big similarity between Wonder Woman and Rey is that they are both female, I don't think they have very much in common really. Can you give some examples of why you see them as comparable?
I was comparing them in "lead female character" category.
BTW, you can easily reverse your position, if all these characters that are written in as male, but could very easily be switched to female (with minimal rewriting needed tbh), why do they all need to be male? Honestly, beyond sexual preference, and some folks are not straight, most characters COULD be gender switched up. Frankly, how do you know we're not creating endless women in pants, by masculinizing roles that might have been more interesting with a female lead? I know from personal examination that I'd love to see way more female leads, and I don't mind if they, like many male characters, could easily be gender swapped. The idea of male as neutral is actually unscientific, with X being the actual default chromosome.
Personally, I prefer characters who are... well, persons, regardless of sexual preference. If they can't be a person, then a thing devoid of emotion will do as well (e.g. Rambo or T-800).
But Rey is way too neutral. She wouldn't be a better character if she was male, but at least she wouldn't stand out as such a lazy effort in the age when everyone talks about importance of creating more female leads. I don't know about others, but if I really wanted to change something, I'd lead by example and set good standards.
And yeah, I appreciate female protagonists probably even more than I do male ones One of my favorite animes in recent years was Girls und Panzer, about competitive tank-driving sports with all-female cast and not a trace of suggestive themes.
For the record, I don't think anyone can claim the 'public laughed' at Rey's character, since she has been one of the most successful characters so far in film, and apparently Disney is looking at more movies featuring her character, after 9.
Well, I always knew Disney was run by idiots
Either way, I'll be much happier when everyone just moves on and accepts that women, LGBTQ people, minorities etc are all here to stay, and are all going to receive games, movies, books, etc all directed at them, and staring them.
Is anyone actually opposed to it? My problem is with amateur hacks trying to be hip and thinking that milking trends is a substitute for talent. If they do it for the idea, then they've got double responsibility to not mess up and worsen the things by alienating audience from that very idea. If they do it just for money, then sucks to be them for willingly exploiting sensitive matters without care about consequences.
Ardanis can you prove that hormones are more significant than socialization in determining behavior? I have naturally very large muscles in androgen receptive areas (IE I have a very bulky upper body, with relatively little effort beyond good diet), suggesting very high testosterone levels, yet I have a nearly non-existent sex drive, which suggests very low levels. I'm also taller than average, and while I can sing as low or lower than average, I can also sing very, very high, higher than many women can do so easily. These suggest abnormally high estrogen, not testosterone. So, what exactly is my hormone profile? It would be pretty unusual to be abnormally high in both I'd expect, since they are supposedly associated with gender so strongly. *shrugs*
Regarding physical differences, who cares at this point, other than women that are constantly harassed on the street and athletes? Very, very few jobs require more upper body strength than the average woman can achieve with a small amount of effort, while men are actually becoming less suitable for the 'traditional' male roles anyways, since testosterone production is dropping consistently remember. I'd wager it's as much because of inactivity as pollution, since testosterone levels spike with hard exercise like used to be common in daily life.
I should rephrase then - it's one thing to care about equality in civil rights, and completely another to pretend there's no difference at all and anyone suggesting otherwise must be a sexist nazi.
By and large, it simply doesn't matter if a character is male or female or trans. If we agree with that principle, then it really shouldn't be worth so much intense discussion over whether it's okay or not.
The discussion only exists when people decide that a character isn't supposed to be a certain gender. Without that, the discussion would never start.
By definition, a 50/50 split between male and female characters is the neutral position.
@semiticgod Well, I think there are some stories where it matters a bit, and it might require some rewriting, but these are indeed relatively few. Most things men can do mentally/physically, so can women, so in principle it rarely matters which gender a character is.
@Ardanis Okay, so they are both female leads... I fully agree Diana is more fleshed out than Rey, but Star Wars is notoriously bad at fleshing out characters. Nobody is fleshed out in the original trilogies, and the sheer absence of information lead to the EU's creation, since people really wanted not only stories, but to actually flesh out the surprisingly skeletal movies. I think one thing that actually helped Star Wars is that they did not flesh things out in the original trilogy, and as such, you didn't feel like you were sitting in a class, yet they did a good enough job introducing things in a straightforward way that even a child could roughly understand how things worked. Lightsaber's could lop off limbs we found out, rather than being told 'this is a really dangerous weapon!', for example. I don't think its very fair to hold Rey's poor character development against Star Wars unless you also find this a problem in the original trilogy.
So, it sounds like a completely robotic male lead is okay, but a female one is not? I'm not sure I get this. I can accept personal preference, but this seems like it needs more examining. I personally enjoy silly actiony movies, and I agree they don't require much development to work, but it's not like Rey has no emotions, she seems quite chipper, especially for someone with such a hard life, but there are such people in the world.
From what you're saying, you are fine with lazy male characters, but if someone wants to use a female character in a medium that doesn't benefit from very much development, we shouldn't ever see female leads?? Am I to take it you think Shar Teel is a bad character then, because unlike Minsc, she needs more development, as a female? I'm glad you can enjoy female characters in theory though.
