woke.

[BomberPat]

It's hard to say without being a snob, but I can never understand when I meet people older than me who are really into Harry Potter, because when the first book came out I was towards the end of primary school but already thought it all seemed a bit childish and beneath me - probably as much a kneejerk reaction to thinking that any books with child protagonists were for little kids, but mostly, I'd already read The Hobbit, most of Narnia, and was mad for Discworld, so it just didn't appeal, even if at the time the only reason I could have articulated about why Discworld was more mature was because sometimes people say "bugger" in it.

I didn't read the books beyond one attempt to read the first one, but did end up seeing all of the films over the years. The films are decent enough, because they're very well made and exceptionally well cast, but it's still not enough to paper over the cracks of a very poor story.

I think it's probably a bit simplistic to say it's just a rip-off of Earthsea, though Le Guin had the best criticism of the Harry Potter books when she described them as, "stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited". I'd say she was pretty on the money about that, long before others cottoned on to the "ethically mean-spirited" aspect.

She also highlighted something I think is key to their success, which is that Rowling married all the borrowed fantasy tropes to the format of an English public school novel - when you see foreign tourists lining up for Harry Potter tours, or at the made-up platform at Kings Cross, or the merch shops that have blighted the Shambles in York and half of central London, and Harry Potter stuff in British tourist tat shops, you realise that a lot of what made the books attractive internationally was that the weirdness of an English boarding school setting was just as alien to other people as all the magic.

[Carbomb]

11 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

And Tintin.

Tintin is great, but it's a lot less "knowing" than Asterix, I think - fun adventures, and you get the odd bit of subversiveness, like Captain Haddock fending off Madame Castafiore, but for the most part it's straightforward. Asterix, on the other hand, is just laced with sardonic inferences and piss-takes.

[Keith Houchen]

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

before Bruce Lee emerged as a self-realised, potent model of an Asian identity

I might be wrong but I think Lee even lost out on Asian roles to white actors because the studios weren’t prepared to have an unknown Asian on screen, they preferred an unknown white guy in case the audience didn’t like it!

[Carbomb]

4 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

I might be wrong but I think Lee even lost out on Asian roles to white actors because the studios weren’t prepared to have an unknown Asian on screen, they preferred an unknown white guy in case the audience didn’t like it!

Not just that, but Kung Fu was a series that he came up with! But he went off to Hong Kong, proved how fucking amazing he was, and made himself so undeniable that even those cunts in Hollywood had to give in.

But, then, of course, as great a film as Enter The Dragon is, there's still the simple fact that, even in Bruce Lee's big Hollywood break-out, they still couldn't have him as the sole lead who gets to get the girl (especially if it's a white girl), so they had to have Roper as the acceptable, secondary white lead - after they've killed off the bad-ass black guy, natch.

EDIT: Hell, imagine a version of Enter where it's Roper that gets killed, and Williams gets to win the day and avenge him?

Edited April 17 by Carbomb

[SuperBacon]

20 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Tintin is great, but it's a lot less "knowing" than Asterix, I think - fun adventures, and you get the odd bit of subversiveness, like Captain Haddock fending off Madame Castafiore, but for the most part it's straightforward. Asterix, on the other hand, is just laced with sardonic inferences and piss-takes.

Apologies, misunderstood. 

Yes, quite.

[BomberPat]

my favourite thing about Asterix is that all the punning names had to be translated into every language the books have ever been published in, in a way that means they both function as puns and fit the naming conventions of all the Roman names ending the same way and all the Gaul's names ending the same way. Wonderful stuff.

Though both Asterix and Tintin have their fair share of decidedly unwoke moments, between Hergé's writing for fascist newspapers and Tintin In The Congo, and that pirate in Asterix.

Edited April 17 by BomberPat

[organizedkaos]

Tintin in the Congo is pretty wild. Tintin kills a lot of animals in increasingly inventive splatterfilm ways. And loads of racism.

Remember stumbling across it as a kid (a french copy, i'm not sure it was published in english at the time? i certainly remembering thinking this was curious because i'd not seen this Tintin book before) and even then realising it didn't seem OK.

[BomberPat]

I always thought that it had been released in English and then removed from print, but bizarrely, looking at the publication history, it was first published here in 1991, and reprinted in 2005, despite having been deemed too racist decades before that.

It's the only book in the series I've not read, but I've seen excerpts from it - across multiple editions Hergé did tone down stuff like exploding a rhino with dynamite, and a lot of the more colonialist and racist content; most infamously, a scene in which he's teaching African kids a Maths lesson originally had him saying, "I'm here to teach you about your mother country, Belgium". I think in the final edition, one of the villains is changed from an African caricature to a white big game hunter.

