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I think people with legitimate criticisms are starting to get really tired being called a racist or a misogynist. 99% of the reviews aren't about wokeness at al

by tjpnz 4y ago

I think people with legitimate criticisms are starting to get really tired being called a racist or a misogynist. 99% of the reviews aren't about wokeness at all. They're about the writing, the pacing and the how unbelievably dull the show is.

dmix 4y ago
People will always ignore flaws if it’s entertaining. The fact LOTR was boring and uneventful makes the other flaws more glaring.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
smcl 4y ago
People were up in arms before a single episode aired, because they saw a fictional species (dwarf) had dark skin. many of those people have now pivoted their arguments against the show to being about pacing, writing (note: I’m in no way implying this is you, I haven’t seen any LotR series opinions on HN) - but the racist stuff has already occurred
- scarface74 4y ago
  Yes, this is like people being up in arms that DC decided to cast a Black woman to play an orange alien from Tamarin.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  But the fact that some people were racist does not preclude others from just not liking the show.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  I wonder how well it would go down if someone made a show about slavery in USA with all of the black people being played by non-blacks... For inclusivity you know? Get some Asians there. Maybe gender swap the historical big figures to boot and have them speak Chinese or something.
  - tarakat 4y ago
    A better comparison would be Black Panther or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - fictional stories and worlds loosely inspired by real places, just like Middle Earth.
  - wodenokoto 4y ago
    So the human race can, in real life, have black and white people, but the made up species of dwarfes and elves can’t?
    - sensanaty 4y ago
      How do black dwarves make sense? Their entire species lives deep underground and never sees the light of day, so they don't need to evolve to protect their skin from UV rays. It's not like humans randomly became black or white, skin color is a result of thousands of years of evolution because of our surroundings. If you're going to apply the real world here, then you have to admit that black skinned dwarves make no sense from a biological point of view, since as we can see in the real world things tend to get paler and paler the less UV they're exposed to. I don't know enough about Tolkien elves to comment on there being no black elves though
      - 3nd0rph1n 4y ago
        > How do black dwarves make sense? Their entire species lives deep underground and never sees the light of day, so they don't need to evolve to protect their skin from UV rays. This is EXACTLY my issue with the show. This kind of forced diversity fuccs up the lore and detaches me from the depicted universe. At least make them all of the same skin color so it is coherent.
      - sudosysgen 4y ago
        You really really didn't think this through. While they live deep underground and don't need to protect from UV light, they also don't need to have white skin to let in sunlight for vitamin synthesis. In the real world, skin didn't get paler simply because there wasn't enough UV. It got paler because less sunlight meant that darker skin couldn't absorb enough light for synthesis. If this wasn't case, our skins would still be dark. So there is absolutely 1000% no reason at all why their skin would be any specific color. Dark or white, all are justifiable.
- narag 4y ago
  Since there were no dark skin in depictions that are chronologicallly later, the two trilogies we already watched, it means that some terrible genocidal racial cleansing happened in between.
  - layer8 4y ago
    It would be interesting if the show actually did that storyline.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  "some people" are always irrational and unhappy. They are irrelevant. The new criticism isn't them "pivoting", it is a completely new set of people who dislike the show for entirely different reasons. You're making the common error of assuming everyone you disagree with is part of some homogenous club.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- unknownus3r 4y ago
  this is true but the dwarf lady was actually one of the best castings in the show
baba-yaga 4y ago
thedorkknight 4y ago
I don't disagree, but it's tough to tell who's really doing the "lumping" of legit criticism with political tribalism. She-hulk got review-bombed before the first episode came out. After watching it and enjoying it, my frustration at the fact that it's tough to criticize it without feeling lumped together with sexists wasn't at the "woke" crowd, but rather at the people who'd buried it in negative reviews before it even aired simply because they hate anything with a wiff of liberal politics.
GordonS 4y ago
I've only watched the first episode so far, and... I'm not very impressed. The narrative is really awful - it feels like the characters are reading verbatim from a book, rather than reciting a screenplay adaption. The acting and behaviour of characters is very wooden, stiff, amateurish and unrealistic - maybe that's just what happens when actors have to recite such "formal" narrative, or maybe it's the actors' ability. The narrative and acting are totally unconvincing. Thus far, the set, lighting CGI have been pretty disappointing too - I don't really understand why everything has to look like it's straight out of a cartoon, with eye-popping saturation levels. Or why all the CGI looks too "smooth" and strangely lit to look authentic. Or why so many of the buildings etc just look so... improbable. All the characters look like they just came out of a salon - obviously brand new, pristine clothing, make up absolutely plastered on with a trowel, not a hair out of place etc. It looks very silly, and adds to the overall amateurish vibe. And what on earth was that nonsense with the elves all standing in formation, perfectly upright and perfectly still, on the deck of a small boat sailing across an ocean?! Overall, I felt like I was watching a theatre play, rather than a TV series. I think I read Amazon spent half a billion dollars on it, which is true sounds basically fraudulent. I also want to add that I've been using IMDB for something like 20 years, and have rated over 1,000 movies and TV shows - what Amazon have done here is totally destroy my trust in IMDB ratings :(
happytoexplain 4y ago
When I happen to feel critical of something that the woke or anti-woke crowd is critical of for their own irrational reasons, I am angry at that crowd, not at everybody else who is also angry at that crowd and who can not realistically be expected to distinguish every single individual critical comment when judging the legitimacy of an aggregate number. In my experience, people directing anger the other way frequently end up declaring that they are now, in some capacity, on the side of the irrational crowd in question, with a "YOU made me do this" rationalization, which is pretty highly transparent. Note that this is not to say there is no such thing as people doing the unfair lumping-in you describe on an individual basis, which is indeed its own problem. But also note that, if you frequent the places where people feel more free to be openly anti-woke, you will find that those who would like to make irrational anti-woke criticisms also exaggerate the more acceptable criticisms you describe. This is because the show or movie is beyond merely "badly written" for them and has triggered their "hate" feelings. So, some amount of reviews critical of non-political/racial/etc things like pacing end up being magnified anyway by the hate the reviewer has underneath.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
stjohnswarts 4y ago
The minute you say "the elves weren't dark!" I'm probably going to start doubting your opinion on the matter almost immediately, as whether they were pale as a sheet or black as coal has nothing to do with what they represent.

