Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

There's been a lot of talk about how the SJW movement has diminished movies on here, but it seems that people only assign this label to a movie if it's a bad or no more than mediocre movie. When a good movie comes out that may have a female lead or a non-white lead in it, or a non-heterosexual protagonist, than people don't give it the label.

So I was wondering, are people only assigning that label if the movie is bad, but not if it's good? Therefore, maybe the bad movies are to blame for being bad, and not any SJW movement itself?

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

What is SJW?

Social Justice Warrior

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Sorry for not explaining, it's just a term that has been going around on the net lately, when it comes to movies.

Social Justices Whiner...as in whiners who complain if something isn't 'in line' with current social trends. Think of how kids were in high school with their social cliques, that's what a SJW is, only they live on internet boards and not high school halls.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

I remember I was in a conversation with my uncle talking about Fox News or something, and he said "I know how you S-J-Ws think, and bla bla bla" I had no idea what an SJW was. Weeks later I finally remembered to look it up and laughed. I don't consider myself that at all. If anything, I'm more of a Devil's Advocate kinda guy for or against whatEVER the argument at hand is. Usually.

I don't think a movie is necessarily bad for having progressive social themes, but I can see why people would personally think a movie is bad for it. I mean, it kind of rocks the viewer's bubble, depending on where they are on whatever spectrum for acceptance or dismissal. That kind of brings up the question, "What are movies for: entertainment or political/social vanguards?" Depending on who you ask, that answer may greatly shape their sensitivities and reactions to such themes. Also, I think there is a fine line between exploring progressive ideas for purposes such as debate, recognition, or anything positively-intended result, and say stirring a pot for publicity's sake.

A movie can be bad while at the same time promoting more progressive ideals. So can conservative movies, containing the opposite. And both can be good, with the same efforts if the movies are good. I think it mostly comes down to which echo chamber you're listening to and whether you can parse out the average between the them all for a more informed opinion to judge a movie.

Never heard it before.

This 5 minute video says all and is damn funny too:p because it's true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBdnyrzq96s

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Well it's just that people label movies like the Ghostbusters remake or Captain Marvel SJW movies, because they are trying to promote a strong female protagonists. These movies aren't good in my opinion, but then a good movie like Widows (2018), has strong female characters, and no one labels it a SJW movie.

So it makes me wonder if they are just giving this label to movies that aren't that good perhaps.

Perhaps there's a little truth in that, but you could ask "do movies become bad when SJW issues are forced upon them?".

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

I guess that could be case, that the SJW issues are forced upon them compared to a movie where the issue naturally plays into the story?

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

I don't think it's the fact that it's there, it's the fact that it's forced to be there, as The Doors Album Cover (ynwtf) suggested, "stirring a pot for publicity's sake." It's the fact that it's being used for show as opposed to actually saying something of importance, because let's be real, there is not an issue of there being "not enough female protagonists," it's just people making noise to get attention and that's what's annoying.
But as an answer to your question, the annoyance of SJW madness isn't THE PROBLEM with today's bad movies. It's more like, the movies of today are bad or mediocre for their own set of reasons, including the unnecessary promotion of a movement that we don't need. I believe the reason why this very specific issue is in the spotlight of so many modern film complaints is because it tends to be the cause of other issues in said films. The Force Awakens for example. The problem audiences had with Rei wasn't that she was a female. It was that she was bland and didn't have to do anything to gain her abilities, which you could draw a line back to the decision to make a female antagonist. You can tell that the only thing that was written for her was, "girl." You can argue that Rei was written to be as impressive and as flawless as possible to promote the agenda of having more females as leads instead of more females as entertaining characters.
And the observation of SJW complaints not affecting the reviews of good movies is evidence of it just being one of many flaws in today's cinema, because while a film can have a female lead specifically to appeal to the SJW crowd..well, the film is a good movie. Someone behind the scenes knew better than to let the "message" drive the project and as a result, you get a movie with SJW stuff that can be overlooked or just ignored. And in some cases, in good movies especially, there really is no agenda. The lead is just a female. In an original work like Widows, the characters being female are essential to the story. Or a work like Coraline, You can tell that Coraline is a girl because that's what the writer wanted. She was written to be a character and is so unique that you can barely imagine her as a boy.
A force of an agenda is like, Ghostbusters, where for as much as they sold the movie on the fact that they were all ladies, them being ladies didn't impact the story at all and nothing new was done with them. Or inserting more female characters who have no role and don't do anything, or what I just mentioned was wrong with Rei. So yeah. :D

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

But are the people making noise, the moviemakers, or moviegoers, who the filmmakers then cater to as a result?

People are making noise, catching the attention of marketers who want filmmakers to write around a "trend" they want to put into a movie for profit.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

A big problem is how the term "social justice warrior" originally referred to people who got needlessly militant even by the standards of other people who were concerned about social justice (a good example being the guy who decided to count how much dialogue Margot Robbie got in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was rightly mocked on all sides) but now it's been co-opted as a catch-all term for dismissing anyone who might be pushing for any kind of social justice as being some kind of petulant whiner (as seen in the posts by Citizen Sucks). To this end, it is hard to tell the difference between those who would invoke the word as part of a nuanced criticism of how an entity (be it film or filmmaker) goes about handling concepts and themes related to social justice and those who invoke it out of knee-jerk disagreement, yet it seems like the latter are far more likely to use the actual acronym as part of their arguing. As such, it's become such an overused term as to become virtually meaningless so if I see anyone using it I will definitely take their arguments with a grain of salt (especially if something as basic as casting a female protagonist without having some big justification for differing from the male default is automatically assumed to be "catering to the SJW crowd"). Also, for all the talk of "forced agendas", maybe consider the possibility that a prevalence of white male characters over the entire course of cinematic history is in itself a forced agenda and that people who aren't being catered to by that long-standing default are not being whiners for having a problem with that.

