The issue of wokeness in fiction occurred repeatedly in my Wordpress writings. Until January 2025, I mostly kept post-Wordpress discussions on a page with updates to various old Wordpress posts, as there was a strong connection with the original writings. With my partial watching of “A Man on the Inside” (cf. below), I decided to start this dedicated page and have also moved the relevant portions of the update page here.
(However, I have not integrated the contents in a manner as if they had originally been written for this page. Other mentions of related topics might remain on the update page, or even be added later, because an excision from a larger context would not make sense.)
The original (non-update) Wordpress contents might follow at a later date. (For now, see some below links.)
The new page notwithstanding, further additions will likely be rare: The topic is important but also tiresome and examples are too common for serious efforts that fall short of a dedicated website.
On some few occasions, I have looked into the opinions of others. The results are not just depressing but show a horrifying Leftist/woke/whatnot hypocrisy. (Not that hypocrisy on the Left would be something new.)
For instance, there is not just a hypocrisy in that casting someone White in a “naturally non-White” part causes screams to high heaven, while the reverse is seen as enlightened, but the rules for evaluation of this-and-that are applied with extreme inconsistency and to the one-sided advantage of wokesters. Consider language: As I have pointed out (likely, repeatedly), the Left seems to have a blind spot for other issues than those that relate to Leftist movements, e.g. in that some work might be condemned for having an Anglo-Saxon actor play Jesus (or, even, a non-Aspie play an Aspie), while the fact that all actors in the work spoke English instead of Aramaic (or whatever applied to the work at hand) goes unmentioned, maybe even unnoticed. However, I saw someone object to the casting of Blacks in “A Gentleman in Moscow” (also cf. below)—and he was promptly met with ridicule for not, instead, having objected to the supposed Russians speaking English instead of Russian. One rule for the Left; one rule for everyone else.
To boot, the issue of language must be seen in light of the book by the same name, upon which the TV series is based, being an English work, implying that some degree of translation English-to-Russian would have been needed to keep the TV series in Russian, while many other works were either written for TV or the movies to begin with and/or do base on non-English sources. (At an extreme, it would be almost silly to translate “Romeo and Juliet” to Italian or “Hamlet” to Danish for the specific purpose of being more authentic—even discounting the changes in language between the “now” of the events and the “now” of the production.)
Indeed, the outrage over the casting of Whites can lose all hold of accuracy. In 2024, for instance, the casting of “Heathcliff” in a “Wuthering Heights” adaptation drew a storm of complaints because the choice had not been Black—while, in my understanding, the character might have been intended as someone Indian or of Indian descent, but not as a Black man. (Groups like the Romani, in particular, are of Indian descent.)
Similar problems include a criticism of woke casting being condemned as proof of e.g. racism, entirely (and, likely, deliberately) ignoring the true reason, namely, that the casting is ideologically driven, leads to issues with quality of cast, and (in some works) leads to problems with e.g. historical accuracy in a manner that is not just annoying but potentially dangerous, as viewers without a deeper knowledge of history can get entirely the wrong impression and draw entirely the wrong conclusions. (Say, that historical England has had a proportion of Blacks similar to the U.S. of 2025, and a following “but look how few Blacks were X, Y, and Z”.)
A particular absurdity is the claim that this ideologically driven casting would, in fact, merely be “colorblind”. Firstly, if it truly were colorblind, the average number of non-Whites in many works would be far smaller. Secondly, this is outright belied by e.g calls for only Blacks/Aspies/gays/whatnots to play Black/Aspie/gay/whatnot characters. Thirdly, there are many cases where even an actual colorblind casting is a bad idea, e.g., again, for historical accuracy. Fourthly, many of the works that have been condemned for e.g. “white washing” have cast excellent actors in the parts under scrutiny, while drawing on a pool of candidates with no comparable candidates that were “ethnically appropriate”, which is also, effectively, colorblind casting—they have still been condemned. (I say “effectively”, because this was not always by design but often simply through a comparatively homogeneous population of candidates.)
And, no, making a colorblind shortlist of, say, one Black and five White fungible candidates and then invoking “diversity” to pick the Black guy is not colorblind casting. Quite the contrary.
And, no, if a White candidate is chosen from the same shortlist, this, absent other signs, is no reason to doubt colorblindness. For instance, just selecting randomly by throwing a dice would give a chance of 5/6 of picking one of the White guys. The Black guy has an equal-to-anyone-else chance of being chosen, but in accumulation he will, obviously, trail the sum of the other five.
The “Secondly” also points to another complication, namely the inclusion of disproportionately many characters that are originally and deliberately conceived as non-White, non-hetero, non-whatnot. Consider “The Winchesters” (cf. the text linked as [1] below), where the underlying problem is, likely, not the casting but the character conception, which seems to have been deliberately chosen to be “diverse” or, even, to be an anti-pole to the parent series, “Supernatural”, which focused on two straight White men (or three, or four, depending on what season is chosen and where the borders are drawn).
After a promising start to the TV series “A Man on the Inside”, I abruptly stopped watching after a gross act of misandry:
A geriatric man, Elliott, had punched the protagonist, Charles, in the nose for reasons like stealing his watch and hitting on his wife.
