Politics in arts and PC culture
 

My biggest axe to grind ever in my life. The weaponization of the arts. For politics. I would have been fine to nod on anything until everything in front of me became obvious propaganda from either the writers themselves or lightly (or not so lightly) peppered from above. I didn't care a lick about politics until it bled into everything creative.

Video games. Comics. Movies. TV. It is suffocating. It requires a response in kind at every chance. By people who aren't cowards.

I'm anti crime but also anti lockdown, because then it really feels like a police state in control. Not sure Chicago is going to react well to that...

Been happening for centuries, but it's more overt than it used to be. If you feel offended by it, maybe you're one of the targets they are poking fun at?

Arts and politics have been interconnected since ancient Rome and Greece. Propaganda in comic books and cartoons was also very prominent during and after WWII. Nothing new.

I dunno. We’ve talked about it before, but it’s hard to explain. I’m all over the place politically, but I have many left wing opinions and sympathies. I just can’t help my gag reflex when I see stuff like a young Muslim refugee hamfistedly explaining “preferred pronouns” in Young Justice.

And we’re all TMNT fans. We grew up with the turtles encouraging recycling, and with Peter and Murph using the comics to go on their own political tangents. I might have rolled my eyes occasionally, but it felt more authentic back then I guess.

I would say roughly around 2012 was when Tumblr-brained freaks started getting mainstream work. Then 2016… we don’t even need to touch on that lol. 2020 made the whole world crazy, but it seems like we’ve all slowly been recovering.

Not looking forward to the next psyop.

Well, one thing we can probably all agree on to an extent is how PC culture has gotten to a point where some stuff is just embarassing to watch or listen to. I think it's mainly media for children where it's gotten out of hand: I remember a book we have that my super-conservative, slightly islamophobic mother-in-law read to my kids until she stumbled upon a page that said something along the lines of "And then they met their friend Fatma and her little brother Lennart." Then she just went "Sorry kids, I'm not reading this nonsense to you. There's no Fatma in the world whose little brother is called Lennart."

And there's nothing to disagree there. That kind of thing is just so shoe-horned, it's lame. Unfortunately, I've been encountering examples likes this in real life as well. Like, a couple of month ago a colleague of mine wanted to tell me something about one of my pupils whose name he didn't know and he had the HARDEST time describing the girl.

Colleague: Yeeeeeah, she sits there and there. Her hair colour... I'm not sure...
Me: The girl with the headscarf?
short break
Colleague: I couldn't think of another way to describe her...
SO WHAT?

Ridiculous.

Fatma and Lennart lol.

I don't agree with the whole "art shouldn't be political" folks. The people who say that don't actually mind politics in art, as long as it's politics they agree with.

Ha, I honestly haven’t come across too much nonsense in my parenting adventures. I don’t actually care, but I have noticed a concerted effort to show women operating heavy equipment. That’s fine, I’ve certainly seen it happen. But it’s INCREDIBLY rare in the real world.



Haha, that rules. I don’t see too much stupidity being in construction. But I will say that I LOVE pronouns in email signatures. Saves a lot of awkward exchanges with people like Jamie, Jordan, Terry, Dana, Kelly, Blake, etc.

My last job was at an outdoor resort. Big hippie culture with an all female management team, so we’d have stuff like you’d describe occasionally. But it was always hilarious when an ethnic guest would be rude to one of the ladies and they’d fly into a brief racial tirade (privately of course) before realizing what they were saying.

This was pre-Trump of course. I doubt any of them would admit to it now haha.

Art can be political, but it has to be good first lol.

I like communist hardcore bands. There’s some good NSBM. Plenty of great Anarchist punk, environmentalist punk, etc.

Many episodes of The Sopranos have feminist and anti-capitalist themes, but most people who watch it probably don’t even realize it.