I think horseshoe theory definitely applies here, especially if it's a question of how one's attitude towards social justice impacts their ability to interpret and criticise films - I can definitely contest the idea that Widows has "no agenda" just because it contrives a plot that demands female leads (never mind how its whole plot is rooted in social justice talking points like political corruption, capitalist greed, and gender inequality) as opposed to something like The Force Awakens arbitrarily casting a female lead in a franchise that hasn't always done right by its female characters (and there is a lot I could say about how Rey is more complex that Ami-Scythe seems to think). It really is a question of how deeply you're willing to engage on either side.

I would say quality wise it becomes an issue when films look to fall back to quite tokenistic pandering as their main selling point.The Ghostbusters remake for example was basically "ghostbusters but their women", its not really a film that offers much substance on such issues. That's very different to say something like Fury Road in which the gender politics play a significant role in the plot of the film.

I mean I wouldn't say that a non white male blockbuster lead needs to be justified by some kind of political depth relating to that characters gender/race/etc(Rogue One for example has a female lead of depth without her gender being much of an issue) BUT there has been a tendency recently for Hollywood to look to use rather cheap tokenism to sell its product.

It also tends to be those kinds of films that make headlines as the marketing of them tends to try and turn the film into a political issue.

As time goes on, things change, including speech. The "SJW" term is not being used as a way to describe a person pushing for social justice. It's to describe a person who places social justice or whatever they think social justice is in places it doesn't belong...such as the film industry. As I said before, there is no problem concerning female roles. You can name countless films with likable, memorable, and strong female characters in all roles. Leads, second leads, supporting casts, villains. We're talking about the people who look at this fact and say, "Well, there's (x) or (y) film that has one lady in it and she doesn't have that many lines so that means, ALL film is flawed and ALL of it needs to be modified to be 'all inclusive.'" That is what we call the SJW.
It is also being used ironically, for the person in question is usually in a place where there is nothing to be solved such as a white man saying the word, "black," and the person in question calling them racist so in the same way someone would call a person who has done something dumb a "genius" ironically, we're calling this type of person a "warrior" ironically.


I put an emphasis on the Ghostbusters cast not putting an impact on the story because as MoreOrLess said, it's the marketing. The selling point was that the cast was female and in the long run, nothing else was written for them. I admittedly didn't see Widows, but what I was saying was that if the selling point is going to be that the cast is all female, then it should've been essential to the story or at the very least, it could've given us something new, even if the new material had nothing to do with the gender. As a matter of fact, in that section of the comment, I was trying to say that not all female roles automatically constitute as SJW pandering but I guess that's just the result of 9pm speech writing. It becomes pandering when the gender swap or inclusion is the selling point or is randomly in the focus of the movie but has no impact on the story. Again, the impact doesn't have to have anything to do with the gender, but they should at least be a likable character. Sure, people like who and what they like and that's completely fine, but I'm personally seeing that the characters that were promoted as double X chromosomes and muscles have no personality past those two traits. This, "strong female lead" thing has affected many characters in the past but audiences are noticing it more because of the subject's popularity.

This is an interesting argument. I'm guessing you're talking about the agenda of men having to be big, strong, misogynistic, emotionless, sexy, white heroes. And while this clearly isn't correct, this is also a stereotype that's been corrected. We've been getting movies with male protagonists of color, with flaws, weaknesses, emotions, charisma, development and partners they love and respect. The same progression has happened with the females characters yesterday. Instead of them being cooking, cleaning sex objects, they've been the loving, supporting, witty and charming partners or leads that keeps everyone and everything in place. And I believe that the problem with the new female agenda is that instead of pushing a positive message about the capabilities of women, it is repeating the mistakes of the past. The agenda that is being pushed is for females to be big, strong, misogynistic, emotionless, sexy, white heroes. It's moving backwards.

I guess it depends on the review. As I said, the "SJW" complaints, or least what I've seen just have a place in a film that had many problems, that's just one of them.

I agree with what you wrote there. In a 'perfect world' the term SJW would mean someone who tries to bring social justice through blogs, posts and tweets. In a 'perfect world' a SJW would be an intelligent, thoughtful & kind person who through their actions on the internet & social media would try to bring the world together. BUT my experience with SJW types, is that they are lonely, sad people, who use the current trends of social correctness to draw attention to themselves by being obstinate, deflective, dismissive and condescending. In other words, the typical internet SJWs are usually losers who spout off to troll people. Sadly they make more racial strife in the world with their misguided actions. If they actually believed in what they purport, they would be trying to heal the racial and gender tensions that seem to be growing in the last few years.

That video I posted is pretty damn accurate in the way a real SJW behaves on the internet. SJWs don't really care about anything, they just want to whine about everything.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Nobody has a problem with female leads that actually make sense. The problem with the SJW movement is that options are made for reasons that are not artistic. And that is a corruption of what Cinema should be.

