Is ‘Hollywood’ Healing?
Will the old archetypes make a comeback or do we need a new movie industry?
I’m sure most people who have been engaged in some capacity with modern Western culture over the last few years have heard the term ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’ countless times. It’s a term used by those on one side of the culture war to criticise public facing corporations who have adopted aspects of the radical progressive movement into their business model; ie, DEI, de-platforming, etc. In response, the hard left aligned cohort on the opposite side typically push back against this phrase with their usual brand of oversimplification and thought terminating cliches; calling it ‘a red flag’ used by the ‘far right’, racists, bigots, etc.
Regardless of how one feels about this particular debate, (I find it tiresome, in truth), the facts of the matter are that a lot of corporations are turning away from the DEI initiatives that they adopted post 2020, most notably Microsoft.
When reading about this and similar instances, I've noticed a lot of sources cite that this trend is happening because of the impact these woke initiatives are having on the financial bottom lines of these companies. Of course, this could be an inherent bias on the part of the sources which may or may not have a vested interest in the way this story is reported. (Left leaning sources tend to not state that there is a financial incentive behind these moves). However, if it is indeed the case that these companies are abandoning their previous diversity pledges for capital gain then it would add some credibility to the ‘Go Woke, Go broke’ adage.
The domain for which I most associate this slogan has been that of ‘Hollywood’, by which I mean the US film industry as a whole, rather than the specific region of Los Angeles, California. (Here in the UK, ‘Hollywood’ is a term typically used in this way; as a shorthand, catch-all term that represents the American movie industry, and I will use it as such throughout).
The American movie industry is definitely suffering monetarily as of late, as Ted Gioia explains here. Of course, the reasons for this financial decline are probably multifaceted and it would be disingenuous of me to posit that it is entirely due to the effects of DEI and Critical Social Justice initiatives, but I do think ‘wokeness’ played a role.
I’ve heard countless amateur (and some professional) movie critics use the adage ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’ over the last few years in print, on their Youtube channels, etc. Normally, this results in them being lambasted for being ‘toxic’, misogynistic or ‘far right’ by the radical, Identitarian left. I have no doubt that some of this may in fact be true in some fringe cases, but I don’t buy it across the board. I don’t think they are all toxic ‘incels’ who are just emotionally threatened and emasculated by strong women in films. In fact, having listened to a lot of them myself, I can attest that some are expressing genuine and reasonable criticisms about the direction the industry has been going in recent years.
For instance, I agree with them that virtue signalling, social messaging and pandering has crept into a lot of popular franchises to the detriment of story. I agree that a lot of long running franchises whose traditional target audience is male have adopted aggressively feminist narratives and ideological leanings. Men are often represented as weak, cruel and stupid in these films/shows whereas the women are Amazonian superwomen who often don’t need to embark on any kind of growth arc; instead they are instantly as smart, skilled and competent as they need to be for any challenge.
It’s fine to have women kicking ass in action movies of course and they have been for years; Princess Leia, Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, etc. But these women were not shown to be strong by making their male counterparts look weak or incompetent by comparison, but rather, characters of both sexes were often shown to be mutually complementary to each other.
The characters Kyle Reese in The Terminator and Corporal Hicks in Aliens (both played by Michael Biehn) were extremely adept and skilled military men as one would expect these seasoned soldiers to be. And they both saved and were saved by, their female leads through the story. Complimentary to the lead; different but equal.
These heroines also always had some form of obstacle or challenge to overcome that facilitated character growth, instead of instantly levelling up to meet any challenge that the script throws at them, like a video game character whose whole skill tree was unlocked from the start with a cheat code. Sarah Connor beats the T101 (spoilers) by the skin of her teeth at the end of the movie, as does Ripley when facing off with the Xenomorph Queen (again, spoilers), but their characters have been changed by the events of their stories.
