People seem to confuse "woke" with "diverse". We've had diversity in movies, books, tv shows, and games before, for many years now. We've had strong women, POCs, and LGBTs before. That's not the same as being woke. That said, if the books were woke before "woke" became a term, that's one thing. But if the books were just diverse, then like I said, that's not the same.
What primarily makes something "woke" is changing a character's race, gender, and/or sexuality from the source material for the sake of pandering, and pushing a biased political message, often sacrificing quality storytelling and alienating pre-existing loyal audiences. These changes are usually, not always, but usually targeted towards straight white male characters, and mythologies based on white culture featuring mostly strong males, hence why people consider wokeness to be anti-heterosexuality, anti-white, and anti-male. Since story's and mythologies made by non-whites have not been subjected to the same standards, this only supports people's negative views of wokeness and the push against it.
They also don't have to be changes from certain source material in order to be "woke". In more recent decades, there have been original stories that from the get-go have negatively portrayed straight white men, are anti-conservative, and featured self-insert characters that reflect the writer's radical views. Such stories are also considered woke. Diversity is fine, but unfounded animosity is not.
TLDR, being woke means making certain people look bad, where as being diverse means making other people look equally good.
I haven't read the Wheel of Time books, but I read up on the lore. I'm also aware that the books were inspired by Asian mythology as much as European, so some diversity is expected. Was it revealed right away that men's ability to wield magic was tainted, or did that come later? The first episode made it seem like they were blaming men for the destruction of the world, something that many wokists preach today which will understandably turn people away. Was that how it was in the books too?
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Otter (24464)
3 years ago
The bit about the male side of the magical power being tainted was brought up fairly early in the book, I don't remember exactly when but it was probably early in their relationship with Moiraine, after too many chapters set in the home village. The tainting of male magic is a major theme in the books, it's part of the world's history (yes, I believe male sorcerers destroyed the world), it gives an element of ongoing suspense to the saga and gives the hero a heroic task, and frankly it's a big part of what makes Rand interesting. If the series jammed all that into the first episode or two I approve, because the books as a whole are very slow, they should have been ruthlessly edited before release but hey, as long as the show's writers are doing it now!
As for the "diverse" casting, I don't have a problem with it. The books have the characters moving all over two continents and through many peoples and ethnicities, it's actually kind of weird that the books have everyone from every nation on two continents being white. That was standard for the Fantasy genre of the day, which were marketed to a white demographic, but which is really pretty improbable if you think about it. I'm also totally okay for making Rand a different race than the villagers he grew up with, he's supposed to look strikingly different from everyone else in the village, so different that it screams "HE'S ADOPTED" to the audience, and putting a redhead in a village of people with brown hair just doesn't make a strong enough visual contrast.
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Iffy762 (1334)
3 years ago
Great point about Rand not looking very different from the villagers if he's just a red-haired white person in a community of brown-haired white persons. I think the show may have decorated the Manetheren history a bit but I read the books a long time ago so maybe I just don't remember that part. But Moraine made it sound like Manetheren is as it is because essentially most of the courageous people left at the time gathered there from all over for a big, hopeless battle, hoping for reinforcements that never came. And the villagers are basically the descendents of whatever bedraggled survivors were left after that.
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Otter (24464)
3 years ago
One of the absolute rules about adapting a long book to the screen is that you present as much information as possible *visually*. If a book, for instance, had a chapters describing a city ruined by a monster, you take thirty seconds of film to show a ruined city full of scorch marks and monster footprints, and maybe add a few sentences of narration instead of chapter after chapter describing the horrors of the monster attack. And if your hero is and adoptee with Mysterious Origins and doesn't fit into the village where he grew up, you don't have the kind of slow build you do in a book, where everyone's looks are described and people say the adoptee looks like the whatever people from some other place, you just make him look really obviously *really* different from the other villagers.
They're going to have to do a lot of that sort of thing, if they want to boil 100,000 pages down to a watchable series, they're going to have to edit and present information about the fantasy work succinctly, and deliver as much information visually as possible. Screw the racists who object to looking at people aren't white, this is how the adaptation of these overly long books is going to have to work.
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Iffy762 (1334)
3 years ago
Excellent points. Loved "overly long" and "should have been ruthlessly edited before release."
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