5 ms·

I don’t think all critics of “mandatory woke” can be boiled down to “I hate it because it has black people in it”. I mean I wouldn’t personally use the world wo

I don’t think all critics of “mandatory woke” can be boiled down to “I hate it because it has black people in it”. I mean I wouldn’t personally use the world woke because it looks mostly devoid of meaning but as a European, the mandatory diversity in American production has reached a point where it sometimes gets very funny. I don’t really mind it because it doesn’t affect the narrative structure of what you are watching most of the time but I must confess that I did roll my eyes at black characters acting normally in the middle of a tavern in medieval Europe recently.

simonh 4y ago
There were black peoples, or at least Middle Eastern, all over Medieval Europe. The Arthurian cycle has moorish knights. When Eleanor of Aquitaine married the English king, part of her dowry was a North African city. Are we to believe none of them travelled to England? Berber pirates raided Iceland for slaves so there were whites people in Africa, why not black people in Europe? Some people travelled a lot. The Saxons sent emissaries to what’s now Sri Lanka, while an Armenian Christian monk born in Beijing met the pope and Edward I. In Middle Earth the Numenorians had extensive colonies in the far south of the continent. This obsession with racial segregation is absurd and utterly ahistorical.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  There is no obsession about racial segregation and I don’t care at all about the fictional universe of Tolkien. I can tell you that the first time people saw black people in my very small hometown in the French countryside during the Second World War, they stopped to ask questions and at least one photo was taken. It’s not racism. It was just completely out of the ordinary which is exactly how I imagine seeing black people in the middle of a tavern would happen in medieval Europe.
  - simonh 4y ago
    I think it very much depends on the tavern. In many places sure, it would be unknown. Could a random village have a black resident, maybe a sailor or member of a trade expedition that happened to settle there? Absolutely. Adventure fiction is often centred on unusual characters with exceptional back stories or circumstances, and people like that did exist.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      > Could a random village have a black resident, maybe a sailor or member of a trade expedition that happened to settle there? Absolutely. No, because they would have died from the novel diseases the village would have had. There's a reason why when Europeans went anywhere they died by the boat load and pretty much everyone they brought back to Europe also died. It's always fun to remember that Pocahontas died in England after being there less than a year.
      - simonh 4y ago
        The Middle East and North Africa had frequent contact with Europe. When thousands of Europeans went on crusade to the Middle East they didn’t all drop dead. The Romans went everywhere. Berber pirates even raided for slaves as far north as Iceland. This is simply not an issue. The Americas was a different situation, they’d been isolated from Eurasia for tens of thousands of years. In Middle Earth the Numenorians had extensive colonies in the far south, and also had contact with the Elves and their ancestral homelands in the northern regions. Again, just not an issue.
        thrown_22 4y ago
        The middle east is _not_ sub Saharan Africa.
        simonh 4y ago
        So what? The same applies. Sub Saharan Africa had frequent contact with North Africa and the Middle East. The Romans sent expeditions, and Arab traders travelled across much of the continent. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#History The Egyptians sponsored a Phoenician expedition that circumnavigated Africa. Finds at the ruins at Great Zimbabwe include items from as far away as China. Check out this mural of the Roman emperor Severus and his wife from the 2nd century, and tell me again how there were no black people in Europe as long ago as Medieval times. https://www.history.co.uk/article/severus-rome’s-first-african-emperor https://www.history.co.uk/article/severus-rome’s-first-afric... And again, we know for a fact from Tolkien that the Numenorians ranged from the north all the way to the far southern continent, and the oceans of the Far East.
- renox 4y ago
  OTOH, I remember a black colleague created quite a sensation when he traveled in a non-touristic part of China.. That said, 'historical fictions' are usually much more fiction than historical.
  - simonh 4y ago
    Why go to fiction when we have real history, like Yasuke the ‘black samurai’. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      “When Yasuke was presented to Oda Nobunaga, the Japanese daimyō thought that his skin must have been colored with black ink. Nobunaga had him strip from the waist up and made him scrub his skin.[22] These events are recorded in a 1581 letter of the Jesuit Luís Fróis to Lourenço Mexia, and in the 1582 Annual Report of the Jesuit Mission in Japan, also by Fróis. These were published in Cartas que os padres e irmãos da Companhia de Jesus escreverão dos reynos de Japão e China II (1598), normally known simply as Cartas.[23][24] When Nobunaga realized that the African's skin was indeed black, he took an interest in him.” You both seem in agreement actually.
      - simonh 4y ago
        Oh sure, it was incredibly unusual but once everyone got used to him being around after a few years, or a generation if he had kids, the novelty would wear off. I just don’t think it matters.
allendoerfer 4y ago
> I must confess that I did roll my eyes at black characters acting normally in the middle of a tavern in medieval Europe recently. It ruins the whole viewing experience, because you stop buying what you see. Characters are just very obviously not believable anymore. People in present times still react strongly to people of different skin color if they are not used to seeing them. And I am supposed to just let it slide, that a group of illiterate people, whose access to media consists only of some paintings in church to illustrate the Latin sermon they cannot even understand, just did not react whatsoever to some obvious foreigner, who - by definition, not because of the skin color - could very likely have robbed and killed them?
- docmars 4y ago
  Today, anything that could possibly incite violence or impart "otheredness" towards an "oppressed" people group will not do in film, the risk is too high (albeit manufactured from nothing), lest they experience the total condemnation of Twitter for not following the latest narrative and appealing to this very small group of radical activists who are almost singlehandedly dictating what modern multimedia is allowed to portray.
hackerlight 4y ago
> mandatory diversity For everyone except East Asian males. They are generally not allowed into the diversity club unless they're playing a martial arts expert. East Asian women get casted because, well, at least they're women. Maybe they can find themselves a nice non-East Asian boyfriend in the movie. East Asian men can go and screw themselves. God forbid if they included a conservative older white male who isn't portrayed as a heinous villain. You have to remember that the woke writers are not striving for real diversity, they are striving to placate the cultural elite on Twitter and look good in front of their woke friends. It is a status contest. I think this is all part of the reason why "woke" shows get canned so hard. It is so obviously contrived and not reflective of real life. They are not making timeless content.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- docmars 4y ago
  A melting pot devoid of individual culture or expression. It's ridiculous. They forced as many races as they possibly could into the same scenes, representing the "same" peoples to check a box for representation (cheaply) in the most homogeneous way possible, which is half the reason this show is so uninteresting. It removes the entire concept of having different nations with different people who are proud of their culture and ways of being, each with something unique to bring to the table, say in scenarios of war, uniting together against something evil, trade, customs, and everything else that isolated groups represent on their own. Globalism isn't even realistic in a setting like Lord of the Rings, yet here we are.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    > It removes the entire concept of having different nations with different people who are proud of their culture That's not my issue. I dislike the concept of nations and national culture and borders, and I despise nationalism and ethnonationalism. I just want non-contrived diversity. That means sitcoms that have an actual diverse cast (including political conservatives, Asian and Middle Eastern men, redheads, ugly people, autistic people who aren't there as a gag, guys with small dicks, butch women, and so on) which represents the real world and doesn't alienate and shaft parts of the population for no artistic reasons. And that means a LoTR series that doesn't have diversity where it doesn't belong and where it doesn't make artistic sense.

