Do women actually support all the entertainment representation??

If youve seen the recent plethora of fantasy and sci-fi television and movies, Im sure youve noticed a new "twist" to your treasured tales translated from one medium to another. Im mainly talking about Rings of Power, Resident Evil and The Witcher. I however understand this to be the same in the Marvel, DC and Star Wars universe' as well.

The borrowing of story lines, changes to long established lore, even new characters are all on the chopping block in favor of diversity and inclusion.

Also, this doesnt exclusively apply to women. All races and sexual preferences as well.

The question Id like to ask is, do members of those groups approve? Does it make these visual tales more engaging?

a reply to: JinMI

No, I don't particularly approve of such pandering. It just comes off on bestowers' parts as contrived hairsplitting. And very vapid at that.

I think I'm plenty big enough a girl to appreciate a character acted by someone who gave it a valiant all.

Versus a bandwagoner who clearly is no fit in that iteration, no matter the cause nor pleading on it's part.

Perhaps people would impress me more with their claims of "added value", if they'd bother to come up with their own # for once, instead of appropriating existing material.

Appropriation is bad, m'kay No do that.

a reply to: Nyiah

Very much agreed in sentiment.

Which begs another question. Why the takeover instead of original content? I know we all joke about the lack of talent in entertainment but surely this cant be the case?

originally posted by: JinMI
a reply to: Nyiah

Very much agreed in sentiment.

Which begs another question. Why the takeover instead of original content? I know we all joke about the lack of talent in entertainment but surely this cant be the case?

It may indeed be the case. The current crop of creators may have already hit Peak back in their mid-teens.

That's a scary thought even for dark humor, innit?

a reply to: Nyiah

It is!

Perhaps its just another example of a bubble. The creators cant create outside of it which is completely antithetical to artist.

a reply to: JinMI

I don't mind and in fact, I like it.

Until recently, the role of women in many action movies from the 1950's and on hammered on the idea that I (as a woman) had limited roles. I never saw any movies with female figures I related to.

* moms usually were killed off so the kids could have adventures. (or were single moms who didn't have a man and their overwhelmed lifestyle let the kids run free until a nice man helped the kids and fell in love with her so they might get married.)
* boys did science. Girls danced or might solve mysteries but didn't do science (I'm a scientist... so I had to take my role models from figures like Mr. Spock.)
* boys led expeditions. So did men.
* boys had bands. So did men. Women were "singers" and not guitar players, bass players, shanty leaders
* women existed to be romantic interests for the hero.
* women who were supposedly powerful also had to dress like Laura Croft. No one ever dressed like Indiana Jones (like I do in the field.)
* until Voyager, there were darn few women shown in command roles.
* women existed in movies as youthful figures. Roger Moore could play James Bond. Older women got Miss Marple - and there was almost no representation for women between the ages of marriage and Being A Crone.
* women also screamed and shrank into the arms of the guys. They didn't pick up swords/clubs/crockery/etc and defend themselves as a rule.

We started getting some representation with the Avengers (Steed and Peel, not Marvel) and the occasional feisty character (Murder She Wrote) but most of them were still glamorous and thin in ways that you seldom achieve after 10 years of having kids and doing a desk job.

Now -- this is true of white women - AND (very important note) true of American tv and film.

Black girls, multiracial girls, Asians, Native Americans - they didn't have any role models unless they wanted to (as I did) pattern themselves after a guy. Which of course made you sort of a freak back in those days.



*swim to the other side of the pond* - I'm a REAL fan of BBC. From the 1990's and onward there was an increase in women being set into equal roles with men and NOT as the love interest, wearing ordinary clothes, and people who looked very ordinary being cast as the lead. I see women my age (the detective series "Vera") playing the lead. There's marvelous shows with only one or two white persons ("Murder In Paradise" - a FABULOUS show!) and the rest of the cast is multiracial. Romantic relationships between races - instead of being shocking (Kirk kissing Uhura in Star Trek) were pretty much the norm.

Media tells us the story of who we might dream to be and tells society what our possibilities can be. It helps set our feet on a path that we want for ourselves. If I'd gone through my early career in a place where Sara Jane not only was the Doctor's companion but ended up running her own agency and handling a robot dog, I might have been permitted to lead teams instead of working to set something up and then been shuffled off to another position while the lead was handed to a guy.

Culturally, in ancient societies gender-bending and shape shifting wasn't uncommon and people accepted it (I'm looking at YOU, Loki. And Coyote - don't sneak off into the corner there.)

