Tim Doyle makes a good point about all the angry people on the internet who bitch and moan about “SJWs”, diversity and politics being in geek fandoms today. The reality is that they were always there and they were very rarely subtle. This goes hand in hand with the Geek Culture Has Always Been Left-Wing post. Like we said there, we all grew up watching and reading these stories and the messages were pretty clear. But obviously this still needs to be said. Every day someone shows up to demand we “keep politics off our page”, as if they weren’t deeply ingrained in all our media. There’s also the “what is this SJW crap?” question, as if many superheroes and geek icons weren’t literal social justice warriors. So yea, I guess these people complaining completely missed the subtext of pretty much everything they read/watched as a kid:
Source: Tim Doyle
(via: Geek Girls)
Thank you and all, but JK Rowling isn’t on the lefts side anymore
Geek media dealt with issues, but it was all subtext.
These days it’s all heavy-handed, in-your-face moralizing without any subtlety whatsoever.
Watch Star Trek’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” and tell me it was subtext. Or the cover of the first issue of Captain America (punching Hitler in the face, drawn by a Jew, while America was trying to stay neutral in WW2, and working a subway ride away from the headquarters of the American Nazi Party). The very existence of a Black superhero in 1966 was pretty in-your-face when the Black Panther was created.
“These days it’s all heavy-handed, in-your-face moralizing without any subtlety whatsoever.”
Maybe that’s because abusers have become more brazen and blatant in their attacks and are less and less subtle intellectually, and a more direct response is needed: one that cannot be missed even by the more dim among them.
It’s amazing how many Star Trek fans there are out there who have apparently never watched a single episode and have no idea what the show is about.
Your parents were just as furious about the “ridiculous idea” of a woman being in command (Pike’s Number One, from “The Cage”), and an educated black woman in the command center, in a position of respect, a woman who was NOT mopping floors and washing clothes.
Star Trek was CREATED “woke.”
Or, hot take here, maybe they’re telling you that they’re so gods-damned sick and tired of all the divisive backbiting between political extremes that all they want to do is sit down and watch a TV program or movie without any of that going on. Politics is poison, and a life without it constantly being shoved in your face, regardless of whose politics it is, is a life less toxic.