simonh 4y ago

There were black peoples, or at least Middle Eastern, all over Medieval Europe. The Arthurian cycle has moorish knights. When Eleanor of Aquitaine married the English king, part of her dowry was a North African city. Are we to believe none of them travelled to England? Berber pirates raided Iceland for slaves so there were whites people in Africa, why not black people in Europe? Some people travelled a lot. The Saxons sent emissaries to what’s now Sri Lanka, while an Armenian Christian monk born in Beijing met the pope and Edward I. In Middle Earth the Numenorians had extensive colonies in the far south of the continent. This obsession with racial segregation is absurd and utterly ahistorical.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
There is no obsession about racial segregation and I don’t care at all about the fictional universe of Tolkien. I can tell you that the first time people saw black people in my very small hometown in the French countryside during the Second World War, they stopped to ask questions and at least one photo was taken. It’s not racism. It was just completely out of the ordinary which is exactly how I imagine seeing black people in the middle of a tavern would happen in medieval Europe.
- simonh 4y ago
  I think it very much depends on the tavern. In many places sure, it would be unknown. Could a random village have a black resident, maybe a sailor or member of a trade expedition that happened to settle there? Absolutely. Adventure fiction is often centred on unusual characters with exceptional back stories or circumstances, and people like that did exist.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    > Could a random village have a black resident, maybe a sailor or member of a trade expedition that happened to settle there? Absolutely. No, because they would have died from the novel diseases the village would have had. There's a reason why when Europeans went anywhere they died by the boat load and pretty much everyone they brought back to Europe also died. It's always fun to remember that Pocahontas died in England after being there less than a year.
    - simonh 4y ago
      The Middle East and North Africa had frequent contact with Europe. When thousands of Europeans went on crusade to the Middle East they didn’t all drop dead. The Romans went everywhere. Berber pirates even raided for slaves as far north as Iceland. This is simply not an issue. The Americas was a different situation, they’d been isolated from Eurasia for tens of thousands of years. In Middle Earth the Numenorians had extensive colonies in the far south, and also had contact with the Elves and their ancestral homelands in the northern regions. Again, just not an issue.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        The middle east is _not_ sub Saharan Africa.
        simonh 4y ago
        So what? The same applies. Sub Saharan Africa had frequent contact with North Africa and the Middle East. The Romans sent expeditions, and Arab traders travelled across much of the continent. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu#History The Egyptians sponsored a Phoenician expedition that circumnavigated Africa. Finds at the ruins at Great Zimbabwe include items from as far away as China. Check out this mural of the Roman emperor Severus and his wife from the 2nd century, and tell me again how there were no black people in Europe as long ago as Medieval times. https://www.history.co.uk/article/severus-rome’s-first-african-emperor https://www.history.co.uk/article/severus-rome’s-first-afric... And again, we know for a fact from Tolkien that the Numenorians ranged from the north all the way to the far southern continent, and the oceans of the Far East.
renox 4y ago
OTOH, I remember a black colleague created quite a sensation when he traveled in a non-touristic part of China.. That said, 'historical fictions' are usually much more fiction than historical.
- simonh 4y ago
  Why go to fiction when we have real history, like Yasuke the ‘black samurai’. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasuke
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    “When Yasuke was presented to Oda Nobunaga, the Japanese daimyō thought that his skin must have been colored with black ink. Nobunaga had him strip from the waist up and made him scrub his skin.[22] These events are recorded in a 1581 letter of the Jesuit Luís Fróis to Lourenço Mexia, and in the 1582 Annual Report of the Jesuit Mission in Japan, also by Fróis. These were published in Cartas que os padres e irmãos da Companhia de Jesus escreverão dos reynos de Japão e China II (1598), normally known simply as Cartas.[23][24] When Nobunaga realized that the African's skin was indeed black, he took an interest in him.” You both seem in agreement actually.
    - simonh 4y ago
      Oh sure, it was incredibly unusual but once everyone got used to him being around after a few years, or a generation if he had kids, the novelty would wear off. I just don’t think it matters.