Erm, making more Rey movies is probably a VERY wise move, as she created a huge amount of free press. It's entirely possible that people that wouldn't have bothered to see Episode 9 will now, since they've heard that it has prominent female characters, including ones that don't seem to be 'along for the ride', like Leia mostly was. Last Jedi was wildly successful, Force Awakens was even more wildly successful, as is normal for a Star Wars trilogy, but the pattern is that the final movie will do better than the 2nd, and worse than the first. I'm sure this is what they expect, but it'll be funny if the effect of all this Rey hating is that more people interested in feminism become Star Wars fans! Finding out how many closet misogynists liked Star Wars was a bit disappointing for me, so this would cheer me up!
But you're just fine with hacks that make crappy movies with male leads? This IMHO is where the anti-Rey argument utterly falls into ruin, because their have been some truly awful movies made staring male leads, and people don't blame these movies sucking on male leads. Similarly, nobody said any of the countless flopped games over the decades that stared male lead characters were dreck because they were male, they are just considered a bad game period, and the discussion is ended their. As soon as the offensive thing is female, it's a big deal, and this seems to be suggesting that the problem really is the inclusion of strong female characters more than anything else. This comes across to me as a great big double standard, and I don't care for it!
Might and Magic 1, released in 1986, has a section of the game that is made significantly harder if you have an all-male party and significantly easier if you have a all-female party. FAQs for this game even straight-up recommend you make 6 female characters. This is DECADES before this debate started taking shape. I have to imagine if, say, Pillars of Eternity had offered a significant benefit to making a female rather than a male and only recruiting female companions or mercenaries, there would have been riots on every gaming forum imaginable calling the game out for misandry. The Wizardry series has a class (Valkyrie) that is only playable as a female. This stuff has existed forever, from the beginning, in the most formative games of the genre. Yet it only became an "issue" 3-5 years ago.
Comments
My favorite incident this year was when they had all convinced themselves that Captain Marvel was going to be a miserable failure because of something the lead actress said that upset them to the point you would have assumed they were going to set fire to the theaters the movie was showing in. Turns out the crusade of a bunch of internet jack-asses were no match for the fact that parents were probably genuinely excited to take their daughters to a Marvel movie with a female lead, and instead of being a disaster, it's right behind E.T. as the 21st highest grossing film in the history of movies. Point being, simply because of the actress and because it was a female lead, the consensus among this crowd was that it was inherently political simply that was how it was being sold. Of course, ground-zero for this nonsense was the Ghostbusters reboot, which instead of being excoriated for simply being one of any dozen shitty remakes that come out in a given year, was singled out because it was a shitty remake that just HAPPENED to have a female ensemble cast. Because I guess it would have been better to have the 3 surviving 65-year old men and Harold Ramis' corpse get the billing instead.
What most of this boil down to is that there are simply OPTIONS (and these are all options) out there now that (gasp!) don't all directly cater to straight, white men. It's ok for something to be for someone else. And you might like it too if you give it a chance. Game of Thrones and Big Little Lies are on the same network, and they sure as shit don't appeal to remotely the same audience, generally speaking. I don't see how this is a problem in any way.
I suppose one could reasonably argue that most "art", if it does have a political message, is probably going to be liberal. That isn't a conspiracy. It's that fact that conservatives generally aren't as interested in pursuing careers in a story-telling medium and that (frankly) they generally aren't as good at it when they try. When a movie or TV show is made to push an explicitly conservative agenda, it is usually (at best) one on the level of quality of the Hallmark or Sci-Fi Channel. I could make a great case that nearly every damn action movie of the '80s and '90s was at least MARGINALLY conservative, and in the case of something like Death Wish or Rambo was ACTIVELY attempting to be conservative. I don't turn off First Blood because of this. But it also doesn't make Rambo 3 or Cobra any less of a garbage movie. The most notable successful example of what I would consider something that succeeded massively BECAUSE it was seen as conservative was the movie American Sniper, but that was mostly because Eastwood is a great director and the movie was a hagiography of a guy who in reality was a pretty repulsive person.
The second thing I love is that you specifically mention YouTube channels that are dedicated to searching for political media to slam them. These exist, true, but if you consider what they are doing bad, then for the sake of consistency you need to recognize the fact that left-leaning sociopaths are actively looking for things to be offended at in media and consider basically everything they don't like problematic, sexist, misogonic, homophobic, abelist etc. Not only they do actively looking for things to be offended at, they also quite often are harassing both actual fans and creators. So I hope for sake of your consistency you also consider then a problem. If not, then we have blatant double standard here.
I am totally fine with there being other options around in storytelling. If you want to aim for very specific demographic, then it's okay. Political activists are free to create their own stories, character etc. But what's that? They change already existing and established characters to suit them, instead of making their own stories instead. I wonder how actual fans of a franchise that's being changed to fit political narratives would find that...
If I had a daughter I'll definitely bring her to see Wonder Women. Or Alita: Battle Angel. Captain Marvel, on the other hand is miserable by comparison. Not subtle, blatantly catering with actress that is actual misandrist, retroactively changes events in MCU, has conflict but not character arc, has very unsatisfaying conclusion etc... And the reason it actually did well is the fact it's between Infinity War and Endgame and it was marketed as Captain Marvel will be crucial to the Endgame.
