I apologize for my long-windedness. Took Adderall for my final exam this morning, but now I've got the rest of the day with my mind running and ready to jump onto anything, without any actual schoolwork to direct it towards
TL;DR -
- I support/promote diversity and positive minority representation in media, but I am right alongside you in my loathing of poorly-written, shoehorned political messaging (not limited to diversity/representation, obviously) that detracts from the integrity of the work itself.
- When it does happen, even the people being pandered to generally don't like being pandered to; because ingenuine attempts at pandering usually result in poor-quality media, but is also liable to stumble into pitfalls that further misrepresent or harm the groups it's "advocating" for.
- However, not everyone knows how to properly identify actual pandering. Some people are whiny babies with nothing better to do but actively seek out any hint of non-cishetwhitemale characters existing or being important in media, and throw a tantrum over it.
- Diversity and representation can be well-written and woven skillfully into the natural setting, or fundamental themes, of a work. This is not pandering or shoehorning, and is not an example of pushing a political agenda.
- We need to be on the same page about what constitutes an "agenda" or pandering before a meaningful conversation about it can be had.
@ericv00 I respect this response. I definitely see what
@residntevl was saying too, though, and kinda got those vibes myself from your first post that started this tangent - but mostly because it sounded suspiciously similar to what people who
are like what residntevl described often say.
Of course that doesn't mean
you are like that, so I'm glad you've been able to elaborate, and I'll say I actually agree with the general sentiment here. I am definitely a huge proponent of increasing diversity in all areas of media (including behind-the-scenes) as well as more positive representation of various minority demographics
(I don't want the subject of my art in my PFP to mislead anyone when I talk about diversity - I am white). However, I also turn my nose up at pandering attempts at diversity that are shoehorned into media and/or are poorly done.
But let it be clear, that (to my understanding) real people in the groups being "represented" this way
do not want that either. No one likes being pandered to. It's soulless and ingenuine. It not only hurts the quality and integrity of the media it's bogging down, but it can also do more harm to the actual people it's pandering to. Because if a group of writers are only adding what they perceive to be "woke stuff" to a piece of media to appease an audience, then their lack of actual care will easily lead them to make terrible decisions or otherwise handle the subject matter poorly. That's a prime way to end up with tokenism, annoying/unlikable or one-dimensional characters, misrepresentation, running blind into controversial or sensitive subjects, and inadvertently perpetuating stereotypes or caricatures. This benefits no one. So when you see this happening, know that we (i.e. the "woke" folk) generally dislike it, too.
And that's in addition to the basic value of not ruining art by shoving irrelevant messages into it, even if those messages are true. Hopefully we all agree Hitler was a bad man, but if a show like Ozark suddenly introduced a Jewish character whose entire purpose was to talk about how awful Hitler was and distract from the cartel drama to teach the audience about the horrors of ethnic cleansing... I'd be pissed. Because (aside from the inherent disservice to that character and Jewish viewers) even though no decent human being on the face of the planet would disagree with the message or its importance, the fact is that it's completely irrelevant to the show and is actively detracting from the established themes, characters, and plot. Even worse if it's poorly-done (which was kind of a condition of my example - I'm sure talented enough writers could find a way to naturally weave Nazis into the story and touch on relevant subtle messaging without plummeting the quality or integrity of the show, as it literally
has been done in shows before - but that's not what I'm describing here). But the point to take away is, I stand with you on valuing the integrity of media and art, and quite loathe when
any poorly-written messaging (even good messages) is unnaturally forced into it and bashes the viewer over the head with such on-the-nose one-liners or caricatures that you'd think we were in kindergarten.
But here comes my
real, actual, final point: I've very rarely actually seen that happen. It could happen more frequently than I think, if I'm just not looking in the right places, so I'll leave room for that possibility. However, I
do know that there are many pieces of media that have been skewered over this alleged "pandering" or "ruining" of the franchise, when in reality that's not what's happening at all. The reason I distrust people who talk about pandering to "woke culture" is because I distrust people's ability to actually
discern when something is actually pandering. When there are people throwing tantrums over a single video game in a franchise finally getting a female lead, or the mere
inclusion of anyone who's not white in a main cast of characters, or a few-second shot of a bunch of female heroes being powerful together in the middle of a
battle (i.e. exactly where you'd expect to see them doing that), where no words are even spoken and literally nobody would even notice unless they were explicitly
looking for things to criticize (as if we haven't seen nearly identical shots of all male characters a million times before and never said anything about it)..........
..........then, when cases like those exist, it becomes abundantly clear that there are plenty of people out there who do not have enough brain cells to tell the difference between a non-white, non-straight, non-cisgender, non-male character being important (or sometimes just
existing) in the media, and pandering. Depicting strong female leads is not pandering to feminism. Because surprise, there are still more strong male leads than female ones. Women are far from "taking over"
anything. Having gay or trans characters exist in a piece of media is not pandering to LGBT+ people. Because surprise, they exist in real life, and the chances of knowing one (or several) are actually pretty high. It would be unrealistic to
not ever include them. Etc.
I'm not saying that
you're saying any of those things. Just that, when we
are talking about not shoehorning representation in, or pandering to woke crowds, etc... we do in fact need to touch base and make sure we're on the same page, and don't have different definitions of those things. Because way too many people misdiagnose normal, harmless representation as "pandering" or "ruining" something, simply because they're not used to seeing it (which is precisely the problem in the first place), when in reality the media or characters they're complaining about might be truly exceptionally written, and they are missing out on that because of their own bias and stubbornness.
So whether or not that describes you, it's useful to be aware of how wildly differently people can interpret the same media with regard to this subject. I think this explains why residntevl interpreted your first mention of the topic the way they did, and why I also read it in a similar way. Those were assumptions, sure, but you should probably be aware of just how prevalent it is for people to speak the same way you are, but not actually apply it correctly or know what they're talking about - and therefore, it's not unreasonable that many others are going to come out of those interactions wary about encountering this type of argument in general.
I just wanted to lay that out there. I actually wanted to get into it in response to some parts of what OP had written, but there were so many other topics/points and they wrote so vaguely, I thought it would be too much of a tangent (until now, that the discussion has headed that way naturally).