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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

Name a „woke“ movie with likable characters. One.

Its a contradiction in terms - you cannot be a spiritual scold or schoolmarm and mold a set of likable characters from this essence.

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Wait we’ve gone from the show having diversity hiring to the entire thing being “woke” now? It’s so hard to keep up with the ginned up outrage.

The interesting thing is that the plot is almost entirely about noble elites. The casting is the only woke thing about it.

Woke seems to purposefully imply a bungled attempt at progressive characters so it's kind of tautological. But if we just mean progressive, then Zootopia.

Interesting. I did not perceive Zootopia as progressive ( tbh, I don't remember much of it except for the DMV skit ). Could you elaborate on that interpretation?

The entire plot of the movie is about predator animals going savage and the rabbit cop and fox conman working together to understand why.

Act 1 is rabbit cop overcoming assumptions that she cannot be a cop because she is a rabbit.

Act 2 is they catch a savage predator and then, when prompted on the news, rabbit cop suggests it may be due to predators having savage behaviors "in their genetics"

Act 3 is realizing that this was an unwarranted bias, working together, and finding the real culprit.

It's a great progressive film because one of the big racial conflict moments is the rabbit cop, a kind and well intentioned protagonist, grappling with her own subconscious biases.

I think it was a warranted bias. Obviously in the show's past there was a time when predators predated, or they wouldn't have brought it up.

That makes it more noble. The Rabbit is not just getting over a silly uninformed prejudice, but is willing to intellectually set aside the ongoing murder of her ancestors to fully analyze a case. "Sure, they are naturally violent and we all know that, but is that enough to account for ..." She's a real investigator who refuses to be distracted.

The movie was very clear that predators in this universe were not naturally violent.

It's at best on par with prejudice towards people from a country that previously invaded your own.

It’s all about diversity and stereotypes. Shows that one can’t trust stereotypes about certain types of people.

While amusingly also showing that stereotypes are mostly accurate.

It has a a couple of strong female leads fighting the system and taking down the man.

The entire premise of the movie is the conflict born if prejudice between prey animals, who are the majority, and predator animals, who are the minority. Throughout the movie, prey animals are depicted as being suspicious of predators, or even refuse them business. The main character is a idealistic cop, from a rural setting who moves to the city and encounters anti-predator bias. There is a panic after a series of predator animals appear to engage in random acts of violence. And the big reveal is that the panic is all manufactured by prey animals in government to maintain power.

I feel like a lot of Disney movies aren’t exactly subtle in their messaging these days, but even by that measure this one was about as hamfisted of an effort as they’ve ever made.

“Woke” or accused of being so?

There are plenty of movies out there that have been criticised for being too ”liberal leaning”. “Woke” is a rather recent term.

Django unchained and Black Panther are two relatively recent movies accused of being “woke”. Both were resounding successes.

Neither of those movies are considered Woke, really.

Memories are short. Both were criticised for being woke, especially Black Panther, which I distinctively remember being both lauded and lambasted for the same reason.

I sense though that most people who parrot the "go woke go broke" narrative, focus only on those that have done badly in the box office.

Black Panther had a few good ones, like BP's sister Shuri.

Unfortunately she went on to become that exact sort of insufferable character in her followup appearances.

To kill a mockingbird

How dare you question a woman's lived experience.

Not to mention the hate Harper Lee got for Go Set a Watchman showing what happened to the characters 20 years later.

Define „woke“

The parent is using the term pejoratively. In this context, I would describe it as calling someone a poseur of liberal/progressive issues, i.e., someone who cares more about the appearance of supporting progressive issues than actually supporting those underlying issues themselves. It means calling someone dishonest about their outward intent, basically. Personally, I'd prefer that people would just say what they mean rather than relying on slang entangled in the modern culture wars.

While used pejoratively, there are a few characteristics you can glean:

- Over-representations or inappropriate representations of minorities

- Main lead is usually some minority (e.g., woman, black, trans, etc.)

- Said minority characters are usually high on the power scale and rarely encounter any challenges, often at the detriment to the story

- Said minority usually espouse some overly blunt progressive message.

It's a mix between progressive propaganda and a fan-fic.

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