'Fewer pimples, more pronouns': Cinema's classic coming-of-age genre suffers most in Hollywood's shift to woke storytelling

Sky News AU

2 days ago

When did going to the cinema start to feel like attending an HR seminar?
And how did we go from plot twists and real dialogue to one-dimensional characters regurgitating ideological talking points?
Somewhere along the line, Hollywood clearly handed the writers' room over to political activists.
Films were no longer about escapism, but about productions more interested in moralising and telling you off.Hollywood no longer sells dreams.
It peddles guilt, replacing characters we once cared about with vacuous mouthpieces who speak in hashtags.
This shift, although underway for a while, gained momentum during the infamous #OscarsSoWhite scandal in 2015.
It triggered a full-blown identity audit across the industry, with film houses tripping over themselves to 'out-woke' each other.
By 2020, a complete overhaul was underway.
It led to diversity checklists, which, in the case of the Academy, determined whether films could even qualify for Best Picture.
'Diversity', as we once knew it, had been boiled down to a person's race and/or genitalia.
And true creativity suffered in the process.Today, writers second-guess every joke, plot twist and character flaw, for fear of causing offence.
Instead of leaning into what makes stories compelling (i.e. tension, conflict, and the messy bits of humanity), we get glossy morality tales that no one asked for.
Hollywood, the long-standing epicentre of debauchery, addiction, opportunism and every other human vice you can think of, has now become too scared to explore the human condition.
Isn't it ironic?
It no longer tells timeless stories of love, jealousy, power, addiction or conflict. Every love story has to be 'modernised' and told through the lens of feminism and the impact of the patriarchy.
Even protagonists and antagonists have to be clearly good or indefensibly bad.
It's ridiculous.
Yet no genre has suffered more from this shift in storytelling than coming-of-age films.
It's now practically extinct, like cinema's equivalent of the dodo bird.
Films like 'The Breakfast Club', 'Stand By Me', and 'Dazed and Confused', which captured the awkwardness of adolescence with honesty and humour, would never get made today.
Modern replacements are now all about introspection and identity politics. Fewer pimples, more pronouns.
Teenage angst is no longer worthy of storytelling because it's not seen as progressive enough.
Unless, of course, it's the angst of a one-eyed, trans-identifying Muslim teenager called Sandra.
Meanwhile, Eastern cinema is picking up where Hollywood left off. Films like 'Parasite', 'RRR', and 'Shoplifters' have succeeded not because they're diverse, but because they tell damn good stories.
They treat audiences like grown-ups, not mentally challenged misfits.
Something that used to be Hollywood's job. Is it any surprise that audiences are now looking elsewhere in search of raw storytelling power?
Of course, Hollywood has always been political to some extent.
From 'Gentleman's Agreement' to 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner', it never shied away from difficult themes.
But it did so with nuance and craft, things which are nowhere to be found. So people are returning to the classics not just for nostalgia, but because they're starved for universality.
From 'Rocky' to 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Gone with the Wind', these stories endure because they speak to something timeless. In today's climate, they wouldn't make it past a pitch meeting.
They'd be too problematic, too white or too male.
Even 'The Wizard of Oz' would be binned for its lack of intersectional munchkin representation.
That is the era we've entered now, where cultural self-censorship is flattening the vibrancy of cinema.Even criticism isn't what it used to be anymore.
Instead of lively debate based on plot, pacing and cinematography, it has now become a moral tribunal.
The only question that matters is whether the message of the film aligns with a particular virtue, not vision.
We no longer ask, "Was it good?". But rather "Was it correct?"
Industry jobs, too, are not being lost for poor scripts, but for poor optics. White, male writers are being quietly dropped.
Agents whisper that 'they had to hire a diversity candidate.'
And no one dares to push back because it's become easier, and safer, to stay silent.
Those willing to put their heads above the parapet are saying similar things.
Quentin Tarantino argues that ideology is trumping art.
And Mike White admits people are too scared to speak freely.
How can we expect anything decent out of Hollywood when creatives are writing with a fire extinguisher pointed at their faces?
Take 'Woke', for example, a series that was meant to satirise the very culture it ended up drowning in.
Black writers who wanted to push boundaries were shut down.
The show lost its voice, its viewership and had a Rotten Tomatoes score so low that it ended up becoming the quintessential cautionary tale of what happens when ideology micromanages art.
Even the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures managed to erase the Jewish immigrants who built Hollywood from the ground up.
Diversity, apparently, has its limits.
A story about resilience, talent, and the American dream apparently didn't fit the vibe they were going for. In the rush to elevate new voices, Hollywood has forgotten to honour the ones who laid its foundation.
Hollywood once thrived on the belief that talent could come from anywhere.
It didn't matter where you were from, as long as you could write, act, direct, or produce.
That meritocracy is now under siege. Your identity matters more than your ideas. What used to be an industry obsessed with innovation is now paralysed by fear.Let's be clear: representation matters.
But not at the expense of quality.
And not if it means filtering every story through the same narrow ideological sieve.
We need to separate the art from the artist, stop demanding that every film be a political statement, and let flawed characters be flawed.
Art isn't meant to make us comfortable.
It's meant to make us feel something; sometimes joy, sometimes discomfort, but always something real.
Otherwise, audiences will keep leaving.
If Hollywood is going to survive, then it's time to bring back the Hollywood that used to say, 'here's something to think about', not 'here's what to think'.
Esther Krakue is a British commentator who has regularly appeared on Sky News Australia programs, as well as on TalkTV and GB News in the UK. She launched her career with Turning Point UK, with whom she hosted a show featuring guests including Douglas Murray and Peter Hitchens