On "Wokeness" and the Wheel of Time - Be Thoughtful in Responding

[MasterAblar]

21 minutes ago, Tim said:

The part that then doesn't really make sense* is that, if souls are gendered, and saidin/saidar is linked to the soul, then how could a channeler ever be born into the wrong-sexed body? Unless you can not agree with the gender of your soul? In which case why have gendered souls in the first place?

 

Its fiction... It can make sense if we want it to make sense. Who says gender identity in life must absolutely be analogous to what the soul is? To me you disassociate them and voilà, no issue at all to have transgender people. Why should you have to agree with the gender of you soul?

[Tim]

19 minutes ago, swollymammoth said:

For the moment I'll satisfy myself by pushing back on the idea that these ideas being injected into WoT are new "economic imperatives." If anything, they are being treated as moral imperatives, as if to not include them would be some kind of heinous sin against mankind. (See: All the backlash which occurs when a show doesn't have enough "representation"/"diversity"). 

 

There is no evidence that these ideas lead to success in the entertainment marketplace or that they add any sort of economic value to the project at all. If anything, shows and movies which have made these ideas their focal points have seen their audiences shrink rather than grow. This is because writers aren't giving audiences what they want to see, they're imposing an idea on the audience of what they should want to see, if only they were more moral, upright human beings. 

 

I think you are kind of agreeing with (or exemplifying) what I was saying. Some people think that  a show which is more diverse, which has strong female characters and prominent queer characters and so on will attract a broader audience than a show which do not have those qualities. Some people disagree with that proposition. It's still an "economic imperative" - just one which is more contested than, say, not having four hour episodes in a TV show.

(And it's not just about literal sales performance: a fossil fuel company might want to progressively shift away from coal production not because it will make more money from renewables but because it will lose investor and financier support if it does not. There are a number of ways that a "moral imperative" can become an "economic imperative" as a result of a quite subtle shifts in complicated interacting social pressures.)
 

Of course obviously it's not straightforward.

You say "shows and movies which have made these ideas their focal points have seen their audiences shrink rather than grow" - would you say this is true for every film or show which has sought to show a more modern view of gender, ethnicity etc than its source material? For every decision intended to (for example) give female characters more agency (like in LOTR, Arwen taking Frodo over the river to Rivendell)?

 

Or would you confine your point to examples where you think the execution of that intention was poorly done, unrealistic, and so on?

[Tim]

1 minute ago, MasterAblar said:

Its fiction... It can make sense if we want it to make sense. Who says gender identity in life must absolutely be analogous to what the soul is? To me you disassociate them and voilà, no issue at all to have transgender people. Why should you have to agree with the gender of you soul?

Oh look, I agree absolutely - I was really just teasing out the implications of strongly objecting to the decision to de-gender souls. Once you can disagree with your soul's gender identity, what does it even mean to have soul-based gender identity? At that point the whole notion becomes a dead letter.

As I said in my post, coming up with a solution to those questions doesn't really bother me, but I think people who are going to get up on their high horse about the awfulness of the show making such changes should probably spell out what they think is an acceptable solution (and if that solution is: "look, I just don't think there should be trans channeler characters at all" then they should probably just say that so that other people can understand what their position is and debate it).

[Gothic Flame]

If Rafe isn't going to respect the source material then I should wonder why bother? Is there some sort of cash grab here that I'm not seeing?

[MasterAblar]

5 minutes ago, Tim said:

Once you can disagree with your soul's gender identity, what does it even mean to have soul-based gender identity? At that point the whole notion becomes a dead letter.

 

I mean I suppose its important because it's in keeping with the dichotomy of the male/female division in the WoT world. I would argue that the soul is saidin/saidar based and that those are the ones associated with a sex. But ultimately its simply that RJ created his world that way.

 

You can definitely have transgender individuals in the story but will they fit perfectly with the system RJ set up? No of course not. And there are countless gender identities and the only way you fit everything into the world RJ build is by doing away with the entire system. I just don't see the logic in that if you're interested in adapting the WoT. Its at the heart of the story in many ways and I understand that it sucks that it can feel like its not inclusive but ultimately not every bit of art is imagined in a way that allows it. And I don't think that's unfair.

