On facebook, I'm in a group for people who like 50s/60s era of television, and recently the admin banned someone who was trying to discuss lack of diversity in tv shows of that era and racial politics. People were saying it was unfair, but the admin said this group is for a specific topic. Years back I would've seen that as harsh, but now I'm all for it. If only we done that with our hobbies once the usual suspects infiltrated.
The larger point being is that there is always some idiot who feels the need to bring in politics or some other issue into a completely unrelated hobby, and can't just let people have an escape. Recently I saw that the Twister movie was attacked for not addressing climate change, and I remember that Far Cry game got bad reviews for not addressing white supremacy.
Of course, the usual thing we hear is that "(fill in the blank) has always been political" or "it is too important". One of the reasons I rarely use reddit now is because of what happened during the "summer of love". I collect sports cards (baseball/football/hockey) and on a hockey card subreddit you had people who felt the need to have long posts about covid or vaccine misinformation along with the usual racial reckoning nonsense. Then of course they jumped all over me for asking what that has to do with hockey cards and I was told "some things are too important". I had to completely get off the Dallas Cowboys subreddit because they went off the deep end at that time.
Anyway, the mindset of these people who just can't let people enjoy something or feel that their point of view has to be brought into anything and everything even if it is some babies playing with blocks will never cease to annoy me.
There is a big difference between exploring universal topics and pushing a current day perspective on those universal topics.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a great example. Ostensibly it's about racism and changing the political landscape, but it's actually about a man being unjustly persecuted by an unfair jistice system due soley to his ancestry. You could transpose the story into any number of other times or places and it would work just as well, which is what makes it a classic.
Contrast this to Uncle Tom's Cabin. That one is openly political and specific to the institution of American slavery to the point where you really couldn't set the story anywhere else. It's often touted as an important cultural book but, in terms of actual timeless quality, it's pretty mediocre.
To your example, imagine a story about a young woman from Baltimore fighting for Reparations in the present day. Outside of this very specific context, it's completely nonsensical tripe that no one except these political agitators can relate to.
Exactly. A more timeless story would be the young woman in Baltimore wondering why businesses won’t come to her neighborhood and learning a lesson about the victim mindset. Victim mindset can be a lesson across many cultures
Right. That I could watch, Black female lead or not.