One more thing, willingness to make an piece of art doesn't mean that the person willing to do so is actually capable of doing that. Or should try doing that. Politicial activists specifically are unable to understand human beings, especially those who hold different point of view to themselves. A person who wants to become a good writer would need to do some research on how human psychology works, in order to write a believable, humanized and fleshed-out characters. Political activists wouldn't bother by any of that, not when their retarded politics is the end goal.
That's ignore the fact that this very trend was in fact, reactionary to a media the LITERALLY pushed one side and cherry picked the worse of the opposing side to show of they showed it at all. I mean it's even still the way now just even worse now that corporations want to play morally righteous instead of just being greedy, just look at silicon valley and the crap they do.
Oh please, leave out the fact that...
1.Captain marvel was riding on the coat tail of 21 success movie cinematic universe.
2. Was literally shoe horned in just before for the most anticipated blockbuster of probably the last 2 decades.
3. Had the entirety of the media machine constantly play on its side of the field, to the point it caused rotten tomato to remove its, " do you want to see this movie" percentage" that's not even counting how they acted like movies such as wonder woman, tomb raider, and the infinite other female lead action movies that came before it just didn't freaking exist.
4. Oh and he constant attack on aletta battle angle which actually had a larger fan score.
That bs about mothers showing their daughters had very little to actually do with that.
But just because marvel movie made money means its good huh. Despite you could stick marvel on anything but it's comics and people will buy it!
Then where was that for wonder woman? Or lucy? Or atomic blonde? Or alien? Or tomb raider? Or the hunger games? Or killbill? Or underworld?
You left out the part where the director and cast members directly insulted anyone who literally wasn't interested in the movie or thought it looked bad based on the trailer and then turned around and played victim when the fandom pushed back.
Or maybe you don't make such a drastic change, have no real connections to the original, constantly attack the very people who more than likely will give you their money regardless of how bad it is because that's what fandoms tend to due when not attacked or insulted.
Except oh no, blade didn't cater to straight white men and it saved an entire movie genre.
The cosbies did the same.
One of the most loved actors is a black man who's worst if not one of his worst movies still made a 100 million.
You're spouting crap that can and has been proven wrong over and over again. You know how I know this, look at a progressive cartoon that didn't destroy a already established cartoon...
STEVEN UNIVERSE, ignoring its garbage random, people aren't running out and trying to boycott it because they don't care that it exist. It's it own up, it can do what it wants. It's progressive fandom on the other hand thinks its ok to harass a 17 year old kid until Abe tries to kill herself all because she drew a fat character skinny. Which reminds me, I need to go draw the new dark-skinned Pokemon character a little lighter lighter and posted it on Twitter. Well in my case I'm going to draw her white, excuse me.
At to break it to you I like good story telling over pushing a progressive narrative. Also I don't watch either of those shows so no comment, but I did hear that game of thrones got worse after Martin left.
Liberal isn't synonymous with she or intersectionality.
What...
I think you lost the plot...
Guess what, we don't. The only power we hold is whether or not we spend the $10 to get into a multiplex or to pay for the monthly streaming fee. And I suppose we can also make YouTube videos specifically aimed at a disgruntled fans explaining to them why the legacy of such and such a franchise is being "stolen" from them this week. Nothing stopping it I guess. I venture it's a pretty good living. I just have to wonder how long one can wallow in pedantic nonsense like pretending Assassin's Creed Odyssey is problematic because it doesn't have historically accurate gender politics for the time-frame when the game literally features boss battles with a Cyclops and Medusa. I mean, I've watched many of the same videos you have about this stuff. Except I just sit there dumb-founded that the conversations are even taking place, much less being taken seriously by thousands upon thousands of people. And Youtube's algorithms just send you deeper down the rabbit-hole if you even happen across ONE of them.
@jjstraka34 Well, as for just putting down whatever art is offending you, I know some art can be compelling, despite being unpleasant or even offensive. Vulgar art relies on this I think, so an anime like Berserk derives much of it's power from how hard it is to look away, despite things being so ghastly. I know when I was a kid, I would get engrossed by adult movies and watch them, despite not really liking them much, being too young at the time. It was like I couldn't look away, despite mostly wanting to do something else. I'd also watch whatever awful daytime TV was on when I skipped school, some of which might have actually traumatized me (...Leprosy is ****ed up!), yet I would watch it. I doubt I'm unique in this. Thus, we can feel we are a captive of the art.
@DragonKing Fans don't own a franchise, and they should be reminded of this occasionally, and most fans ultimately do not know whats best for their fandom. These should be ignored utterly (unfortunately) to avoid contaminating the good with the bad. They might be very devoted to a franchise, but it's up to a franchise's owners what happens in it, and if Disney thinks Star Wars needs a female main character, then that's damn well what we get, because it's their call. They were willing to take a risk for this principle, so I respect them for it. They spend a fortune on each Star Wars movie, so the fact that they are willing to try to new things is nice, even if the movies are pretty rehashed. I think people are hoping that there will be some LGBTQ stuff in some of the non-core movies at least, maybe the Mandalorian movie thing? Is that still happening even? *checks* Okay, so it's a series? Anyways, finger's crossed, that maybe some of the LGBTQ fans of Star Wars will finally feel included, represented, in their preferred art. I'd love to see that.
