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Comment by NullPrefix | Hacker News Reader

New woke ip flops belly up, so they take what they can.

Edit: Question to the downvoter: Which woke IP didn't flop?

I'll give a couple historical and current examples:

Star Trek was always woke, starting with its at the time quite "woke" black communications' officer and many plots with aliens as stand-ins for different races or nations. The initial show got cancelled (as is often the case with even successful sci-fi) but it gave birth to a giant franchise that continued to be at least somewhat "woke" by contemporary standards. Definitely not a flop.

The Apple TV series For All Mankind is going into season 4 and is relatively popular. I liked it. It's full of "woke" stuff but is well written and is based on a really good premise. My favorite fan theory is that it's an unofficial prequel to The Expanse. Not sure I'd call The Expanse "woke" but it's also not not-woke and has a number of background elements like the popularity of polyamory and bisexual characters sure to trigger right-wingers.

I could keep listing sci-fi. Lots of "woke" sci-fi.

Films, lots of them. There's many films about civil rights and social justice struggles that are quite good and did not flop: Mississippi Burning, Schindler's List, 12 Years a Slave, Hidden Figures, etc. Disney has recently made a bunch of Pixar films that are pretty woke and didn't exactly flop.

I do agree that there's been a fair amount of stuff that feels like "woke" plot points have been shoehorned into it, but that's just bad writing. Bad writing is bad writing.

If anything the woke stuff might be getting shoehorned in in a frantic attempt to dress up a turkey. "Lets throw some gay characters into this shitty movie to be edgy for gen-Z."

You’re confusing woke and liberal.

In practice, the former is mostly a word conservatives use to attack the latter. The words used have changed since politicians are less likely to run scared of being called “liberal” but the sides have not.

I think there's a bigger difference than quality.

If I watch a bad episode of Star Trek, I don't come away disliking Gene Roddenberry as a person, it's just a bad episode. Some of the woke stuff is actively obnoxious and self-aggrandizing beyond merely not landing.

Not the downvoter - but I’m guessing it was for using the term ‘woke’ - a derogatory term that is so often used lazily to excuse racism, homophobia or misogyny by people who don’t want to engage in discussion.

That's true, 60% of the time that's the case. Though also how else do you describe things like the new Velma show, that just try to cram as many progressive causes/jokes/viewpoints into a piece as possible while making sure to have nothing that strays from that pattern?

Sure saying "wow series X is woke because a character is gay which means it's pandering and sucks" is lazy, but at a certain point there is a point where it's useful to have a word to categorize this phenomenon.

>at a certain point there is a point where it's useful to have a word to categorize this phenomenon.

Other words can simply be used. "Woke" shouldnt have to be diverted so far from its original definition just to become a convenient catchall term.

Gina Carano’s Terror on the Prairie.

Avatar

>'Avatar 2' is already the 10th highest-grossing movie ever made

OK, point taken

I don't think the original Avatar was particularly "woke", what makes you say that?

Edit: and Avatar 2 is not an example of a "new IP"

Haven't seen the second, but afaik the internets are telling me it's woke enough. I was following the logic of "why change old Bond releases when you can release a new woke Bond"

What does “woke” mean?

I would define woke as extremely politically correct without any regards to moral values

Whose moral values?

Avatar is the story of a soldier who joins a non-industrial society and fights back against the military trying to mine resources. It wasn't subtle.

How about this: American soldier joins Cherokee resistance fighters and successfully defends burial ground from "liberation" force trying to tap oil reservoirs underneath the land. Okay, now the Cherokee are blue aliens, the oil is "unobtanium", and there are spaceships.

The original avatar is about indigenous people (with the help of a gone-native soldier and a sympathetic scientist) using their wits to overcome a greedy military-industrial that is attempting to reap all the minerals on their planet.

That certainly qualifies.

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