That's I'd say an argument that extends far beyond cinema into how gender equality should be dealt with as a whole, the promotion of traditionally masculine values in women balanced with the promotion of traditionally feminine values over society as a whole.

Tied into that I'v always kind of suspected that the introduction of female leads in blockbusters was actually not only driven by a desire for greater representation but actually a dramatic choice. These are films that tend towards having to work in dramatic short hand and aim for a very wide audience to the degree I would argue that female characters make it easier to have a large dramatic range. I mean you look at the likes of Ripley, Sarah Conor, Princess Leia or recently Jyn Erso, Furiosa, etc and I think you see characters with a large emotional range, who can be both credible action heroes but also show extreme emotional vulnerability in a fashion that would be harder to sell to audiences with a male character.

It was I'd say partly a push back against the kind of hardass anti hero we've seen so much of in the 60's and 70's played by the likes of Eastwood. You could maybe argue that having younger male characters such as say Luke in Starwars or even more Elliot in E.T. was a similar kind of choice.

I didn't know about this either Stirch :).

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Well when it comes to forced agendas one example I can think of maybe is the movie Black Panther. The movie starts off with this sci-fi fantasy superhero plot and so far so good, but once the villain reveals their true intentions, that they want to get revenge for how Africans are racially treated in other parts of the world, it felt like a forced agenda to me, in the sense, that is sort of came out of left field, and didn't feel like it went with the rest of the plot we had so far.

I never read the comics to so maybe racism is a deep theme that is often explored in the Black Panther comics, but the way the movie presented it, it felt like a forced agenda that someone felt they had to push because of the current social climate. Would I be reading it wrong though, perhaps?

I think that was just pandering

At least you can tell the difference, I guess. I still think I shouldn't have to interrogate someone in depth over what exactly they mean when they use the acronym as I tend to see it be used interchangeably (and this is only backed up by their arguments) - or maybe it's a motte-and-bailey thing. After all, I initially read part of this as "social justice doesn't belong in the film industry" and that definitely made me have to read this in depth just to be sure of what you were saying.

I mean, it did give us something new? Different characters and arcs, human antagonist, change of themes, updated effects and setpieces - maybe that's not a lot, but it's more than the Psycho remake did. In any case, I didn't think there was something so essential about the Ghostbusters being male that a female-led remake would have been inappropriate (what would we miss? Ray getting a BJ from a ghost?).

Guess again. I just said "white male" - while the other descriptors you brought up are definitely part of the issue, I would not necessarily say that they represent the extent of it either. That being said, I will concede that it has to take more than just giving women the same reductive roles as men and act as if that is somehow equality.

Maybe this "perfect world" standard for what a person should be like when arguing for social justice is a problem all on its own. At the very least, I question why the apparent standard for a perfect world is "people still argue about social justice but they are nice and inoffensive about it" instead of "people don't argue about social justice at all because they actually achieved it". As for the social justice types that actually exist, I figure that the anger is a response to injustice so I at least try to figure out if that anger is justified rather than writing them all off simply because they're not all nice and polite about it.

Eh, people find a way. Furiosa made perfect sense as the deuteragonist of Mad Max: Fury Road - the film is about her journey that Max just wanders into - but there were still people who complained about her turning Max into her sidekick in a movie titled Mad Max, so there's just no pleasing some people on this front. Besides, could this same logic of what's sensible/artistic not also be flipped around to the prevalence of male leads? It is a little weird how female leads get the "does this make sense" question but nobody ever asks if a male lead makes sense.

The whole concept of Wakanda is inherently political - Black Panther imagines a world where one African nation was able to resist being colonised due to its unique resources and technology. The film explores the ramifications of how such a country can continue to exist and its main method of doing so - keeping itself out of global politics for fear of endangering itself like the other countries - is what inspires the villain in the first place. You can even draw a comparison between the hero and villain being parallels for MLK and Malcolm X respectively. As far as the MCU's political agendas go, it's arguably one of the more organic ones in the series (though not without its flaws).

I've not seen either but from the outside it definitely looked like the 'Ghostbusters' reboot tried to shoehorn women in for the sake of it, instead of having a good idea and building a project around it and casting on merit. It also probably happens to be a really bad movie. The original cast was male. Now suddenly they are all female. People are bound to jump to conclusions solely based on that fact.

As for' Widows', it never crossed my mind that the film centres around a group of females for the sake of it - because it is central to the plot that they are all female. It's a poor film in my opinion. But not because of any gender roles / shorhoerning. It's just not very good.

So the answer is - it depends on the film.

I understand what you mean. For me in particular, I'm very sarcastic so I always use "SJW ironically because what I've been seeing these days, metaphorically, is say, someone walking up to a happy married couple, assuming they're on the brink of divorce and then proceed to interfere with their relationship by trying to convince them that they're unhappy and need to see a counselor and when said person is confronted about it, they call it, "saving their relationship." I don't know how other people use the term but that's what I mean when I say SJW. It's a person (to me) who "fights for social justice" in the wrong places. I wasn't saying that social justice doesn't belong in film, I'm saying that there are probably issues in the film industry that need to be addressed other than how often this or that gender or this or that race is used. Because at this point, we're just putting people into categories and turning them into numbers instead of viewing them as individuals but then again, that's a totally different conversation.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Honestly the biggestt issue when it comes to blockbuster cinema is I'd say clearly the lack of non white male directors. Some of these films can IMHO be a bit of a two edged sword as whilst they do offer opportunities for non white male directors you could also argue the films tend to be used in a tokenistic fashion to downplay the issue as well as pushing the idea they should be confined to films based on their gender, race, etc.