Sarah Connor was just an everyday, unremarkable woman who became a survivor that will fight for every breath and the representation of Mary, Mother to the Messiah. Ripley started the Alien sequel traumatised by the events of the first movie and in an existential crisis after being frozen for decades and coming to terms with the fact that her daughter had lived a full life that Ripley missed. She ends the movie as a survivor, a protector, a mother and a warrior. These characters grew, and they earned it, unlike a lot of the female leads we see now.
This is the ‘Girl Boss’ phenomena and much has been said about it. Among others, the Critical Drinker on YouTube has been making these arguments for a while; he often talks cogently and at length about the rise of the ‘Girl Boss’ archetype and the decline of the strong & stoic male hero in cinema.
I hear a lot of people on these kinds of channels saying that we will never go back to the traditional character archetypes that worked in narrative fiction for centuries; that they have been buried by radical progressivism, but I disagree. I think capitalism will win out in the end. More on that later.
But as Katherine Elaine brought up in her recent article ‘I Love Men’, the ‘Girl Boss’ is not the only female archetype common to narrative fiction, nor is it the only one that women could possibly relate to. Another is the more historically prolific ‘Damsel’, for which Katherine made a case for; a case which is expertly echoed here in an excellent recent article by The Brothers Krynn.
It’s easy to see why the radical progressives would rally against the ‘Damsel in Distress’ or call it a misogynistic trope. It’s a fair argument and I would agree with them on it up to a point. But it’s also an archetype that has persisted for centuries, and for that there must be a reason, right?
Yes, there is. And the reason is of course, reality.
That reality is (in part) biological, and no matter what virtue signalling, cultural positions some among us may adopt for philosophical reasons, our own evolved, biological imperatives will not be denied. This is best described as the ‘stated versus revealed preferences’ phenomena that Chris Williamson often discusses on his podcast Modern Wisdom.
Chris Williamson is currently writing a book that touches on this issue but he has discussed these ideas publicly as he is researching it. He outlines an example that leads me to believe that the old, ‘tried and tested’ archetypes will make a comeback in movies, tv, etc; it has already happened in the domain of romance novels.
In his podcast with Eric Weinstein, they are talking about what makes men desirable to women.
Williamson says… ‘...in the early 2010s after the success of 50 Shades of Grey, there was a proliferation of dark romance novels and there was a push back from the feminist movement saying that the portrayals of men as dominant, masculine, bearded, big chested, in a loincloth or in a plaid shirt wielding an axe, wasn't what women wanted. They wanted a softer version of this. So they started putting more agreeable, more feminised men on the front cover of books. They didn't sell. I think that there's a massive difference between stated and revealed preferences here’.
Later on, or perhaps in another episode (I can’t recall exactly) I remember hearing Chris say that some authors made this connection between the less hunky love interests and low sales, reinstalled the traditional macho archetype and the sales improved. This shows that you can deny reality all you like, and for as long as it remains morally fashionable to do so, but reality will still be there at the end to punch you right in the face. That’s because reality is simply what IS the case regardless of how you feel about it. That reality can’t be denied indefinitely because it’s always there and can outlast any and all pretence.
Women fantasise about strong men who can protect them and their progeny from threats. It’s not a progressive trait, true, but it's the reality of billions of years of selective evolution and is hardwired into our genetic code. It's primal, animalistic and a biological imperative which isn’t going away anytime soon. Sex, will always sell and so will our ‘revealed preferences’ in the end. Women will gravitate to the male characters that their bodies innately desire and to female characters that resonate with their own experiences. Vice versa, men.
As the money dries up, corporations will pivot back towards the inherent desires of their customers. In fiction, that means showcasing characters and storylines that entice people to purchase a book or a movie ticket.
So when will this happen to ‘Hollywood’?
In the comment section of ‘Brother Krynn’s’ original post, I commented with a broad overview of the thesis I am outlining in this article, saying…,
‘One day soon, someone will make a film that returns to these tried and tested ideas. It will resonate with whole swathes of people as it will reflect their own humanity and revealed preferences. The film will be a monster hit and cause Hollywood/TV to pivot back to characters that more closely resemble our base human nature in search of box office receipts. [...] These kinds of stories have persisted for centuries because they innately describe our own experiences, and the production companies will follow the money eventually. We just gotta vote with our wallets like the romantic novel readers did’.
