Review: Arcane is amazing "woke" television
Normally I manage to slip something about politics into my reviews. A regrettable vice of mine, to be certain. I think this will likely be the first review I've ever written where I talk only about politics. Please, stick around, that wasn't meant to scare you away.
Unless you've been living under a rock recently, it's obvious that there is a lot of heated discussion and disagreement about pop culture. One might even go so far as to call it, ahem, a culture war. Video games such as The Last of Us and TV shows such as Star Wars: Acolyte have come under heavy criticism for being "too woke". There are numerous other examples. Writers, creators, and designers are decidedly left-leaning, and audiences consuming video games, animations, and other nerdy media are decidedly not, mostly because they are predominantly male. So it only make senses that once politics starts to come on to the scene, some people are going to get mad, and then they're going to get nasty. Ignoring the fact that nobody really knows what "woke" means, many viewers are prone to react to entertainment labeled as "woke" with jerking knees and frothing mouths.
At best this leads to pithy sarcasm and bad ratings, at worst to Internet crimes such as stalking, harrassment, and threats. Of course stalking, harrassment, and threats are never warranted. However I would say at least some of the criticism is. To pick further on Star Wars: Acolyte - the show was a true monster of a production. Boring, nonsensical, disrespectful to previous Star Wars canon, and oozing with female empowerment fantasies, it sacrificed every opportunity it had to do something cool and instead replace it with smug moralizing and terrible one-liners. It deserved bad ratings and criticism, even if some of the people giving it went way too far.
On the other side, Hollywood executives and actors have mostly responded by crying thick alligator tears. "People saying these things are racists!," they moan. "We were review-bombed! People actually like our show! The only reason it tanked was those horrible sexists and Neo-nazis. They're scared of strong, independent female actors telling them what they don't want to hear!"
Yes, yes, of course they are. But what does this have to do with Arcane? Well, everything. It's proof that those executives and actors are wrong. Flat out.
You see, Arcane could easily, easily be classified as one of those dastardly "woke" shows. It doesn't really take a genius to see the political undertones, they are not shy about it.
The central conflict of the first season is decidedly about class. The show focuses on telling us about the sins, decadence, and corruption of the ruling class of the city of Piltover. It focuses on the suffering of the downtrodden in Zaun, really driving the point home by contrasting them with characters from the wealthy Piltover. It largely casts the billionaire class and ruling elite as smug, delusional, corrupt, weak, and hypocritical. It advocates for social justice and progress through resistance, and though it doesn't outright condone violence, it never really says too many bad things about it. (And it takes us all the way to the second season for the audience to see how violent resistance and rebellion mayyyy not always turn out the way it's envisioned.)
This is bread-and-butter leftist discourse, people. But Arcane doesn't stop there. It keeps going well into the domain of identity politics. A majority of the people in the show with real political power and influence are female leaders. Corrupt male leaders are quick to kick the bucket. Arcane is not shy at all about flipping gender roles and casting powerful men as playthings of even more powerful women. I would go as far as to accuse many of these Machiavellian females of (gasp!) objectifying male characters. The only romantic relationships that actually matter are interracial, lesbian, or both. Many times, male characters and their relationships take an obvious back seat to female ones, both in terms of screentime and plot relevance. Overall the cast is extremely diverse (and I mean the human cast, not just the weird alien things) appearing in a variety of different skin tones, cultures, and accents. It would not be unreasonable to say the producers of Arcane went out of their way to make the show ethnically and culturally diverse, and to portray racial and sexual minorities in a positive light. Pretty woke, right?
But you know something? I loved the show. It was awesome. And nearly everyone agrees! At the time of writing, it has a one hundred (100%) rating from critics and a 95% from general audiences. Do you know why? Simple, it's fucking cool.
The characters in Arcane, regardless of their skin color or sexuality or race or culture, are total badasses. The plot is well-paced and engaging. The voice acting is universally good, and the emotions the characters display are relatable and captivating. The action is tense and explosive. The special effects and world-building are insanely cool for general audiences, but pure fanservice for fans of League of Legends.
That last part is really important.
Riot and the rest of the team knew that the primary audience for the show was going to be sweaty League players, who are overwhelmingly white and male.
They made a show where popular characters in an existing canon are represented true to the audience's expectations in a way that is engaging and satisfying.
There are no tedious monologues about right versus wrong, no patronizing lectures about flimsy and obvious proxies for $CURRENT_THING.
Diversity is not something inserted into the show haphazardly, it is the natural (and important!) consequence of building a good fantasy setting with interesting characters.
Now, if you're the kind of racist jerk who hated the character of Ekko for being black before the show was released, you're probably irredeemable and nothing can help that. But I don't see how anyone could dislike Ekko after watching this. I expect thousands of kids and young adults got to see a black character who is smart, likeable, determined, loyal, and strong. And most importantly, on equal footing with characters of other races. I don't know if thousands of young girls actually watched this show (again, not the target demographic), but if they did they got to see Jinx. They got to see a character who is tough but still feminine, broken but still fighting, unconventional but still beautiful, flawed but still loved. In my personal opinion, that's a lot more valuable than another lecture about how white men are evil. At least a million times more valuable than a washed-up rich hag declaring "The Force is female xD" to an audience of yes-men on late-night TV.
But overall, nobody cares about some of the weaker plot points. Nobody cares about some occasional blips in dialogue. Nobody cares about the women in power, or the lesbian relationships. Where are the hordes of misogynistic Neo-nazis bombing the ratings now? Shouldn't they be absolutely livid at the success of Arcane?
I think it's more likely that these hordes never really existed. Audiences wanted to see their favorite heros blow shit up, and Arcane more than delivered. It is living proof that you can make a successful TV show with political messaging and have everyone love it. You just have to make it a good show first.