Tag: Woke Mind Virus

A Hot Take On ‘Woke’ Hollywood

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Everything is fucked up in the world. What I mean by that is everyone seems to have an agenda whenever anything makes them uncomfortable. At the moment, there seems to be two types of movies — big budget “four quadrant” blockbusters….and woke movies.

The president of Hollywood.
For someone who is a storytelling snob, this really grates on my nerves. It seems impossible to find just “a good movie” that doesn’t seem to be some sort of preening pontification on the “woke agenda.” And I say this as someone who considers himself center-Left.

I’m all for art having “a message” but there is this thing called….subtext?…that too many earnest Hollywood people seem to have forgotten about. I mean, I hope to write a six novel project that pretty much is just one huge, long screed against extremism in general and MAGA in particular. But my goal is to do it all in such a way that you, the reader, won’t really realize what’s up unless you give it a lot of thought.

That’s the dream, at least.

I know why we have such a problem with over-the-top “woke” movies — the economics of movies are such these days that the only people willing to do passion projects are people who are members of the “woke cancel culture mob” who think you can only tell a story if all its characters are gay and / or a minority. (South Park has a good recent episode on this trend.)

I’m all for having representation in art. In fact, I organically have a lot of representation in my first novel. But at the forefront of my mind is TELL A GOOD STORY. If your message browbeats the audience to the detriment of your storytelling, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot.

And I know — I KNOW — that as a smelly CIS white male I’m opening myself up to a lot of hate by even bringing this up. But, I had to vent. I just would like to see modern interpretation of, say, a movie like The Big Chill or Time Bandits without the “message” of the movie making it unwatchable.

I Love Developing & Writing Female Characters, But The Process Can Be a Pain In The Ass As A Male Author

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

People love, love, love to pick on male authors for all being a bunch of clueless hornytoads when it comes to the female characters that they write. I’m so self-conscious of this issue that I over think everything to do with my female characters.

My heroine looks like Corrie Yee.
Then, of course, I turn around and turn my heroine into a part-time sex worker (stripper.) And given that I often write from a female POV, I find myself in a situation where I just can’t avoid talking about T&A, even though that’s the very thing that the fucking “woke cancel culture mob” things I have no right to describe at all as a CIS white middle age male.

But I dunno. It’s typical of my lot in life that I would inevitable gravitate straight towards the most problematic situation possible. And given that I’m a smelly CIS white middle age male, for some members of the “woke cancel culture mob” there just isn’t anything I can write that they would validate. So, fuck it, why not just endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and see what happens.

I like to THINK that I can write about women as a male author that won’t be embarrassing or cause women in the audience to want to throw the book across the room. But the whole sex worker element of the novel definitely makes it a provocative novel in the context of how sexless the “woke cancel culture mob” tends to be.

I’m happen with what I’ve come up with. I know people will really enjoy this novel once I finish it. The question is, of course, will the liberal white women who are often literary agents be cool with not just the contents of this novel but the fact that it was written by a smelly CIS white middle aged male.

Man, Dua Lipa Is Rather Chaste Compared To Madonna

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m old enough to remember how Madonna ran around quite naked in the late 1980s, early 1990s. It’s rather startling that someone like Dua Lipa — who clearly might be willing to nude for Playboy if it was still culturally relevant — is content with just the occasional spicy snap or faux nudity of a music video.

Its the rise of not just online porn but specifically OnlyFans that makes you realize what a brave new world we live in. Playboy is now a long-forgotten cultural backwater, a legacy brand. Meanwhile, mainstream culture in general has grown not only “woke” but rather chaste.

Of note — the moment MAGA Republicans have power again, they’re probably going to effectively ban online porn. It’s possible that soon enough that because of that specific act that Playboy may again have mass media appeal. I can’t predict the future, but such a thing is definitely one of those unexpected consequences of major policy changes.

I say all of this knowing how fucking dark the Playboy empire was in the shadows. But I do have an appreciation of the (romanticized) Playboy ethos. It would be so cool to bring back something like Playboy After Hours. That was the epitome of cool.

The ‘Barry’ Problem — Managing ‘Spicy’ Scenes In Third Draft Of My First Novel

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. I have a little bit of a problem on my hands at the moment.I’m very leery about having any “spicy” maternal too soon in the third draft of my first novel. But that, unto itself, has caused me to struggle with how to drag things out with interesting scenes.

I have a few ideas, but it’s really difficult at the moment to think of how I can convey what I want to convey without things getting spicy. You see, my heroine is very much a “Barry”-like character in that she had two widely different elements to her life.