I enjoyed Jordan Peele's Us because it was a film starring a black family simply in a horror film. I can't say there wasn't any social commentary in it concerning race but I was happy that it wasn't the focus. A problem I'd say is in the film industry is that too many films with all black casts feel the need to use their talents to discuss politics when they should star in mindless films like The Mummy (Brennan Fraser). And I do say black because usually when I see other ethnicities doing their thing on film, they tell whatever story they want to, not just a historical one or a "This Is America" one.

No I was thinking about it before actually, when I read about the new The Killer remake, and the new Cliffhanger remake, that are planned with both women leads, and I saw Black Panther, which made me think of it, cause I felt the themes may have been shoehorned in because of the SJW views.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Here's my take. The social injustice agenda is rife in Hollywood because of festering ideologies like anti-whiteism. Just look at Terminator 6...when you really think about it, you can see it's promoting the genocide of Caucasians. That's why the new terminator is Mexican, because James Cameron has been propagandized to believe white people deserve to die. Were you here to see this thread from a year back? https://www.movieforums.com/communit...ad.php?t=57618

It's precisely ideas like that which has made Hollyweird go SJW. There's also an apparent anti-male sentiment brewing in our society. You're only safe if you're a nonreligious, pansexual, poor young transgender minority.

Let me get this straight - Dark Fate has a Mexican playing the villain (representing a group of robotic villains that have previously been played by predominantly white actors) and not one but two white heroes (in a series where the main heroes have always been white), but somehow this means that the movie itself is anti-white? Never mind the fact that his main target is also Mexican so it's not simply one race against another in this particular conflict.

It's one thing if people want to talk about representation of less-privileged groups being cynically profit-motivated or condescending in execution (e.g. "queerbaiting"), but the idea that doing this kind of representation at all automatically implies that the entire industry is laser-focused on attacking all whites and/or males is still quite a reach (never mind how it's often commenting on the toxic aspects of white/male identity, especially the Terminator series and how its white male villains reflects subjects like mass shootings, police brutality, and the dangers of unfettered artificial intelligence and nuclear armament). This is the flip side to the argument that SJW criticism is worthless because it only focuses on supposedly superficial issues of representation and whatnot - if the counterargument is that already-privileged groups should continue to enjoy the same level of unquestioned dominance, then that just implies stagnation more than anything else.

*breathes in deeply* no.

Hey Roy, welcome back to MoFo, it's been long awhile.
I'd guess that Cameron made those choices that you mentioned in T6 because of either of two factors:

• Perhaps he was aware that if he cast a predominantly white cast in T6, he'd get all kinds of criticism of racism. If I was a white director I wouldn't want to face a bunch of people bitchin about the genetic make up of my make believe film. Of course black directors routinely make all black cast films and no one gives them crap...All directors should be allowed to make their films as they choose. It be better if all the current racist trend of white bashing would go away, so we all could be just people and not be defined by the color tonality of our skin.

• Or perhaps race and the fear of being called a racist never even figured into the casting of T6. Perhaps Cameron knew he'd been to the Terminator idea one too many times, so needed to do something fresh. And it's fresh to have a Hispanic actor play a Terminator. I mean why not? The first terminator had a heavy Austrian accent and fans bought that.

Basically none of this matters to me, as I have no plan on watching an old tired movie idea being rehashed again. Just be glad Cameron isn't making yet another of those Avatar film.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

You are aware that Cameron is only an executive producer on this new Terminator and is still primarily focused on making another, what, four Avatar films?

I mean, I'd like to think you're smart enough to understand the nuances at play here but I'm not so sure that's the case. Anyway, it's not like people complained about Terminator 2 being anti-white simply because it posited that the man responsible for inventing Skynet was black.

I think this is sort of the point, though? That people didn't automatically assume nefarious motives as often back then. If that comes out today, maybe we get a few facile attempted think pieces about it.

It's kinda hard to measure this stuff because a lot of the more egregiously aggrieved editorials are in, shall we say, sub-mainstream publications, but they can still get passed around as an example of how crazy the other side is (and this absolutely happens in both directions).

This is a pretty huge stretch. Also, if you know anything about Cameron, you know he has massive nihilistic tendencies in general. I don't see too much evidence that it's consistently directed at white people, except insofar as there's more of them and that would obviously correlate a bit for someone like him with those kinds of misanthropic tendencies.

It seems to be that a lot of these films end up almost actively looking to court such a reaction, basically rattling the cages of conservative/alt right types and waiting for the inevitable blacklash that this is "propaganda for the genocide of the white race/male gender" so the film can become a "political issue" rather than stand on its own quality.

That's a good point. There's nothing better for business than becoming part of a rallying cry. That seems to swamp any half-hearted boycott efforts for any business or piece of art that becomes a lightning rod.

Yeah, sucks doesn't it? They used to make great movies, and had a little bit of faith in the people. And many of those great movies made money, a triumph for good taste. It seems like they talk about everything EXCEPT the movie.. "Did you see what _____ said on fakebook?"