I think we all can agree that bad art is bad art, even if it's got a good message, and if its really bad, nobody is going to bother with it. That said, it's still up to a franchise owner if they want to take a risk and try something different, even if it might not be as profitable, perhaps simply to do a good deed for the world. Heck, an owner might even chose to disregard profit completely if very rich, and plenty of right wing companies are known to do this in broadcast, subsidizing what is essentially propaganda for their views, even knowing they will be losing advertisers etc. Is propaganda art? I think so, even if it's obviously a special category.
I'm not terribly good at separating what I like from people I can respect, so I try to avoid art if I know I have issues with the artist. I won't willingly watch a Woody Allen movie now or ever I'd say, for example. But, I also don't make videos about how Woody Allen is a monster, or ruined nebbish men, because I'd probably be institutionalized by my family if I did. Because that's not very healthy behaviour.
Liberal I think has two very separate uses, one is for someone that support small government that is very laissez faire, but this is now archaic I think, so the more popular use seems to be for someone who is a centrist to left, who favours a relatively progressive agenda regarding social rights. How would you define liberal for us, @DragonKing so that we can have a discussion about it?
People like seeing themselves in media, so writers cater to that desire. There's nothing wrong with catering to your fans.
I know this has absolutely nothing to do with your point, but this is a BALLER concept for a Ghostbusters movie. Just picture it. Egon is killed in action, and as a result, the Ghostbusters all retire. Then one day, the ghost of Egon comes back to warn the Ghostbusters of like, Gozer coming back for revenge or something. Maybe something kinda like Bubba Hotep, but actually funny.
At the very least (in the US anyway), at least 6% of the population is either gay, bisexual or transgender. That is a MASSIVE number of people to appeal to. It's why corporate America, despite everything else that is wrong with them, have conceded the ground on gay rights and yes, will market and develop products and entertainment that caters to what they like. Because there 20 million of them out there with disposable incomes to spend money on. Women make up MORE than 50% of the population. It would be malpractice from an entertainment business perspective to ignore these groups and cater to (let's be honest) young men. We all know (simply by the demographics polls that took place on this page) that people who dissect entertainment down to it's bone and pick it apart are overwhelmingly male.
Roger Ebert said in his review for the seminal Bergman film "Cries and Whispers" that it's very possible the only reason such a complex and emotionally wrenching movie like this one hasn't sprung up the same kind of cult following breaking down it's every movement and nuance like, say, Fight Club has is because it's a movie about 4 women in a house together. Not that a foreign film from the '70s would be in any way as popular, but to point out that, in general, the kind of audience that watches Fight Club is much more likely to become absolutely obsessed with it. And when you take on an obsessed fandom of some piece of art, be it music, movies, TV or games, you will defend it when people are attacking it, and you will rage if you think someone is despoiling it. But the point is is that most of the people who do so ARE men. They aren't ALL men, but the vast majority are. And the cursory glance at any internet forum or Youtube comment section will reveal this. Guys care about pop culture more, and are more interested in discussing it's nuances.
I didn't know there was a demographics poll on this site before last night. When I looked at it, I was not surprised. Obviously, it is a small sample of about 100 people. But I think we can safely place Baldur's Gate and CRPGs (which this forum is based on) in the realm of what has historically been known as "geek culture". In the last decade (I'd argue since the Lord of the Rings movies), this culture has BECOME the mainstream culture in many way. But the people who participate in these massive breakdowns and dissections of it, based on those who participate here are almost EXCLUSIVELY a.) white b.) male and c.) American or European in country of origin.
So what does this tell me?? It tells me that most entertainment HAS been catered to us for most of our lives if we are over 30 years of age. There have been never-ending options for us. And now, things are shifting. As "geek culture" has become culture, everyone is now interested in seeing something THEY can relate to in these mediums. And it's giving the ILLUSION that something is being taken away, when all that is happening is that something is being given to someone else who was previously locked out of these spaces. And there is massive money to be made in doing so. Raging against this is like telling the sun not to rise.
The nerds won. Those guys who made fun of you in high school for listening to Iron Maiden, reading comics or playing D&D instead of whatever else it was you were SUPPOSED to be doing were the first ones in line to take their sons and daughters to the Hobbit movies or newest super-hero blockbuster. What generated in those formative years was a sense that despite the abuse you suffered because of a particular hobby, solace could be taken in that you had a secret knowledge, a pass to something that those people would never know about. Except, now they like it too, because everybody does. And we don't want to let them in. They aren't "real" fans. Whether people know it or not, alot of this just comes down to gate-keeping on the sub-conscious level.
You are semi correct, like everything else on this planet and something I'm constantly pointing out on both sides, (currently its more so the left within this last decade) is the there is nuance in all things. Nothing is ever black and white, but few seem to actually want to find that middle ground and work from there.
But more onto your point directly..
