One example that probably flirts the line with hurting children was Netflix's Cuties.
"Netflix is also the streaming service behind "Cuties," a wildly controversial French film that tells the coming-of-age story of an 11-year-old girl as she discovers her maturing self, all while looking for acceptance in her religious family and group of young dancers she hopes to befriend"
If you want examples of pardon the term but I guess "woke" programming, this list is pretty extensive on Netflix. You can do a quick google search yourself to see lots of examples here.
My personal take (as someone who is left leaning) is when these messages are bombarded into programming it often feels forced.. even perhaps propagandized. This level of inauthenticity hurts the overall artistic and entertainment value of the programming (just my two cents).
There is no dispute that Netflix has woke programming, or heck many other kinds of programming and no sensible person would claim otherwise. What is being asked is which programs for children/kids are you arguing is politically motivated?
The only examples anyone has been able to produce are children shows that have homosexual characters in them. I am going to assume the best of intentions here, but it's very hard not to find it appalling that many people would think that a show that has some gay characters in it is making a political statement or has a political agenda.
The fact that the inclusion of LGBT and/or PoC in a children's program is at all controversial tells me we still have a problem that needs to be addressed. If you really don't like the idea of seeing a black or gay person on TV then you are the problem.
The sad thing is that a big majority of people complaining are people who are past child-rearing age and thus not even the target market for any of these shows.
What bugs people, me included, is very different. It is the forced inclusion of diversity seemingly everywhere. It is the constant subtle messages of "white man evil" in shows where it doesn't add to the plot. It is stuff like the Oscars being explicit about requiring minority leads. It is the one sided diversity where blacks, browns and Muslims are protected but it is perfectly acceptable to make racist jokes about white people or say Christians. It is the subtle shaming of anything conservative.
FYI I am mixed race, liberal, and not Christian. I am also of child rearing age and don't like seeing my kids being indoctrinated at so many levels.
It's nice that you're a mixed race liberal Christian who has kids, but please answer the question. It really is coming across as a bunch of people who want way too much to be angry about something without knowing precisely what it is they're angry about.
Also, apparently it's annoying to "force" representation in shows but it's perfectly fine to have shows whose literal only purpose is to drive demand for various dolls and toys. As if anyone would have created Bob the Builder or whatever without a plan for selling it in Walmart.
The content itself is political. That's increasingly problematic.
[1]https://edition.cnn.com/style/amp/abercrombie-fitch-exclusio...
There's also a difference between reaching out to disadvantaged groups -vs- targeting elites.
As an absurd example, compare a fancy restaurant to a soup kitchen. The fancy restaurant is targeting the elite, and excluding the poor. The soup kitchen is targeting the poor, and it'd be ridiculous for Elon Musk to demand food from them - but they'd probably still serve him if he showed up.
Analogously, it feels like you're trying to use the existence of soup kitchens to defend restaurants.
(To be clear, I'm not saying restaurants are evil, or that clothing brands are an act of charity. Just trying to illustrate why people are going to have different intuitions on Abercrombie -vs- clothes for black people)
What you're really saying is that it's not your personal politics, and is therefore bad.
The opposite is true. If a writer feels or is outwardly coerced that he/she must include certain characters, topics, behaviors.... this comes off an not genuine, propagandized, or even corporate commercially. My personal opinion is much of the Netflix original content falls into this later category.
> this comes off an not genuine
I get the feeling you'd say this even about authentically written content, so it's a moot point. You've drawn a line in the sand that characters and content that don't look like you are bad, and that it's origins must be from seedy beginnings rather than decades of hard work by dismissed groups of people that are now finally getting a chance to write stories about people like them.
Not necessarily. If Netflix had 10,000 shows and some of them were stories about Christian values, some were about Hindu values, and some were about Muslim values, nobody reasonable would have a problem with it. However, if all 10,000 shows made a forced effort to somehow include Christian values, or always had to shoehorn at least one character openly wearing a cross and saying a prayer into every show, it would rub on people the wrong way. That's how it is with Netflix original programming. You can break out your "woke" bingo card for any Netflix original show, no matter what it is purportedly about, and score bingo every time. Not every show has to include a facet of the same political agenda. Even if you happen to agree with that agenda, there is something to be said about diversity (true diversity - diversity of thought, not the fake kind peddling on Netflix).
