…or how political shit needs to leave entertainment alone!
The more I see movies and shows being rebooted, and new characters replacing old ones, the more I think that Hollywood, the BBC and other entertainment outlets have lost the script entirely. They want to put feminism, identity politics, and other political messages in something that doesn’t need it. I mean, who wants to see The Doctor preach about girl power, or Marvel heroes drone on about representation? I sure don’t.
We are all just trolls.
This frustrates and angers me more than anything. There are many of us from different fandoms who grew up loving franchises like Star Wars and Doctor Who, franchises with wonder, action, solid characters and plots that drew us into another world or reality for a short time. Now, there can be no immersion for us when there are shallow characters who can do no wrong, and a Doctor that misses the mark week after week, and as for comics and cartoons? Well, I’ll get to them. Instead of listening to the fans who faithfully cling to the canon we all know and love, they labels us trolls and slap on labels like “Nazi”, “Misogynist”, and the list goes on. They double down by telling us not to watch the shows and movies if we think we’re not going to like them, and then chide us when we don’t. It’s not that we are hateful trolls. It’s that we’re disillusioned and frustrated with the ever-growing political correctness and identity politics in franchises that are not known for having any of that crap in the first place.
We need strong female leads.
This one gets me. In the race to claim “the first”, they forget about the predecessors. What happened to Linda Carter? Janeway? Ripley? Did they forget Summer Glau in Firefly and Serenity? Have they tossed aside Carrie Fischer, who’s character was one of the strongest females in a sci-fi fantasy before the others? She was the leader of a rebellion for Christ sake, but let’s all praise Rey for magically being able to master the force in one movie, because reasons? Give. Me. A. Break.
Throughout entertainment history, there have been a bevy of strong females in both lead and support roles, but they have all been forgotten and replaced with Mary Sues who we are supposed to love and can do anything and everything perfect without training or talent beforehand. This isn’t good writing. This is the equivalent to children playing pretend in the backyard and one-upping each other by adding talents the character they are pretending to be not being able to do that before. This is bad fan fiction, not TRUE Hollywood blockbuster material.
I never complained about female leads when I was growing up, because the story was there, and it was good. They didn’t have to openly proclaim who they were. They showed us with well-written arcs and strong plots.
Cartoons are for children.
Bullshit. Utter and total bullshit. Cartoons are a medium of entertainment that extends to adulthood. Yes, grown-ups love watching cartoons, too. After all, we were the generation who got up on Saturday mornings, fixed ourselves cereal, and sat to watch our cartoons from seven in the morning until lunch. We are also the generation that is watching our shows be rebooted into a fraction of a shadow of what they used to be, and we are not happy. Yes, we understand the reboots are targeted to a younger audience, but dumbing down our beloved cartoons just makes us think you believe the children of the new generation are stupid. They are not, and they don’t need your politics in their shows. Let them children. Period.
Star Wars, Star Trek…
They both had their own political power plays and strife. They had their own inner conflicts. They don’t real-world problems injected into them. We don’t watch fiction to be reminded of our real-world problems. We watch fiction to escape the stress of the world we live in, and we can’t do that with identity politics being shoved in our faces in our entertainment as well.
Comic Books…
I have been watching the decline in solid stories in comic books through the people who create content on YouTube. It’s sad to see how much the artwork has declined and how much the story telling has gone downhill. Again, these are runs and universes that have their own intrinsic problems. They don’t need ours added to them.
Original Content…
I was going to say something here about original works and knocking it off with the reboots, but I am beginning to think that the originators of the books and stories Hollywood could court might just be afraid of what would become of their works if put into the hands of today’s Hollywoood.
We may never see a live-action/CG Dragonriders of Pern, and quite frankly, if they are going to bastardize the series with identity politics, the stories are best left in print.
Keep your mind open,
Maddy
House of Geek 