No a fandom does not own the ip that is correct, but businesses, not just in the entertainment industry but in general LISTENS to their customer base to not only find out what helps make the product better, but also to find out what the customer wants. They interact with their costumers positively and respectfully. Owning the IP doesn't give anyone in that business the right to attack and insult their customer base, and literally any other industry would have fired the employees for doing half of the crap we've seen these "professionals" do.
You want to mention star wars, the biggest issue with star wars wasn't that the main character was female, it was she was a mary sue and then a media machine pretended there were no strong female characters before she came around, practically erasing Leia and Ashoka every existence.
Then when the fandom speaks with their wallets buy not spending their money on the projects, these "pros" are quick to blame every and everything but themselves. BAming the last failed movies on "star wars fatigue"... It's freaking star wars, this crap literally has a legitimized real world RELIGION! If the movie failed it wasn't because of fatigue! People would literally sit in a line reaching over a block for it... Ok now I'm moving further off topic lets shift back.
Is propaganda art is a whole other discussion in itself, and I would make a joke here but I feel there may be a mod or two who are just itching to pull the trigger on me lmao.
a far as your other point, do you just stop at art with that? If so why? A lot of things we use in everyday life are created, produced, developed through means far worse than half the crap progressives cry about here. From 2-d cartoons that get shipped off and animated on sweatshops in places like china and Korea, to the abused populace's that the components that our computers and cellphone are made from. Do you try to avoid these objects and things as well? Or do you separate the products from the companies, corporations, and exploitation that lead to their creation because you we don't always see why directly goes into the creation of the final product?
Both left and right have three basic divides
The centrist, some sway left and some sway right but the ultimate important is that the solution is by far more important than the bias.
The moderate...
Conservative- holding traditional values and attitudes.
Liberal- but I guess you'd call it classical liberalism now as ot focused on securing the freedoms of the individual and lessoning the control government has on the individual.
The extremes:
The Alt right: this one is actually quite interesting because I've seen it range from just people who only really just believe race realism, Asians are smarter and more mental capabilities, Blacks stronger and have more physical capabilities and such all the way to white supremacy and and ethnostate in the US.
Progressives/intersectionality:...won't make the joke... Won't make the joke... Ed it, this is basically the oppression olympics and the poison that is currently destroying the democratic party and also the VERY REASON we long needed to get rid of the 2 party system!
Ok I'll be nice, this is basically people who are barely any better than the altright, they claim race realism is a pseudoscience while categorizing people based on gender, sex, ethnicity, religion and literally placing them on a who is more oppressed scale. It follows the modern day religion of Intersectionality while tying itself to socialist and even to communist ideas.
It would be interest if it was just as powerless as the altright, but unlike the altright it currently dominates universities, silicon valley where the tech oligarchy resides, and has split the democratic party into fractures while Republican party still stands strong. It's also currently eating itself alive in places like Europe since you now have the oppressed Muslim community protesting the lgbt curriculum, another oppressed minority class at one school and majority of progressives are remaining silent about it.
Oh that's not even somehow they believe there is no difference between men and women and them simultaneously claim men and women are different and women have special needs...
@semiticgod
The alt right's preferred candidate is currently the President of the United States. If that's not political power, I don't know what is.
The sum of Luke's Jedi training amounts to (in totality) a single session of laser tag with a blindfold on the Falcon with Obi-Wan, and however long he was on Dagobah with Yoda. And since Luke's training was clearly happening concurrently with Han and Leia outrunning Star Destroyers, unless you think they were inside that "cave" for months upon months, and that Vader and his Imperial ambush were also hiding in Cloud City for MORE months, he had, AT BEST, a couple weeks of training with Yoda. A month if we are reaching to the absolute cap of generosity. There is NO indication he ever went back between Empire and Jedi (I'm sure there is some expanded universe nonsense where he does, but we aren't dealing with something less than 1% of the people who have seen the movies would know about), yet he somehow managed to become someone who got annihilated by Vader at the end of Empire to someone who wipes the floor with him in Jedi, all with NO additional training. So I have to ask. If Rey is so problematic because of her "lack of training", then why isn't this standard applied to Luke, who by any measure had as bare bones a diet as she did?? That's why I don't buy this argument, because it seems to hinge on pretending the first trilogy was a totally different set of scenarios than it was.
I hated Rey more than anything for her inablity to keep her damned mouth shut when not talking. I even thought at first if she was being played by Kristen Stewart.
To the other points. Again, I would have thought this Anita Sarkeesian boogeyman would have died out by now. The amount of energy put into this one person for so long is just astounding. I suppose Kotaku should have reviewed Kingdom Come Deliverance if only to expose it for the broken, poorly optimized mess that it is. And Japanese games DO have ridiculous caricatures as most of their female representation. I bought Xenoblade Chronicles 2 last year for my Switch and one them was the most absurd thing I've ever seen in my life. I don't really care one way or the other about it, or know if it's a "problem", but it's kinda hard to just ignore outright after awhile. It would be weirder if it WASN'T a topic of conversation.