Telling girls they can be stronger than men is a lie that can lead to terrible outcomes.
2. indirect harm - the girls told falsehoods begin to distrust institutions who hold themselves out to be unconditional truthsayers, thereby dissolving social bonds and encouraging unneeded division and rancor
First of all, anyone can get into a fight and lose. And more often than not, technique is what helps people prevail in fights, not strength. Any decent martial arts training will teach you that.
If you’re talking about professional boxing, sure, it would be stupid to claim that a well-trained woman could, on average, beat an equally-well-trained man in a boxing match.
But I don’t think that’s the claim here. The claim is that women can be as strong as men, and that isn’t totally false. Maybe not the strongest men, but certainly a lot of them, and especially if they train well.
As for the claim of indirect harm, I think people in general need to be better-educated to engage in critical thinking. Treating words from authority figures with a grain of salt is at the heart of post-secondary education, and yet, it leads to better civil discourse, not worse.
Also, there seems to be a thin veil of sexism in your claim, as though women aren’t capable of thinking for themselves and therefore can’t ascertain the nuance in a general statement like “women can be stronger than men.” It’s meant to be a motivational statement, not a rigorous scientific claim.
Find me a credible source that claims this. After all, we certainly don't group wrestlers into weight categories because of differences in technique?
>The claim is that women can be as strong as men, and that isn’t totally false. Maybe not the strongest men, but certainly a lot of them, and especially if they train well.
That claim is simply false. The most extreme female athletes come close to achieving parity with an average untrained man. There are almost none of these - certainly not "a lot of them". The vast majority of women are much weaker than even the weakest men.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17186303/ "Less expected was the gender related distribution of hand-grip strength: 90% of females produced less force than 95% of males. Though female athletes were significantly stronger (444 N) than their untrained female counterparts, this value corresponded to only the 25th percentile of the male subjects."
"The results of female national elite athletes even indicate that the strength level attainable by extremely high training will rarely surpass the 50th percentile of untrained or not specifically trained men."
>Also, there seems to be a thin veil of sexism in your claim,
I appreciate your candor.
> as though women aren’t capable of thinking for themselves
The problem is that everyone (men and women) thinks of themselves as the special snowflake who can "beat the odds". I think that the message to women "You are very likely weaker than the weakest men you know" avoids much more harm (case 1 direct harm) than the "good" generated by: "it's extremely unlikely but with good genetics and training it's a possibility that some extreme athlete women could become nearly as strong as a below-average man".
I personally am not sure how important I think the truth is as a moral good. I feel that as time has gone on, I've seen the dissolution on a societal level, and I now value truth more than I once did.
"Culture war" issues tend to be a bit more subtle, and can usually be ignored as valid plot devices. There's not even anything explicitly wrong with adding your own cultural values to a movie, but rather it can get pretty overbearing, even if you tend to agree.
A good way to look out for these themes is to look at the characters and ask some basic questions:
- Which characters in the show are in charge? What groups (racial, sexual, etc) are they from?
- Which characters in the show are competent? What groups are they from?
- Which characters in the show are the villains? What groups are they from?
- Which characters in the show are the victims? What groups are they from?
- Which characters have "good" traits such as humility, kindness, etc?
- Which characters are shown to be bigots?
- etc.
This can get a bit more complex, too. The solutions to problems, or explanations for the ills of the world might also follow culture war lines. Who are the bad guys? Are they from a corporation? From the government? From a certain gender or ethnic group? etc.
A great example of this might be the Mulan remake vs. the original. In the remake, much of the movie is occupied with showing how Mulan is better than everyone, and then quickly cutting to show face-shots of men who are either severely intimated, cowed, afraid, or impressed. I'm not suggesting there is anything wrong with this. Rather I'm just making the point that this was added to the movie for political and cultural reasons. The original cartoon didn't really have much comeuppance in this way, because it was written during a different time.
Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with people putting their political views into shows -- really, that's inevitable at some level. But, there's also a certain level where it becomes too over the top, too sanctimonious, too pervasive, and you just want to get away from it all.