 

[DaddyFinn]

21 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

If Rafe isn't going to respect the source material then I should wonder why bother? Is there some sort of cash grab here that I'm not seeing?

There's a lot of stuff faithful to the books. Don't focus on the negative things and you'll see.

[Bmorebuilt]

So I read like half the comments, so joined down the rabbit hole.  I just reread the entire series again, finished yesterday, so everything is pretty fresh.  The people of Emond’s Field are exactly as the trailer was cast.  Our intro in the book was the women’s circle saying men were woolheaded idiots that had to be steered the right way, where the village council were always saying the let the women think they ran things to keep them happy but everyone knew who the real power was.  The trailer was in nyneave’s narration so of course it’s gonna be from her point of view.  I’m sure we will be immediately introduced to the back and forth between both groups.

 

Also what does it matter if nyneave snuck up on lan?  She did so in the books several times, also it was stated she was a better tracker then lan, this doesn’t make lan any less powerful of a warrior because an expert tracker snuck up and disarmed him.  Lan isn’t looking for a subservient woman, he’s looking for an equal and that’s why he’s attracted to her.

Edited November 11, 2021 by Bmorebuilt

[swollymammoth]

9 minutes ago, Tim said:

You say "shows and movies which have made these ideas their focal points have seen their audiences shrink rather than grow" - would you say this is true for every film or show which has sought to show a more modern view of gender, ethnicity etc than its source material?

I would feel quite confident in saying that the vast majority of shows/movies which have taken this approach have seen diminished returns. You have roughly half the country which disagrees with these politics and a large percentage of those people will likely tune out if they feel they're being preached to vs. a tiny minority of people who are drawn to media by these ideas. Just seems like a whole lotta risk for a whole little reward if you ask me (though the validation from blue checkmarks on Twitter is a reward in its own right, I guess). 

 

The big reason is mainly that any ideologically driven writer usually just becomes lazy. On the right, you have Ayn Rand as an example of this. Her books are as preachy as they come, and their only audience is people who want to hear their own ideas preached back at them. For someone like me who doesn't want to be preached to at all (even if I agree with some of those ideas) her books are unbearable. 

 

I've just noticed a trend that writers seem to rest on the laurels of diversity and inclusivity. Part of this is because it gives them the license to automatically dismiss any criticisms of their product by attaching an -ist label to whoever is doing the criticizing. Part of it is because their priority in the first place seems to have been to spread THE MESSAGE rather than tell an engaging story. 

 

Honestly, where you see this the most is Christian movies. They're so bad! And most of the reason is that they're so limited in what they can portray and how they can portray it. A "woke" ideology is no different. Playing by those rules, you can only talk about race a certain way. Same with gender and a host of other topics. This often leads to predictable and boring storytelling which feels inauthentic to life (which is frequently problematic). 

 

That being said, certain individual decisions being made don't necessarily equate to the show being turned into an ideological vehicle. Some of these decisions can work. The Arwen example you used is awesome. However, the "I am no man" moment from RotK is cringe as heck. I'm also reminded of the girl power scene from Endgame. These moments are just distracting because they feel like they're happening directly to the audience. 

 

I think that, by nature, most woke stuff is poorly done because it's allowed to be poorly done. People who agree with that stuff don't really demand anything more than hearing their own opinions repeated back to them. Mediocrity is openly rewarded and praised. 

 

In short: I believe that certain intentions tend to produce poor execution. For example, when I get angry on this forum, my posts suck because my intention moves from creating a coherent point to just pissing people off. 

 

[Kudzu]

Wow this thread really exploded while I was asleep.

 

I'm not sure where the histrionics reacting to Rafe's interview are coming from. He basically just confirmed what we've all been suspecting may be the case for weeks now. For me it re-affirmed that they are taking care with these changes and thinking through the effects.

