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This thread needs that Simpsons Grandpa gif.

And yet misogyny has run rampant throughout human history and women still have to fight for equal rights and protections as men... basically all over the world. As a result, it's not surprising there are TV shows, films, books, etc... that have political messaging in support of equality for women. Companies having political values or putting out political messages isn't anything new. Especially in films, which are a form of art. There's always been politics in art, in the Rennaissance... most art was actually political (even the very religious stuff). Art has famously been used for propaganda (which is political) since... probably since the concept of "art" became a thing. As a result, it's not surprising a filmmaker puts their political values into a film. And honestly... Star Wars itself originally is a story about fighting off fascism to restore democracy. The prequels are very much about how easy it is to lose democracy and slide into fascism - with a lot of not-so-subtle criticisms of Bush and the Iraq war. So political ideas in a Star Wars film are not new either. Feminist ideas aren't even new to Star Wars. The leader of the Rebel Alliance is Mon Mothma, a woman portrayed as a strong and respected leader fighting for freedom in the galaxy. Princess Leia needs to be rescued by Luke, Han, and Chewie... but she never seems like a weak character. She withstands getting tortured by the Empire, watches her family (and planet) get murdered in front of her eyes, and never once seems to display weakness at all before Imperial leadership. Her character is considered a feminist hero by many for good reason. I think Disney are pretty not subtle about the way they do it... and a lot of what they do tbh feels like obvious "LOOK WE ARE INCLUSIVE AND THEREFORE GOOD" to pat themselves on the back. And then other times, like with Andor, their political messaging is really well done and brilliant. I don't think anyone likes sloppy political messaging that just seems like forcing in some sort of ideas of diversity - it's just lazy tokenism. What I liked least about the Disney trilogy of Star Wars was the absolute dogshit writing. I didn't hate Rey because she was a woman Jedi, disliked Rey because she's a poorly written character it was fucking stupid that with barely any guidance or training she's suddenly a master at the force. If this director that "End Wokeness" is worried about can put her political messaging in line with... the traditional political messaging of Star Wars and can tell a good story that's well written, I will probably like her film. If her political messaging is sloppy tokenisms and the film is poorly written, I'll think it's shit. But I'm not going to think it's shit because of "wokeness" - I think wokeness is an entirely meaningless term. "Oh no, some film and TV show has political messaging" - no shit, that's always been the case. If you don't like the political messaging, don't watch it. And I do think that the people who use the terms "woke" and "wokeness" as a pejorative descriptor are definitively racist and/or. They don't like the idea of people they don't believe as equal to be portrayed as equal to them in popular culture. For instance, if the idea of Disney casting a black woman as Ariel in the Little Mermaid upset anyone... I know 100% that they are a racist. It's a fucking mermaid, why does the skin colour matter? It doesn't, it's just people being pissed off something they remember from their childhood is now depicting Ariel as someone they see as "lesser" - and they see her as lesser because they're racist. So then they say things like "Disney is woke" and "go woke, go broke" because otherwise what they'd want to say and tweet would probably include the n word and get them widespread condemnation. If someone made the works of Ayn Rand into a film or TV show, I'm not going to watch it because I know it's going to be shoving libertarian values that lead society towards fascism down my throat. And Ayn Rand was a terrible writer aside from being a terrible person. By the same token, I don't know why any libertarians or far right people would want to watch Star Wars - it's a franchise where the political messaging has always been against their values. tl;dr - films are a form of art, art has always been political, worrying about politics in art too much is stupid.

Lol I like how they describe her as just a "Pakistani feminist activist" in that tweet, it's so fucking reductive. She won multiple Oscars and Emmys for directing documentaries, her work in animation has also won awards and was critically acclaimed, and she also directed live action TV show in the Marvel universe. My opinion is that I will give everyone a fair chance and reserve my judgement until after the movie is released, everything else makes no sense whatsoever.

I genuinely don't know what your point is. It wouldn't bother you if I started making a bunch of home movies that were all terrible because it doesn't affect your life in any way. Nor does it affect your life if Disney are making loads of bad movies. There's hundreds of thousands of them out there so why can't everyone just watch the content they like? Criticise Disney by all means but there's a million ways that films can be bad (in some people's opinion) and if it's bad lighting or bad writing or bad casting decisions then people comment on it and then move on with their lives. But when it's because the skin colour or other physical characteristics of a character or cast member are not what everyone is used to, this massive fuss gets kicked up and we're having debates about the entire direction of movie companies and their politics.

You're offended by nothing because what you believe in doesn't make sense at all.

Gal Gadot almost got cast as Cleopatra and it didn't get as much outrage as a black woman playing a fucking mermaid.

I remember watching a video of a little black girl watching the trailer of that Little Mermaid film, and she burst into tears because she was so happy. Goes to show you how how underrepresented minorities were in being a lead in a story or in a movie. It meant so much to that little girl that I totally understood why it is important things like that happen more often. Especially since Ariel is a ficitional character, so why would people be so persistent that she has to be white? Unless they are indeed racist.

Yeah I agree with all that. If you have the energy to be annoyed at Aeriel being black then you should exert the same energy with Jasmine changing and Ken being blonde. Funnily enough I spoke to one of my friends a year ago about this who is black and I used the 'I wouldn't care if Idris Elba was James Bond' example. He immediately cut me off and told me that to him James Bond represents every privileged British stereotype from the 90's so he would find James Bond played by a black person weird. Which I found interesting.

Are you a shareholder? If not then I don't see what impact it has on your life to be moaning about films they're making when you can just choose not to watch the ones you don't like.

Disney is losing millions because their films are shit. Look at Marvel's most recent release, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. High budget film using a recycled plot. No one went to see that. Indiana Jones, Ant-Man, the Little Mermaid, and Secret Invasion all did poorly on release. She-Hulk had a quarter of a billion operating budget. Who the fuck even watches that? Think I read Disney hasn't had a positive operating income on theatrical/streaming releases since early 2022.

Who gives a fuck if they lose money because they sure as hell aren't. They literally own everything, it's a massive conglomerate.

I think you're completely ignoring the context here, though. Her answer is to the host's (a man's) question about whether her work, while aiming to empower women, also targets men. To which she replies that yes, she likes to make men uncomfortable, because any significant, long lasting social change can only happen through difficult conversations and uncomfortable realizations. Her goal is not to make men uncomfortable in general because she wants them to be miserable lol, it's to make them see that maybe they themselves have those certain internalized attitudes that are the root of the problem. Which is pretty obvious when you think about the issues that she tackles in her work - women and child abuse, domestic violence, acid attacks and honour killings of women in Pakistan, rights of refugees and marginalized groups, Pakistani boys groomed in Taliban-run schools to carry out attacks against civilians, etc.

If you don't like those films then don't watch them. That's my opinion. There are plenty of good films and bad films with white male leads. There are also plenty of good and bad films with female/minority/LGBT leads. I'll concede that Disney/Marvel have been very ham-fisted on some occasions where it feels forced to draw attention to female empowerment or gay rights but what it always comes back to is that it appeals someone and if it doesn't appeal to you then you don't have to watch it. Generally, people who use the word "woke" tend to be silly tits in my experience who aren't able to string three sentences together to explain what their problem is in their own words.

I think I'm still with Southampton

Wanting the manager to start all four of the players we have who can play centre back doesn't seem like the best idea to me.

They are but they aren’t really that big anymore. They’re still banned in Iran, so they can’t run for any political office. Most of the more active people from the party were killed in part of the mass purges of the 80s and the rest are in exile.

Walt banged her back in 32