by tjpnz 4y ago

dmix 4y ago

People will always ignore flaws if it’s entertaining. The fact LOTR was boring and uneventful makes the other flaws more glaring.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

smcl 4y ago

People were up in arms before a single episode aired, because they saw a fictional species (dwarf) had dark skin. many of those people have now pivoted their arguments against the show to being about pacing, writing (note: I’m in no way implying this is you, I haven’t seen any LotR series opinions on HN) - but the racist stuff has already occurred

scarface74 4y ago
Yes, this is like people being up in arms that DC decided to cast a Black woman to play an orange alien from Tamarin.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
But the fact that some people were racist does not preclude others from just not liking the show.
Ekaros 4y ago
I wonder how well it would go down if someone made a show about slavery in USA with all of the black people being played by non-blacks... For inclusivity you know? Get some Asians there. Maybe gender swap the historical big figures to boot and have them speak Chinese or something.
- tarakat 4y ago
  A better comparison would be Black Panther or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - fictional stories and worlds loosely inspired by real places, just like Middle Earth.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
  So the human race can, in real life, have black and white people, but the made up species of dwarfes and elves can’t?
  - sensanaty 4y ago
    How do black dwarves make sense? Their entire species lives deep underground and never sees the light of day, so they don't need to evolve to protect their skin from UV rays. It's not like humans randomly became black or white, skin color is a result of thousands of years of evolution because of our surroundings. If you're going to apply the real world here, then you have to admit that black skinned dwarves make no sense from a biological point of view, since as we can see in the real world things tend to get paler and paler the less UV they're exposed to. I don't know enough about Tolkien elves to comment on there being no black elves though
    - 3nd0rph1n 4y ago
      > How do black dwarves make sense? Their entire species lives deep underground and never sees the light of day, so they don't need to evolve to protect their skin from UV rays. This is EXACTLY my issue with the show. This kind of forced diversity fuccs up the lore and detaches me from the depicted universe. At least make them all of the same skin color so it is coherent.
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      You really really didn't think this through. While they live deep underground and don't need to protect from UV light, they also don't need to have white skin to let in sunlight for vitamin synthesis. In the real world, skin didn't get paler simply because there wasn't enough UV. It got paler because less sunlight meant that darker skin couldn't absorb enough light for synthesis. If this wasn't case, our skins would still be dark. So there is absolutely 1000% no reason at all why their skin would be any specific color. Dark or white, all are justifiable.
narag 4y ago
Since there were no dark skin in depictions that are chronologicallly later, the two trilogies we already watched, it means that some terrible genocidal racial cleansing happened in between.
- layer8 4y ago
  It would be interesting if the show actually did that storyline.
koheripbal 4y ago
"some people" are always irrational and unhappy. They are irrelevant. The new criticism isn't them "pivoting", it is a completely new set of people who dislike the show for entirely different reasons. You're making the common error of assuming everyone you disagree with is part of some homogenous club.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
unknownus3r 4y ago
this is true but the dwarf lady was actually one of the best castings in the show