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Ranting time: Social justice warriors are ignorant, selfish children wearing adult clothing ignoring the real terrors of the world in place of promoting that all white men (including them) are racist and that anyone who disagrees deserves to be insulted because insulting people unintentionally is evil but calling them racist sexist homophobic capitalist pigs is like the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights rolled into one.

Politcal agendas have gone from being about respecting all people to "waah waah I want my way," except that there's a lot of WHITE MEN doing that in these groups simply because white men are more prominent in America than men of any race simply because most people in the country are white. Oooh, I said something scary and should be insulted. I'm not allowed to use the most basic and obvious of statistics and facts when someone could intentionally twist my words to be a big fat insult.

I really wish there would be an age of respectful political neutrality. I really don't want to believe it's not possible anymore.


EDIT: Ugh, I really shouldn't be using a movie forum to vent my political stress. OK, if there are any social justice whiners here, get out what you want to say right now. Pretend I'm a racist because I'm white because your opinion changes science.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

But Grease takes place in an American high school where there would be a lot of white people. If I watched high school movie from a Hispanic country, should I, as a white person, be bothered that there are no 'gringos' in the movie?

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

No one should ever be bothered by something as petty as that.

Grease was diversified....Sandy was from Australia and Danny was Italian, and Rizzo was probably from the Bronxs:p

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Since I'm into filmmaking and try to get more and more into the industry, I had a screenplay shown to me a while ago, and the writer advertised it as a "female driven thriller". But I was thinking what do I care if the main characters, were female or not. I want a premise and synopsis, but I'm not going to be sold on being excited about a script all because of the genders the main characters alone.

Does that make sense?

If it makes sense to you, that's all that matters.

If I was making a film and someone pitched the idea of a female driven thriller, I'd be like, 'cool, tell me more'. I mean it could be a good script with a fresh angle. Just depends on the script.

This seems to be a divide to me between a movement towards blockbusters having substantive greater representation outside of white males and a more recent trend to use politics in a cynical fashion to sell product.

I would say that something like Fury Road for example is a good example of the former and clearly links back to say something like Aliens in terms of having feminist themes to it but being sold on quality and having some weight to those themes and its drama. The Last Jedi on the other hand feels to me like something much more cynical, a film lacking in real weight or quality and looking to play on partisan politics to sell itself.

I think its highly questionable whether such cinema actually helps the causes it claims to espouse. Indeed I think you could argue that actually making a strong and balanced case for such politics is bad for such films marketing, if there going to draw the ire of conservatives most effectively then making a shallow and insubstantive case is actually more effective.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

None of this thread makes any sense [from inside or outside the industry], but you already know that.

The first paragraph here, where you relay a (secondhand) personal anecdote, in no way logically implies the second paragraph, where you extrapolate that anecdote to the world at large.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

I must say that old movies are best, new remakes movies just makes me sad, that's all I can say, because are kinda terrible.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Well I just think it's kind of a double standard. I'm a fan of South Korean cinema for example and watch their movies, but I don't lookout for Caucasians to be in the movie, just because I am Caucasian, etc.

What if (some of) the real terrors of the world are being caused by racist white men?

I'm not sure political agendas were ever truly about respecting "all" people because you ultimately can't extend that same courtesy to those whose agendas are fundamentally incompatible with yours in a way that goes beyond mere agree-to-disagree differences. If you're fundamentally opposed to racism, how much respect can you genuinely extend to racists? Neutrality sounds nice in theory and all, but there are some things you just can't be neutral about.

Agreed

I'm not neurtal to racism. And I know some terrors have been caused by white racists, but the whole world isn't white. There's poverty in almost every country, there's starvation and war all over Africa, and don't get me started on the robots of North Korea. Watch the National Geographic Explorer episode, "Inside North Korea,"

The trick is that SJW's will use even a single white racist to compare all white people to. If you ask me, the white male SJW's are the worst because they're just flat-out hypocrites. They're the ones telling other races what to believe and how to live, so doesn't that make them the new breed of white supremacists in an ironic and much more ignorant way?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojExgfB4smc

Amen Brother!

I've thought the same thing. SJWs who go around condemning whites, just because of their skin color are no better than other hate groups. They troll and stir the vast internet and piss off people of all colors. They seek to create division, not healing. I might be from an older generation but I was taught that judging someone by their skin color was wrong, wrong, wrong!

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Amen back!

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Yeah, much easier to judge them by their posts instead.

That's fine, my main point is that the whole thing is very speculative. How would someone hope to tell the difference between "this type of thinking is more common now" (which seems obvious) and "this type of thinking is pervasive/everywhere" (which isn't)? One thing that is clear is that there's enough curated media out there to find anecdotal evidence of virtually all conclusions. Partisans of all kinds can easily pass around, viral-style, every ridiculous thing the other side does or says (even if most of it's from decidedly non-mainstream people and sources), and if that's all you see it's easy to get a distorted picture of frequency.

That works fine if you have an ironclad, inarguable definition of racism. The problem, as I see it, is not that racism is more tolerated, but that the definition of racism has demonstrably expanded, and yet the people talking about it want the label to have the same amount of force and meaning as it previously did, which is literally impossible. Refusing to engage with racism seems like a pretty reasonable position, until you start diluting "racism" to mean indirect things like social structure, downstream effects, or mere inaction (or even something you judge to be insufficient action!). If your definition is that wide, then we-don't-negotiate-with-racists becomes a pretty hard position to defend, unless of course you motte-and-bailey it so people who don't like mortgage reforms are sitting in the same category as people in pointy hoods.

