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.

‘My point wasn't really about representation.’

No if course it wasn’t. I’m not racist but… I’m have gay friends but…

For me it gives me the impression that there are lots of black actors available to play those roles. It also makes me think that these days there are many black police officers, doctors etc. period dramas are usually more about our own society than they are about the past unless it involves a specific incident - and even then it is about our outlook on that event.

Ok, I had typos but it was not that incomprehensible.... 🙄

"some people overcook pasta and it's not nice then"
"so you are saying all pasta is disgusting, ok"

It depends I think on whether the period drama holds itself out to be historically accurate or not. If its a fictitious place and vague about time line I would be much more forgiving but if its specific city and year I think it should be reflective of the reality.

the answer is really simple: get rid of the TV! read some books instead.

Historical dramas, are not history lessons. They're escapism.

Non of them are "historically accurate". They're not supposed to be.

Many people manage both 😁
I love readkng but when I am nackered at the end of the day, I just don't have the concentration sometimes. Even for subtitles (which are a must with netflix non english seriws and movies because dubbing into english often lacks. A lot).
Something simpler to relax the brain.

The carry on over casting in The Little Mermaid and Rings of Power strongly suggests a lot of objections to diverse casting are also driven by an 'agenda', and not a benign one at that.

Still, I'm sure the same people would have had the same objections to, say, Robert Powell playing Jesus, right?

@Chermeup well if you consume visual junk food why complain of its quality? ))

Not everything on tv is junk food. Let's not pretend all books are made equal too😁

havent rdtft but i would like to add that i dont like Amol Rajan, the way he speaks, etc. he seems so fake to me. i dont know why they are pushing him forward nowadays, what they see in him. he seems to think of himself as gold dust, too. i have to change the channel he is on so quickly.

Amol Rajan is excellent on Today. Looking forward to UChallenge.

@Chermeup true, but, as you said, books take an effort to consume so probs require a bit of a more discerning taste.

In any case, if you "cant stand" something just avoid it?

That's what I do after few episodes.
But it's annoying when something starts well and turns into pretty annoying meh.
Same with books though!

Also it's a concentration issue with books in my case (as I said) , not about being choosy. Concentrating all day at work does my adhd brain no favours towards evening

I have a hard time thinking you aren't taking the piss with a comment like that. No one has said anything remotely resembling that.

With historical dramas: There is a real art form to doing them well. Something like Wolf Hall needs to feel, to the viewer, like it a window on another time and place, without being incomprehensible, or distracting.

Dialogue is part of that. It would be completely inappropriate to have a Jane Austen character speak in Valley Girl type slang, unless you are writing Clueless. Clueless is brilliant, but if we want something set in period you try, as a writer, to reflect the place and time, a more formal use of language, some more archaic, but still understandable, vocabulary, and especially avoiding very clearly modern colloquialisms.

Costuming etc is similar, you aren't going to present people of the past looking as scrubbed up as modern people, but on the other hand many productions avoid things like very bad teeth or skin diseases, because they are so distracting to the viewers.

Colourblind casting isn't necessarily a no go, but it will make a production something more like a play, and less like an immersive drama. But at the moment that kind of thing is clearly not as "blind" as people seem to like to imply. Notwithstanding the idiocy of the Cleopatra "documentary," as a role Cleopatra has been for years treated as something mainly seen as appropriate for black actresses, with an implication that a white actress in the role is somehow colonialist or something. Which is pretty silly

I don't really see ethnic diversity in a particular production as intrinsically good. I am quite fine with productions that aim to reflect accurate representations, be they set in Tudor England, or the far North of Canada, or a village in India. On television that's usually my preference, for realistic productions - for the theater I don't care so much. I am also happy for anyone to play any role they can be convincing in, but that will in many cases relate to their physical appearance - identity, IMO, is irrelevant in acting.

I'm not sure why anyone though would think like crap like Cleopatra, and that kind of casting in general, is anything other than deeply patronizing.

He didn't say no one was against racism. But the way it was thought about, and particularly the language used, has changed since then. As you'd expect.

This sort of thing is what anyone writing a historical piece should be well versed in. Or they aren't doing their jobs.

I had no problems with the diverse casting in The Little Mermaid. My problem is primarily with how moral and political issues are presented.

I can only assume you haven't read any of my comments here. My issue is not with diverse casting. It's with characters sermonising on moral issues.

Of course I'm not saying that there weren't people who were passionately opposed to racism in history. One of my great interests is in the history of the abolitionist movement, propelled primarily by the Quakers and William Wilberforce. I was just agreeing with this journalist's point that a lower middle class northern English family probably wouldn't have voiced their views using that particular vocabulary.

That's the thing. I don't think there is plenty out there that doesn't do this. You either have to watch old productions, or only the very very best TV and film out there, of which there's very little. Sometimes I want something lighthearted and low budget that's not preachy.

And I disagree but that could be because many of the shows with a diverse cast I have enjoyed and way into the story to notice or see these preachy things people claim.

Saying that, my own reality has been nothing but diversity so perhaps seeing such things in shows and movies as far back as I was a child, makes it difficult for me to notice any so-called preaching because I wasn’t looking for fallacies.

I recently watched BBC’s Inside Man and by some of these comments wonder if they would have found the beginning preachy about misogyny on public transport or complained how unrealistic it would be for a journalist to ride the tube, or the lack of mobile signals on tube trains, instead of just watching it as if they were reading a book.

This.

It is so frustrating to me that people think that it is possible to represent the past authentically. It's so weird. When I was a very young kid there were dramas about Henry VIII and his wives and Queen Victoria and everybody seems to think that those dramas were authentic representations of the past. How the hell could we know that? 100 years from now they won't be able to represent our time accurately. As I mentioned before when I see shows about the 1980s they are nothing like my memory and why should they be? They're TV shows.

And how far do you go with this historical realism that people seem to want? So only someone who really has blonde hair and blue eyes can play Harry Hotspur or only someone who really carries a bit of weight can play Henry VIII.