Was cinema about to go the other way before the 'woke' madness?

The 'woke' madness in modern cinema seems to have infected more and more popular franchises. Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Terminator, Charlie's Angels, Marvel Cinematic Universe.... I would even venture Mad Max: Fury Road might've been where it *really* started for me.

Sure there's been feminist cinema long before this, and even popular feminist cinema (Thelma & Louise), but it seemed like it used to be its own niche and restricted to being within its own context, and yet lately it seems to have become something a lot more officious and viral, spreading from franchise to franchise.

But it did seem to come out of nowhere and get a sudden grip on cinema lately. If I was to pinpoint a reason it might've accelerated as it did, I would venture it was to do with the cult of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic party, and how the Democrat following can be incredibly cultish as it is. Meaning that suddenly everyone was going for the pro-woman power message.

And I can't help wondering if beforehand, cinema was beginning to go in quite an opposite direction to that, and argue the case for men.

The movie Gone Girl for instance speaks to a lot of the issues that Mens Rights Activists have raised about how men have become easy to demonize as the go-to boogeyman, and the social power women can have over men.

Dredd was another one that not only emphasized heroic masculine virtues in its titular stoic hero, but had in Lena Headley's Ma-Ma, a terrifying example of how women can be just as cruel villains and abusers as men, and highlighted the suffering of her male victims.

Cassie Jaye's The Red Pill documentary on the Men's Rights Movement also seemed like it was right on the pulse of the zeitgeist until the feminists did everything they could to shut it down.

End of Watch was another film about male virtues exemplified by frontline police officers putting their lives on the line to be protectors of the innocent.

Fifty Shades of Grey, whilst not exactly in the highest league, did seem to make a case that sexual relationship control dynamics can be a lot more nuanced than dominant male abuser and female victim.

But ultimately these were films that turned a plethora of feminist myths (both subtle and pernicious) on their head.

It makes me wonder if in a lot of ways, was cinema perhaps headed on a completely different, better course before the wokeness took hold and dragged it back?

I think the point of no return was Ghostbusters in 2016. If they didn't make that one then who knows? We might have been saved from all this crap and our favourite franchises might still be in tact.

This is the most important time for men to have male role models and they're either not being given any or the men that are being presented are undesirable. Luke Skywalker in TLJ fulfilled many SJW fantasies by having the old white guy be apathetic, bitter, lazy and irrational. What about Poe Dameron? He's portrayed as being impulsive and selfish, two traits these people often associate with men. You'll notice that every woman in the film is calm, smart and assertive. They belittle the men in the film and usually seem to cope with things a lot better. Charlie's Angels is the same with all the men either being portrayed as dopey or villainous. Of course Doctor Who is perhaps the worst of all them but we've covered that many times.

It's unlikely you're going to see a movie oozing with testosterone like Predator again. I also don't expect to see any "sensitive" movies about men's rights either.

In a strange way, at the time I still didn't think Ghostbusters 2016 was going to be the point of no return.

Infact I expected it to be instrumental in being the kind of box office bomb that would serve as a warning to studios of what not to do again, and communicate what the modern zeitgeist was and what it did want, and what it didn't want.

What I didn't expect was for Hollywood to double down with this nonsense when it was clearly not a winner. But they just wouldn't give up, and it still blows my mind why.

I do think part of it was down to the cultish effect the Hillary Clinton campaign had around 2016. It seemed to brainwash half the nation and much of Hollywood with the idea that they had to lift women up (and dig men down) and force men to accept female replacements of their idols and to even accept and obey the most malevolent female bosses (i.e. Admiral Holdo).

I mean, with Disney Star Wars, The Force Awakens was a successful film, as was Rogue One. And they both had their pro-woman agenda but it wasn't so obnoxious as to drive the audience out.

But with The Last Jedi they just pushed too hard too obnoxiously to the point where those like me who enjoyed the previous films and actually liked its female leads, were turned off completely.

The treatment of Po seemed very confused. For much of the film he seems to be completely in the right with his impulse instincts, but it then tries to pull some nonsense sucker-punch about how Holdo was right and he should've obeyed her in all things, and all his actions were based on male ego rather than rationality.

I'm still not sure to this day how much that was the intent of the writers, or how much it was a case of the writers doing something coherent for the most part, and then someone else trying to subvert it at the last minute for the message. It just came off like the makers had no real coherent base-code grounding and so the feminist element of the writing department came to skew it.

Pepsi Maxil wrote:It's unlikely you're going to see a movie oozing with testosterone like Predator again. I also don't expect to see any "sensitive" movies about men's rights either.

There was a sensitive movie about men's rights, called The Red Pill by Cassie Jaye (who'd previously done rather feminist documentaries), where she looked into the MRM.

But the feminists did everything to protest it into not being shown, and so it pretty much wasn't, except for a few very obscure one-time screenings.

It's also on Amazon Prime. It's worth seeing but it's very maddening.

Wokeness comes from American culture. As American culture lacks the basic virtues of other civil societs, such as the ability to debate coherently, and not result in a slagging match, when the political spectrum is shaken, it becomes all out hell.  

Trumpism motivated the right, which then galvanised the left. Now, while societies that are decent could sit down and talk things through, America is stupid and doesn't work like that. Instead, it became a massive power grab. The left fought back by hijacking the mainstream media, due to the weaknesses left in the wake of high profile sexual abuses cases by prominent right wingers, Roger Aiels, Bill O'rielly, etc.

So basically, it was always going to happen, and I think it has existed in other ways in the past. Think of the hippy movement vs the typical US warmongers.

In short, this whole thing is because America sucks.