We've talked about this before, I'm pretty sure. I can dig up the most recent example, but I'm not sure I want to bother if this exchange is gonna go like all the other ones where I've tried to talk about this meaningfully. So let's just decide now if you wanna talk about it, or if you're gonna just swat at what you feel is the low-hanging fruit.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

I'm just saying there's neutrality and there's neutrality. Even that post you quoted just now was meant to imply a spectrum of tolerance that's complicated to maintain, especially if it can be seen as a weakness and manipulated in bad faith (which is what breeds its own sense of extremes so, contrary to what other users have written, it is not merely those inclined towards enacting social justice who are "creating division"). It's not like I haven't been trying to field other people's motte-and-bailey arguments about what counts as "SJW" in this thread and others with decidedly mixed results.

Sure, and there's "racism and then there's racism." Is there any indication here, even in the more pointed/argumentative posts, that anyone's defending the kind of racism that thoughtful people shouldn't even engage with? I don't see evidence of that. However annoying or predictable the "aggrieved majority" stuff might be to you (and certainly sometimes me, even though we often think differently on this issue), it's not the kind of racism you're describing, that shouldn't even be engaged with. So why bring it up? Either it's a non-sequitur (yes, okay, racism exists, nobody's saying otherwise), or you're implying that these users, here and now, are examples of that, even though they clearly haven't given you sufficient reason to think they are.

I think we need to be careful about what "bad faith" means. After all, arguments in a court of law are "bad faith" in the sense that the lawyers involved are obligated to make the most persuasive argument whether they believe it or not. And we judge those on merit rather than motive because that's how truth works.

To me, "bad faith" means things like not engaging with the replies and incorporating them into responses and continually resetting the discussion (a constant problem in our exchanges), or deliberately trying to misunderstand. I'm not sure how you're using it, but it only seems to apply if you define it was just "being kind of belligerent." Which isn't something I like, but also isn't something so manifestly racist or genuinely bad faith that it shouldn't even have to be addressed. It's become strangely common for people to devote most of their argumentative energy to explaining why they shouldn't have to really respond to things.

Yeah, that's certainly a problem. I'd sure like that frustration to translate into empathy for my repeated attempts to have these conversations, though. As I continually point out, these discussions are offered up again and again, and they immediately get dropped in favor of taking shots at less thoughtful arguments. Is the point to actually defend a viewpoint against the best argument against it (which is what you do if you really believe in it and are willing to test it), or just to make it look better by only putting it up against weaker ones?

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Well as far as SJW people, if that is the correct term to call them, being white goes, it seems that more of them are white which is ironic. Is is a white guilt thing perhaps?

Like when the remake of Ghost in the Shell came out, so many white Americans were complaining about how the character was changed from Asian to white, where as a lot of Japanese fans, of the source material, thought that white Americans were making too big a deal of it, and that it was okay, since it was an American remake.

I mean when Japan remade Unforgiven, all the characters were cast with Japanese actors, and Japanese audiences, didn't complain about the remake preserving the races of the original.

The Ghost in the Shell thing is a technicality.


Also, there's a Japanese remake of Unforgiven? Cool.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

I think the Ghost in the Shell reaction does tell you a lot about the climate today though, there was a very strong desire to try and shoehorn that film into the idea of whitewashing but very limited desire to bother to do much research or indeed wait for the film itself to be released which ironically actually commented on the idea of the characters identity being stolen and replaced with a westernised one.

That doesn't mean that legitimate criticism doesn't exist(and maybe some better reasoned criticism of the above might have been possible) but just unthinkingly following the ideological battle lines as set out for you by the mass media or twitter culture is not going to put you on the right side of every issue.

Pervasive means "(especially of an unwelcome influence or physical effect) spreading widely throughout an area or a group of people." So in other words, I meant that kind of thinking is spreading. We can all agree on that.

And while the view of both "sides" can indeed be slanted, the left-wing antifa/SJW types are having more effect on our society. Thus why political correctness is rampant, more so than its ever been.

I think the word "widely" is the key word there. Anyway, that's all I'm on about. The point you're making is contingent on the idea that this is widespread, which I'm not sure is the case. I think we're learning, from the Internet, that a small number of people can make a lot of noise. And that confirmation bias in closed partisan circles can greatly amplify that noise even further.

The main thing to take on board is that pretty much everybody thinks something like this about the other side. Doesn't mean someone isn't right, but it does mean that just insisting it's true is sort of talking past the built-in disagreements, which makes it of dubious value. It therefore becomes a signal that someone is just sort of firing, and maybe isn't terribly interested in talking things out. It certainly doesn't feel like an invitation to discussion, at least, and that's kinda my big thing: I like it when people reach out to discuss things, rather than just to broadcast, if you get my meaning. Not like we don't have a million other places on the Internet where people can (and do) do the former already.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Alrighty, fair enough, then. :)

I'd put forth Roy C. complaining about how the new Terminator casting a Mexican means that the movie is implicitly advocating for white genocide. An absurd and easily-disproved claim, sure, but considering how the concept of white genocide itself is a factor in white supremacist rhetoric I had to at least question why he was willing to bring it up and also prompt others to consider it by being all "if you really think about it, this is what the new Terminator is about".

