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What is Your Entertainment Wokeness Threshold?
Recently, Right Angles wrote a wonderful post making fun of 9-1-1 Lonestar and how incessantly woke it is. At around that time, I decided to give up on the television show, The Good Place, because it exceeded what I call my “wokeness threshold.” In Right Angles blistering review, she mentioned how insufferably preachy the show is. Most notably, the gay and the transgender firepeople before helping a lady suffering a cardiac arrest decide to bother the lady with their personal lives.
Before helping her, a fireman says “I should tell you I’m gay” (why?), and she recoils a little so the trans one bends down to help and says “And I’m trans.” When the woman is in respiratory distress! Excuse me?
Right Angles she concluded that, “I want to be entertained, not yelled at.” As for myself, economic illiteracy very quickly crosses my woke threshold.
The Good Place is a show about whether or not people get into the Good Place or the Bad Place. The Good Place is pretty much heaven and the Bad place is pretty much hell but your actions and not your faith determines who goes where. Almost every action gives you positive or negative points depending on the consequences and intentions of what you do.
The first two season were great television. It was one of the most innovative stories told as a minute comedy and it was both funny and legitimately thoughtful. Then came the third season and in came the economic illiteracy.
I can suspend my disbelief for magic and superpowers and aliens but once people completely misunderstand economics in a story, I lose interest. I don’t have magic or superpowers… that I would admit to, nor am I alien… you totally can’t prove I’m an alien, but I do interact with the economy everyday and I’ve read Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman so it’s much harder to suspend my disbelief of something that I am both intimately and academically familiar with.
In this particular case, it has to do with the economic acquisition of two bundles of roses and the morality therein. The economics wasn’t even basic.
<Minor spoiler ahead>
A powerful divine being with intellect far beyond human understanding is reading from a book about whose action is good or evil. This divine being apparently interprets goodness the way a 19 year conformist would after listening to his Marxist Professor.
In 1534, Douglass Wynegarr of Hawkhurst England gave his grandmother roses for her birthday. Picked them himself, walk them over to her, she was happy, boom 100 and 45 points. Now, in 2009, Doug Ewing of Scottsville Maryland also gave his grandmother, a dozen roses. But he lost four points.
Why? Because he ordered roses using a cell phone that was made in a sweatshop. The flowers were grown with toxic pesticides picked by exploited migrant workers delivered from thousands of miles away, which created a massive carbon footprint and his money went to a billionaire racist CEO who sends his female employees pictures of his genitals.
In essence, the economic system that has enabled billions of people to read and to have access to basic literacy and healthcare is to its core corrupt. It would be better to have half of your children die in 1534. The slave trade, serfdom and indentured servitude were all normal in 1534 England. England was actually unusual for just having serfs and not slaves.
The rest of the list of problems show just how ignorant our artistic class is of basic realities. Pesticides can be very problematic and they should be regulated sensibly but they do let us create more food and flowers with a minimum of land and help create enough food to avoid child labor. It is unlikely that Doug Ewing’s cellphone was made in a sweatshop because the labor for constructing cellphone parts is too skilled for slave labor. As for the racist billionaire, I will concede that it is disturbingly easy to believe that an elite billionaire is a sex pervert. However, very few CEOs are racist. They have to deal with many different people of many different colors everyday and high I.Q. people tend not to be racist.
That last comment was a rich-hating cherry on the socialism Sunday and was more about confirming the left’s anti-capitalist bias than it is about concern for the victims of our elite’s sexual depravity.
<End of Minor spoiler/>
Any of us who have ever studied algebra know that if you get something wrong in the beginning, the ending result will be wrong even if you do everything else perfectly. Likewise, if you don’t understand Basic Economics, you misunderstand everything about society and politics.
Some writers and critiques have said that the message of a work doesn’t determine its worth, particularly if it’s meant as entertainment. As the saying in Hollywood goes, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” Many great Hollywood writers would agree with Right Angles that movies were for entertaining people preaching at them. I respect the sentiment but almost every story has a moral universe that is a crucial piece of the whole.
For example, the first two seasons of The Good Place encouraged people to be good. The show would not have worked without that moral message. The ethical debates in the show are a bigger part of the show than any of the main characters. This isn’t at all unusual. In, To Kill a Mockingbird, Maycomb county and the zeitgeist of the time was as much a character as Atticus or Scout. Scout and the trial of Tom Robinson were the lens through which the reader could see the moral universe as viewed by Harper Lee.
While it is unusual for philosophy to feature so heavily in a narrative written primarily to entertain, it is far from unheard of. Since the time of the Greeks, people who wanted to express ideas wrote stories instead of philosophy. Humans are moved by stories and not by well-researched arguments. The Greeks were a creative and competitive lot and the writers knew that they wouldn’t be able to keep audiences by lecturing at them. Aristophanes has lots of fart jokes for a reason.