I'm all for it.

I get a little tired of Hollywood not trying to find new properties and in focusing on movies where the protagonist solves things by blowing everything up.

So here's to the BBC and even Black mermaids (in the original stories, she's green.) Or Native American women being something other than Pocahontas and Sacagawea. And Muslim women need to see that they're the equal of everyone else as lawyers, heroes, doctors, and more.



My 2 cents as a survivor of the 1950's. Your mileage may vary.

Same goes for lesbians, gays, transgender folk.

And that's why BBC is so popular. All of them can find role models there, going back several decades. Along with manly men and womenly women and rock stars and all the rest of the crazy and fun archetypes that humans take on.

a reply to: Byrd

I appreciated your well thought out post. But I disagree with the part you wrote about women being pigeonholed from the 50's on....I could have misread it.

I know music. There have been a long list of female musicians.

Take for example The Runaways. An all female band that kicked arse. The world was blessed with Joan Jett. She is an effing guitar godess. One of her shows was my daughter's first live concert....at 6 months old.

We can take a band I personally can't stand, but are also very good.... Heart.

There are so many more.

And tbh, as a sound guy/stagehand for 30+ years, I can tell you most female singers I have worked with are very talented musicians as well, they just chose to sign on stage instead of do both. No fault there...I play trumpet, piano, guitar, bass and sing bass...I just choose to beat my body up setting up audio equipment, sit behind the desk at a show, and paint an audio portrait instead of perform.

originally posted by: theatreboy
a reply to: Byrd

I appreciated your well thought out post. But I disagree with the part you wrote about women being pigeonholed from the 50's on....I could have misread it.

I know music. There have been a long list of female musicians.

Take for example The Runaways. An all female band that kicked arse. The world was blessed with Joan Jett. She is an effing guitar godess. One of her shows was my daughter's first live concert....at 6 months old.

We can take a band I personally can't stand, but are also very good.... Heart.

There are so many more.

And tbh, as a sound guy/stagehand for 30+ years, I can tell you most female singers I have worked with are very talented musicians as well, they just chose to sign on stage instead of do both. No fault there...I play trumpet, piano, guitar, bass and sing bass...I just choose to beat my body up setting up audio equipment, sit behind the desk at a show, and paint an audio portrait instead of perform.

Oh, absolutely. And the Poynter Sisters and Andrews Sisters before that and all the fabulous Motown women. And let's not forget the amazing Dolly Parton, who's emblematic of success. The thing is, they had far less control and power than men of equal status and accomplishment.

Read up sometime on Ike and Tina Turner or even Cher or Gracie Slick of Jefferson Starship/Jefferson Airplane.

I play a mean guitar back in the day - semipro in coffee houses. I'm not big record label material but I could have been on one of the real minor labels, however, my then-husband would have controlled contracts and all... and actually, he'd have pitched an absolute fit, because he also played the guitar but he wasn't as good as I was (he used to accuse me of practicing behind his back to make him look bad) and I had a better voice than he did. I quit singing and quit playing guitar to appease him.

It was a man's world. You could get hurt financially, socially, otherwise by violating limits. Tina Turner went through that in a very horrible way.

But suppose... suppose there'd been movies and films about women who were independent and rock stars. Suppose it was normalized in the media we saw. Think how different the careers of some of the minor players would have been.

I didn't talk about it up there, but I also played professional chess (I'm old, as you can tell, and have led an interesting life.) I could beat men at chess... but they'd get furious (had a guy throw the chess pieces at me) and others would shame them for being "beaten by a girrrrrrl." Not by a better chess player. By a girl.

Imagine if there'd been movies about girl chess geniuses and how their career wasn't freakish or family-destroying, but simply a celebration of an unusual talent and an unusual strategic ability.

Yes, women made it. I made it into the field of PC support and programming (and was often the only non "cute table girl" at computer conventions) and did well but it was a fight and my manager took credit for several of my accomplishments - something he never did to my male colleagues.

Black men and women who were friends were often snidely referred to as having gotten to their position because of the desegregation laws (this was in the 80's.) They were uneasy going into restaurants and stores that had formerly been Whites only. But in England (and Europe), where Blacks and Whites were seen as colleagues in the media, this didn't happen.

Their stories said this kind of thing was normal. You saw it on the telly, doncha know.

We become the stories we tell ourselves. BBC and its ilk told a different story than the American media did.