allendoerfer 4y ago

> I must confess that I did roll my eyes at black characters acting normally in the middle of a tavern in medieval Europe recently. It ruins the whole viewing experience, because you stop buying what you see. Characters are just very obviously not believable anymore. People in present times still react strongly to people of different skin color if they are not used to seeing them. And I am supposed to just let it slide, that a group of illiterate people, whose access to media consists only of some paintings in church to illustrate the Latin sermon they cannot even understand, just did not react whatsoever to some obvious foreigner, who - by definition, not because of the skin color - could very likely have robbed and killed them?

docmars 4y ago
Today, anything that could possibly incite violence or impart "otheredness" towards an "oppressed" people group will not do in film, the risk is too high (albeit manufactured from nothing), lest they experience the total condemnation of Twitter for not following the latest narrative and appealing to this very small group of radical activists who are almost singlehandedly dictating what modern multimedia is allowed to portray.

hackerlight 4y ago

> mandatory diversity For everyone except East Asian males. They are generally not allowed into the diversity club unless they're playing a martial arts expert. East Asian women get casted because, well, at least they're women. Maybe they can find themselves a nice non-East Asian boyfriend in the movie. East Asian men can go and screw themselves. God forbid if they included a conservative older white male who isn't portrayed as a heinous villain. You have to remember that the woke writers are not striving for real diversity, they are striving to placate the cultural elite on Twitter and look good in front of their woke friends. It is a status contest. I think this is all part of the reason why "woke" shows get canned so hard. It is so obviously contrived and not reflective of real life. They are not making timeless content.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
docmars 4y ago
A melting pot devoid of individual culture or expression. It's ridiculous. They forced as many races as they possibly could into the same scenes, representing the "same" peoples to check a box for representation (cheaply) in the most homogeneous way possible, which is half the reason this show is so uninteresting. It removes the entire concept of having different nations with different people who are proud of their culture and ways of being, each with something unique to bring to the table, say in scenarios of war, uniting together against something evil, trade, customs, and everything else that isolated groups represent on their own. Globalism isn't even realistic in a setting like Lord of the Rings, yet here we are.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  > It removes the entire concept of having different nations with different people who are proud of their culture That's not my issue. I dislike the concept of nations and national culture and borders, and I despise nationalism and ethnonationalism. I just want non-contrived diversity. That means sitcoms that have an actual diverse cast (including political conservatives, Asian and Middle Eastern men, redheads, ugly people, autistic people who aren't there as a gag, guys with small dicks, butch women, and so on) which represents the real world and doesn't alienate and shaft parts of the population for no artistic reasons. And that means a LoTR series that doesn't have diversity where it doesn't belong and where it doesn't make artistic sense.