* A social worker investigates the boys' home life and tells Mr. Drummond that she believes black children belong in black households.
* Mr. Drummond scolds Arnold for secretly recording other people's conversations. Arnold disobeys him and records Kimberly's boyfriend Roger making racist comments about Willis to his sister.
* Arnold's poor dental checkup has Drummond suspecting that the easy availability of junk food from vending machines at school is to blame. But when Drummond begins a campaign to replace the hot dogs, cookies, potato chips and soft drinks with more healthy foods, Arnold's friends try to convince him to get his father to reconsider.
* Arnold's joy of being transferred to an all-white school (and riding a bus to get there) is shaken to its very core when a racist busing opponent calls the Drummond household warning the pro-busing family patriarch not to send his black children to the new school, or else.
* When it is learned that Drummond's upcoming construction project may be located on top of an ancient Indian burial ground, he faces protest from a Native American who threatens to go on a hunger strike if the land is built on. Arnold and Willis follow suit by going on a hunger strike of their own.
--
And of course, we mustn't forget "All in the Family" from the 1970s; pretty much every episode was about politics in some way.
That said, there's plenty of room to make fun of white male Christians, just like there's plenty of room to make fun of everyone else. It's not like there's a shortage of hypocrisy and foibles out there.
Why is it only political when another group is creating the content?
This is dishonest. Minorities were also portrayed positively in legacy media, and villains were also frequently portrayed by white males.
>Why is it only political when another group is creating the content
In the past studios were creating content relevant to a predominantly (90%+) white audience. They were creating content which was largely in line with their target demographic culture.
This recent media instead is creating content to disrupt what it's owners and managers see as a "racist" culture. That's what makes it political. It's less about money and more about deliberately changing culture in a hypocritical manner - fighting alleged racism with explicit racism. Breakfast at tiffanies was not about punching down on asians, but black feminist vikings is about sending a politicized message.
Sure, maybe a century ago in the 1920s but it's been several decades since international revenues eclipsed domestic.
> That's what makes it political.
Other people having their voices heard is what makes it political? Or that you don't like what those voices have to say?
Well, it isn't. As a straight white man myself, I don't feel like I'm particularly suffering from discrimination. Am I picked first for everything now, like maybe before I would have? Maybe not. Does it adversely impact my life? Not really.
It's OK to let others to have the first sip from the fountain once in awhile, and you can help lift up historically-persecuted people without it necessarily being a loss for you. Attitude goes a long way in helping yourself be at peace with it.
If you're a straight white man and you're feeling seriously oppressed by D&I, I'd like to hear from you personally and understand your situation better.
Anyway, this is pretty far afield from the discussion, which is really about specifically how media is harming people and children in particular.
If you want to know why D&I is an issue, it's because it is re-entrenching all of the stereotypes by hamhandedly trying to give everyone different handicaps, like life can be simplified to a game of golf. The reality, though, is that it doesn't matter what handicap I'm given, due to my poor golf game I'm never going to play against Tiger Woods.
The only thing the handicaps change is what we're measuring, and at some point people decide not to play the game, or lobby to change the rules. Look at the resurgence of the far right: it is D&I which gave them the resentment in people's souls to which they could place their hooks.
Because it's racist and sexist? Because it reduces people to their skin color and gender? Because it implicitly reinforces the notion that minorities are "different" and forces us to nonsensically pretend that differences can only be positive in cooperative environments? Because it suggests that minorities need special advantages to level the playing field? Because top to bottom it is not a cohesive, consistent, or rational policy and implies that all inequities are exclusively the result of discrimination on behalf of white males who have been made into a target, are having their voices silenced, their job opportunities removed, and their livelihoods threatened for self advocating?
On one hand your ideology implies that all of this is deserved because of the past and necessary for an equitable future, but then at the same time you blatantly deny that any of it's happening and shame anyone who speaks up against this discrimination by calling them bigoted. It's insanity.
What is "forcing" you to do this? The D&I training I've been taking has been about finding positivity in differences to our mutual advantage, but never does it say that all aspects of it are 100% positive. People are always going to find areas of disagreement. Yet we find ourselves working together, and so we must find ways to collaborate as a team despite those differences, even to the point of respecting them.
