To not be able to stand film and TV nowadays because it always has an agenda?

[mintlily]

I've noticed that I can only bear to watch TV shows and films produced until roughly 2008.

It feels like everything nowadays has some kind of moral or political agenda. The writers are either trying to show off how enlightened they are, or condition you to accept their certain neo-Marxist world view. Virtually ALL dramas have an LGBT, feminist or anti-racist agenda, delivered with 0 subtlety or nuance. And the way it is done is so patronising and disrespectful to historical writers and figures - as if we 21st century people are the moral arbiters of history, and must overlay our more enlightened worldview on their bigoted work, which was surely produced in ignorance. It's also patronising to the intelligence of viewers, as if we need everything censored for our innocent eyes and can't make our own moral judgements. There is something puritanical and unartistic about it, like the Victorians censoring art to not corrupt the masses.

For example:

The new Little Mermaid deleting the line "men don't like women who blabber" from Ursula's songs. Ursula is a villain. We can cope with her being sexist, for goodness sake - we know that we're supposed to think she's wrong. The writer didn't need to fret that children would internalise the worldview of the villain.

Anne of Green Gables and her gay best friend. Why? This is not the genre to deal with LGBT issues. The author had no interest in this subject (as far as I'm aware).

Call the Midwife and it's pro-abortion stance. As if CATHOLIC MIDWIVES IN THE 1970s would have been pro-abortion?!

It's nothing to do with your actual views on these subjects. I just find that TV and film lacks the nuance and intelligence that it used to and I actually can't bear to watch any of it anymore, as it just feels so soulless.

There's a lot to be said for things either being well written or badly written. Oscar had it about right. Lots of mainstream television is written by people who seem to be channelling Legs Akimbo. Whereas good writing are the people who had the insight to create Legs Akimbo, ie the League of Gentlemen.

And Just Like That is a fantastic example of pretzeling a social issue into a bad story and character.

@MovinGroovinBarbie

the typical woke reaction

Typical lazy stereotyping.

Yep, every single new film/soap/drama in existence has a lefty liberal blah blah blah agenda and is ramming it down our throats 😄

@MarkWithaC

lefty liberal blah blah blah agenda and is ramming it down our throats 😄

My mother-in-law once said that she didn't like full frontal male nudity 'rammed down her throat' and couldn't understand why me, DH, and even the two teens were falling about laughing.

😆

On the subject of adverts. This morning there were about 15 or so adverts on my Facebook feed from UK companies, most of them had some people in. All the people in all the adverts were black - individuals, couples, families. There were no white or Asian people in any of them.

@RudsyFarmer , someone gave us a (very good) cartoon version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when dd1 was very small - we were living abroad at the time and there was sod all available for children. She watched it over and over.
TBH it took ages to dawn on me that Aslan was ‘Jesus’! He was just a very good Goodie.

"People of colour are overrepresented on TV = complaining".

"You think there are too many black people on TV."

Except I actually said they were 'overrepresented in comparison to their prevalence in society' which isn't the same thing.

And it's also not the same as saying there are 'too many'.

'Too many' is a value judgement whilst the other is an factual statement based on numbers. For example, if 50% of the shows on TV were car shows most people would say this was 'too many' but I'd love it as I'm into fast cars. So clearly 'too many' is an ambiguous statement.

However, if 50% of the shows on TV were car shows and only 5% of the population watched them then you could say they were 'overrepresented in comparison with their viewing demographic'. Sadly, many of the woke seem to struggle to understand the difference between fact and opinion.

It's not complicated but if it makes you feel good to keep misquoting me and erroneously 'paraphrasing' my posts then please continue. Everybody else can see what I actually wrote.

Yet you're confirming the stereotype. 😂

Yeah yeah yeah 🙄

I completely agree with you, telly is becoming so patronising and utterly hypocritical.

Call the midwife has become unwatchable

That's completely false. You must not have read the books.

She doesn't go to hell but she is singled out and separated from the others IIRC.

This is an easily verifiable population fact, normally people who want to check something like that spend the two seconds to look it up.

Those who live in places like London often have a completely incorrect sense of the demographics of the country. Big cities in most places are concentrations of ethnic or other types of population diversity. If you go into small towns in England, or Scotland, or Lesotho, you will find it's quite a different stor.

@DemiColon I read somewhere that because most productions are london based the demographics in them are different exactly for the reasln you mention.

There is serious underrepresentation off screen in the industry, but on screen it is the opposite. There were articles about it few years ago. Iirc for disabled the underrepresentation runs on and off screen considerably mofe than other groups.

Yeah, isolated. Allegorically 'cast out'.

YEs, yes , YES, so glad someone said it. I feel the exact same! Stuff is just being rammed down our throats! No artistical freedom, you have to stick to the zeitsgeist or you can't say jack! They changed the Roald Dahl books for goodness sake?

As a biracial First nations woman, with a black son and a partner who is a transman I agree. I feel totally over represented.
Am I watching a movie or my real life unfold?

Things were easier in the good ole days when the blacks were hidden and the gays in the closet.

Nothing worse than media having an agenda to teach about racism and homophobia! I mean, who needs minorities to feel more included? We're fine. My son has been called the N word more times than I count and he's only 12, but it's fine. Racisms is so yesterday.

I wouldn't be surprised if MN deleted this thread. cause its against the woke to have opinions like this. I'm going to read while I can

I don't mind as long as it doesn't stray into obvious, crass proselytising - like Star Trek Discovery and the "non-binary" character that jarred me out of the story. Stopped watching at that point. And there's some clunkiness in You S3 as well.
Generally anything I watch on Now seems okay though.

OP you might like Succession.

I don’t completely agree. The good tv shows and films I’ve watched don’t feel at all like preaching, they just actually relate to my life and those around me. I feel so much happier watching tv than I did in the 90s. That’s the truth. Quite happy with sexism just not being a thing.

How brave of you.

But it's often so patronisingly done. And usually preaching to the converted. Let's be real, no hardened racist is going to change their views after watching a sitcom.

But it's often so patronisingly done. And usually preaching to the converted. Let's be real, no hardened racist is going to change their views after watching a sitcom

That’s the thing isn’t it @MovinGroovinBarbie

much is always written about the lack of diversity in Friends (never the same criticisms about Frazier or Will & Grace).

even the creators said if they made it today, they would never have an all-white cast. But if a sitcom was cast today you could almost guarantee of six characters, one would be white, one black, one gay, one trans or non binary rather than focusing on the chemistry between the actors.

now I do agree that friends does look problematic looking back. But it was the chemistry between the six cast that made it the show that it was.

a show like Brooklyn 99 did diversity excellently. Two Latina characters, black characters, white characters, different ages, but again, each character was beautifully written and when it covered tricky topics, it did it sensitively and in reference to the previous character development

Is Friends really that unrealistic for its time though? The characters were from different social classes, with a mixture of wasp, Italian and Jewish. Isn’t that plausible for Manhattan in the 90s?