No matter what you’re creating, I think a certain level of intelligence and artistry can go a long way no matter what you’re trying to say. As opposed to… “hur hur hur, you people are ****ing idiots! Duhhhh make [blank] great again! Covfefe!”

This is a fun discussion so I'm splitting it into its own thread.

Seems obvious but then again, some of the most acclaimed dystopian literature can be very in-your-face about its political messages. For example, the commentary against patriarchy in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is not subtle at all.

Also, the examples from music you mentioned are not always that intelligent, some NSBM bands have lyrics about literally slaughtering the Jews and other 'subhumans'. But sure, we sometimes try to separate lyrics from music to still be able to enjoy it, just like we sometimes try to separate art and artists.

In the end, it's not necessarily an issue of how 'intelligent' political commentary is but how naturally it's implemented into media. The examples of cartoons and kids' books we talked about are both stupid AND non-sensical. Environmental messages in TMNT comics were not subtle but they fit the stories well.

There's a big difference between "weaponizing the arts for political slant" and having "politics in arts".

I guess the differentiation is also between 'politics in arts' and 'politics in pop-culture'. Some pop-culture can hardly be seen as "art", i.e. 'artistic expression' and in those cases political messages are merely propaganda.

Maybe. I haven’t read or watched that, but my wife likes it and says the horrors in it are all heavily based on real-world laws that have been implemented around the world at one time or another.

But my understanding of it via cultural osmosis has always been that it’s heavy handed Lib dreck. Which is stupid of me, because I can’t stand when people make harsh judgments about things based on clips and summaries.

I said “some”! lol

Music is probably easier than anything else to look past the lyrics. Also with metal, often times they don’t actually believe the stuff they’re singing about and are just going for shock value.

But again, if anything is good, people will find ways to enjoy it. My MAGA-ass dad called me a few years ago to tell me how great “Don’t Look Up” was. I was very confused and proceeded to feel him out. He ends up saying “yeah, it was liberal ********, but it was funny!”

Andrew and I talked about this recently, but there’s nothing worse than losers taking an existing IP or character and forcing their own stupid politics into it.

Create your own **** if you want to proselytize!

Oh, absolutely. By far the worst kids' book we have is a "re-told" version of Snow White my brother got for my oldest kid a couple of years ago. It is beautifully drawn but the story is so stupid, it makes you want to pull your hair out. Its supposedly big thing is that it changes the parts about the queen wanting to be 'the fairest' into 'the bravest' and she gets super jealous when her magic mirror tells her that little Snow White (who is a freckled black girl here) is braver than her because she climbs big trees and other ****.

Just like in the original, the queen then orders to have the girl killed - and this is right where that idiot who made this stuff up should have thought 'Oooooh, this doesn't make any sense. If she orders someone to kill a little kid for her, she's not brave at all. Haha well, it was a stupid idea anyway!'. But of course, the 'story' goes on and Snow White meets the seven Dwarves who all have different ethnicities - one is black, one is Chinese, one is a redhead WITH A JAPANESE NAME etc. This was a couple of years before the new Disney disaster by the way.

If you visit the website, there's a pretentious sob story about how the writer once noticed that all the fairy tales were too stereotypical (no sh*t) but when he changed just one word, his kid's eyes lit up blablabla. It's just sooooo dishonest. If you want your kid to listen to better stories, there are enough options. Or - as you said - come up with something new! Using a well-known name to cash-in on crazy moms' concern about 'educational' kids' books is just a scam.

My brother is the sweetest guy and he thought this was a great idea but sometimes he can be a little naive.

Sorry, for the rant. I just hate this ****ing book so much. lol

Then you can understand why I (and others) can't stand the race/gender swaps. It's like the new FF movie with "girl Surfer". They could have just used the "Nova" (Frankie Raye) as Galactus' Herald and although that would've had it's criticisms they'd be using an existing character rather than a swap of the male template. That was low hanging fruit - there is clearly a lot of that swap $#!( going around.