Those jokes were funny. I regret nothing.
The Good Place was always left-learning but its leftism was never a core part of the show’s philosophy. Even though the show’s writing, character development and humor seem as good in the third season as it did in the first, the Wokist message fatally undermines the show because its anticapitalist (and I would argue antiwealth) philosophy corrupts the necessary message of struggling to be good.
We immediately understand that if the protagonist of a story starts to be written poorly, the entire story can cave-in like a building falling after one crucial load bearing structure has been compromised. The same is true if the story’s moral universe collapses in on itself. At least, that is my woke threshold.
What crosses your wokeness threshold? What makes you quit a show after a few seasons of really enjoying it? Do you agree that a bad message can undermine the arête of a work?
Published in General
I have zero tolerance, which is why I watch some old shows and hardly any current network TV. In fact, I like shows like House that make attempts at “reverse” wokeness. Goliath, a Billy Bob Thornton vehicle, goes there on occasion also.
I’m not saying that I have a low threshold but I just blocked the original poster of this thread for being way too woke for me.
Very well put.
Billy Wilder said he told stories, not preached to people. In the process of storytelling, the morality or ethical dilemas can be woven into fantasy, because human nature doesn’t seem to have changed over time like technology does. In order to understand that you have to have some type of interest in studying history and placing events in the context of the time.
We were watching a British detective show with a priest amatuer detective that we thought we might binge, and after about 6 episodes decided that in the 1950’s gayness (not his, but victims or other characters) was not really central to most of life, so it was bye bye. Historical shows that use the old days as foder for contemporary wokeness are a turn off for me.
Sometimes we accidently watch a woke show just to make fun and guess how the story will go. It isn’t storytelling, it is predictable, boring, and irritating at times that writers are so limited.
Boston Legal was good the first few years, then went downhill.
My threshold is pretty low, Mr. AZ’s even lower – he didn’t watch the Superbowl because of the female coach. Got on his last nerve. I guess the kneeling issue was his next to last nerve.
I really wouldn’t mind an occasional gay or trans character but they are so prevalent that you would think that they comprise 25% of the entire population – and I’ve read polls that folks do believe it. And Muslims, especially in Brit shows – they’re either the victims of racism or if they are the criminal suspect they turn out to be innocent, all the time. We actually like watching good shows but they are all pushing us away.
Yeah, Ron Swanson was not intentionally written to be liked. Schur was surprised the character was so well received. Same goes for Chris Pratt’s Andy character. But at least Schur adapted and gave the audience what we wanted, which is more of both.
Good to read all these posts to remind me why I stopped watching network TV. Well, at least until they’ve been collected and successful enough to show up on Netflix or Amazon. Even there I watch mostly British, which are even more politically correct. Go figure. Perhaps it’s tolerable there because they’ve already lost and artists and writers just play a different reality.
And don’t forget Canadian and Australian/ New Zealand shows. The writing and dialogue is just plain superior to American network shows.
In light of this topic here’s a warning for you – don’t go see Nick Offerman’s comedy show. My wife and I went to see him recently thinking we’d see a funny and somewhat self-mocking show with nothing particularly political about it. We’d enjoyed him in Parks & Rec and my wife had listened to his first book and liked it.
He was horrible. He gave a 90-minute lecture on the need for all of us, particularly white males, to be woke. Supposedly there were jokes in there but they were lame, simplistic, and stupid (and I don’t mean like how good stupid comedy can be when done right – these jokes were idiotic).
I’ve seen and enjoyed comics I don’t agree with politically (Lewis Black comes to mind) but they were creative, funny, came at things from an unusual angle, and added a touch of humanity. Offerman dealt strictly in caricatures and is filled with hate.
The BBC is a government network. The “get woke, go broke” model doesn’t apply. If they put out a spectacularly woke show (like Lady Doctor Who) they will never suffer the effects of low viewership because they just suck money from taxpayers to keep the show going.
I’ve seen scores of episodes of the show, though by no means all of them. Ron Swanson is not portrayed negatively in any of them. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, we see him coming to Leslie Knope’s defense when she gets in trouble, in Season One.
He’s an eccentric, and a curmudgeon, but he’s more likable than, say, Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Yeah and the ratings are definitely down. I take RottenTomatoes with a grain of salt, just like other sites with audience ratings, but the difference between the critics’ percentage and the audience’s percentage for Jodie’s seasons is hilarious.
I don’t think villain is the right word. Schur doesn’t have real villains in his shows. He based Ron’s character on a real life bureaucrat that surprised Schur since she’s a libertarian that works for the govt. Ron was written originally to be someone in which the audience laughed at his irony for working for the govt even though he’s so anti-govt. I guess Schur and Daniels thought someone like a Bush appointee overseeing Leslie would be soooo funny (pretty sure they don’t understand libertarians if they likened libertarians to Bush appointees). Offerman played the character so well and he played such a great foil to Poehler’s Leslie that the writers changed their track and made him into a fully formed character.