The other "SJW-infested" game I played recently was last year's Battletech. I gotta ask, how on frigging earth can developer be so pretentiously inclusive as to add "they" option to chargen, and then make the UI fonts so diminutive I can't read then without straining my eyes??? You'd think a lot higher percentage of gamers has poor vision than gender identity issues. It's fine if you can't cater to everyone, but if you can't then maybe you shouldn't pretend otherwise?
While I don't remember specifically Harebrained being vocal about their views (and so don't actually have an issue with them), I find it highly disturbing when a game or movie gets released, its author not particularly caring about politics, and then gets swarmed with, including their forums even, "your lack of diversity is problematic" bs.
My point was you seemed to imply only neckbeard losers whine about social politics in media, instead of just moving along. Which is not true in the slightest, I've seen about as much rich leftist kids whining how someone dared to not include them.
Conservative is not synonymous with the alt right... That's literally doing the same thing as conflating liberal with progressive...
Secondly, conservatives, HAD found a home on YouTube, before the media started calling all their opposition I. YouTube altright and started directly attacking YouTube over and over again until it started attacking he very people that are youtube what it is. They are on the forth adpocalypse and they are out right deleting even none political channels. One of the most notable was a history teacher's channel that archived ww2. Another being black legion speaks, a CONSERVATIVE not Alt right. Many conservatives even within fox news has denounced the altright, but the big difference here is fox news personalities like tucker Carlson, and many centrist and conservative YouTubers have no problem inviting ANYONE onto their show you discuss or even debate their viewpoint. The left prefers to try and deplatform and censor people they don't like or agree with and we saw it time and time again he biggest one being Alex Johns who got unpersoned despite anyone with a brain knows the man is a living meme.
That's also ignoring the fact, the left claims everyone is altright, going as far as claiming Phily D, the largest alternative news source as alt right, one of the most liberal guys on the planet. That's also not even taking into the account, YouTube recommends the left, twice as much as it do the right or even centrist. (https://medium.com/@markoledwich/we-have-been-misled-about-non-pc-youtube-b6ffea5e34fa)
What have they as a group done? What industry bent to what they wanted? Progressive have taken over schools, have gotten laws rewritten, have gotten just regular conservatives banned off platforms, fired from jobs and even gotten the violence of antifa down played in nearly every mainstream liberal media. What have the alt right actually done to show that have actual power?
Logical fallacy:
A logical fallacy is an error in reasoning that renders an argument invalid. Also called a fallacy, an informal logical fallacy, and an informal fallacy. In a broad sense, all logical fallacies are non sequiturs—arguments in which in which a conclusion doesn't follow logically from what preceded it.
Poisoning the well:
To commit a preemptive ad hominem attack against an opponent. That is, to prime the audience with adverse information about the opponent from the start, in q attempt to make your claim more acceptable or discount the credibility of your opponent’s claim.
Now let me do what you just did...
The black nationalist preferred candidate was President Obama of the United States. If that's not political power, I don't know what is...
You literally claiming that you have power because you like someone in power. By that logic, EVERYONE has political power and some and the so called under represented/privileged groups aren't underrepresented/privileged because they supported the black president.
You're asking the wrong person because the person you are talking to right now, agrees he's also a Gary Stu. I'm not an original trilogy super fan, in fact I am part of the unholy few who actually like the prequels more. That's also part of the reason I made no references to the original.
It is reasonable to call Obama the "Democratic candidate" because he generally agreed with mainstream Democratic party views. Calling him the "black nationalist candidate" would only be accurate, for example, if we saw him echoing views unique to black nationalists--that is, views that you could NOT find among liberals who weren't black nationalists.
Contrast with Trump, who has repeatedly railed against the media and the "deep state," which only a small portion of GOP figures did before 2016. This was not a mainstream Republican concept; it was more of a fringe idea.
We saw very clearly during the 2016 primaries that a lot of folks on the right disagreed with Trump and were willing to condemn him before he secured the nomination--Trump was not the GOP mainstream at the time. Conservatives themselves were one of the first people to say that Trump was not a regular Republican politician. Today, however, GOP figures generally hesitate to condemn him, to the extent that even Lindsay Graham seldom ever does. It's my understanding that GOP politicians who did criticize Trump were more likely to lose re-election campaigns than those who supported Trump--definitely a clear demonstration of the power of Trump supporters in the GOP.
To put my position in a single sentence: I call Trump the "alt-right candidate" specifically BECAUSE I draw a distinction between regular Republicans and the alt-right.
Wait before I continue with this anymore, shouldn't this topic be happening in the politics channel at this point? I assumed this was was specifically meant for politics in art, or the political of art. We've quite literally moved away from the art and went into just general politics.
And honestly I don't really feeling going into a Obama/Trump discussion.
Now, I think I would have to admit that I'd be quick to criticize a company for abysmal human rights records, but I think taking offence at the increased presence of 'non-traditional' characters, even if they aren't fully LGBTQ really isn't the same. One side wants to move towards equality, or at least be shown to exist, while the other wants to pretend that only a certain number of demographics should exist in entertainment, and I think that's why I can have a double standard and not feel like it's, well, unfair.