A lot of us in America, men and women, have worked to change the narrative to be more inclusive. By letting everyone see that someone like them can be a hero or can come up with marvelous solutions to change the world. I was looking at an article about award winning science projects by high schoolers and was delighted to see a whole range of young people - many different skin tones, different sizes, and yes at least one transgender. And the "story" - the experience of their schools - now includes the idea that these types of people aren't freaks but are going to help lead scientific advances in the future.

They're creating the story of what the new "normal" will be.

What a wonderful time to be alive!

a reply to: Byrd

Yeah, but imagine how much better it is to be tolerant & open to following Not Identical as inspiration, in BOTH directions here.

I don't think Janeway was a really better captain, I think Sisko was the unsung Born Leader in the Trek franchise (pre-Space Jeebus BS)

I'm just putting out there (albeit disjointed) that I have no issue not putting a mirror image of Me everywhere to draw my ProTips from -- it's just not necessary, IMO. I do not understand why we are told we MUST be hung up on this in order to obtain self--esteem.

originally posted by: Byrd
Same goes for lesbians, gays, transgender folk.

And that's why BBC is so popular. All of them can find role models there, going back several decades. Along with manly men and womenly women and rock stars and all the rest of the crazy and fun archetypes that humans take on.

The BBC is in a state of decline.Popular my ass,they lost 1.7 million licence payers just last year.
Normal Brits despise it. it's the Briish Pravda.
We all know there is no truth in Pravda.
Why do you think the BBC doesn't want to change to a subscription service?Because it will go bust so they prefer to force people to pay for their leftist degenerates wages.Terrifying pensioners into paying whether they watch BBC or not.
The house of Saville= I bet he's just the tip of the iceberg of perverts there.See John Barrowman,Eddie Izzard etc for clues.
Their obsession with Covid 19,man made climate change fantasy,the carbon terror(carbon,nice dirty black carbon,never carbon dioxide- anther example of their propaganda for the easily led.They also push the alphabet people non stop.Never a mention of the multi culti hellhole Britain has became in the last 30 years,its Utopia didn't you know?
Woke propaganda the whole time.
Popular?,ha ha ha.
Typical,I bet you are a Royal family loving American too.

originally posted by: Nyiah
a reply to: Byrd

Yeah, but imagine how much better it is to be tolerant & open to following Not Identical as inspiration, in BOTH directions here.

I don't think Janeway was a really better captain, I think Sisko was the unsung Born Leader in the Trek franchise (pre-Space Jeebus BS)

I'm just putting out there (albeit disjointed) that I have no issue not putting a mirror image of Me everywhere to draw my ProTips from -- it's just not necessary, IMO. I do not understand why we are told we MUST be hung up on this in order to obtain self--esteem.

And that was the point of Sisko, too (I liked him a LOT!) One of the very few shows on TV with a Black leading man who commanded a city in space and worked with a lot of other people (mostly White, if you hadn't noticed.)

Black youths (who need better images than rappers, as my (Black) academic mentors strongly urged) saw a leader who was kind, tolerant, wise, and thoughtful. He dealt with anger and grief - and most importantly the person modeling this for them was not someone of a different race. It was someone who looked like them. Then the series ended and kids aren't usually aware of it unless they're geeks like my family (we argue playfully over who's the better Captain. Picard's my choice, actually.)

You're savvy enough to know you can pick those "ProTips" sources from anyone, including people who look wildly different (Klingons for example.) But, let's face it - not everyone is as literate as you, as thoughtful as you, as insightful as you or has the resources that you do.

Next time you watch tv or a movie, though, take a count of how many Blacks vs Whites show up onscreen and how much air time they get. Historically the numbers are pretty heavily weighted to the Whites.

There are game changers out there - Black Panther, for instance (I cried when the actor died). Colin Powell (my brother worked for him), Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou (to name ones you might know.) But they're few and far between and if you look for people like them in the media, you don't see a lot of them.

Representation isn't that critical for you and I... but the people who are being reached by and uplifted by these messages aren't us.

And here's the thing about these movies -- they're actually not very true to the original source. Little Mermaid? Man, that's a dark and grim tale and she basically allows herself to die while watching the married prince dance with the princess he loves because she (the mermaid) can't bring herself to kill him so that she (mermaid) can live. Loki? Hooboy. Modern one (Tom Hiddleston) ain't nothin' like the original Marvel character.

Superman? Recent media versions aren't much like the original (who couldn't fly but could jump over tall buildings.)