> Because it suggests that minorities need special advantages to level the playing field?
The evidence on this is pretty clear, because several minorities do suffer from historical poverty (in money, in education, and quality of life) that has been very difficult to overcome. A lot of damage was done prior to the Civil Rights Act through mechanisms specifically intended to keep Black people down, and we haven't recovered from that yet. We're getting better, but I don't think we can just put our heads in the sand and conclude that the Civil Rights Act was the end of our journey to remedy the terrible legacy of slavery and racism.
> all inequities are exclusively the result of discrimination on behalf of white males who have been made into a target, are having their voices silenced, their job opportunities removed
You cannot be serious about the silence of white voices in the media. Maybe some individuals are being silenced (see below), but the sentiments certainly are not. For every 1 person who may have been silenced, it's easy to find thousands who haven't, whose opinions track roughly identically. And those people who have been "silenced" seem to have no trouble getting their voices heard through other avenues. Alex Jones still has plenty of mouthpieces, as does Donald Trump. (Both also happen to own several of those mouthpieces...)
And it is especially ironic when a person claims they are being silenced... on Twitter, and then when it is republished through various blogspam ad nauseam.
> ...their livelihoods threatened for self advocating?
I think it depends on the nature of the advocacy in question. If you're saying, "I want the opportunity to learn, to work hard, and be successful," I would be very surprised if people were to threaten your livelihood over that. On the other hand, if your advocacy consists of lies, exaggerations, and hysterics, then people might not want to associate with you.
I don't accuse anyone of being a bigot because they have genuine and good-faith concerns about whether we are remedying social inequity the wrong way. It's when they flat-out lie, deny the past, make racist remarks themselves, or make themselves out to be the victim without evidence that they deserve that moniker.
You seem pretty sure about that for a person who wasn’t involved in its production. Even assuming, arguendo, that it wasn’t, would you contend that it would be appropriate to have such a character in a modern movie? Have you surveyed Asian people about how they feel about the Fu Manchu character?
Genuinely curious here - is there some difference between the dominance of one group in the 50s vs 80s vs today? Or do you feel that TV has always been dominated by political themes?
I think what you have these days is a splintering of the mainstream, and the rise of extremist viewpoints. Both of these, in my opinion are due to social media.
In the 80s, (and before) there was a true mainstream culture. For certain, people fell outside of that culture, and if you did fall outside of the mainstream I believe the consequences were harsher than they would be nowadays. But, broadly speaking, that mainstream culture encompassed more Americans than the mainstream culture of today. In modern times, there is no real majority mainstream culture, and because of this centralized media is reflective of a smaller and smaller portion of the country. In other words, there are simply going to be a larger number of people who might not feel represented by views and positions they watch in TV or hear on the news. And to be clear, I'm not talking about "racial representation here." I explicitly do not mean that "if I don't see a person of my race or gender in a show, I don't feel represented." I mean instead that the social and political values of a given show today reflect the views of a smaller percentage of Americans than the political and social values of a show in the 50s or 80s.
I'm not even arguing that this is a bad thing in the objective sense: simply that the political views of the current "mainstream" feel narrow and extremist to me, to the extent that I just don't want to watch a lot of popular shows.
Seriously?
Now, when She-Ra starts having extended monologues about taxation policy or the virtues of direct democracy vs. representative government, I’ll support ya!
(I'm not joking, that's canon.)
https://www.romper.com/life/lgbtq-shows-kids-family
Not that it's bad for those people to believe in those things or anything. But I don't want my kids exposed and normalized to these things until they're an appropriate age to decide on their own.
“Same sex couples exist” is not a political view. It is a reality of fact that children of all ages already know. My kid’s best friend since age 5 has two moms. Trust me: she has no concept of what politics are but knows what two loving parents are.
If “gays exist” is the example of politics jammed into TV, that’s a really really weak example.
Yes sadly this has become much more prominent in the last couple of years. It has blatant political propaganda inserted into all of their original content that is clearly forced and hurts the quality of the programming.