I copied my own words in because for one, I’m lazy as fuck, and two, I kind of hit the nail on the head the first time around.
Then I had a comment from SubStacker Larry D pointing out something that, interestingly, I hadn’t even considered. He posited that this process has already started and maybe the ‘monster hit’ movie that would be the catalyst for change had already happened; Top Gun: Maverick.
It made over 1.4 billion dollars at the box office worldwide so it is certainly a hit, but I can’t attest to its usage of traditional male and female archetypes or its overall lack of wokeness because I haven’t watched it. I could, and for the sake of my article I probably should as part of a rigorous, research practice; but I won’t, because I don’t want to watch it. I hate Top Gun (1986) with a passion and cannot stand the idea of another two hours spent in that universe.
But, Maverick was released a full two years ago now, and since then we have seen some of the most egregious examples of woke ideological capture coming out of Hollywood. Not least the most recent offering from Disney/Lucasfilm ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’, which may be one of the messiest, sanctimonious and contrived things I have ever watched. This may seem to indicate that we are in the eye of the storm in terms of Hollywood ‘wokeness’.
But consider the turnaround involved in these high budget projects. The Acolyte was first announced to be in development in 2020 and started principal photography in 2022. This meant that its development and production was entirely during what many call the ‘peak woke’ time period. A 2-4 year turnaround is quite typical for a high budget movie or TV show (The Acolyte cost and eye-watering $180 million) so one would expect the representation of ideas and fashions in these shows to operate in arrears of a couple of years or so.
By that reasoning, if Maverick was the ‘monster hit’ that realigned the capitalistic movie industry back in the direction of traditional archetypes and storylines, we should start to see more and more non-woke projects from this year (2024) onwards.
And I believe we have. The obvious example is Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024), which takes a centrist approach to the culture war topic. Holding up a mirror to the extremities of both sides while intentionally highlighting the plight of those without a strong allegiance to either, who are caught in the middle of the fighting.
The ‘Western Forces’ alliance in the movie between Texas and California is, I believe, an attempt by Garland to stop people identifying their representative side as the good guys or the one opposite as evil. Taking the ‘wokest’ and most left leaning state and aligning them with the state most stereotypically seen as being right wing is a stroke of genius in my view. I’ve seen critics from either camp attack this narrative feature for identical yet individually partisan reasons. In their criticisms, they reveal their desires for the film to identify their side as good, moral and right and to demonise the other. By taking this one creative liberty, Garland ensured that the plight of both sides must be considered when watching and hinted that the only way to avoid a real life civil war scenario is for both sides to learn how to set aside their differences and work together. It's genius and I love it. I recommend Cole’s SubStack (here) on this film and the response from certain film critics.
Another movie that I feel is worth mentioning is Guy Ritchie’s 2023 war film The Covenant starring Jake Gyllenhaal. It features strong, stoic male characters making reasonable decisions and understandable, human mistakes. They are competent in situations where one would expect them to be; elite soldiers making battleground choices, but without being portrayed as perfectly moral agents. It doesn’t try to say that American imperialism is the bad guy, nor does it demonise Arabs on the whole. It makes the Taliban the bad guys (because they are) and shows both locals and American soldiers as real human beings who are trying to navigate this dangerous environment and return safely to their respective families.
It highlights honour, friendship and loyalty as key motivators in its characters, as well as taking responsibility for one’s actions and paying your debts. But most interestingly to me, its female characters are strong, women without being ‘Girl Bosses’ and family oriented without being trad wife homemakers. Gyllenhaal’s character's wife supports her husband by competently running the family business and raising the family while he is on tour. She doesn’t hold this over him at all though, instead expresses that as much as she dislikes him leaving her alone to put his life in danger for his country and fellow man, she knows it’s his calling and something he feels is a duty. They respect each other and work as a team, two individuals working together for common goals, two halves of one whole. Neither one is subservient to the other. They are a healthy couple with no time for gendered politics or the resentment that that stuff brings.
