Agema said:
Absolutely. "But... one of the leads is a black person. HOW DARE YOU SHOVE SOCIAL JUSTICE DOWN OUR THROATS!"
Because that is approximately all a fair chunk of them need to be triggered. There's a couple of offhand jibes directed at excessive machismo, a woman who can fight, and IT'S SOCIAL JUSTICE GONE MAD. Of course, those of them who realise at some level that their case isn't very good (or just don't want to seem too obvious) instead take the route of being hypercritical, and just try to be as deliberately negative as possible on pseudo-objective grounds. Good is presented as okay, okay is presented as abysmal - anything as long as it damages what they don't like.
One might point out the irony that as a group they have become the worst of what they used to complain about: the minority activist types who constantly complain about anything and everything for not ticking the boxes they want ticked. Ah well, gaze long enough into the abyss and the abyss gazes back into you, as the saying goes.
It's not even irony, really. Back before "SJW" was used as a pejorative, Republicans tried to make fashionable the term "culture warrior," it in itself a positive term to describe their side in a supposed culture war that included things like being considerate and inclusive. They were outrage warriors, basically. Someone said "happy holidays?"
Rage! Someone didn't mock the disabled?
Rage! Someone was inclusive?
Rage!
Really, we've had people with a need to be triggered since the 90s and a certain group of people made "political correctness" mjuch bigger than the people they were decrying ever did. Probably longer, since Archie Bunker represented millions of real people.
Rage! is one hell of a drug. And like most drugs, you need more and more to get to the same place the longer you abuse it. The reason the "War on Christmas" stopped getting much coverage because people stopped caring. Bill Oreily claimed it had been won, bu we're still seeing holiday sales, holiday trees, and holiday displays.
However, while most people eventually get tired of the silliness, we occasionally see outrage. It gets smaller and sillier each time, like that one time a couple of years ago when there was a minor War on Christmas resurgence because a few people were upset that Starbucks--once the enemy simply for
having holiday cups--were pushing the gay agenda because the hands on their holiday cup were a little too gay or something. And it got a little attention, but was mostly ignored for the nonsense it was.
What's left is the hardcore outrage warrior, and it takes less and less to get this small and concerted group to sound the alarms.
This is pretty much what I think we're seeing in comics, movies, and video games. It's not so much what the movement has become, but what I'm pretty sure it has always been. People who complain about people being offended while looking for something to be offended about. And it's why I generally have engaged in this stuff less and less over the years, because it becomes more absurd. Captain America's black now? Oh no! Nobody other than Steve Rogers has ever been Captain America before! The Doctor's a woman? Oh no, how can they reasonably explain how an immortal alien who can swap bodies can become a woman? A
woman busting ghosts? A
WOMAN using the Force!?
The irony is, in some of these cases they could hide it if they just waited a little bit. Instead of flipping out because of the announcement the Ghostbusters movie would feature women, they could just wait and watch it. It wasn't that good, though I did enjoy a couple of scenes. Hell, Mad Max is one I could see. I know it's critically acclaimed, but I still haven't finished it. They could disguise their outrage by just holding off a bit, but they seem to prefer to make up a story anyway. Finn's arc was somehow about Sock juice, and we knew this before the movie came out because...he was black. Which brings me back to the here and now, where people are making criticisms of Rey that don't reflect on her character in the movies.
Is she a good character? Well, to the extent you can consider any Star Wars character "good," I think she's somewhere in that pack, but I never watched Star Wars for its amazing character depth, I watched it for its campy cowboy space wizard aesthetic, and watching an orphan from a desert planet pick up a laser sword and kick ass fits into that.
I mean, to be completely honest, I don't doubt that most of these creators are able to do what they're doing for cynical reasons. I just don't think it has anything to do with social justice. I think it has to do with the money that can be made once you start tapping women and people of colour, etc. It's not so much social justice as the discovery that we're as exploitable as anyone else.
Which is why it doesn't get more traction. Most people are becoming used to the idea.
I'm not sure if I'd even notice if I didn't frequent nerd sites for nerd news and nerd information.
