Part 1: Women Talking...
...about the degeneracy of men for 2 hours!: 'The Thousand Unspoken Rules of Writing'
To understand how agendas and political indoctrination have seeped deeply into our entertainment and news ecosystems, imagine these counterpoints:
Instead of The Woman King, there’s a film about a brutal and rapacious little kingdom in Western Africa which has sold so many of its own and its neighboring polities’ men into slavery that it has to use women as royal guards and combat troops. European missionaries visit and are appalled; European writers and philosophers condemn a chattel system this extensive. Eventually Europeans intervene and criminalize the slave trade all over the continent… for the first time in 10,000 years.
Instead of a lesbian romance in the new Buzz Lightyear film, there’s a commander who believes in the essential truth of the Bible and throws some casual statements in the film about sex roles and gender being ordained by God and traditionally valid.
Instead of an inexplicably skilled, mechanically-brilliant, world-bendingly force powerful Rey in the new Star Wars films we have a junk trader (Rey’s in-world childhood environment) who ends up being called by the force and is naturally skilled at lightsaber duels… but who is infatuated with good-looking young male characters and is mechanically inept at every turn (Instead of literally teaching Han Solo how to fix the Millennium Falcon after an hour aboard. Ridiculous).
All of the changes above are completely incomprehensible in modern Hollywood. They would never get made and if they were made they would be viciously attacked by critics. Aside from being unpopular with the cultural elite, the only other common factor that they have is they’re more realistic (or at least as realistic) and would make for more interesting films. They would introduce real elements and ideas that we encounter everyday. Many teenage girls are boy-crazy and uninterested in mechanical knowledge (even Jedi girls perhaps). There are far more devout Christians than lesbians in our society, even in the ranks of the military. The kingdom of Dahomey was one of the most enthusiastic slavers in history, annually sacrificing thousands of innocent civilians and brining rape and horror to its neighbors, until their largely female fighting force was completely destroyed by the French military in the mid-19th century.
These elements are not impossible to imagine because they’re unrealistic or uninteresting or offer no opportunities for great writing; they’re impossible to imagine because they break some of the hundreds of invisible rules which now bind writers. They violate the messages that the cultural elite want to be drilled into our heads, without any contradictory stories. By now the tropes are obvious as tropes, and so whatever power they once may have had is fading… yet they remain. Trans characters can’t be evil or grotesque (nor, for the most part gay characters or-even-women, most of the time). Evil characters must be, whenever possible, white and male. Women protagonists cannot be seen to be bested or controlled by men and even learning from men is disfavored. Racial heterogeneity must be created in every time and place, even in fictional worlds… unless the group is non-white. European influence, economic development, and all colonial institutions must be portrayed as exploitative and dishonest… or nakedly evil. There are literally hundreds of these rules. No one acknowledges that they exist, even though they obviously do, to the point that they’ve blanketed almost every major film or television show in the past 5 years. They’re far from all about racial and sexual parities as well. Can you think of a positive female character who stays home and raises children and is defined by love for her husband in anything recently? Especially a modern female character? Can you think of a Christian or a Republican… or someone who’s concerned about the loss of community, or immigration, or sexual license, or urban crime, who isn’t a villain? The world is full of such people but fiction now never is and this matters (at least on the margins).
History and contemporary society are now shown as the Left (over-educated, under-experienced, fragile, and disproportionately white and female) wishes it was… without admitting that any changes have been made or that there is any uniform vision guiding these hundreds of invisible rules. This is not a healthy state of affairs for a culture.
Because no one will admit that they exist there’s no debate about their intentions or effects-just a loose series of reactive internet mobs becoming enraged about black mermaids or enraged that people are becoming enraged about black mermaids. These dialogues always end up talking past one another, because one side accuses the other of racism (sexism/transphobia/etc.) and ignores every other argument made (as if they’re not real arguments… which they usually-though not always-are). As with so many other issues, there is a cultural consensus not shared by the mainstream, which has been imposed from above in a dishonest and condescending fashion, and which can’t be discussed. Even trying to create language or labels for such a discussion is strictly verboten. Nothing is happening here and no changes are being made… and it’s good that they are! They’re good changes! This is a familiar mode of discourse by now.
I’m not too worried about the changes. Apparently there is an iron law of creativity: any person (even-or especially-sheltered softies with graduate educations and few real life challenges, struggling with mild mental illness) who sets out to promote an agenda will damage the story beyond any use or quality and evoke mostly weariness and disgust. There’s a neat loop of writers-studios-critics-awards ceremonies that consumes its own tail, like Ouroborous, but these products make little money… and as time goes on people seem to be avoiding them intentionally more and more. If only every acerbic twitter post made the franchises money! Alas, they do not.