I think Hergé was, as a young artist, incredibly naive and never sought to question the logic around him - that led to him depicting Africans as childish savages during a time that Belgium was committing horrific acts in Congo, and to draw comic strips for Nazi-owned publications during the occupation, and it's hard to justify those things. But by the last book, Tintin has a CND sticker on his bike helmet and is pastiching revolutionary movements in South America, and Hergé's politics are clearly no longer anywhere near what they once were.

[Just Some Guy]

Had a couple of election leaflets from the some of the more "interesting" candidates standing in the Blackpool South by-election.

Both of them taking aim squarely at that insidious wokeness that has supposedly infected society.

Speaking of being infected, both anti-vaxxers as well.

It's a strange old world where people seeking political office are telling the electorate that they will offer more racism, homophobia and general bigotry.

[Loki]

I do wonder where this backlash against modernity will end.

As easy as it is to laugh at the weirdos online, or have a chuckle at anti-vax literature, a lot of this stuff has gone from fringe conspiracy groups to mainstream political parties in probably less than a decade.  And as you can see in the US it doesn't take that long to infect mainstream politics - the GOP has become the party of QAnon and anti-science, anti-woke in really only two election cycles.

With the rise of far-right politics in the US and across Europe, it will surely arrive here soon in terms of mainstream political discourse - I don't mean the Lee Andersons of the world but probably the opposition Conservative party/leader post the next election.  And it will bring with it other elements like anti-abortion etc.

I think the next election after this will be fought on the stuff in this thread.

 

 

[Keith Houchen]

17 minutes ago, Just Some Guy said:

Had a couple of election leaflets from the some of the more "interesting" candidates standing in the Blackpool South by-election.

Both of them taking aim squarely at that insidious wokeness that has supposedly infected society.

Speaking of being infected, both anti-vaxxers as well.

It's a strange old world where people seeking political office are telling the electorate that they will offer more racism, homophobia and general bigotry.

The two biggest arseholes in the Manchester Mayoral Election (Reform and the independent, utter bellsniff Nick Buckley) both have Reclaim The Streets as part of their pledges. 

[Just Some Guy]

I think you are right @Loki about "woke" being the battleground of the next election.

When we should be hearing about saving the economy, foreign diplomacy, NHS, infrastructure etc, etc, the thought of toilets and the right to hate speech being the main topics is deeply depressing.

[Tamura]

21 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

The two biggest arseholes in the Manchester Mayoral Election (Reform and the independent, utter bellsniff Nick Buckley) both have Reclaim The Streets as part of their pledges. 

I assume that's a law and order thing, and not a resurrection of the 90s/00s street parties?

 

[The Gaffer]

7 minutes ago, Loki said:

I do wonder where this backlash against modernity will end.

I know it wasn't your intention - but just to pick up on this phrase in general terms - I think it's an oversimplification that would promote some unhealthy dialogue if it were used in a more politicised environment. 

A lot of the outrage we've seen over the last few years has been for issues that - though they've never not been contentious - actually went through somewhat of a purple patch of relative calm and acceptance compared to what it's like now. 

I should clarify that I am not giving genuinely horrible fuckers with genuinely problematic views a pass but how many of us have parents or older relatives who have shared something suspect? Again and again we see that with otherwise decent, ordinary people it's because their hopes and fears are being siphoned off by some rage-for-clicks algorithm. 

That is modernity. And it sucks. So in that sense, I guess I'm in on the backlash against modernity as well.  It's pretty much evil in plain sight - normalised horror - that tech companies poach neuroscientists and put them to task with how best to keep young kids addicted to their products. The modern world is more of a petri dish for psychological issues now than it's ever been and that's not just because they're simply surfacing more. 

Modernity has many, many problems right on its surface, and a lot of them are breeding the kind of backlash you're referring to. 

Full clarification: I'm running from anything solution based, comparisons to the past (we've always had adverts on TV aimed at children), personal responsibility etc. There's a lot of potentially endless debates here I don't want to get stuck in, that phrasing just struck me. You might have another intention with it I've failed to read into so if so, apologies!

tl;dr a lot of the shit we see is a manifestation of growing pains and psychological dislocation due directly to modernity moreso than a conscious rejection of it. 

[Loki]

@The Gaffer Yeah - I just mean a backlash against the generally socially progressive trend of the last few decades.  And you're absolutely right about parents/relatives - even my folks, as liberal as they come, have weird red lines that seem to anger them.  Gay marriage was a big one - despite having had gay friends all their lives, the access to the institution of marriage was the point at which they balked.  I think a lot of that is natural inertia as you approach old age, where you become more and more disconnected from the bleeding edge of social discourse and more and more set in your ways.

In that respect the older generation not understanding the younger generation is a constant throughout history, but we're definitely seeing a worldwide rise in backlash against the prevailing direction of travel.

We should probably just delete the internet, it's not been a force for good.