Dr. Strange? (I loved that comic but had to sneak to buy it and read it because it "wasn't allowed") Benedict Cumberbach is tasty but that ain't the Dr. Strange I knew and loved (and the reboot they did of him after the Golden Age of comics wasn't like the original, either.

And so on.

They're reaching out to the America who haven't been given stories before.

I don't know about you, but because I've been surrounded by and enfolded by stories with heroes that looked like me to some degree - I can be uplifted and excited by Chadwick Boseman's performance in Black Panther. But it still won't have the impact of a little Black girl seeing Letitia Wright as Shuri in Wakanda Forever... seeing someone like herself as a powerful hero.

I think they deserve heroes.

And I can enjoy them thanks to the heroes I've seen in books, comics, tv, opera, musicals, videos, and movies and more.

a reply to: glen200376

My British and Scottish friends don't share your opinion, but I acknowledge that Britain has its fair share of cultural struggles and that the BBC isn't popular with everyone. You, of course, live there and are more aware of situations. I'm just a visitor who appreciates a lot of your writers and the programs on BBC.

I quite liked Queen Elizabeth. Didn't care for Diana (fightin' words in many corners, I know) and beyond that have no opinion about the Royals. Don't follow their doings, much.

originally posted by: JinMI

The question Id like to ask is, do members of those groups approve? Does it make these visual tales more engaging?

I think the box office receipts answer your question.

I think Hollywood has lost its way. It used to be that they would put out a movie, and if it was a good movie, it gained a fan following and made money. Nowadays, they put out a movie and blame "toxic fans" if the movie isn't successful.

Hollywood should go back to the old formula: interesting characters and a good story.

I don't care what race or gender a character is. I don't care who they have sex with. I want to see characters who are smart, strong, and have a sense of integrity you can't break with a sledgehammer. I want to see those characters in unusual situations that require innovative solutions. Do that, and you can shoehorn whatever racial, gender, ecology, or other social issues you want, and I'll watch.

If the main character of They Live had been a black, lesbian, eco-warrior, it still would have been a great movie. But remaking They Live with a black, lesbian, eco-warrior is just pandering.

a reply to: JinMI

Maybe I am weird, but I would rather watch a film that gives women more screen time than men. Hell, take all of the men out of movies and I might actually start watching them.

a reply to: Byrd

If this is so, can anyone explain why that Disney flick (Strange Worlds?) ended up an utter bomb by their own openness standards? Even the folks it was made a tailor-fit for rejected it. I'd say that end result speaks much more than all the well-wishes & inclusivity did for it.

And for what it's worth, I never saw the Siskos as anything but excellent humans. Same for Nerys & Nog, and Quark (dude's my favorite, every episode is gold) They can be described as grating to the uninitiated, but are very rich characters nailed by excellent actors to the point where there can ever be Only One.

If ypu can't relate to the personality as a personality, then what are we being told yo relate to ultimately?

Maybe I'm stretching comparisons a bit much here, but view this tailoring debate as food for the soul, I suppose.
IMO, it's like getting picky over the cutlery's usability value because of it's embossing. A standard fork is a standard fork all the same to me, but others make it a hill to die on. /mild shrug

I'll upset the apple cart. Batman, Spiderman even Aquaman, the emphasis is the word MAN. Throw women in those roles and you have a different thing all together. The writers are just piggy backing on a known premise. As for the BBC and the other British channels they are like American MSM, they've sold their souls years ago. Woke does not even cover their content. They are too busy pushing the woke agenda, ie LGBT, NOT white presenters, actors virtually every scene on TV. Even the adverts on commercial TV nearly 99.999% has multi cultural actors and even multi cultural cartoons. They are slowly alienating white viewers. THAT IS A FACT not from a homo phobic or a colour prejudice person.

a reply to: JinMI

It would be nice if they remembered how to properly write characters again if they were going to do it.

Instead we get these representational two-dimensional tropes that aren't interesting because all they are is a symbol for a modern morality bit. Every single character is simply a walking token.

Galadriel is the token strong woman and meant to make me superimpose myself on her image. It would be great if she were at all interesting, but instead she's dead boring and poorly written as are all the so-called strong women who don't actually undergo any kind of hero's journey because they're all super, just oppressed by something. All they have to do is figure out how they're oppressed and remove that and they know everything they need to. It's dull.

The other tokens are the same.

It's about as exciting as reading the medieval morality tales for college was.