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.

That's interesting. I'll have to do some of my own googling into this.

But, regardless, don't you think it would have been better delivering this theme in a way that was more reflective of how Lucy Maud Montgomery conveyed it? They had a whole episode in which Anne's friend's aunt openly presents as lesbian at a private party, and this feels very discordant with the tone of the books. If it's true that she was interested in such themes, it would have been much more clever and authentic to have seen them conveyed "under the radar", through disguised comments, looks and plot devices here and there, as they perhaps would have been at the time. Being so explicit about it, in a historical context, is just lazy, banal writing in my opinion.

Fucking hell, calm down.

@carbonarya TL:DR: I've realised I'm considered an old reactionary these days and I don't like it, why don't they show Benny Hill and Allo Allo on TV these days etc

And jim'll fix it, rolf Harris cartoon time and that alf garnett one

Well there is Mrs Brown's Boys. You could argue though that has an agenda that foul mouthed rants from a man dressed as a woman should be considered comedy, and that we should forgive a tax dodging cast.

I don't watch it as it is the best argument for abolishing the licence fee there is.

Completely agree OP. Also on a somewhat related note: you're a beautiful writer!

why don't they show Benny Hill and Allo Allo on TV these days etc

Allo Allo is on Freeview, and Benny Hill was crap.

I agree. Like anything by Taylor Sheridan (his shows are fun but it's like being whacked on the head by a thematic mallet). In Mayor of Kingstown, Dianne Wiest's character basically gives a little lecture in every episode telling what the point of the episode is. It's almost funny (in the wrong way).

Why is Anne a lesbian icon — as opposed to being an icon for bookish young girls generally? I’m a lesbian myself, but have never heard this, so I’m surprised. If anything, her obvious interest in Gilbert from very early on always made her rather resolutely heterosexual. She starts off the books as an icon for awkward, not-classically-pretty girls everywhere; but (a bit like Jo March and Laurie), the (very heteronormative) handsome-boy’s-childhood-sweetheart trope always left me feeling a little alienated.

Even when I was a kid and still thought I would like to marry a handsome boy, I was painfully aware that in real life the handsome boy normally doesn’t actually fall in love with the awkward bookish plain poor girl (who miraculously then blooms into a beautiful auburn-haired goddess on her eighteenth birthday)!

It’s not about being environmentally skeptic. I want to hear environment-related content—at other times, like when I’m reading or watching news content or a documentary. I don’t want it when I am watching Tolkien. Is that too much to ask?

If you don't want to hear a message about society when you're reading then for goodness' sake stay away from Charles Dickens.

You are not wrong OP. But that won’t go down well on this forum. Virtue signalling is a national sport for some on here.

The left-leaning BBC??!! Seriously? Have you seen Question Time lately? Fiona Bruce is so Tory it's not funny.
The DG is an ex-conservative candidate and the controversial director is a Tory donor.
It was the BBC that gave that famous lefty Farage a platform..he was on Question Time 33 times (it's probably more now).

Sure. That doesn't mean others aren't. Also the whole point of the story is the battle at the time between what is best for women's health and then the morality of the society at the time (including religion).

CTM also included a stroy line of a nun running off with the doctor. You aren't getting your knickers in a twist about that, although I am sure most nuns wouldn't be up for that.

Gilchesterton, spot on, stay away from dickens op

Look through the thread. We already discussed Dickens

We already talked about Dickens. In a nutshell, Dickens, unlike the writers of these shows and films, was counter cultural for his day. Also, Dickens actually cared deeply about these issues and the themes dominated the entirety of many of his works. 21st century producers don't really care about the moral issues they're addressing - they're just doing it tokenistically to stay on the right side of activists. They inject moral lessons in a way that is incongruous to the rest of their work to tick a box. Dickens does it in a way that is coherent with the entire plot, because the issues he's concerned about are literally the entire theme of his novels.

Even then, having actually studied Victorian writers at university, I would say that Dickens comes last place in the great novelists in terms of nuance. He does many things fantastically, but the way he paints villains and heroes and the sexes is very pantomime-esque. E.g. His female characters are either crazy hags or angelic saints. Read the scene when Nell dies in the Old Curiosity Shop. Victorian sentimentalism at its sugariest.

I do love Dickens, but he wasn't the benchmark of nuance when it came to charactisation

I'm really not sure how anyone thinks it's credible that in CTM, the majority of the main characters seem either fully or partly on board with changing the abortion laws. Some, maybe especially the ones who weren't nuns? Sure. That's realistic and would have made for a good show, if they showed the kinds of real conflicts in people's thinking.

What I found very notable is when they were addressing it, you didn't actually get anyone really describing what the beliefs and principles of many people, especially nuns, would have been at the time.

You almost get the impression that the writers think anyone from the 60s who isn't socially progressive according to 21st century norms just was a fuddy duddy for no reason, and incapable of making an argument for their position. Which is clearly bollocks.

Doctor Mansplainer in particular seems completely improbable, not so much for his views, he could have been a radical person, but because he behaves as if he is completely unaware why many people felt differently. It's like he's been transplanted from 2020.

I'm sure Sister Evangelina wouldn't have put up with any of it.

@JaneyGee the only people I know who use the word 'woke' are the frothing, rabid right-wingers - so not sure why the word makes you 'laugh' when no sane, normal person would actually use it

I should imagine that people, even nuns, who worked with women having multiple pregnancies, dying in childbirth, young girls getting pregnant, forced marriage, rape etc would be pretty pro-choice. And they are Anglican nuns also.

I don't know he to phrase this without inciting a pile on, but I feel irritated by the producers of historical series expecting viewers to be colour blind when they cast.

With a few very minor exceptions (the mixed race aristocrat (Belle?) About whom a film has been made, the small numbers of black people in the UK in the 17 and 1800s were not aristocrats, UMC etc. So why are we pretending they were? And if it's because we're supposed to be colour blind (and it seems were expected to be so in an attempt to redress the total lack of black rgc characters in period dramas) ... Why? We're not vote blind. If we were, we wouldn't have to redress the balance in the first place.

I don't get it.

*not colour blind.

Im trying to define why it irritates makes me uncomfortable and I think it's because it's so inauthentic.

Not a word, I know but...

Those novels/plays were set in a country with with a vast majority Caucasus population. The class of the people that the novels are about were 99% or more Caucasian. This is true of both novels written around the time that there set, and of historical/period novels written recently but set in the e 1700s and 1800s.
So I don't get why we're expected to accept non Caucasian actors being cast in the roles; and as I said, if we're supposed to now be colour blind, it's BS . . None of our issues on this front would exist if humans were colour blind.
I find the casting jars because it's so unauthentic.

If it's "Rome" and every race on the planet Is cast; cool, that's authentic. 1800s Victorian England among aristocrats and the UMC; no.

*vast majority Caucasian population

I'd it that it's illegal and they'd be open to suing if they reject actors on the basis of race for any role; even if the role would is clearly a Caucasian British aristocrat in the 1800s?

Or is it just that the producers feel they should represent all races, totally regardless of the race of the characters? It seems that way. But it just totally jars for me (and I should emphasise that is not due to anyone's race; it's due to them playing a role that I'd a different race, and it matters because of the context of the story.