Afterwards, Elliott was given a stern talk by a staff member, where true problems with his behavior, which could have been of value to the audience for self-reflection, were at most tangentially addressed—including a lack of proof that Charles was the thief. (Indeed, from an audience point of view, Charles appears to have been innocent on both counts, watch and wife.) Valuable topics would have included the presumption of innocence, the importance of being sufficiently certain before acting, and, from another angle, whether the claimed wife was actually his wife, with sub-topics like what circumstances create what facts. (The wife issue appeared to be complex and was not elaborated in sufficient detail within the portions of the series that I watched.)
Instead of taking a worthwhile discussion, the situation was abused for Feminist hate rhetoric, where Elliot’s actions were condemned as “toxic masculinity”. In a next step, instead of addressing and condemning this hate rhetoric for what is, the show makers had Elliott go off on a rant that he did not need some girl to explain things to him (approximate paraphrase)—presumably, for the purpose of proving the issue of “toxic masculinity”, that Elliott was sexist, or similar.
Here, we have at least three issues that occur disturbingly often in today’s world:
The use of caricatures of groups that the Left wants to put in a bad light (here, men; other common cases include Republicans, MRAs, “preppers”, and Christians). Since enough “evil X”, “bigoted X”, whatnot, is not present in the real world, fiction is used to paint a world where Xs are evil, bigoted, whatnot, at a rate far above reality
This is the more absurd as even the real-life incarnations of many Leftist movements, including Feminism, do not need to be caricatured to find equal or worse examples, and would make a far better target for someone interested more in humor, in showing the problems with the world, in probing the absurdities of human behavior, or similar, than in pushing a political agenda.
The fiction of “toxic masculinity” as such—a term used in the manner of a slogan and for defamatory purposes in a way similar to “White supremacy” and “rape culture”, and with a similar distorting and detached-from-reality effect.
A deeper discussion might follow at a later time. For now, I note:
Firstly, that I have met and had meaningful interactions with considerably more men than women (for reasons like field of study in college and field of work at later times), but that more women than men have been among those that I would view as toxic in any meaningful sense. In a very rough guestimate, men might outnumber women 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 in the first category and women outnumber men by the same ratio in the second category. Why, then, blabber about “toxic masculinity” instead of “toxic femininity”? The same in politics—far more women than men appear to be toxic (consider the likes of AOC and Hillary Clinton). The same with mobbing bosses—when I here news stories about a boss mobbing subordinates, the perpetrator usually turns out to be a woman. Etc.
Secondly, that the alleged grounds for “toxicity” are usually extremely flimsy, often amounting to nothing more than “does not behave like I want him to behave”, “has other life priorities than I do”, or, even, “has dared to speak critically about Feminism”. (This, of course, provided that there are alleged grounds at all. Again, the phrase often seems to be based more on sloganeering than reality.) At an extreme, a man might be condemned for “toxic masculinity” (or, e.g., “misogyny”, “not respecting women”) merely for not wanting to settle down with some specific woman. (Also see the below item.)
The application of labels that are irrelevant to the case at hand. Here, nothing in the events could truly be viewed as “toxic masculinity” (even should we accept the concept, as such).
Firstly, if Elliott acted in affection, there is nothing masculine about the event. If anything, from what I have seen so far, a woman in the same situation would be even more likely to jump her rival/the thief. (Admittedly, specifically a punch in the nose might not be the first choice of a female attacker. For more deliberate acts, without immediate affection, see a side-note to the “Secondly”: Here there might be something masculine involved, but, if so, in a positive and non-toxic manner.)
Indeed, words relating to manliness in various forms have often been pushed to a negative meaning by Feminists, prejudiced women, whatnot, turning typical male ideals like taking care of a family to a presumed standard of abuse and dominance of the family, turning a wish to compete and prove oneself into a presumed wish for senseless violence, etc.
Secondly, there is nothing toxic about it. On the contrary, given the (misperceived) situation, the reaction was perfectly normal and human. The true issue, again, is that Elliott acted without having gained sufficient certainty. We might argue, of course, that violence was not the best solution (even had certainty been present), but I do not view it as out of proportion, it is possible that Elliott had reasons to view it as a better approach than to, say, involve others, and it is possible that he had made poor experiences with involving the (literal or metaphorical) authorities. Certainly, an attitude like “Violence is never the answer!!!” is extremely childish and naive. (But I leave unstated whether violence, greater certainty presumed, was the answer here.)
While I cannot know what Elliott’s motivations in terms of approach were, trying to resolve an issue between the parties at hand is usually the best first approach. (And here we see a good counterexample of toxic femininity: Many a woman who is in a conflict, is dissatisfied with someone’s behavior, whatnot, might spend two weeks slandering the counterpart to everyone else, while not taking the matter up with the counterpart, sometimes, to the point that the counterpart is unaware that something is amiss. Now, that is a toxic behavior.)
Moreover, there appear to be a great many cases of men slugging it out once, thereby settling their differences, and, on occasion, even growing to be friends. This certainly is the stereotype in fiction (or, as case may have it, pre-Feminist fiction). Unfortunately, I have no own practical experiences of this, and cannot vouch for the chances that it works; however, in contexts like this, the important thing is the perception of someone who tries the approach. (And, again, we see a good counterexample of toxic femininity: Many two women would keep their conflict alive for ages, slandering and backstabbing each other at every chance, while showing nothing but smiles when face to face, never moving further than a “backhanded compliment” in terms of open aggression. Again, that is a toxic behavior.)