 

De-gendering souls really isn't (or at least doesn't have to be) a really big lore breaking change. Sure is has implications, but none of them have any impact at all on the major arcs of the story. I challenge anyone to demonstrate how this change effects any character in a meaningful way. Remembering that Rand is definitely the Dragon Reborn.

 

To be honest I think playing up the who's the Dragon Reborn angle at all is a bigger change, whether or not that includes women. For me, it wasn't a major theme of EotW at all. Not just because it's plainly obvious for anyone who thinks to ask the question (young naive me didn't when I first read it). But the characters themselves never asked the question, none of them, not even Rand went through the first book worrying about being a prophesied savior/destroyer.

[Kudzu]

8 minutes ago, NightWolf said:

Well actually, I pondered on this very subject for awhile and I certainly feel that the novels were written with some pretty foundational structuring concerning male / female differences with established absolutes. Biological differences that have indegenous traits and accesses that are foreign to the opposing sex. I think its a real world term refered to as gender essentialism? For example, saidin / saidar is clearly a gender specific concept that Jordan created to give the readers the feeling that there are clear delineations between male / female. As a man, I was able to relate well to the male characters of the novels but not so much to the females. I think Jordan developed and penned these contrasts purposely, perhaps to have woolheads such as myself looking at characters such as Siuan, Liandrin and Nynaeve with absolute strangeness, mystery and confusion. A feeling that I still have today concerning my bride... (it's by design).

 

To really get into the weeds, being ex-military myself, I would feel right at home applying as a warder or maybe the Queen's Guards... but if I were to sit amongst the Women's Circle or be a guest in the White Tower, I would feel completely out of my comfort zone and would want to run as far away as possible. Why? Its because of the amazing writing genius of Jordan and his ability to portray these absolute contrasts into words that, atleast for myself, hit home perfectly. He penned these for a purpose, a reason. These gender absolutes are not wrong, it's the universe of which Robert designed. One should not be pissed about it, but be angry at our nation's current political and social battlefield, not a fantasy fiction series that began 31 years ago.

 

Clearly I digress.

 

I don't disagree with anything you are saying. I also don't believe de-gendering souls removes that tension. It's not like they are de-gendering people. They are very clearly setting up a dichotomy between men and women, look at the reported first minute of the show. People are up in arms because Moiraine dared called (a specific group of) men arrogant.

[TheMountain]

2 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

There's a lot of stuff faithful to the books. Don't focus on the negative things and you'll see.

The running list of changes is huge compared to things they've kept the same...

[Tim]

57 minutes ago, swollymammoth said:

Honestly, where you see this the most is Christian movies. They're so bad! And most of the reason is that they're so limited in what they can portray and how they can portray it. A "woke" ideology is no different. Playing by those rules, you can only talk about race a certain way. Same with gender and a host of other topics. This often leads to predictable and boring storytelling which feels inauthentic to life (which is frequently problematic). 

 

That being said, certain individual decisions being made don't necessarily equate to the show being turned into an ideological vehicle. Some of these decisions can work. The Arwen example you used is awesome. However, the "I am no man" moment from RotK is cringe as heck. I'm also reminded of the girl power scene from Endgame. These moments are just distracting because they feel like they're happening directly to the audience. 

 

I think that, by nature, most woke stuff is poorly done because it's allowed to be poorly done. People who agree with that stuff don't really demand anything more than hearing their own opinions repeated back to them. Mediocrity is openly rewarded and praised. 

 

Again, though, I feel like what you're really saying is "this is a problem if it results in "predictable and boring storytelling which feels inauthentic to life"." Which, surely, is a case of "it depends"?

 

Leaving aside that "inauthentic to life" is a tricky thing to assess in the context of a fantasy show (I'm not saying the concept has no currency, just that the question of how to measure it is not as straightforward as for realist drama, say), it seems to me to be a question of approach and execution. At which point I think it's just really difficult to predict these things without actually seeing the execution first.

