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"Woke" games
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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I disagree with your premise that that "forced progressivism" messes things up. Andor, for example, is the most progressive Star Wars media ever, and it's amazing for it. (It's literally about a leftist, or at least leftist coded, rebellion against Fascists, and wears it proudly.) The reason is because the people making it were allowed to be creative and were passionate about what they were making.
Its the lack of creative freedom and passion that kills things. Most things with a lot of money put into them are directed by suits, not creatives. They don't want to take risks, so they just follow trends and formulas. This leads to the media not having anything to actually say, and just a veneer of trying to appeal to certain people, without actually doing anything with it.
I haven't seen Andor so I can't comment, but I'll take the plunge on your advice.
I think corporate "progressivism" is certainly one of the culprits, but sometimes it's the creatives themselves who ruin things. Some creatives have even intentionally uprooted an IP like The Witcher's show, and Rings of Power. Sometimes progressive ideals are merely a shield against criticism, other times it's a creators' own ideals that made them ruin things, and sometimes it's just rainbow capitalism. It's not a simple issue to talk about really.
I generally agree with you, with some caveats.
I think that most IPs have subtext, and a lot of time this is in the form of a deeper political message. I think it would be silly to say progressivism in IPs is always a bad thing. That's part of the reason I mentioned Arcane and Spiderverse by name.
The problem comes from the fact that IPs are supposed to be entertainment first, messaging second. A lot of creators make a lazy and mediocre product, and somewhere in there is a ham-fisted political message. Some creators also seem to be making IPs bad on purpose as a fuck you to their target audience, which is an absolutely baffling choice.
There's also the concept of nuance that's sort of been lost. A lot of the creators will write something in some super reductive black/white way that's basically guaranteed to turn off everyone who doesn't already emphatically agree with them. This is a huge departure from a lot of older movies. For example Forrest Gump is a Republican movie, but doesn't just portray republicans as automatically good or liberals as automatically bad. The end result is that there are a lot of liberals who love Forrest Gump.
The part that I strongly disagree on is that you seem to be blaming the corporations. I think ultimately a lot of the problem here is at the fault of the creators. There have been a lot of high profile cases where studios don't interfere, give the creators a massive budget, and have their backs when controversy hits. The creators will still end up making mediocre culture war content. Todd Philips was allowed to do whatever he wanted in Joker 2. It turns out what Todd Philips wanted was for the Joker to be permanently defeated by the power of prison rape. There's no studio head in the world who would have told him to do that.
I disagree with this:
Maybe you just want entertainment, but the purpose of art has almost always been message-first. If a piece of art isn't trying to say something, what's the point? People trying to act like gaming, or any other form of art, should only focus on entertaining, and always has, are not very media-literate. I can't think of a single classically well received movie that doesn't have a message it's trying to tell.
Nuance, yeah. That's important. The goal of art is to get someone to feel like the idea you're trying to give them came from themselves. That's when it's effective. It doesn't really work when you're just telling them how to think. It just annoys people.
Also, of course some garbage will also be made when people are allowed freedom to be creative. The difference is that good things can be made in that situation, not that it always will. It pretty much never will if everything is targeted towards mass appeal. That ensures no one in particular will care because there isn't a target. They do it because it's a safe bet. This implies the alternative is more risky, meaning more failures (like Joker 2), but also the opportunity for greatness.