Looking at my own experiences with authorities, my attempts to receive aid have usually involved a disproportionate effort on my behalf and then the authorities doing nothing. The German police, in particular, seems to systematically try to squash the investigation of any crime not deemed “important” enough by the police. (And, as a result, many crimes go unpunished and leave the perpetrators with the knowledge that they can act with impunity, as with businesses that engage in small frauds towards many customers and jackasses who drive their bicycles or, even, e-scooters on narrow pedestrian-only pavements.)
Thirdly, in as far as Elliott acted wrongly, even beyond insufficient certainty, it seemed to be more a matter of old age and confusion than anything relating to being a man or being toxic. Of course, an attempt to claim “geriatric toxicity” (or similar) would be met with loud claims of “Ageism!!!” and see the series rapidly cancelled (in both senses).
Looking at other aspects of the show, relevant to this page, I did not pay much attention and might, especially with the incomplete watching, have a misleading impression.
However:
On the upside, Charles, the lead, is a White man and there appears to be no particular pushing of race or ethnicity in the casting. (Two of the below women are also Hispanic, but this is legitimate for a series set in San Francisco.)
On the downside, the three most important other characters are women (his daughter, his employer, and the head-or-whatnot of the old people’s home where the series largely plays), and at least two of them are in a position of authority (with no men in similar positions). To boot, despite Charles being a former college professor in, likely, engineering, the three are all portrayed as being more sensible (for want of a better word).
At the time of writing (2025-03-07), I am only in the second half of the first season and will refrain from giving a final judgment at this stage. However, there have been quite a few cases of distorted representations and entirely unnecessary angles.
Consider, for an illustration of how subtle distortions can be, how one episode (“The Hawke”) pictures a police officer going rogue—after, for no good reason, and with no true connection to ensuing crimes, having gone out of its way to characterize that officer as both sexist and racist by having another character describe him as having preferred the good old days with a 90% White male police force (or something very similar in effect). Here, a connection between being sexist/racist and being likely to go rogue, be a criminal, be a “bad cop”, or similar, is pushed. (To which I also note that real-life claims about both sexism and racism are usually highly misguided, which might well be reflected in a misguided take on what is consider what in the series.)
Likewise, for another subtle example, note how “Manhunt” contains a scene with a group of vigilantes on the street trying to protect their neighborhood against escaped prisoners. They are depicted as bumbling fools, described as a “militia” (presumably, in reference to the U.S. Second Amendment) in a derogatory manner and as “bigots” for no tangible reason whatever. (Yes, one of them had performed a hard-to-comprehend citizen’s arrest on a, maybe, Hispanic guy in an orange west, but there was no sign of any racial/ethnic/whatnot motivation—the guy had an orange west on, the prisoners wore orange jumpsuits, the group was depicted as bumbling fools. To boot, seeing one hypothetically bigoted individual and jumping to a conclusion about a larger group is very dubious.) Here, without adding any value to the show, we have an image of gun owners associated with bigoted, bumbling fools.
If the “militia” had been included at all, a better angle would have been to give a serious discussion of the risk that it got in the way of the police and the “official” attempts to track down the prisoners, including the specific risk that someone with a gun is mistakenly taken to be a hostile by the police in an already nervous and/or high-stakes situation.
(Indeed, earlier episodes of the show already has at least two cases of misguided actions by the police against private gun possessors: In one, a store owner has two would-be-robbers at gunpoint. The police rush in, force her to drop her gun—and the would-be-robbers run off. During the ensuing chases, one of the robbers is shot dead—where he, in a different reality, would just have been arrested. In another, a hostage grapples with a hostage taker, gains possession of the hostage taker’s gun—and is promptly shot by the police, in a near-lethal manner.)
This episode, among other things, also contained a use of the grossly sexist expression “mansplaining”—a word that should be banned from the vocabulary of any reasonable human. Contributing to the normalization of such hateful expressions is not legitimate. (And here, unlike in so many other cases, “sexist” is actually called for.)
Less subtle, but also less interesting, examples include repeated cases of men murdering or kidnapping specifically women in an unrealistic manner.
At this juncture, I am a bit on the fence whether to watch on, and had “Manhunt” been the first episode, I would not have. As is: (a) I note that much of the pushing has been through the voices of individual characters on the show, which could conceivably be interpreted to reflect their bigotry and whatnot, and not necessarily the bigotry of the show makers. (b) I am somewhat hopeful through several more realistic depictions, including an early episode where an abusive woman murders her husband (women are more likely to perpetrate than to be the victims of domestic violence—contrary to Feminist propaganda claims) and one which shows a violent altercation between two former lesbian partners (woman–woman is the combination of partners most likely to be violent).
Note that claims about realism and similar should be seen with an eye at a particular aspect or family of aspects. There is plenty of other, non-partisan, lack of realism, including that the characters seem unable to drive for five minutes without stumbling onto some violent crime and that the aforementioned Lesbian altercation centered on the theft by the one of the fertilized embryos of the other—something that I have never even heard of in real life.