Haha, crazy. I don’t have too many kids books that I hate. Anything too insufferable just “goes missing” if I can’t take it.

Off the top of my head, most of the awful stuff is from my own childhood. Worst offender being The Rainbow Fish, which I remember liking growing up. But the story is that he’s an asshole because he won’t share his shiny scales with everyone? So then everyone starts liking him after he removes his literal flesh from his body and gives all the other fish one scale each? So effing weird.

Getting off topic now, but The Pokey Little Puppy is tough read. I just make up my own abridged version, because the art is cute at least. Oh and don’t get me started on any of the book versions of the 12 days of Christmas song. **** off!

Back on topic, this weekend I’m probably going to compile some songs from bands that were making good political music in the 90’s and 2000’s but went full LT during the Trump era. Do a little compare and contrast.

Will also curate some right wing cringe to keep it Fair and Balanced lol.

It depends. In an adaptation, there are always some creative changes (or there should be). But if gender or race are integral to a character, then of course you should keep them the way the character was originally created. I have no plans seeing the new FF but is 'being male' one of the defining traits of the Silver Surfer? I'm not that familiar with the character but if I had to list his major traits, I'd say

• a silver alien that flies through space on a surfboard
• finds planets for giant space monster so that it can eat them
• is always conflicted about being an accomplice to mass murder

So it doesn't really matter that much.

Then there is a case like the rumours about Meryl Streep playing Aslan in the new Narnia film and that doesn't work at all. Aslan is a character that is very stereotypically male and if you take that away, it's something too different from the original.

..is this thread a discussion split from another thread? Those no longer end up in the Desintegrator Unit?

eh it worked in the context of a woman-to-woman discussion with Sue, and Johnny clearly not being as obsessed about finding out about the Silver Surfer if he was some jacked dude rather than a metallic naked woman.

But it still reeks of bottom of the barrel just for the sake of diversity. Did this female Silver Surfer exist in the comics? Yeah. Like for a weekend. Was this the Silver Surfer that first arrived to Earth and encountering the Fantastic Four? No.

It's a mixed bag because they switched her in for diversity and girl power's sake, but they at least catered her story where her gender would make sense.

This would be like a Batman movie that tries to play it straight and has Duke Edwards be his first ever Robin. Was Duke Robin in the comics? Sure, for a weekend. Was Duke the Robin most known Robin that stood alongside Batman in the 60s and such? No. Or the most current Robin, his son Damian? No.

No one was arguing. Barkworm just branched it off because it was off-topic but worthy of its own thread.

I was totally fine with it. Like you said, it absolutely served the story. And FF missed the MCU boat in phase 1, so I’m fine with some changes. In a perfect world, the FF would have been active or just starting around the same time Tony became Iron Man.

The Robin comparison isn’t completely fair. Robin/Dick is way more iconic and important than Silver Surfer ever was or will be.

But the new switcheroo they like to pull is making Tim Drake black/biracial. Same with Wally. And the best adaptation of Wally in the past 20 years killed him off in season 2 lol.

They should've just had the F4 jump forward in time from the 60s in the first movie and, at the same time, reveal the X-Men have been hiding in plain site for decades and we see what's really going on at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.

That's it. Nice, neat. No alternate worlds, Doomsdays and world merging or THIS team is on THIS world and THAT team is on that world mumbo jumbo.

Seriously. They were so intent on that 60’s setting/aesthetic, but forced all these mental gymnastics to make it work.

And it still doesn’t really make much sense that everybody looked the same when they went to Earth 818, but Reed was John Krasinsky. I know they just hand wave and say “multiverse”, but it doesn’t sit right with me.

So... possibly great strides in dismantling a decent portion of the weaponization of the arts of late. Let's look at the state of the union now:

* Skydance bought up Paramount last year. We have yet to really see the ramifications of that yet but it would reason to say that Skydance probably has no interest in "The Message™."