baba-yaga 4y ago

thedorkknight 4y ago

I don't disagree, but it's tough to tell who's really doing the "lumping" of legit criticism with political tribalism. She-hulk got review-bombed before the first episode came out. After watching it and enjoying it, my frustration at the fact that it's tough to criticize it without feeling lumped together with sexists wasn't at the "woke" crowd, but rather at the people who'd buried it in negative reviews before it even aired simply because they hate anything with a wiff of liberal politics.

GordonS 4y ago

I've only watched the first episode so far, and... I'm not very impressed. The narrative is really awful - it feels like the characters are reading verbatim from a book, rather than reciting a screenplay adaption. The acting and behaviour of characters is very wooden, stiff, amateurish and unrealistic - maybe that's just what happens when actors have to recite such "formal" narrative, or maybe it's the actors' ability. The narrative and acting are totally unconvincing. Thus far, the set, lighting CGI have been pretty disappointing too - I don't really understand why everything has to look like it's straight out of a cartoon, with eye-popping saturation levels. Or why all the CGI looks too "smooth" and strangely lit to look authentic. Or why so many of the buildings etc just look so... improbable. All the characters look like they just came out of a salon - obviously brand new, pristine clothing, make up absolutely plastered on with a trowel, not a hair out of place etc. It looks very silly, and adds to the overall amateurish vibe. And what on earth was that nonsense with the elves all standing in formation, perfectly upright and perfectly still, on the deck of a small boat sailing across an ocean?! Overall, I felt like I was watching a theatre play, rather than a TV series. I think I read Amazon spent half a billion dollars on it, which is true sounds basically fraudulent. I also want to add that I've been using IMDB for something like 20 years, and have rated over 1,000 movies and TV shows - what Amazon have done here is totally destroy my trust in IMDB ratings :(

happytoexplain 4y ago

When I happen to feel critical of something that the woke or anti-woke crowd is critical of for their own irrational reasons, I am angry at that crowd, not at everybody else who is also angry at that crowd and who can not realistically be expected to distinguish every single individual critical comment when judging the legitimacy of an aggregate number. In my experience, people directing anger the other way frequently end up declaring that they are now, in some capacity, on the side of the irrational crowd in question, with a "YOU made me do this" rationalization, which is pretty highly transparent. Note that this is not to say there is no such thing as people doing the unfair lumping-in you describe on an individual basis, which is indeed its own problem. But also note that, if you frequent the places where people feel more free to be openly anti-woke, you will find that those who would like to make irrational anti-woke criticisms also exaggerate the more acceptable criticisms you describe. This is because the show or movie is beyond merely "badly written" for them and has triggered their "hate" feelings. So, some amount of reviews critical of non-political/racial/etc things like pacing end up being magnified anyway by the hate the reviewer has underneath.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

stjohnswarts 4y ago

The minute you say "the elves weren't dark!" I'm probably going to start doubting your opinion on the matter almost immediately, as whether they were pale as a sheet or black as coal has nothing to do with what they represent.