 

To use an example drawn from music but also your analogy above, the band Low are a mormon duo who make music which is heavily (but certainly not exclusively) invested in exploring Christian themes, but whose fanbase is predominantly secular, in part because (and this is not what makes their music good per se, but it might be a precondition to effectively reaching that broader audience) the actual execution is not perceived by that audience as requiring that the listener to accept the duo's faith before you can understand or enjoy the music (and it's possible a lot of observant christians would strongly dislike the band).

Archetypal "christian rock", by comparison, is pretty explicitly music by and for observant christians, and is not intended to be received let alone enjoyed by a broader audience. That intent is performed as much as felt: audiences can hear that intent and many will react to it (negatively or positively) - i.e. "I feel included/excluded by this art." And in between you have a whole host of artists where the religious or spiritual themes might or might not be a barrier to certain listeners depending on (a) the extent to which they are emphasised and (b) the listener's appetite. Whether a listener felt that a given piece of music was "too Christian" to work for them will, inevitably, say as much about the listener as about the music. I'm aware that there's at least some people (albeit a minority it seems) who take the view that even Low's christianity interferes with their enjoyment; they're not wrong, but obviously I and many others take a different view.
 

I described WOT the books to my partner once and he thought from my description that it sounded like a cultural feminist* lecture - and, arguably, it kind of is? But the execution to my mind is for the most part so good that I would never think of it in those terms - i.e. whatever point RJ may or may not have been trying to make, the work he produced speaks to me regardless of whether I agree with it - just as Low's music affects me despite me not identifying as christian, let alone mormon.
 

[Jpud]

Bottom line - this sucks for lore/prophecies and diminishes the dragon “fear factor”, but it can probably work fine and may even be worth it to captivate the new TV audience with guessing the dragon. 
 

Bigger problem to me is that it shows he’s going out of his way to add political nonsense to an amazing story. The quote that confirms this is his “hopefully what RJ would have written today” line. 

 

THAT bodes very poorly for the show and makes me incredibly nervous.

[DaddyFinn]

13 minutes ago, NightWolf said:

Refering to this photo in a way that is out of scope (because I'm too lazy to go back and see why you circled back to it) --- I look at this and I have to tip my hat to it. Rand al'Thor looked remarkably different than the rest of the Two Rivers folk and from this cast and effects shoot, they certainly made it look that way. 

 

So whatever past problem you are refering to (which I truly have no clue about), I too can say that I really don't see the problem. 

Someone had issue with Madeleine being "too dark to play Egwene". And of course when the cast was announced people were outraged that Perrin and Nynaeve are BLACK when they are actually (in my POV) just a shade or two darker than Mat. Nothing too serious.

[Tim]

I'm going to pretend that the complaints upthread about Egwene's skin colour were all part of some kind of performance art intervention after commenters complained that Elder Haman's opening post was too reductive.

[Gothic Flame]

If they're making changes that change the entirety of the books then this isn't for me.

It's like GoT without dragons or the Houses.

[Deadsy]

5 minutes ago, Gothic Flame said:

If they're making changes that change the entirety of the books then this isn't for me.

It's like GoT without dragons or the Houses.

 

 

What is like GoT without dragons or Houses?

[Els]

19 minutes ago, Deadsy said:

 

 

What is like GoT without dragons or Houses?

 

GoT without dragons or houses is like WoT without Aei Sedai ? I do think the show will stay true to the core of the book series. Time will tell.

[Guire]

The economics of who a show is trying to reach is very interesting to me.  Maybe someone here has better insight than I do.  The last 10 years I have kept informed in US politics and I have frequently felt the political parties were using bad metrics in judging their success. Who they courted and how they messaged often seemed clunky and counter productive at times.

 

So with a show like WoT who does Amazon and the production team want to please?  Will Amazon be happy if this wins awards and is publicly lauded by media as inclusive and appealing to audiences not generally core fantasy audience members?  Are certain demographics are higher priority for appeal because of advertising? What does the broader Fantasy audience look like when broken down into demographics.  If the show doesn't end up appealing to me but is widely loved I think would be very happy for fans that did enjoy it.  

