Ace of Spades:
Are We Now Beyond Parody?
In its infinite wisdom, HBO has created an animated prequel/spin-off series based on Scooby Doo. The new show is called "Velma" and it is centered on that character from the original series, albeit race-swapped and ultra-woke. So ultra-woke, in face, that it has caused some people to wonder what's going on. This show is apparently so awful (I have not seen it, nor do I plan to) that it has caused some amount of confusion and anger within the progressive media space.
A few days ago, an article in Forbes had this hilarious headline:
'Velma' Is So Bad It's Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories
What are the "conspiracy theories?" What is the "psyop?" It's that the showrunner is a secret conservative who made a parody of progressive humor to chum the waters of the culture war. It's so awful that it must have been made by a secret conservative to provide ammunition for the culture warriors on Twitter and YouTube! The article author sums it up reasonably well:
Velma is so bad in fact, that it's spawning conspiracy theories that creator Mindy Kaling made what is essentially a parody of what the right wing thinks left wing comedy is like. As in, a show that not just recast most roles with new races, but also features loads and loads of "white guys, amiright?" jokes. The idea is that Kaling is a secretly conservative force in media trying to make the left look bad by making a cringey adult cartoon full of "this rich white guy has a small dong" jokes that the right can point at as everything wrong with race-recasted, social justice-influenced media.
And this guy is sympathetic to the cause of woke reboots! It's so bad that the author takes a page from "conservative" media and tries for a "both sides" argument: On one side, it absolutely is working to spark mockery from the right, exactly as you might imagine it would. But on the other, it's just not defensible at all by those who would normally welcome a progressive series. But what's the cause of the "conspiracy theory" and "psyop" stuff? It isn't just that the show apparently sucks, it's that the show sucks and was made by the greatest kind of thought criminal roaming the planet today: the "transphobe." Creator Mindy Kaling is a transphobic TERF, at least according to Twitter activists. It's because Kaling isn't woke enough when it comes to transpersyns (and that, of course, means she's a "conservative" ...) that she made a show to hurt the woke cause by pretending - but only poorly - to be progressive!
[snip]
.....As if woke media is ever something other than "cringy." Woke media can't suck on its own terms, so if it does then there must be some grand scheme at play to suck deliberately in a manner that hurts the progressive cause!
Has it finally happened? Has woke media finally been distilled to its essence and is now indistinguishable from parody? Is this the peak?
I doubt it.
I am personally a fan of Mindy's work. I'm not positive how much she is writing vs the official creator Charlie Grandy (you'd think she'd be in involved with her writing history and the show's jokes mirroring the Mindy Project), but Mindy's political views overall are slightly more elusive than the usual left wingers. Some one liners in the Mindy Project were suggesting that her character is a secret Republican. Her main love interest in the show is conservative as is her parents showing possibly some sympathy for them. In Velma (I have seen all 4 episodes) it is sometimes agreeing with woke people and sometimes pointing the finger at her that she is being the shallow/hypocritical one. So far black Shaggy is almost a worse person than Fred, Fred is just a dumbass innocent kid who can't cut food for himself, but Shaggy is like an incel friendzoner who's trying to learn how to mimic the people Velma likes so she's more into him. This is the type of the thing that woke people don't put in their shows, black people are supposed to be perfect and white people guilty. The plot of the last episode was that the serial killer is targeting only hot girls, so the town gets Velma to make a list of the hottest girls in town to choose which ones get security detail, which then causes them to try to show off to win. Then they realize that instead of doing that, they can just get Velma to teach them to be as sexually uneappling as her. After uglifying them up and they stand for themselves and go back to being hot, and their hotness is needed to get a crowd out of the way for an ambulance for someone giving birth on the street, Velma realizes it was as wrong to try to take that away and as bad as the patriarchy side, and tells them to do their sexy dance to distract the crowd. Again I think this message is slightly different than woke shows where you're not allowed to challenge the prevailing ideology. I don't think they would even touch things like "hot girl list" as it's not PC enough. If the show was true blue woke left would be liking it right now instead of attacking it so much. Overall I think Mindy is a left winger but I think she may be more sympathetic to conservative views than people like Debra Messing and Seth Rogen.
Mindy is Indian, and that influences her to some extent. Kudos to you for actually watching the show for that analysis, it's insufferable.