In any case, would this particular type of too-racist-to-engage with rhetoric you describe also happen to be blatant enough to violate the forum rules and prompt you to do something like ban the user in question? If that's the case, it's always possible for people to figure out where the line is and how not to end up crossing it.

Anyway, I only brought up racism in this particular response to KeyserCorleone regarding the question of what really counts as political neutrality and how plausible such a concept is while also making sure to outline how said neutrality should not just be limited to a kind of performative politeness that potentially disregards legitimate conflicts (and also whether or not this is what the people who complain about SJWs actually want them to do instead of being angry and argumentative).

I guess that sort of covers what I was going for. In this context, I was thinking of it as something of a double-bind where someone will at once not take you seriously if you are being overly argumentative (which I can sort of understand) but still won't care if you try to be civil in your arguments. I know I've been trying to do that because you've got users like KeyserCorleone or Citizen Rules whose main problem with SJWs is more that they're too combative but my attempts to be more civil don't necessarily pan out. The latter even wrote about how in a perfect world SJWs wouldn't be so angry when they argued for things as if somehow it's the anger in and of itself that's the issue more than what the SJW is arguing against. I wonder if this counts as an example of the I-don't-think-I-have-to-respond-to-things motive you describe.

Why, would you like me to dig up the last one?

I think it might also be because you seem to be the only one who's not only an actual challenge to argue with (which means I really have to bring my A-game and that can in itself be so exhausting as to prompt giving up at times) but because I get the impression that other users I argue with have probably put me on ignore anyway (which I'm guessing you the administrator couldn't do even if you wanted to).

It's worth remembering that social justice is about more than just addressing racial issues - it also addresses matters involving gender, sexuality, disability, and so forth. White guilt may or may not be part of it, but there is a focus on maintaining an intersectional sense of equality that extends beyond race.

As for Ghost in the Shell, I wonder how much of that has to do with cultural differences and the contrast/overlap between the two cultures, especially when it comes to matters of social justice (whether within the fan community or not). I also wonder what Japanese-Americans make of it.

Maybe the real problem is that the idea of the character's identity being stolen and replaced with a Westernised one ends up serving as a good metaphor for how the remake delivered such a reductive re-interpretation on the original's themes of identity (opting to focus on a mostly artificial being rediscovering her human roots instead of being challenged by a conflict with an entirely artificial being), to say nothing of how it reads like an ad hoc justification for casting Johansson. It's one thing to simply whitewash the character, but incorporating whitewashing as an actual plot point in a way that sounds like it's excusing your initial decision to whitewash a character instead of vice versa is also questionable.

What other members posted that they agreed with Roy C.'s white genocide reasoning for the casting of a Mexican actor in the new Terminator???

I think you're making that up, as I don't recall anyone agreeing with him on that one point...You need to provide links to prove your claim.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

If it helps, I didn't read that as other members were posting that, just that Roy was posting it and attempting to persuade others of its validity.

...if it helps.

I'll admit that "prompt" was not the best choice of word. I just wanted to get across that he was doing that, not that anyone was actually agreeing with him.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Well it seems the SJW is growing and become more prevalent in movies. But I am wondering, what causes all this to happen? Was it the Metoo movement, or did something before that caused it to happen?

it’s probably the fact that voices that have been marginalized for generations finally have a way to be heard through a platform like the internet and can force us to reckon with the way they have heretofore been severely underrepresented in our cultural output. either that or participation trophies. it’s definitely one of those.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Oh okay, but a lot of people have had the internet for a little over 20 years now, and this SJW movement took off in the last three years, at least in Hollywood. So isn't this movement caused by something in the few years therefore?

I would correct it to:
Trendy Justice Whorior

It's worth keeping in mind that social justice movements have existed in one form or another for decades on end and that the term "SJW" now exists as a means of deriding said movements, so I would advise against using it in this context. Anyway, I pretty much agree with Frightened Inmate in that the advent of the Internet accelerated the evolution of the discourse and movement surrounding social justice, but the Hollywood mainstream was always a little slow on the uptake by nature of a production cycle where it takes months, if not years for a movie to get made even before the recent introduction of signifiers like #metoo or SJW to the general discourse.

Just because you have a username like a Twitter bot doesn't mean you have to post like one.

Sure, the Internet gave everyone a chance to speak up. The flip side of that is that when everyone has a megaphone you have no idea how many people are saying things. Sometimes an important thing gets heard that didn't before, and sometimes people use repetition and volume to create a false sense of scale to get what they want. It's kind of a mess.

You asked in other threads why they listen to these people if there aren't very many of them. That's why. It's increasingly difficult to differentiate between valid grievances and reflexive ones, and genuine movements from astroturf outrage campaigns.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Oh okay. It's just a lot of these movies that have gone 'woke' as the term goes haven't been well received, unless that's of course they have been and box office wise?

Or I just keep reading about people saying that they do not like how movies have gone woke now. But what counts as a woke movie though? Cause woke people say they want more women in action roles, and more LGBTQ representation in movies.

So therefore, would a movie like Atomic Blonde count as a woke movie, since you have a woman in an action role, who's character is also a lesbian, or at least bi-sexual? So would that therefore count?

