I’ve been known from time to time to scold the woke-scolds…and it’s that time again.
If someone wants to start a story with political preaching,
I get it. It may not sell well, but it
can probably find a niche audience, and at least that audience knows what it is
in for.
My issue come when the woke-scolds want to retrofit stuff
that was never about politics and try to shove their version of the world down
our throats. Usually it’s one screeching
harpy getting into a position of influence, and then shrieking about it loud
enough that everyone else just goes along because they a) are afraid to say
something, or b) just want the harpy to shut up.
Three stories recently have come under scrutiny for
straying from good storytelling and going into uber-woke territory. The first is the new Alien TV show on
FX. Now call me crazy, but the original Alien,
and its sequel, Aliens, is about scary space monsters that are near
unstoppable and can burst out of your chest.
The humans have to use their intelligence to beat these primal creatures
of horror. However, Noah Hawley has
announced his series will be about…wait for it…inequality. *BARF*
Then there are Captain America and Loki, both Marvel
franchises produced by a studio who seems to have forgotten that it was this
kind of preaching in the 1990s that so hollowed out the Marvel fanbase that
they had to sell off key parts of the franchise(X-Men, Spiderman, etc), leading
to the current legal issues getting Spidey an others back into the MCU. Captain America, for example, tells folks
that the American Dream isn’t available to everyone, ragging on every imagined
slight under the sun. Loki, on Disney+,
has decided to let us all know about Loki’s sexuality, as if any of us cared.
Think what you want about the role of Captain America and
the sexuality of Loki, but none of that has a place in our already-established
stories. I know this will be shocking,
but the average person goes to fantastical stories to escape the political
bullshit they already get shoved down their throats. And yes, I’d say the exact same thing if
Captain America came out as a MAGA-flag waving redneck or Loki decided he
needed to wax episodic about the benefits of finding a good church. No one wants this shit.
Again, start your own fucking stories. Is it really asking so much that we get some
level of escape from this crap? Does everything
have to be political or preachy? A
backlash is coming from all those who only want to be left alone to enjoy their
favorite stories without being preached at in ways that are not in accordance
with the characters or story, and the first part of that backlash will be these
franchises going broke. Again.
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