Expectedly, there is a demographically odd casting. Most notably, the main cast has three rookies (White man, Black man, Asian woman), three training officers (White man, Black woman, Hispanic woman), a sergeant (Black man) as their immediate superior, and a captain (White woman) at the top of the “everyday” hierarchy.
(The Black rookie also appears to be homosexual, but this is within the reasonably likely for a group of that size, and he is not of the “flaming” type.)
With the last episode of season 1 (“Free Fall”), I stopped watching around the half-way mark. Here a ridiculous and pointless storyline about “nationalists” wanting to release a deadly contagion in Los Angeles, in the apparent hope of extirpating it, followed.
Firstly, this is not the type of thing that a real nationalist does. I would go as far as saying that the overwhelming majority of nationalists would not only reject the idea in disgust—but would also consider it outright contrary to nationalism.
Secondly, terrorism is something usually found on the Left and/or in an Islamist context, and the fact that the series pawns the plot off on a “nationalist” (by implication of Leftist pseudo-logic, “Rightwing”) group is both tasteless and a sign of deliberate political manipulation.
Thirdly, this is (regardless of any political angles) just bad TV, sensationalist, incompatible with the general concept of the show, and interfering with storylines and plots that are far more interesting. (Including, but not limited to, what would happen during a crucial test for the rookies, which was now postponed.) Moreover, we have an unnecessary reality break, in as far as this type of terrorism and on the implied scale has no true real-life precedent. If such a storyline should have been followed at all (despite my misgivings) it would have been better to go with something more realistic/precedented, say, a canister of sarin gas or a large conventional bomb—and with a more realistic group of Islamist and/or far-Left terrorists as the perpetrators.
This after some dubious choices in the episodes between “Manhunt” and “Free Fall”, including the almost absurd one of making a massive L.A. gang “White supremacist”, where a much, much more natural and realistic choice would be to pick among the many Hispanic gangs (or a fictionalized version thereof), including those that are subsidiary to a South-American gang—and which truly do pose a severe problem for California.
I have repeatedly written about woke casting and other problems, e.g. in [1], [2], [3].
Today (2024-03-31), I watched the first episode of “A Gentleman in Moscow”. This episode shows some early experiences of a (fictional?) Count Rostov in the post-revolutionary Russia, including his being condemned never to leave a certain hotel and, in that hotel, being removed from regular guest quarters to an old servants room. A friend of his is shot for no other apparent reason than that his death was wished for by the regime: the friend is grabbed as he plays the violin in the hotel, in front of an audience, the violin is smashed, he is dragged onto the street, and shot in public.
While the episode deals with Communist Russia, there are great parallels to what goes on in the world today, including the destruction of arts (of which the violin smashing could be seen as symbolic), spurious imprisonment, per- and/or prosecution based on being the wrong thing or having the wrong opinions, whatnot—often exactly at the hand of the woke. (To date, modern events have been far less drastic, but they differ in quantity, not quality, and there is not telling where me might yet end, unless trends are turned with sufficient force.) This while the confinement to the hotel rings an obvious bell of COVID-countermeasure.
Nevertheless, this episode, which could be seen as an indirect critique of the woke and large parts of the modern Left in general, exemplifies woke miscasting.
So far, there have been no Blacks in major parts, but there have been several Blacks in a Russian setting where they would have been extremely rare, including a man in an early court-room scene, who was repeatedly singled out for a face shot. (So prominent was he, in fact, that I assumed that he would play a larger part later in the episode. This did not happen, but I would be unsurprised if this changes at a later point of the series.) There has also been several other unusual (by historical Russian standards) looking characters, including what might be an Indian barber.
This while, to my layman’s eye, the actual racial/ethnic diversity that might more realistically have been present has not been reflected.
In a next step, we have the puzzling woke demand that this-or-that part must be cast with someone with the right credentials (e.g. that an Aspie character must be played by an Aspie actor, a homosexual character by a homosexual actor), which oddly does not extend to characters naturally White. Cast a Russian with a Black actor, or a Russian with a Scottish actor (Ewan McGregor as the count), and everything is in order—but cast someone non-White with a White actor and the world ends. (Note e.g. criticisms of the movies “Gandhi” and “Gods of Egypt”, and of various depictions of Jesus on screen.)
And all this while no-one reflects on the choice of language. Why should, as here, Russians speak English? Why (“Gods of Egypt”) ancient Egyptians speak English? Why (various Jesus depictions) an ancient Jew speak English?
As to what Jesus, and other characters in the same works, would have spoken is a point of some debate, and could have varied in a multilingual society, e.g. in that Jesus spoke predominantly Aramaic, someone else Greek, yet someone else Latin, etc. Modern English, however, is not a candidate.
(My memories of “Gandhi” are too vague for a strong claim, but chances are that some-to-much of the use of English actually was realistic.)
This use of English is a far more legitimate point of complaint for those with a genuine, non-ideological, drive to improve TV and movies—much unlike various woke casting decisions. The reason that this complaint is not made, might simply be that most woke-sters are too poor readers to handle subtitles. (As well as unlikely to be very proficient in foreign languages; however, having mastered the right foreign language for a certain work can be a matter of luck even for the multi-lingual.)
The lack of protests against English, as well as the asymmetry in “ethnic” casting criticism, is a strong sign that the issue is not truly a matter of reaching some ideal of “fairness” or “accuracy”, but of selectively favoring and disfavoring specific societal groups.