Defining my own terms here. I don't think its so much "strong women/people of various ethnicities/LGBTQ," (well, perhaps for some it is), that people tend to take issue with. As aforementioned, I think it mainly has to do with scripts written for the "agenda" which is already polarizing. Sigourney Weaver's character ushered in a whole new breed of female empowerment in the Aliens films and it came with acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. Likewise, I've stated many times on these boards that female directors need more exposure. Maya Deren and Marie Menken in particular practically defined the American Avant-Garde. Then there are those like Charles Burnett and Spike Lee... even Spike Lee, as polarizing as he can be some times, his films seem to prod issues in a very sophisticated manner that leaves the audience asking questions and leaving room for intellectual debate. I guess that's kind of the point... if your going to make a film with an "agenda" it might be best not to "hammer" your opinions on to others. Provide a point of view which begs the viewer to make up their own mind. I guess ask questions is what I'm saying, not so much "hustle" the answers.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Yes that makes sense. Don't hustle the viewer or force your points onto them or shoehorn them into the story. But if Atomic Blonde did that then, you have a female action hero, who has LGBTQ character traits, but it's not forced with an agenda, then why don't other movies do it that way then, and do it without forcing?

Can't Hollywood appeal to the SJW movement with stories like Alien, where it's not forced?

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Movies don't always make their points with tact and sophistication because it's hard to do that. Same reason movies sometimes resort to clumsy exposition.

And, less charitably, sometimes it's because making their point is the primary consideration and artistic concerns are secondary. Nobody makes propaganda and spends most of their time on the cinematography.

With Earth and I am Cuba being exceptions... ;)

Holy crap, whenever the movie fandom learned the terms "agenda" and "woke" it all got screwed up.

This whole debate of forced or unforced, of quotas and SJWs is malicious from its very roots. There have always been ideological vehicles in the medium. Think of whatever character in a Mizoguchi film almost shouting out the message, to not mention stuff that is plain propaganda. There has always been pandering and tokenism. Disney and Hollywood have always been into conforming to washed out and easy to digest politics. This is not a recent phenomenon. It's only the usual happening but in an era where the fans learned basic alt-right internet jargon.

Like, I wouldn't take issue with all this necessary talk on forced messages if it didn't plain ignore how unsubtle, pandering and conforming the film industry, the mainstream film industry in particular, has always been.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Well a lot of Star Wars fans for example, complain about how the last couple of Star Wars movies, have shoehorned in 'identity politics', but did the 70s/80s Star Wars movies do this as well?

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

I don't think so. People like to respond to that charge with the straw man that they were still "political," but that's not quite the same thing (and involves drawing very broad parallels that can always be drawn with good storytelling, contra the much narrower focus and application of more zeitgeisty/didactic movies).

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Oh okay. The last Star Wars movie I saw was The Last Jedi, but even that one, I didn't think was huge on identity politics but other people thought so, unless I just didn't see it on a first viewing?

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

I suppose "huge" is relative to the fact that it's a very popular space fantasy cultural icon franchise, but yes, people can be more or less sensitive to these concerns. The same way people are more or less sensitive to it when a film doesn't have an acceptable number of X (X being any group of people) in it.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Oh okay. Well I wasn't seen a lot of it in The Last Jedi. I keep hearing that the new Harley Quinn movie had a lot of it in from people, so makes me interest to see that now, to see what's up.

Hollywood's obsession with pushing it's woke/progressive/SJW agenda into mainstream films has poisoned the film industry. Most people simply don't want identity politics rammed into their films, especially when it so often comes at the expense of good storytelling. I know I'm sick of it.


This obsession with egalitarianism is as unhealthy as it is irritating. It's sad that so many intelligent and talented people have spent so much time and energy promoting it.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

But there is that saying 'go woke, go broke', which of course means that the majority will not like the movie if you do that. Is that saying true though, or are they making money off of it?

It depends. I think films like the female ghostbusters and Birds of Prey which brands itself specifically as a woke SJW extravaganza is doomed to be a commercial failure but other movies like the Last Jedi which just contain elements of progressiveness will still make a profit, albeit a lot less than if the film had been free of those elements. It's the difference between being financially killed or just wounded. Other films like Captain Marvel that just had a smattering of wokeness will hardly be affected.

Who are "they"? Some do, some don't.

As I've been saying repeatedly, these questions need to be specific if you want clear answers. You can't get clear answers to untenably broad/vague questions.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Oh by they I just mean the companies who choose to promote the woke-ness in their movies. Sorry.

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Yes, it's obvious that's what you mean, but I'm asking to point out why the question isn't answerable. The "they" refers to a large group of films, right? So even if someone had the answer, how would they express it? As an average? Based on the number of films that did or didn't make money relative to budget? Total budget combined with total cost across all of them? And that's if we had an objective list of "woke" films, which we obviously don't. Heck, what if the film itself qualifies, but the marketing doesn't emphasize it, or vice versa?

Before asking a question, consider whether:

a) it's asking for the kind of information anyone could possibly have and
b) whether you're asking for information that could be feasibly expressed based on the request.

In this case, the answer is no to both. It's not data people can really have and it's not even clear how they should answer if they had it.

When you ask questions in this way you're basically saying "here, think about all this for me so I don't have to."

Re: Do people only give bad movies the SJW label?
 

Oh okay, I was just welcoming answers from different perspectives.

What I'm describing is not an issue of "perspectives." It's basic information the questioner has to consider if they realistically want an answer. And it's the kind of thing people omit when they're just asking questions reflexively and expecting (consciously or otherwise) other people to parse all the tricky nuance for them. It shows a real lack of consideration for other people's time, especially when it keeps happening long after being pointed out.