On one hand, she owns an alt-weekly and on the other…she owns a strip club.

Because I’m doing all of this in a vacuum, I have no idea if the audience will really like this dramatic dichotomy or if it will only cause them — especially women — to throw the book across the room.

But that’s where I am at the moment. The second draft only alludes to this unique situation, while the third draft really gets into the implications of such a surreal bifurcation of a woman’s life. And, yet, of course, the issue of why even have this as an element of the novel in the first place is another thing that the fucking woke cancel culture mob critics will bring up.

Well, to that, all I can say is, if you think like that — fuck off.

Anyway, I’ve decided to punt the sexxy scenes down the road as far as possible because I want to establish in the audience’s mind that this is a serious journalist we’re talking about. And, besides, if I rushed into things on the sexxy front, the first thing that the “woke cancel culture mob” would bitch and moan about is I was sexualizing my heroine from the get-go.

Ugh, sometimes you just can’t win.

But I’m very pleased with the state of the third draft. I just have to do a lot — A LOT — of brooding about how to make the “filler” scenes interesting enough that people will keep reading, not realizing that I’m biding my time to give them the mental images of T&A they want so bad.

Of course, given the nature of marketing, if I do actually manage to sell this novel, it’s not like people aren’t going to already know what’s going on as they start to read the novel.

Yet Another Attempt To Understand What The Fuck ‘Woke’ Means

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The issue with the term “woke” is it is so loaded now — and so defined by people who use it for whatever they need it to mean — that it’s really hard to pin down an exact meaning. In general, relative to my point of view, to be “woke” means you are a cultural Leftist who has such a ridged orthodoxy on certain issues that you would rather the United States become a MAGA fascist state than give centrists some wiggle room.

But that’s just me. I suppose in the minds of ambitious Republican politicians, “woke” is a nebulous catch-all of far Left agendas that scare your voters. But because being against the “woke cancel culture mob” polls well, you slather the term over anything — and I mean ANYTHING — that it in anyway seems “liberal.”

Because the term “liberal” has become so hated, so loaded within Republican ranks that you can’t use it at all for any reason. You can’t even use it to describe what the United States is — a liberal democracy.

There is no denying that younger generations have different social expectations that can leave old coots like me at a loss. And, yet, at least I’m willing to admit and acknowledge that just because I don’t understand what the youngins think, doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong.

But the obsession with this or that thing being “woke” in the minds of MAGA Republicans is part of a broader macro problem — the political center no longer exists in the United States and the two sides are receding from each other at an astonishing rate.

Neither side understands the other and the MAGA Right seems determined to either establish a fascist state in the United States or force the issue of a National Divorce.

In the end, once things grow far more existential in nature, the very notion of this or that thing being “woke” will seem rather quaint.

A Lazy Review of ‘Oppenheimer’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I almost didn’t go see Oppenheimer because I felt I knew enough of what happened in the movie from Tik-Tok videos that I didn’t need to. But I felt compelled to see it and I’m really glad that I did.

My key takeaway from the movie was that Christopher Nolan wanted to keep the audience off kilter in an effort to reflect what happened in real life with Oppenheimer. There were some pretty big twists in the confirmation plot line that I just didn’t see coming.

And, what’s more, the issue of if the United States should have dropped the A-Bomb was another interesting moral conundrum. It’s kind of sad that the dropping of the A-Bomb is one of a number of loaded historical issues that is almost impossible to talk about honestly without risking being “canceled.”

Anyway, in general, I really liked the movie. It is definitely a “dude” film in that it deals with “dude stuff.” I’m not suggesting women won’t like it or that women can’t do “dude stuff,” just that the audience for the film is obvious men who want to see other men do “dude stuff.”

The seemingly ever-growing number of issues that are taboo to even broach in our “woke” modern world is enough to make one just want to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. I still think, though, that it’s at least possible that the existential nature of so-called Fourth Turning may cause all our notions of “woke” discourse to seem rather quaint.

‘Go Woke Go Broke’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One of the alarming similarities between the 1850s and the modern age is how both sides seem obsessed with boycotting this or that thing. Usually, the ones that work are very simple to understand.

Take, for instance, the boycott of Bud Lite that happened as part of the overall Gay Scare of the last few years. It’s a very simple type of boycott — don’t drink Bud Lite unless you want your guy friends to think you’re gay or supporting the “gay agenda.”

This is a very simple message to convey and I can tell you from personal experience that this boycott has really resonated with the people who live around me in BFE Virginia. So, of course, one of the main proponants of this boycott would be seen with, you guessed it, a Bud Lite in his hand.

