My favorite movie reviewer is a fellow on You Tube going by the name of The Critical Drinker, a Scot with a sense of humor so dry it requires constant lubrication by alcohol. Besides, if there’s anything to Ancestry DNA he’s one of my distant cousins.
Apr 25, 2023·edited Apr 26, 2023Liked by Ohio Barbarian
I think I love him.
As a woman who actually went through the inequalities and sexism whilst working in the sixties, seventies, etc. - still happening, IMO - I do not consider overtly "woke" entertainment as entertainment. Example - the first few minutes of Amazon's LOTR spin-off consisted of informing me that women were brave and men were not. Nope. Bye-bye. A great thing about GOT was the women were just as mean and murderous as the men.
For no reason I can specify, I was watching a Turkish soap opera - well, two of them - called "Magnificent Century" - there are about eleven hundred four hour long episodes, and it took me a while to tell the actors apart, because the men all had beards and turbans, and the women all shared the same makeup and hair and clothing department, but once I got that sorted out - the women were a LOT scarier than the men. Heh, until I started to recognize individuals, I didn't even bother to watch episodes in order. Now I recognize Turkish actors. Just like all sumo wrestlers looked the same until I watched Terao wrestle. Yes, I can be quite shallow on an international level. Anyway, overt wokeness, to me, is just as actually pointless as a lapel pin or a hashtag. Sorry, I just wish to be entertained. My bad. For other stuff, there are, ya know, documentaries and so forth. Won't even go into how pretty much all western entertainment addresses Russia as "Russia BAD"; I don't think "Russia paradise", but really, how boringly obvious.
And emphasizing "wokeness" when shilling a movie or TV show guarantees that I will not watch it. And good grief - how many people only watch entertainment in order to calculate correct amount of wokeness? So sad. And boring. Like when some folks did not care what Bernie Sanders actually said, they just counted brown faces in the crowd on on the platform.
Years ago, I learned that only casting Asian actors in Asian roles was racist, and also that casting non-Asian actors in Asian roles was racist. Same in principle for some other groups. Um, whut?
Thanks for this, OB, I have subscribed, and will likely spend time figuring out if I have seen all of those movie clips! Also, if I were ever inclined to have another relationship, "drunk movie critic" would be high on my list of admirable traits.
Apr 26, 2023·edited Apr 26, 2023Liked by Ohio Barbarian
Brilliant exegesis of the problematic nature of the “woke” term… and especially compelling in terms of the Scot’s elevation of the concept of nuance - which is so lacking in too many of today’s cultural conversations.
Otherwise I can only echo djean111’s conclusions… and thank her for raising a number of points I might have included myself - though perhaps not as eloquently.
Excellent presentation by Drinker and he really identified that problems of shallowness/lack of character development that I have long noticed in American cinema to the extent that I rarely if ever have an interest in contemporary cinema. I think this is far from a new thing though it may be more recently characterized as 'wokeness'....American cultcher (from blue jeans to McDonalds to cinema) at one time was one of the most exportable commodities and a symptom of its soft power....But as the late great Benjamin Barber argued in JIHAD vs. McWorld (1996), the cinema became as ubiquitous as it was similar.
I think I love him.
As a woman who actually went through the inequalities and sexism whilst working in the sixties, seventies, etc. - still happening, IMO - I do not consider overtly "woke" entertainment as entertainment. Example - the first few minutes of Amazon's LOTR spin-off consisted of informing me that women were brave and men were not. Nope. Bye-bye. A great thing about GOT was the women were just as mean and murderous as the men.
For no reason I can specify, I was watching a Turkish soap opera - well, two of them - called "Magnificent Century" - there are about eleven hundred four hour long episodes, and it took me a while to tell the actors apart, because the men all had beards and turbans, and the women all shared the same makeup and hair and clothing department, but once I got that sorted out - the women were a LOT scarier than the men. Heh, until I started to recognize individuals, I didn't even bother to watch episodes in order. Now I recognize Turkish actors. Just like all sumo wrestlers looked the same until I watched Terao wrestle. Yes, I can be quite shallow on an international level. Anyway, overt wokeness, to me, is just as actually pointless as a lapel pin or a hashtag. Sorry, I just wish to be entertained. My bad. For other stuff, there are, ya know, documentaries and so forth. Won't even go into how pretty much all western entertainment addresses Russia as "Russia BAD"; I don't think "Russia paradise", but really, how boringly obvious.
And emphasizing "wokeness" when shilling a movie or TV show guarantees that I will not watch it. And good grief - how many people only watch entertainment in order to calculate correct amount of wokeness? So sad. And boring. Like when some folks did not care what Bernie Sanders actually said, they just counted brown faces in the crowd on on the platform.
Years ago, I learned that only casting Asian actors in Asian roles was racist, and also that casting non-Asian actors in Asian roles was racist. Same in principle for some other groups. Um, whut?
Thanks for this, OB, I have subscribed, and will likely spend time figuring out if I have seen all of those movie clips! Also, if I were ever inclined to have another relationship, "drunk movie critic" would be high on my list of admirable traits.
A
Brilliant exegesis of the problematic nature of the “woke” term… and especially compelling in terms of the Scot’s elevation of the concept of nuance - which is so lacking in too many of today’s cultural conversations.
Otherwise I can only echo djean111’s conclusions… and thank her for raising a number of points I might have included myself - though perhaps not as eloquently.
Excellent presentation by Drinker and he really identified that problems of shallowness/lack of character development that I have long noticed in American cinema to the extent that I rarely if ever have an interest in contemporary cinema. I think this is far from a new thing though it may be more recently characterized as 'wokeness'....American cultcher (from blue jeans to McDonalds to cinema) at one time was one of the most exportable commodities and a symptom of its soft power....But as the late great Benjamin Barber argued in JIHAD vs. McWorld (1996), the cinema became as ubiquitous as it was similar.