As far as blaming goes, I know several have blamed the large, angry online 'movement', which amounts to complaining about their being non-cis/white/male characters playing roles that would normally go to cis/white/male actors. I dunno, I don't find these groups to be all that reasonable, but I think they should feel free to not spend on an IP, without going apeshit and posting great heaps of what is often questionable criticisms, such as many complaints about the new Star Wars movies. There are issues with all movies, but most of the complaints are silly that I've read, and since Star Wars has never made a great deal of sense (if you think it does, I recommend taking a closer look), and it was never a very well managed IP after the EU started expanding, with tons of rubbish made, yet Rey is the one thing in Star Wars that 'ruined' it for you? I don't get this.
IMHO, about everyone in Star Wars is a Mary/Marty Stu, and almost nothing really holds up to serious scrutiny, everything in Star Wars is Rule of Cool. It's not even considered science fiction by lots of critics, they classify it as science fantasy, because it is so very loose with science. It's certainly true that the whole plot features comical levels of plot armour, so much so that the most conflicts are decided purely by plot armour or 'A Jedi Did It'. It's annoying, but it's not new to episode 7. Regarding the premise that the Star Wars IP is in any trouble, the only unsuccessful movie they made was Solo, which is only a flop because it had to be made twice after the director change.
I don't know of anyone that puts people on an oppression scale really, but I do know of tons of harmed groups trying to gain recognition for their struggles, be they Armenians, Jews, any indigenous people in colonized territory, etc. Claiming that progressives use pseudoscience is laughable on the whole, because guess what, science itself is progressive, always looking to improve on things. The academic community btw tends to be left leaning because it's more educated, and educated people are less likely to be ruled by their emotional mind and believe silliness like 'race realism', which should just be called 'racism', because that's all it is. Anyone who thinks any large population of humans varies all that much from any other from a genetic perspective does not understand science, because humans are not even a genetically diverse species. Two frogs in the same isolated pond will generally be more genetically diverse than any two humans you could find.
I think you're being disingenuous here, it's not unreasonable for the substantial portion of the population to be represented in games/movies/books etc, not just white people. Anyone who thinks they can make art and not get criticized is insane, if they want that they can go the live in a ****ing cave already.
I agree with @semiticgod that you can safely say that the power base of conversativism in the USA is in the hands of the alt-right, and they are a significant power group in the US, and are definitely not subject to any real discrimination, as they are rarely minorities or other dis-empowered groups. Meanwhile, the Democratic party in the US is by international or traditional standards (you can chose either) a centrist party, not a left wing one, and that means you have a far right run party that spreads conspiracy non-sense and has more than 10k public lies from it's leader I've heard while their is no left wing competitor. Apparently the Republican party has consistently moved to the right over the years, while the left has more or less stayed where it was. I think the looseness with the facts that the president has embraced has really spread in the Right quite like a weed, and it's disappointing to see.
In The Last Jedi there was the AT-AT approach/battle with speeders that goes fairly badly, in which people crash their speeder, and everyone flees in the Millenium Falcon... and going to Cloud City = going to random ass Casino Land, etc etc. They are sometimes jumbled up in order, but they are VERY lifted from the original trilogy. I'm sure there was plenty of outrage over the parentage reveal (...Rey's parents too?), it felt very contrived, and I'm not certain it really helped the story in the end, but that's what we get to go with. There was even a drawn out chase scene, thought I guess it lacked asteroids. I wanted to throw something at the movie screen when Leia started floating back in TLJ... that was the dumbest moment in Star Wars history, and Star Wars has done some dumb things. Why can't the Rancor be called a Bantha!? WHY NOT!? I'll show those jerks what rancor really means!
But I nevertheless understand perfectly why some can see Rey being a woman a problem and propaganda. It's a very simple test - will anything in the plot change or look strange if you replace her with a guy? No, nothing will.
Will anything look out of place if you change Diana (Wonder Woman 2017) to a guy? Hell yeah, it will.
Which means, while Diana is indeed a female lead, Rey is not - she's just a lead. Question - what was the purpose of making her female then? To inspire young girls with a brave and strong character they can empathize with, or to show off what a progressive kid you are by creating a dude-in-a-skirt token? That's a rhetoric question
I don't particularly mind the latter - freedom of speech, everyone is free to embarrass themselves as much as they like. Just shouldn't be surprised when public laughs at immature attempts to look creative when you've got no real talent.
Or maybe since the general population is 50% female and the sex didn't matter, there was a 50% chance the 'lead' would be female?
BTW, you can easily reverse your position, if all these characters that are written in as male, but could very easily be switched to female (with minimal rewriting needed tbh), why do they all need to be male? Honestly, beyond sexual preference, and some folks are not straight, most characters COULD be gender switched up. Frankly, how do you know we're not creating endless women in pants, by masculinizing roles that might have been more interesting with a female lead? I know from personal examination that I'd love to see way more female leads, and I don't mind if they, like many male characters, could easily be gender swapped. The idea of male as neutral is actually unscientific, with X being the actual default chromosome. For the record, I don't think anyone can claim the 'public laughed' at Rey's character, since she has been one of the most successful characters so far in film, and apparently Disney is looking at more movies featuring her character, after 9.