It’s clear that the entirety of the Republican worldview is done in bad faith and specifically designed to “own the moment” no matter what. It’s thinking like the “go woke go broke” campaign that is probably going to lead to uncontrollable global climate change.

Things suck and there doesn’t seem to be any solution. Though, of course, the astrology for dudes known as The Fourth Turning would suggest that in 2024 we’re going to decide matters one way or another.

Well, Women Will Either Love or Despise My Heroine

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m definitely taking a risk with this new direction for my heroine. She’s a far more interesting and complex character, but because I’m doing all of this in a vacuum — I just don’t know.

I don’t know what the reaction will be. The idea of my heroine having a very Barry-like sharp dichotomy to her life is, on its face, really interesting and provocative. And, yet, the case could be made that, by definition, a smelly CIS white male creating such a character is exploitive in such a way as to give female readers “the ick.”

In my defense, the whole point of this new direct for the character is to keep people distracted while I build up to something actually happening. The first roughly 30 scenes are just an effort to lay out the groundwork for what is about to happen to these characters.

My hope is that by the time the Inciting Incident rolls around, the audience — especially women — will be invested enough in the story that they will care enough to finish the novel. That’s the hope. That’s the goal.

I imagine my heroine looks like a younger version of Nicole Scherzinger.

But I *am* a smell CIS white male — and a drunk loser middle aged one at that. So, the anger over having my heroine own a strip club pretty much writes itself.

And, yet, I’ve really been struggling for a way to make my heroine really, really interesting and unique and this seems to be as about as good as I’m going to get, all things considered. And, I think, if I am very careful and self-conscious about the dangers involved that I might — just might — manage to pull this particular situation off.

Of course, I’m not getting any younger. It definitely seems that even if I stick the landing that I’m going to be in my mid-50s before I get anywhere near having this novel on bookshelves. And that doesn’t even begin to address the rise of AI which may make all forms of human-produced creativity quite moot.

But, I create because I have to, not because I want to.

It Seems Inevitable That My Novel Will Pass The Bechdel Test

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There was a version of the first scene of the third draft of the novel where the novel passed the fucking Bechdel Test. I unfortunately(?) had to re-write it to add some tension the scene.

And, yet, given how many women are in this novel it definitely seems inevitable that there will come a point when it passes the Bechdel Test. I wish I could feel some satisfaction in doing so, confident in the knowledge that I have passed an ever-so-important metric of the woke cancel culture mob.

AND YET.

I AM a smelly CIS white male and, as such, according to the woke cancel culture mob, by definition, I have no write to do anything. I can’t even give them the representation they claim to want because, lulz…I’m a white dude. That’s why I always get angry when I’m attacked online by people to the Left of me.

“I’m on your side!” I think.

I don’t know what to tell you. The two sides are receding from each other at an alarming rate. There’s just no middle ground anymore. Sometimes I am astonished by how self-defeating the woke cancel culture mob can be. While, in general, I’m pretty center-Left, too often “woke” people seem so consumed by their ideological goals that they miss sight of how they’re driving a lot of people who believe they’re “centrist” into the arms of fucking fascism.

Well, I’ve At Least Come Up With An Interesting Heroine

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

After years of dwelling on the nature of my heroine, I feel as though I’ve finally managed to come up with a woman who is really, really unique. Because I continue to do all of this in a vacuum, I am at a loss as to what people’s reaction to her might be.

My heroine of my first novel looks like a younger version of Nicole Scherzinger

Remember, by definition, because I’m a smelly CIS white male there will be members of the woke cancel culture mob who dismiss my right to tell the story I want to tell. I’m supposed to just stick to writing from a male POV and otherwise shut up. This happens, of course, in the context of “intersectional feminists” complaining about not enough representation in fiction.

In fact, I listened to an entire Slate podcast where two women were angry about how not enough women, POC and LGBTQ+ people were in positions of power in Hollywood. That’s all well and good and I validate those concerns, but I found myself growing a little insecure — what if a CIS white male like me makes a good faith effort to tell a story about a POC woman?

Is that “representation” or is that “exploitive appropriation?”

I am really self-conscious about that potential criticism being lobbed at me. But it’s too late now. I had no idea of the cultural minefield I was wondering into when I decided I wanted my heroine to be a POC. And, what’s more, I only relatively recently realized there was some sort of woke taboo against against a man writing from a female POV.

Ugh.

But, having said all that, I do think I’ve come up with not one but TWO heroines (over the course of six novels) who are just as interesting, in their own way, as Lisbeth Salander. In the end, you just can’t please everyone, especially not members of the woke cancel culture mob who have all these weird ideological demands for any art they consume.