Speaking of New Zealand shows, if you like mysteries and haven’t checked it out, I would suggest checking into the New Zealand show Brokenwood Mysteries – decent storytelling with a touch of humor and good continuity from show to show and season to season. I really enjoyed it. You can watch it with a subscription to Acorn TV or a subscription to the Acorn TV channel at Amazon. (You can also buy it there too.)
Yep, we are rationing ourselves to one Brokenwood episode every ten days or so – they only do 4 episodes per season. And don’t forget 800 Words.
Yeah I like the show Community, it’s one of the few recent things I’ve enjoyed. The creator has said some things I find very objectionable in real life but the show focuses on improbable friendships within a group of very different characters without favouring any particular one. The character that arguably gets sent up the most is Britta the woke activist.
Not relevant but topical; in one episode Britta refers to Joe Biden as folksy yet progressive😀
But Janet is literally one of the most powerful entities in the world so her magical martial arts moves make sense in the context of the story.
As for the Daily Wire guys, though I think Klavan takes it too far, imagine that we made a ton of movies were guys can drink a potion and magically transform into girls or vice-a-versa without any consequences and we are encouraged to take that as reality. Telling the wrong stories as I’ve said before and will say again is terrible thing because human beliefs are based on stories.
After hearing the prophecy, his hamartia (missing the mark) was marrying a woman old enough to be his mother. The pagans might have been fatalists, but they weren’t Calvinists.
I loved 800 Words too! Totally different premise; totally different show – but I enjoyed it too. Both are worth checking out, in my opinion, and can be found on Acorn TV and Acorn TV/Amazon.
This could be a conversation on its own.
I haven’t heard of that show but if it’s as bad as Designated Survivor became I’ll be surprised.
I’m just getting into Game of Thrones now, Series 2, episode 2- so far so good.
Janet is more like a robot archangel than a woman. Nor would anyone ever accuse her of weighing 85 lbs.
Stories that minimize the physical differences between the sexes may be getting women killed.
A few years ago, a woman was put in a previously male role in the Cirque du Soleil show, Ka, in Las Vegas. When she got in trouble, she wasn’t strong enough* to save herself and plummeted 60 feet to her death.
I heard about this when I attended the show and the climactic vertical battle was a recording. One of the performers told me they were reworking the battle scene to prevent future tragedies.
*My conclusion based on the long article in Vanity Fair.
A trope of Russian movies, too. It’s not what makes so many of them good, even though it does appear in some of the great ones.
I am completely unsurprised that Russians appreciate strong women.
I’m very much enjoying The Good Place. I just started it a couple of weeks ago and I’m through Season 1. I’d been tipped off vaguely long ago about the end of Season 1, but I have a pretty good ability to make myself forget spoilers when I want to, and that ending was great. I’m not sure about S2 yet – I’m assuming it will continue to be entertaining even though it has the potential to be, uh, repetitive.
I’ve gotten fed up with wokeness in other shows before, but my threshold is very high. And I don’t (yet) find The Good Place especially woke. My main problem with the show is that I find the Buddhist monk character (avoiding spoilers) to be highly annoying. I’m glad I stuck with it through the first few episodes, because the theology of the show, although still wackadoo, is sort of interesting now.
The Buddhist monk character is beloved by most fans of the show. However, he is much funnier in later seasons.
I am sorry about the spoilers given to you. I’ve tried hard to avoid them in this post. The whole question of how important spoilers are is worth a post in and of itself. I am thinking of finishing season four even though my research has spoiled season 4.
In my observations, spoilers don’t matter that much. If season 4 has a good story. Then I’m I don’t need any surprise.
What’s your opinion?
But according to how the show apparently evaluates things, wouldn’t anyone who works for the UN be doomed/damned because of the rapes and other atrocities committed by the various UN “peacekeepers?”
I can’t watch shows predicated on Climate Change ending The World as We Know It.
Or shows that vilify Big Business as somehow all-knowing evil. I know Big Business. I guess shows about incompetence would not sell.
And I have run out of patience with ANY shows that portray our government as being good/amazing/wonderful. Think NCIS. These shows lie to people, because it makes them think that the government is capable of super-competence.
I liked Queen of The South – until the anti-heroine stupidly risked everything to become a champion-of-the-downtrodden-women. That is not how real drug lords think.
And I got bored of all the shows with super-duper women who are the most powerful physical fighters imaginable.
Star Trek: Picard is the latest example of that. Except the cheerleaders for the show wound up with egg on their faces… or whatever the kids call it now… when the Strong Woman turned out to be an android.
The bigger problem, though, is that those super-duper women in the other shows basically had to be androids too, but they weren’t.
In the Russian model of society, women do all the work; then their men beat them and take their money to buy vodka, get drunk, and beat them some more.