While my overall impression was favorable, I have not yet made up my mind whether to watch the rest of the series. Depending on whether I do and on what is shown, I might or might not make updates to the above.
The series appears to be based on a book, with which I am not familiar. (And statements about casting must be seen with a reservation that the real problem could be that the author was more politically than historically correct; however, based on previous experiences, the TV makers are a far more likely source of problems. Moreover, if the author were to blame, it would not alter the underlying problem—just who were to blame.)
(2024-12-13)
I eventually decided against watching the rest of the series. So far, I have made no attempts to get hold of the book.
Two updates to [1], dealing with the atrocious “The Winchesters”:
Firstly, as predicted, it was cancelled after the first season.
Secondly, in late 2024, I have re-watched portions of “Supernatural”, and found that it was not as exemplary as I had remembered. A major issue is a quality drop over the mid-seasons (I stopped my re-watching after the first few episodes of season 10), including through excessive focus on story arcs over the X-of-the-week format that the series did so well. However, I have also noted quite a few stabs at e.g. Republicans, with a paradoxical absence of similar stabs against the much more “stab-worthy” U.S. Left. This is the more paradoxical, as the show takes implicit positions that (over at least the last few decades, including the years that the show was made) are more Republican than Democrat—often strongly so. A further twist, and one very much on topic, is that casting and character choices seemed to increasingly switch from quality to “diversity”, maybe most notably when (at a point after I stopped my re-watching) Death (incarnated as a man) is arbitrarily killed off and replaced with a female version. An interesting question is whether this is a coincidence or whether it reflects how the long run of the show happened to coincide with the ever greater prioritization of “diversity casting” that afflicts modern TV so badly.
To analyze and map political positions in an even remotely complete manner would be a herculean task, would require a further re-watching, and might leave the door open to cherry pick in either direction.
However, note something as basic as the prominent role that guns play. The brothers are utterly incompatible with typical Leftist talking points and might even be seen as the worst nightmare of a stereotypical Democrat—two Kansas boys riding around in car with guns and actually using those guns on a large scale.
Other points include the value of family and individualism, of doing the right thing (not the convenient/easy thing), the importance of free will, how the angelic equivalents of the nanny state and big government cause endless problems, and similar. Even the fact that the two are private persons who try to protect others (as opposed to government appointed and financed law enforcers, social workers, whatnot) is contrary to much of the Democrat worldview and agenda.
An interesting observation in a bigger picture, however, is that Democrats (and Leftists, generally) often have a very odd view of what their opponents actually believe, what the Democrat politicians actually stand for, and whatnot. Even in 2024, it is somewhat common to hear a Democrat speak of the Democrats as the party of free speech, freedom, respect for the individual, or similar—something that has not held true for decades, if it ever held true at all. (And even after adjusting for the politics-wide issue of many politicians having a “rules for thee but not for me”, “we, the politicians, know best”, or otherwise problematic attitude .)
This re-watching also raises or strengthens a further point of criticism against “The Winchesters” (as a prequel series): great issues with continuity and what “Supernatural” had already revealed about the family’s past.
Reading a German book (Hans Fallada, “Jeder stirbt für sich allein”) I am met with a portion that is almost comically apposite (with reservations for typing errors; and, in translation, idiomatic approximations):
[er mußte] echt braun gefärbten Schauspielern den Vortritt lassen, wenn sie auch lange nicht so viel konnten wie er
([he had to] take a backseat to truly brown colored actors, even when they had nowhere near his ability)
Here, we have an actor in Nazi-Germany, who has to stand back to those of the right ideological “color” (cf. e.g. “brown shirts”); however, the same idea applies equally to skin color and ideological conformity is also a factor in, say, today’s Hollywood. (If not to the degree or with the quasi-official status as in Nazi-Germany.)
For that matter, many who push woke casting also condemn the U.S. McCarthy-era without reservations, while failing to see the similarities with and the dangers in their own behaviors.
It can pay to keep an eye at history and to let factors like acting ability, actual suitability for the part, etc. decide—not who has what skin color or political profession.
More generally, when I read reasonably serious and contemporary literature set in Nazi-Germany, the main issues usually seem to arise from factors that have comparatively little to do with Nazism, as such, and much to do with the failings of human nature; the failure to see individuals as individuals; a disregard for the rights and humanity of others; the dangers of bureaucracies, great power, and the detachment of the power wielders from those subject to the power; existential despair and frustration in the light of matters outside one’s own control; and similar.
This should be a more general warning sign—but, unfortunately, one that it is either not understood or ignored by those who naively believe that the Nazis were a unique evil, rather than a manifestation of human nature. (Worse, by many who are ignorant of or deliberately ignore the very similar manifestations found in various Communist/Marxist/whatnot dictatorships, e.g. in the USSR that preceded, existed in parallel with, and then out lived Nazi-Germany.)
One of the problems with Leftists is how often they force observations to fit the hypothesis, find what they are looking for, even when it is not there, and similar. (In some cases, e.g. those brainwashed in gender-studies, there is likely a systematic problem in that they have been taught to do so.)