[Sidebar] Since writing this article I’ve discovered a few other points of interest on this subject.
I’ve read on several sources that the recently released flick ‘Twisters’ (legacy sequel to Twister) is notably lacking in ‘Woke’ messaging, lecturing and virtue signalling. Maybe this is a further sign that Hollywood is dissenting from the Woke religious framework.
The judge presiding over Gina Carano’s legal case against her former employer Disney has denied the House of Mouse’s request for the case to be dismissed, clearing the way for it progressing to the courts. Carano is suing them for unlawful dismissal after they fired her for expressing her political views on Twitter.
Marvel Studios Hall H panel at San Diego Comic Con featured no Disney+ projects, focussing exclusively on upcoming cinematic movies (Disney+ original programming has been heavily criticised for ‘Woke’ messaging). When referencing the upcoming fourth Captain America movie starring Anthony Mackie as the title character, no references were made to the fact that he was a black hero or the struggles that a black man has to face. The Disney+ show where the character first took up the CA mantle was full of CRT messaging and many feared this film would be part two of that narrative. It may yet still be so, but it seems they are not leaning on these kind of social issues in their projects as much in the promotional marketing as they used to. Instead they specifically referenced how much it was like returning to a (pre-Woke) previous era of storytelling, specifically The Winter Soldier of 2014. [End Sidebar]
We need more films like these, presenting these kinds of messages. But will we get them? Maybe, but they might not be in English.
As well as his insights on Top Gun: Maverick, Larry D in another comment highlighted international cinema as a source of great movies that are not captured by the woke mind virus, specifically citing the Indian action movie RRR and the Japanese monster action flick Godzilla: Minus One. Again I can’t attest to the validity of these claims as I haven’t seen either movie, but what I can attest is there is some wonderful work coming from the Asian movie markets.
I love Asian cinema, and watch a shit ton of it, but ‘wokery’ isn’t completely absent within it. Train to Busan, my favourite movie, was thankfully made before ‘wokery’ captured modern cinema, but its subsequent sequel does has some elements of ‘girl boss’ trope in it. But that isn’t the main reason this film falls so far short of its predecessor in all honesty.
My favourite Asian TV show by far is the Korean period zombie show Kingdom, whose political drama and intrigue is a far more gripping aspect than the horror premise. This show runs rings around Game OF Thrones when it comes to political power games.
It’s two most primary female characters are strong, intelligent and feminine in their own individual ways. The villainous Queen Consort is manipulative, driven and ruthless, but also cunning, calculated and formidable. Whereas Seo-bi, the female lead, is a kind and nurturing nurse who uses her wits to survive and uncover the secrets of both the Royal family and the zombie outbreak. These two characters work in tandem to complement the main character, The Crown Prince Lee Chang, as a foil and a companion respectively.
One instance where ‘wokeness’ definitively penetrated somewhat into Asian cinema is the Japanese Sci-Fi show Alice in Borderland, of which I am still a huge fan. Within, it has an entirely superfluous trans storyline where the character goes on a needless side quest for a few episodes to deal with their past trauma and parental issues. It has no bearing on the wider story and doesn’t really impact upon that character's arc going forward.
But to be fair to this show, it also has another character that is clearly presented as a trans person but of which the gender identity is never really acknowledged in the story. They are just presented that way but (if my memory serves) it’s never mentioned in dialogue and never impacts the plot in any meaningful way. This feels less forced, or if it is, at least it’s more subtle and less preachy. I wonder if this show was intentionally showing the difference between real inclusion and preachy, virtue signalling in storytelling by using two very different examples of trans inclusion? Probably not, but an interesting idea nonetheless.
One show that avoids ‘wokeness’ almost completely is the 2022 Korean show All of Us Are Dead, a teen horror/drama set in a high school during a nationwide zombie outbreak. It was made during Covid-19, (which it mentions by name) and is in a very real way commenting on a government’s handling of pandemics.
