Have you watched any TV commercials lately?
Nope. I don't think I've seen a TV commercial in about seven years
If you didn't know any better you would assume blacks are about 70% of the population. When in reality, its more like 13%. I doubt its an accident that the actors auditioning for and being hired for the spots just happened to be black. I think what's actually happening is advertisers are trying to outwoke each other, and we've gotten to sorta absurd levels of wokeness.
So... this gets to a bit of a derail. But I'll roll the dice anyway.
I actually support temporary over-representation of many groups in fiction and representational entertainment. One of the challenges with society is that our map for how the world works gets set when we're fairly young, and is very strongly influenced by visual stimuli and what we observe of the interactions from adults. Part of shifting subconscious stereotypes lies in exposing young children to scenarios that defy those stereotypes. To do this in a way that can impact existing social stereotypes about black people or hispanic people or women requires that enough black and hispanic and female characters get shown to build a framework that doesn't tie race or sex to specific types of roles. But given the limited number of actual bodies involved in most representational fiction... you end up by necessity over-representing some subsegments.
It should be temporary, if it works. Once that stereotype is removed, once there's no longer that association, I think it would revert back to population norms.
I don't think it's a derail. And it's my thread... so there.
The problem with overrepresentation of minorities in media isn't the fact that they're there. I have no problem with that. I think it's good. The problem is that they're often awesome. They start out awesome. It's not interesting to watch. In the original Ghostbusters the characters had a bunch of obstacles to overcome, and they did it with great difficulty. In the new feminist Ghostbusters they were just awesome right out the gate. Their obstacles were the rest of society not believing in them. That's boring to watch. Wonderwoman was a yawnfest. Nobody wants to see somebody awesome easily crush enemies.
These kinds of films give away the woke mentality. Everybody knows that nobody starts out awesome. We all start out as weak and insecure. That's what's relatable. That's the characters we like seeing on the screen.
These woke movies are dependent on viewers who assume that because the characters are women or black (or transgendered black women) they will be weak. And the film is about proving the viewers preconception wrong. That's going to be a very very short window of opportunity. We only. (sometimes) think like that now because we've, for so many years, been fed the idea that the sluts and the blacks get murdered first. But that stopped in the 90'ies. For thirty years now minority characters have been as complex as the non-minority characters. Until now. Now the minority characters are paper thin again. They're awesome at everything. That's not progress IMHO.
The world of woke movie making are fighting an enemy that died in the 1980'ies. Now they're preaching to a choir. These woke movie goers don't seem to care if the stories are any good. They're like fundamentalist evangelicals just wanting their religious views be validated, and they cheer at that. Movies were fine before woke came along. No, not Disney movies. But that was it. That was the last bastion of mainstream conservative value movie making.
But I can't see how this woke paradigm can last. These woke movies are all boring. Once the novelty has worn off the wokes are going to tire of watching them and then the money will stop funding them.
To continue my ramble, this is what I love about Dan Harmon of Rick and Morty fame. He's woke. But he's smart woke. His stuff is awesome. But that requires genius to pull off. Almost none of the woke stuff out there is made by geniuses. Dan Harmon is pretty alone in his category. Also worth noting is that his stuff is self referential and about woke topics. He rarely touches on topics outside woke topics.
So it's not like I think woke films can't be good. It's more like demanding that every film is woke will inevitably lead to a multitude of bland boring movies that are essentially all the same. But like I said. I think it's transitory, and I think the woke movie trend is already dying. I think Black Panther was peak woke.