 

I had read somewhere that WoT may be an experiment aimed to develop a broad female audience while LoTR might be the traditional male geek vehicle.  When I watched the new Witcher trailer for Season 2 it was very apparent that Netflix has dumped more money into the project.  Oddly my wife really likes Witcher and GoT after I finally convinced to watch it last year, but she has been kind of lukewarm on WoT so far.  Any body with insider knowledge that knows how these decisions are made?  At times in this run up the marketing for WoT has felt kind of disjointed.  

[Morani]

16 hours ago, swollymammoth said:

 

 

One of the hallmarks of a woke production is that its critics are always framed as morally wrong rather than just people who creatively disagree with the show. Just look to the marketing for the Eternals ("Looks like we're pissing off the right people") or Captain Marvel ("I don't want white men to watch Captain Marvel"). 

 

 

Looks like you have been caught up on the anti-woke band wagon, my dude. Brie Larson NEVER said anything of the sort about Captain Marvel, and I dare you to find any evidence on the contrary. She did however say that A wrinkle in time was not made for white men, and that Hollywood needs less old white men to run the show, basically.  This caused a lot of white men to have a hissy fit and say that she obviously did not want their patronage for Captain Marvel either. I can tell that source criticism is not your strong suit. But that has been evident from how you have been jumping to conclusions with the WOTTV as well. 

[Gothic Flame]

24 minutes ago, Guire said:

The economics of who a show is trying to reach is very interesting to me.  Maybe someone here has better insight than I do.  The last 10 years I have kept informed in US politics and I have frequently felt the political parties were using bad metrics in judging their success. Who they courted and how they messaged often seemed clunky and counter productive at times.

 

So with a show like WoT who does Amazon and the production team want to please?  Will Amazon be happy if this wins awards and is publicly lauded by media as inclusive and appealing to audiences not generally core fantasy audience members?  Are certain demographics are higher priority for appeal because of advertising? What does the broader Fantasy audience look like when broken down into demographics.  If the show doesn't end up appealing to me but is widely loved I think would be very happy for fans that did enjoy it.  

 

I had read somewhere that WoT may be an experiment aimed to develop a broad female audience while LoTR might be the traditional male geek vehicle.  When I watched the new Witcher trailer for Season 2 it was very apparent that Netflix has dumped more money into the project.  Oddly my wife really likes Witcher and GoT after I finally convinced to watch it last year, but she has been kind of lukewarm on WoT so far.  Any body with insider knowledge that knows how these decisions are made?  At times in this run up the marketing for WoT has felt kind of disjointed.  

The Stars Wars franchise.

While critically and commercially successful I dare say most here will concede that they could have done better. (And that's putting that as nicely as possible.)

[Borderlander]

12 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

There's a lot of stuff faithful to the books. Don't focus on the negative things and you'll see.

 

Keeping in mind, of course, that it only takes an extra tablespoon of salt to ruin an entire cake, even if you get every other ingredient right. 

[mogi68]

I think a lot of these minor changes will be forgiven once the show comes out. Right now all we have to bicker about are the breadcrumbs we get every few days ?

 

Edited November 11, 2021 by mogi68

[Elder_Haman]

9 hours ago, Jpud said:

Bottom line - this sucks for lore/prophecies and diminishes the dragon “fear factor”,

The more I've thought about it, the more I disagree with this. In terms of being able to play up the concept of Savior vs. Destroyer, and keeping the fear of the Dragon alive for the length of the series, this change actually enhances it.

 

5 hours ago, Guire said:

At times in this run up the marketing for WoT has felt kind of disjointed. 

This is - by far - my biggest complaint so far. Marketing, while certainly kind to the existing fan base (we got tons of stuff to keep us engaged over the last 18 months or so), was all over the place for the casual fan or uninitiated. Even these interviews they did were weird - they gave a cast interview to a channel with 84 subs. Why?

 

Anyway, I think once we see the final product, most of us will be able to take a deep breath and relax. I think a solid number of the anti-Rafe, anti-show folks will be able to recalibrate and decide that we are getting a high quality production. At least that's my hope.

[Pandemonium]

From some of the leaks I've heard there is still no mention of saidin or saidar, just the One power.