The same, however, can happen in the other direction and care should be taken when evaluating. Consider “Senna”, a recent TV-miniseries/-biopic about Ayrton Senna. In (likely) episode 2, I had severe misgivings, when there was a theme of British hostility towards the Brazilian Senna as a successful competitor in British racing, culminating in a shot of Whites at a fence, which gave the impression that the makers of the series wanted to portray rabid dogs, just waiting to burst through and bite poor Senna to death.
I watched on and there was very little, if anything, more to be seen of such potential propaganda, while conflicts portrayed included Senna vs. Prost and Senna and/or other F1 drivers vs. F1 management. (Both based on true events, if, possibly, dramatized or otherwise altered for effect. My direct memories of those days are blurred and my insights were never truly deep.)
Now, I do by no means rule out that there was a woke motivation behind that “rabid dogs” scene. (It certainly felt both unnecessary and exaggerated, and a more toned-down version would have worked far better.) However, it is conceivable that some more legitimate purpose was pursued, say, to reflect the emotional state of Senna (although a poor fit to character compared to the rest of the series) or as a dramatization of real events (such hostility within sports is by no means unheard of).
Likewise, it is possible that my “trigger finger” can otherwise be a bit hasty. It is, for instance, conceivable that “A Man on the Inside”, which I partially watched just a few days before “Senna”, would have continued in a better manner and that I should have given it a further chance. Here, several factors played in to explain my different treatment of the two series:
“Senna” was non-U.S. production, while “A Man on the Inside” was U.S. (I did not sit through the extremely extensive credits of “Senna”, but it was certainly, and unsurprisingly, to a large part Brazilian, maybe with involvement of some other nations.)
Apart from the poor performance of modern U.S. productions, both the presence of Ted Danson and the general feel of “A Man on the Inside” reminded my strongly of “The Good Place”, another comedy series that had erred repeatedly. This raised suspicions of an overlap in creators and other “content influencers”.
There was much more room for ambiguity and legitimacy with the scene in “Senna”.
“Senna” had plenty of opportunity to, say, replace historical White persons with Blacks, men with women, or similar—and chose to stay true to history (to the degree that I can judge it). In fact, “Senna” might have had more White British men than a typical BBC production set in 19th-century London.
(Yes, there were many characters of e.g. a Hispanic persuasion, but what else is to be expected in a biopic about a Brazilian? There is a world of difference between natural inclusion of various actor ethnicities and forced casting of such actors “because diversity” or whatnot.)
Or consider my recent watching of “An Officer and a Gentleman”, a 1982 movie, which long pre-dated wokeness (but not necessarily politically motivated choices more generally).
Here we do have some points that could be interpreted as wokeness (if we pretend that the movie had been released in, say, 2022), but seem more legitimate on closer inspection (and where the true release year strongly points to such legitimacy). Most notably, maybe, the likely single most important authority figure, Gunnery Sergeant Foley, is played by a Black man and he has the opportunity to give various White guys hell in a manner that might please the more extremist BLM-ers greatly.
However, if we look beyond superficialities, there is nothing racial or e.g. anti-White about it. Foley is simply doing his job and (at least, by in-universe standards) appears to be doing it well. The apparent hostility between Foley and (White protagonist) Mayo appears to be resolved into mutual and non-grudging respect by the end of the movie, and the authority positions are reversed at that end, as Mayo becomes an officer and, therefore, outranks Foley. (If a political theme were to be argued, which I do not, it might even go in the other direction: Blacks are good enough to be sergeants, but the officer ranks are dominated by Whites.) Certainly, the casting choice would be very easy to defend based on acting performance (which is far from always the case with modern casting)—Louis Gosset Jr. won a well-deserved Academy Award for his portrayal of Foley.
Various White guys? Well, there was at least one Black guy among the officer candidates (or whatnots) and, more interestingly, at least one woman. (I did not pay attention to exact numbers at the time.) Woke casting to show that women are at least as good as men at everything? No. On the contrary, the movie portrayed genuine struggle with physical tasks from this woman, to the point that it took her very last chance to get over a climbing wall on a critical obstacle-course test—and only after Mayo sacrificed a chance at a course record in order to give her mental support and some instruction. (But I have to ask why he did not give that aid earlier, as she had struggled with this specific element throughout the movie. It might have resulted in a lesser effect on the movie audience, but from a real-life perspective, this would have been the much better approach.)
If criticism against “catering” can be raised, it relates more to a (likely) commercial catering to women, which turned a potentially very interesting drama around military training and other more “manly” topics into a chick-flick and a snooze-fest (I actually fast-forwarded through portions of scenes involving the two main romances). Worse, the culmination of the movie was the famous scene in the factory where Mayo, finally in a position to make something of his life and to, among other things, have a great choice in women, chooses to pick up a low-value woman, Paula, with dubious motivations, no true signs of having a “great character”, no particular looks, no own accomplishment, and, generally, “no nothing”. Not quite as unlikely as “Pretty Woman” (an obvious parallel through Richard Gere), but a similar type of “Cinderella” spin—and Julia Roberts certainly was better looking than Debra Winger. Yes, this is catering—but it is not political catering.
