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.

I admittedly don't watch huge amounts of TV and film as it comes out, but when I do, I find that more often than not it's extremely unpolitical, to the extent that I'm disappointed by how little it has to say of consequence. People get worked up because a show has a woman holding a sword or a brief mention of someone being gay as if this was some kind of extreme left agenda. Whilst a minority of shows might go very hard for political messaging, most of the time the producers seem quite happy to stay away from it.

Exactly, why if you're not attractive, heterosexual and white are you a "token", it's quite disturbing so many people as demonstrated on this thread think this way. White = normal it seems

@Jumpering, yes, I hate that - costume drama characters using very contemporary language/expressions make me cringe. I particularly remember a minor male aristocrat in some Victorian era drama saying, ‘If she fell pregnant..’. Double cringe! If not treble.

It’s not about showing those things a a natural part of the story, it’s about the fact that they shoehorn them in and then make a big deal of it, eg the fucking annoying Che story in AJLT. In my book that’s totally different from casting diverse actors to play a role, it’s more that the role then becomes a character and everyone around them has to be educated.

It's not even remotely that. Tv, movies and books have regularly featured a "moral" but that was a natural part of the story. Something that would make you think. Now the "moral" is being pushed at the expense of the story with the story clearly being used, very badly, as a vehicle to tell you how to think. It's really, really fucking boring and tiresome. And we're far from the only ones who think that way, as companies like Disney have absolutely tanked flagship properties like Star Wars with this nonsense.

*Caricature

I honestly don't watch live TV at home anymore or go to the cinema. I mostly watch old shows and films online. When I do watch TV at my mum's I find that every advert is trying way to hard to be woke or political, it's embarrassing to watch.

It’s a token if the people around that actor are constantly being shown to be bigoted for no reason.

Harking back to SATC eg Miranda, a successful lawyer, not understanding that a black woman could be her professor. Just utter bollocks and demeaning to both black women and Miranda’s character.

What you mean like George Orwell, or Fahrenheit 451, hell even Dirty Dancing was pro abortion!

Compare the black characters in a white show run like SATC, Vs something like How to get away with Murder with a black showrunner and it's really obvious how tokenistic some of these characters are

I agree. It's like how every furniture advert you see seems to have an interracial couple. No issue with it but it's not representative of the actual demographics of our society.

I think it'd make more sense to represent different demographics in line with their prevalence in society rather than going for absolute equal representation.

Maybe you're just watching the wrong TV shows then?

I remember Brooklyn 99 did this in later series and it was clunky. I stopped watching.

But it doesn't apply at all to my favourite shows of the past 5 years - like Succession, Motherland, Star Wars spin offs.

Except Black people, and Black women in particular, have shared that racism - including from educated, successful White people - is still a real, lived, often-daily experience for them? I can't comment as to Miranda's character as I never watched SATC, thought it was a silly show even at the beginning, but you're naive if you think the US doesn't have an issue with that type of thinking present at all levels of society. Check out the experiences Michelle Obama was subjected to. So it showing up in media shouldn't be a surprise.

White = normal it seems

Correct. 82% of the UK population is white.

Well yes it's not representative of the exact demographic background, but for decades and decades before it wasn't either - and I assume you didn't point out how pretty much everyone on TV adverts was white?

Ad execs are trying to right decades of wrongs, and show non white people, non able bodies, non stick thin bodies, many might be seeing people like them on TV ads for the first time ever. I say go for it.

and I assume you didn't point out how pretty much everyone on TV adverts was white?

Well, obviously. We're a majority white population. In Japan I'd imagine most adverts would feature Japanese people.

That's a good example.
People don't have issues with representation of everyone. It's how weirdly done it is in some series and movies.
Kind of feels like old lecture tales for children, doesn't it.
It's a shame because 10 years ago it didn't even register with me that there were black/asian/gay/any other characters etc, because they were there just naturally. It's actually made things worse imho.

It's the same with virtually everything. I believe it is called "intersectionality" - inserting these agendas into everything.

eg I'm an accountant. Go to an accountancy website or get a magazine - full of all the official agendas - usually with some link to accounting and how it is so relevant and you have to do this, think that etc.

You pick up a magazine for your hobby. You know, a place you go to escape from politics and the like. Yep, that's full of these agendas too and opinion pieces opining that the hobbyspace is "too white" etc etc. Pretty tiresome really.

Black people, for example, represent 4% of the UK population yet more than 4 in every 100 people you see in adverts are black. So you could argue they're actually over represented in relation to their prevalence in our society.

Ok some examples of things I’ve watched post 2008 which were excellent-
wolf hall
this way up
catastophe
happy valley
back to life
loads of other stuff just can’t remember it at the moment!
All contained very real characters who were simultaneously good/ bad/ flawed, dealing with difficult situations but also a huge amount of everyday life. There were messages about life and morality in there but they absolutely did not shoehorn them in- it was all about the grey areas.

Data for this please?

I just don't think it's true that art for entertainment has always had a political agenda. At least, artists didn't seem to be as terrified of being seen to have the wrong opinions as they do nowadays. Or, it was ok to produce art without having to draw in every hot topic of the day. Art for art's sake is lost

I agree to an extent with OP’s argument. Though always important to remember that “wokeness” is essentially a reaction to the lazy stereotypes and racism which was prevalent across much of society - including on our screens, until way into the 1980s. There are decent critics of the woke phenomenon, but I’m always deeply suspicious of those who see it as some great evil and who consider it the worst thing happening in the West. “The good old” days were pretty shit if you were gay, black, Asian, Muslim, disabled etc

On another note, British cultural output is still massively influenced by the BBC. Which I find tends to put out fairly bland and predictable drama compared to big US media companies, as the BBC has to make a big song and dance about being fair and socially sensitive.

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Well said.

@MovinGroovinBarbie

You made the assertion, you back it up. That's how debate works.