It also brings back some of the traditional and historically long-lasting archetypal tropes we have already discussed without being one dimensional and cliched with them; preferring instead to authentically characterise male and female characters as unique individuals. Some men are brave and strong, some are smart and resourceful; but some are cowardly and stupid, weak and dishonest. Some have a predisposition for violence and thrive in this violent situation whereas some have to either overcome their inherent timidity and pacifism to survive.
Some of the women are strong, confident and extraverted and aid in taking control of situations, whereas some are more submissive and damsel like, happier to follow strong leaders. Some are manipulative and will use others for their own gain, whereas some are empathetic and selfless. Basically, they are all different human beings reacting to the world in different ways. In a country as ethnically homogenous as South Korea, they are able to explore the only form of diversity that should really matter at all, personality. This shows diversity comes from the uniqueness of each individual's character and personality, not their immutable characteristics.
I can’t recommend all these shows/movies enough.
So there are still some good movies and shows out there that avoid the urban monoculture of the West that is ‘wokeness’. You just gotta find them, possibly outside of the Anglosphere. But there does seem to be some evidence of a turned corner in the English speaking world on this issue. I hope its real. I’m so sick of this shit at this point, but so are a lot of other people besides. That’s why I am confident that the old stories will indeed make a triumphant comeback.
Money talks, and the audience reaction to The Acolyte shows us that people aren’t buying the woke stuff anymore, so it’s only a matter of time before those in charge of financing these movies stop handing them to blue haired, ideological ‘social studies’ graduates and back into the hands of talented artists, writers and storytellers. (At least that’s what I hope will happen).
Thanks for reading…
The Common Centrist
I’m glad to see people finally talking about what makes the “girl boss” archetype tiresome.
I have a theory about what led culture to swing to the “girl boss” archetype and away from strong and stoic male leads, besides woke ideology’s emergence into the mainstream, of course: what I’d call the “betch” archetype, which was prominent in Hollywood during the aughts, directly preceding the girl boss.
I grew up in the aughts. During my adolescence, I recall TV and movies constantly feeding me this “betch” archetype, or a female character who is airheaded, whiny/weepy, vain, mean-spirited, an overreactor, and physically fragile/incapable, often diminishing the character’s personality to the point that she became nothing but an all-too-obvious sex object, even in movies/shows with large female audiences. Take the main characters in "Mean Girls" and how Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie portrayed themselves in "The Simple Life"; I’d say those depictions epitomize the archetype I’m thinking of. Because of this archetype, it also became totally acceptable in the aughts for female characters to gratuitously be called skanks, sluts, whores, bitches/betches, etc., which I think would be met with a lot of criticism today.
I found the betch archetype equally as nauseating when showed time and time again as I find the emotionless, static girl boss who isn’t allowed to possess any character traits traditionally viewed as feminine. It felt like a caricature or vilification of femininity. Instead of countering it with female characters who displayed more positive feminine traits and depth, they overcorrected, as usual, by eliminating femininity from female characters all together with the girl boss. It really makes me wonder why it’s so hard for Hollywood to create balance and range in the writing of their characters so we’re not always having these horrible pendulum swings.
The girl boss archetype is unfortunately prevailing in fiction as well. It’s become difficult for authors to write relatable female characters that don’t get labeled as weak. And it seems to be even more difficult to write male characters or write honestly as a man because the male perspective as a whole is being conflated with “toxic masculinity.” There's a great contradiction in modern literature, where behaviors and ideas deemed “toxic” in male characters are celebrated when coming from female characters.
Would give RRR a big thumbs up and definitely worth a watch. Over the years I’ve watched some Indian movies and much like watching Korean movies/ series once you get into the rhythm and telling of their stories they are fantastic too watch. ( thoroughly enjoyed Kingdom and if you like your series a wee bit darker would recommend is Korean drama series Strangers from Hell ( also heard it called Hell is other People)