While Paula was certainly better than her best friend, it is also notably that Mayo’s best friend had shortly before outright killed himself over Paula’s best friend, his romantic interest, and the way that she had treated him when she found out that he had dropped out of training—what she wanted was not him but the life that she thought that he would give her. She accepted his proposal, found out that he had dropped out, and immediately dumped him—to my memory, without even a switch of scene from the proposal.
From another angle, my own reactions to Foley well illustrate another problem with wokeness: This was my second encounter after a childhood watching on Swedish TV. My very vague memories included various “meanness” by Foley, the “Mayonnaise” crack, and Mayo being worked half to death in the rain. At the time of that first watching, I simply viewed Foley as the adult equivalent of a schoolyard bully, out to torment Mayo for his personal pleasure. During my adult watching, I was much better aware of the ideas behind parts of U.S. military training and could see both how some were illustrated in the movie (including that it is better that a weak link breaks in training than in the field) and that Foley (regardless of what personal motivations he did or did not have) was simply doing his job.
Similarly, a typical idea in the modern world is that various physical and other criteria should be lowered to allow more women to pass and that not doing so is just (some variation of) being mean, e.g. to “oppress” or “discriminate” women because they happen to be women. (With similar remarks applying to other groups in more intellectual areas.) This is not the case, however. On the contrary, the purpose is to ensure that everyone having a certain job is mentally and physically fit enough for that job. (Which is not to rule out that some criteria in some test are too strict or outright superfluous; however, if they are, they should be addressed on that basis—not on a “mean to women” basis.)
Off topic, I also note with some surprise that the ideas of “officer” and “gentleman” were not truly present, while they featured in my childhood thinking about and understanding of the movie. (Including that I likely did not fully understand the difference between being in officer training and being an officer.) Mayo only became an officer at the end of the movie and he certainly went through most of the movie as something very different from a gentleman. Indeed, in as far as he had become a gentleman at the end, there were no clear signs of this. (He might or might not have, but, unlike with his status as officer, it was not demonstrated on screen. Reservation: Proof-reading, I am struck by the suspicion that the aforementioned help-with-the-obstacle-course could have been intended to demonstrate exactly a more gentlemanly attitude. Even this would be thin evidence, however.)
While the type of extreme and ideologically motivated casting seen in e.g. 202x U.S. and U.K. productions is a destructive absurdity, a more limited take does have some justification:
It is easy to fall into the trap of predominantly writing characters like oneself and/or that match the majority in a certain area in a manner similar to a “first past the post” election. The result might then be that a straight White man writes something where non-straight, non-White, and/or non-male characters are considerably rarer than in real life resp. that, say, a 90% majority in real life is turned into a 100% majority in fiction, because the, in some sense, natural choice for any given character is as a member of the 90%.
However, the same applies to a great number of (to date, knock on wood) politically irrelevant groups too, including those with various medical problems. (Also see the following excursion.)
In early drafting of the previous excursion, I gave the specific example of (literal) colorblindness, instead of the vaguer “various medical problems”. However, this, and many other specific examples, is problematic in that we could have a great many characters who are colorblind without it ever being mentioned. Likewise, in real life, some 8% of Caucasian men might be colorblind, but the percentage of known-to-me-to-be-colorblind in my own past is far smaller than that—likely, because the topic never really surfaced. (And I can name only one truly notably exception, an old colleague who repeatedly told anecdotes about his misadventures, including how he once, as a student in a dorm, had seasoned some dish with a green spice while overlooking some interspersed red bugs—much to the horror of his dorm mates.)
Speaking vaguely of “various medical problems” puts me on the safe side.
However, this also raises the question of what politically motivated writing/casting is “unnecessarily known” or more blatant than is truly justified. Consider sexual orientation and how it, in many works/genres, can be less relevant to the plot than colorblindness—but how sexual orientation in today’s fiction is often shouted out from the rooftops, even when irrelevant, while colorblindness goes without mention. Colorblindness is often something that objectively reduces ability (note the above bugs) and could be a legitimate hindrance in, say, a spy or detective story, while sexual orientation only has a practical effect in a sexual or romantic context. Likewise, the proportion of e.g. known-to-be-homosexual team members on various TV series is far larger than in my own experiences—in part, simply because real-life homosexual co-workers do not have the need to shout out their homosexuality from those rooftops. (In part, also, because the proportion of homosexual characters on modern TV likely is larger than the proportion of homosexuals in real life—known or not.)
This not to be confused with the idea of “being closeted”, although I do suspect that many Leftists, LGBT-etc.-etc. activists, and similar do fall into that trap: Being able to tell does not mean that one necessarily should tell. Telling requires at least some legitimate reason. This reason need not be very strong, and it can involve something as trivial as a man mentioning a boyfriend in a small-talk context where many others would have mentioned a girlfriend. However, it is no more natural to introduce oneself to a new colleague with “Hi! I am John and a homosexual!” than with “Hi! I am John and colorblind!” or, for that matter, “Hi! I am John and 42 years old!”. (While, in contrast, “Hi! I am John, the network administrator!” can give valuable and relevant information in the context at hand.)
Someone who does go with “Hi! I am John and a homosexual!” would almost certainly do so for a destructive purpose of provocation or of sniffing out potential “homophobes” (unless, of course, he simply is an idiot).
