MEDIAWATCH: The Spinoff go full woke on LOTR
One of the problems with Woke identity politics is that it manages to eclipse far greater issues.
We’ve seen it in poverty and Police profiling and we see it every week in Stuff, RNZ, TVNZ and especially at Government funded Spinoff.
When the Spinoff aren’t using public funding to rank the best ice blocks, they are constantly using the lens of identity politics to fuck up any insight or oversight.
Take their coverage of the Steinlarger advert.
The Spinoff were very cross with the Steinlarger TV advert because white people are made to look like the heroes and grrrrrrrr identity, diversity etc etc etc.
B-U-T
If we are finished with the identity politics remix isn’t there a far more serious problem with this Steinlager TV advert romanticising the nuclear free protests?
L-I-K-E…the fact that Steinlager is owned by Lion, Lion owned by Kirin, Kirin is owned by Mitsubishi and Mitsubishi owns Uranium mines all around the planet?
Steinlager is doing nuclear free protest TV adverts all the while their Corporate master owns some of the largest Uranium Mines on earth!
Isn’t that a tad more hypocritical and far more damning than the identity politics lens that the Woke are locked into?
They’ve embarrassingly done the same thing with their review of the legacy of the LOTR…
Why we shouldn’t glorify Lord of the Rings
…For the taxpayer funded Spinoff the issue is that there aren’t enough trans Elves and Maori hobbits to bring diversity to the Lord of the Rings!
Note, it’s not how Peter Jackson and John Key gerrymandered the funding and passed law to help a corporation screw over NZ workers, oh no, you get the honest feeling that if LOTR had a love scene between lesbian Orcs and Trans dwarves it would be getting a standing ovation at The Spinoff!
Actual real world workers getting fucked over by a large corporation is the issue with the LOTR legacy, it’s not the lack of bisexual mothers transitioning as leads.
When you see everything through the identity politics lens, class always goes missing.
Never go full woke.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media
Dear lord, I read it.
If it was meant to be tongue in cheek, it worked well. But it wasn’t was it?
Whoever this punter was could have said it’s just plain boring. But no.
The author is seriously bent out of shape at the apparent blatant racism of this fiction.
It’s good this know that just when I thought we were getting a little more sophisticated, McCarthy’s red scare that there really are “Reds under the bed” is alive and well and transitioned to the Spinoff!
And it’s bad to know taxpayer money is going to this rancid organisation!
“…very cross with the Steinlarger TV advert because white people are made to look like the heroes and grrrrrrrr identity, diversity etc etc etc.”
Hahaha….this is hilarious. As I recall from the time, it WAS largely white people sailing to Mururoa, as well as challenging US warships in NZ waters. So what?
As to the issue of uranium, the exigencies of climate change may well force many countries (including NZ) to build nuclear power stations. With regard to greenhouse gases, we’ll be between the devil and the deep blue sea, as the saying goes.
The disposal of waste would be an enduring problem, as would the thorny issue of where we’d build such an installation in this earthquake-prone country.
Perhaps we’d need to go with a floating station: I believe that Russia has at least one such, for a community on its north coast in Siberia.
“…it’s not how Peter Jackson and John Key gerrymandered the funding and passed law to help a corporation screw over NZ workers…”
Indeed: this is the substantive issue. And, given that this bit of finagling happened over the Hobbit movies, the Spinoff could have had a good crack at Jackson having turned one shortish children’s book into three movies, for god’s sake!
What the woke need to remember is when these books were written, and the environment which pertained at the time. And Tolkien’s academic background. Of COURSE the books reflect those times and his area of specialisation. What on earth did anyone expect?
What do the woke want to bowdlerise next: the Aeneid? the Bible? the Odyssey? Give it a rest, say I. Focus on something important.
More importantly, the Ardern regime has continued to betray the nuclear free policy. American warships carrying nuclear weapons have continued to be allowed into our waters as they were under Key, even doing port visits, when they should have been hit with anti-ship missiles.
I’m a Tolkien nerd. I wrote the Spinoff a letter (that will achieve nothing) outlining the huge number and size of flaws in that article.
The central cause of conflict in Middle Earth is genetic determinism?
You mean, it’s nothing to do with Sauron, the right hand man of Morgoth equivalent of Satan continuing on a war that’s waged since before the creation of the world? With Elves*, Dwarves, and Men, sometimes from the same families, on both sides?
You mean Tolkien, a Catholic and big time proponent of free will – who said he wrote LOTR as consciously Catholic work – was secretly a genetic determinist?
Or that despite being a WW1 soldier and opponent of imperialism in real life, he decided to write an ode to imperialism?
What’s absolutely incredible is that the author has a BA(Hons) in English Literature. This is academia at this point. I’ve heard better takes on LOTR from friends of mine that have never read a book since they left high school.
*Yeah, the only remaining elves are all good guys at the time of LOTR; they still blush and go a bit quiet if you talk about kinslaying, rebellion or exile though…