I think it's actually higher than 50% in most cultures, as in, men are typically less common. Male babies require more from their mother's actually, just like with lions and most other mammals, so the default is females. Interesting how that switch happened I'm sure, since many earlier non-mammals have the opposite form of sexual dimorphism, with females being larger. Either way, I'll be much happier when everyone just moves on and accepts that women, LGBTQ people, minorities etc are all here to stay, and are all going to receive games, movies, books, etc all directed at them, and staring them.
@Ardanis can you prove that hormones are more significant than socialization in determining behavior? I have naturally very large muscles in androgen receptive areas (IE I have a very bulky upper body, with relatively little effort beyond good diet), suggesting very high testosterone levels, yet I have a nearly non-existent sex drive, which suggests very low levels. I'm also taller than average, and while I can sing as low or lower than average, I can also sing very, very high, higher than many women can do so easily. These suggest abnormally high estrogen, not testosterone. So, what exactly is my hormone profile? It would be pretty unusual to be abnormally high in both I'd expect, since they are supposedly associated with gender so strongly. *shrugs*
Regarding physical differences, who cares at this point, other than women that are constantly harassed on the street and athletes? Very, very few jobs require more upper body strength than the average woman can achieve with a small amount of effort, while men are actually becoming less suitable for the 'traditional' male roles anyways, since testosterone production is dropping consistently remember. I'd wager it's as much because of inactivity as pollution, since testosterone levels spike with hard exercise like used to be common in daily life.
Personally, I prefer characters who are... well, persons, regardless of sexual preference. If they can't be a person, then a thing devoid of emotion will do as well (e.g. Rambo or T-800).
But Rey is way too neutral. She wouldn't be a better character if she was male, but at least she wouldn't stand out as such a lazy effort in the age when everyone talks about importance of creating more female leads. I don't know about others, but if I really wanted to change something, I'd lead by example and set good standards.
And yeah, I appreciate female protagonists probably even more than I do male ones
Well, I always knew Disney was run by idiots
Is anyone actually opposed to it? My problem is with amateur hacks trying to be hip and thinking that milking trends is a substitute for talent. If they do it for the idea, then they've got double responsibility to not mess up and worsen the things by alienating audience from that very idea. If they do it just for money, then sucks to be them for willingly exploiting sensitive matters without care about consequences.
I should rephrase then - it's one thing to care about equality in civil rights, and completely another to pretend there's no difference at all and anyone suggesting otherwise must be a sexist nazi.
The discussion only exists when people decide that a character isn't supposed to be a certain gender. Without that, the discussion would never start.
By definition, a 50/50 split between male and female characters is the neutral position.
@Ardanis Okay, so they are both female leads... I fully agree Diana is more fleshed out than Rey, but Star Wars is notoriously bad at fleshing out characters. Nobody is fleshed out in the original trilogies, and the sheer absence of information lead to the EU's creation, since people really wanted not only stories, but to actually flesh out the surprisingly skeletal movies. I think one thing that actually helped Star Wars is that they did not flesh things out in the original trilogy, and as such, you didn't feel like you were sitting in a class, yet they did a good enough job introducing things in a straightforward way that even a child could roughly understand how things worked. Lightsaber's could lop off limbs we found out, rather than being told 'this is a really dangerous weapon!', for example. I don't think its very fair to hold Rey's poor character development against Star Wars unless you also find this a problem in the original trilogy.
So, it sounds like a completely robotic male lead is okay, but a female one is not? I'm not sure I get this. I can accept personal preference, but this seems like it needs more examining. I personally enjoy silly actiony movies, and I agree they don't require much development to work, but it's not like Rey has no emotions, she seems quite chipper, especially for someone with such a hard life, but there are such people in the world.
From what you're saying, you are fine with lazy male characters, but if someone wants to use a female character in a medium that doesn't benefit from very much development, we shouldn't ever see female leads?? Am I to take it you think Shar Teel is a bad character then, because unlike Minsc, she needs more development, as a female? I'm glad you can enjoy female characters in theory though.
Erm, making more Rey movies is probably a VERY wise move, as she created a huge amount of free press. It's entirely possible that people that wouldn't have bothered to see Episode 9 will now, since they've heard that it has prominent female characters, including ones that don't seem to be 'along for the ride', like Leia mostly was. Last Jedi was wildly successful, Force Awakens was even more wildly successful, as is normal for a Star Wars trilogy, but the pattern is that the final movie will do better than the 2nd, and worse than the first. I'm sure this is what they expect, but it'll be funny if the effect of all this Rey hating is that more people interested in feminism become Star Wars fans! Finding out how many closet misogynists liked Star Wars was a bit disappointing for me, so this would cheer me up!
But you're just fine with hacks that make crappy movies with male leads? This IMHO is where the anti-Rey argument utterly falls into ruin, because their have been some truly awful movies made staring male leads, and people don't blame these movies sucking on male leads. Similarly, nobody said any of the countless flopped games over the decades that stared male lead characters were dreck because they were male, they are just considered a bad game period, and the discussion is ended their. As soon as the offensive thing is female, it's a big deal, and this seems to be suggesting that the problem really is the inclusion of strong female characters more than anything else. This comes across to me as a great big double standard, and I don't care for it!