A reservation on the above “only has a practical effect in a sexual or romantic context” is that it has, in past works and/or works that deal with the past, often mattered in contexts like strong societal disapproval (note e.g. “Milk”). However, apart from occasional defamatory caricatures (say, to “prove” that Christians are evil), this is quite rare in the works at hand and we are left with sexual and romantic contexts.
Likewise, homosexuals on TV are often much more blatantly homosexual than those that I have encountered in real life. (However, I do not rule out that there is a cultural difference between, say, Germany and the U.S., rather than a real-world-vs.-TV difference.) In real life there is not one single homosexual colleague that I would have considered a given before I had actual knowledge—some that I suspected, yes, but none where I saw the matter as certain. (To boot, among those that I suspected, there is at least one case where I turned out to be wrong and a number where I never found out.) On TV, on the other hand, even those that do not mention their homosexuality, or are seen kissing a homosexual partner, within five minutes of screen time are often obvious, with mannerisms, style of clothing, whatnot, that amount to wearing a sign that says “homosexual”. Note e.g. [1] and the contrast between “Modern Family” (Cam and Mitch are humans first) and “The Winchesters” (a blatant homosexual, who really appears to have homosexuality as an identity).
Of course, this also shows that a common criticism of past fiction is often wrong—that some group would have been underrepresented, ignored, whatnot. When it comes to, say, skin color, this might well have been true, but if we look at homosexuality (or colorblindness), it might simply have been that something did not find mention, because there was no need to mention it. Whether James Bond was homo- or heterosexual would have made a major difference, but “M” and “Q”? Not in the slightest. (Be it because of how their respective, literal or metaphorical, screen time actually played out or because “M” and “Q” were roles within an organization that could be and, in the movies, eventual were filled by different persons, who could then have different preferences.) Indeed, even for Bond, it only matters because of the deliberately large amount of romantic entanglements—but writing a spy story without such entanglements is certainly possible.
More, such stories certainly have been written. I abstain from giving an example, because I would have to revisit the works at hand to make sure and because so many for-teens/for-grownups works contain romantic or sexual angles that are more distractions or waste of time than something central. (Also note my criticism of “An Officer and a Gentleman” above.) However, dropping a bit in age, we find works like the “Biggles” book series, which, at least in the books that I encountered as child, had no or next to no romance, where it did not matter to the books who might or might not have had what preference, and where, it appears, some impute a homosexual Biggles–Ginger romance “off screen”.
As I have often remarked, the modern Left seems stuck in a thinking of “We are so enlightened—everyone before us was a bigoted racist/sexist/whatnot.”, which often goes back to a poor understanding of the past. A potential example is women in acting, how the use of boys to play women in the Elizabethan theater was standard, and how a casting or re-imagining of, say, a male Shakespearean character as a woman would be a sign of such enlightenment. Likewise, we have that annoying idea of many (not necessarily Leftist) theater makers that it is their job to shake the audience out of its comfort (or similar), which they proceed to attempt by something comparatively trite or, off topic, just disgusting/violent/whatnot, without focus on something actually worthy of thought.
Consider e.g. women as Hamlet: Looking at Wikipedia on Hamletw, we find claims like Asta Nielsen playing a Hamlet-as-a-woman in a silent movie in 1921, the famed Sarah Bernhardt playing the part on stage from 1880 to 1885, and Jane Powell doing so in 1796—ranging from 104 to 229 before my 2025 time of writing. (I have not looked into the details, but the latter two might have had a Hamlet-as-a-man played by a woman.)
Such casting is hardly limited to Hamlet—if in doubt because many amateur productions might have had a lack of men, say, when a girl’s school wished to put on a play. (And exactly such limitations might make an “unexpected” casting choice or re-imagining more trite than revolutionary.)
A particularly interesting case is “Shakespeare in Love” (featuring a woman pretending to be a man in order to play Romeo, despite the great restrictions on female acting of the Elizabethan age): In my own perception, it is a “new” movie, but it is actually already 26-or-so years old (depending on what criterion is used) and predated both the era of wokeness and the birth (!) of most “enlightened” modern co-ed Feminists. (It is also, today, older than I was when I first saw it.)
For that matter, while the women in Shakespeare’s plays were originally played by boys, the idea of a woman pretending to be a man occurs in his plays, notably in “Twelfth Night”. It might even be argued that the use of boys to play women positively invites a reversal of the idea. Ditto, the works of many others (Beethoven’s “Fidelio” being a well-known example) and various fairy tales and myths—the execution of the idea in “Shakespeare in Love” was exceptional, but the idea, it self, was not.
With already two mentions of “Elizabethan”, I note that Queen Elizabeth, who is widely considered to have been a woman, did not go out of her way to lift the ban on women on stage—a point that those pushing a men-oppress-women agenda might want to consider. More generally, it is often women who are the keenest on adding various “moral” restrictions on other women. (But I make no claim about the personal positions of specifically Queen Elizabeth.)
However, here we see some differences to the current trends to cast “woke”, where the apparent purpose is simply to include as many “diverse” characters and/or actors as humanly possible. A girl’s school might have little choice in casting, Sarah Bernhardt was an acknowledged great actress and might have been looking for a challenge (but I have no insight into her actual motivations), and something like “Shakespeare in Love” follows much more legitimate artistic, story, character, whatnot purposes than woke and diversity-for-the-sake-of-diversity casting does.
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