* Paramount just won its pursuit of WB, so soon WB will be brought under the same umbrella. We can really only speculate what this will mean beyond the above.

* Disney/Marvel has had the crap kicked out of it with just about every movie and Disney+ release for the last two or three years, largely because of its last gasps of the woke/untalented activist type of material that got squeezed out at the buzzer before Iger said they're not doing that crap anymore. So they've pretty much been beaten into submission in the corner and are showing big signs of coming around on no more of "The Message™" and letting there be projects for boys again and not just girls or the "Modern Audience" that does not exist in any financially beneficial way.

So pretty seismic shifts that we'll probably see the fruit of in... eh, the next 2-4 years or so?

I think it depends on how much political messages are conveyed and delivered in art and culture. They need to be done cleverly and not super in your face and in a preachy way. So many things are done with the subtly of a sledgehammer.

Changing characters nationalities or "race" has been a thing for a long time, like Baxter Stockman in the FW series. But it didn't have the political soapbox intentions behind it like all those Netflix shows and that horrible Scooby-Doo spin-off Velma had.

Just like there's been strong women in fiction since forever. No one had a problem with Samus Aran, Lara Croft or that woman from Kill Bill. But female Ghostbusters movie... that was not innocent. And yet, the vultures attacked James Rolfe for refusing to watch and review the movie.

A lot of people will accuse us of being racist or sexist when we point those things out, sadly. If creators want to make black characters, lesbian characters, etc., then they should simply create their own brand new characters. Don't change established characters like Bruce Wayne, April O'Neil, Arsene Lupin, etc.

I'm glad Japan doesn't seem to be taking part in this nonsense so far.

Yeah, and where's all the uproar about Japanese cinema not being diverse enough? How come it's mostly only Japanese actors and actresses?!

I hate how you can get lumped in with one side or the other for not liking something, regardless of your reasoning.

I was pretty angry when they announced 2016 Ghostbusters, just not for any “political” reason. I didn’t like how the decided to move forward with it when Harold Ramis’ body was practically still warm. Felt gross. But if I pointed that out… I was a misogynist or a Trump supporter of whatever. Shut up.

Occasionally you'll see people complaining about that when it comes to Japanese media and media from European countries. There was a minor outrage over The Witcher III not having any people of colour. The Witcher is a game series made by a Polish company that's an adaptation of a Polish fantasy novel series. Like OK, the games have elves, dwarves and other mythical creatures, but nonetheless, it's a little absurd to DEMAND them to add Black and Indian people to the game, no? And I bet that if they added black people or Indians to the game and a couple of them turned out to be bad guys, there'd be outrage over it too. You can't win with those people.

Quite frankly, most of that outrage when it comes to diversity in the media comes from young Americans. Americans in general, whether they're left-wing or right-wing, tend to have exceptionalistic attitudes and assume the whole world should work like the US. That's one thing that really pisses me off.

Also, this.

We will probably be seeing a lot more straight white males in leading roles going forward. I remember how it was in the 90's, most shows and movies had an all-white cast, you had maybe one token black guy, and the only time Asians would be shown if they needed kung-fu karate experts. Gays and lesbians were almost never seen (unless it was just two girls making out for some reason), and you'd never hear a whisper of a transgender character.

Also is it just me or were they never any Indians in shows/movies back then either? Like almost never, you would barely see any minorities unless they were black, some hispanics, and Asians were just relegated to kung-fu karate flicks.

Black people in American shows and movies were already common place before the 90s.

Perhaps the South Asian population of USA is not very large and there's not a lot of South Asian actors in Hollywood?

I think a lot of people don’t realise Ben Kingsley is half Indian. But you’re right, there weren’t a lot in Western shows and films last century.

Anybody like The Boondocks? I thought of this thread when I saw this Aaron McGruder quote the other day:

“No matter what message you have, you better be captivating your audience first. Or, understand, nobody’s going to listen.”