Did AHS Season 10 leave the woke-train?
Controversial statement, I know, but keep with me for a second. I promise this isn’t gonna be a long take. (edit after writing: it was a long take)
I just finished watching Season 10 of what used to be one of my favourite shows ever: American Horror Story
I got to know about it because of an Ex, and let’s say that my affection for the series is the only thing left from that relationship.
I’m a Horror-Fan! I liked the stranger than life stories, which AHS told. Wrapped in morbid creativity and some Niagara Falls bloodshed, accompanied by this absolutely horrifying intro music, that very much leaves scratches on your brain. But as it happened with so many ongoing series, so many which were and are yet to come, wokeness infiltrated the show and made it hardly watchable anymore. Even though, I might say, that I’m one of the last men standing, because I still found the worst seasons to be good enough to actually enjoy them.
And here comes Season 10. While one usually could find quite a lot of content on YouTube, a quick research revealed that there wasn’t much to go on anymore. Public interest seems to have died down. According to ScreenRant, the 10th season was poorly received as well as it suffered the lowest ratings in the history of this series. And now imagine my surprise when I found out, or at least experienced it like that, that in my opinion it felt like the wokeness was toned down quite a bit, to say the least as you will see.
Yeah, of course there were some notions (spoilerterritory ahead btw). The women from the first half of the double-feature would basically be the lone survivors, the critical lash against police forces at the end of that half (even though I get to that as well in a second) and the notion of how humanity doesn’t deserve planet earth because it has destroyed it, which seemed a little on the nose and had quite some strange connotations as it was delivered from a black alien-human-hybrid to a white former first lady (considering the ideological settings those messages usually come from). But let me pick it apart one by one, it may actually surprise you, my fellow 5 readers a month.
Hollywood
Well, in the name of wokeness, where Hollywood basically seems like the fortress of woke I couldn’t help myself but to be surprised that it actually got quite a slap in the face, blamed and torn apart for it’s tendency to shit all over any place it gets (and this is at least paraphrasing here) as well as the end bombshell where a hord of untalented, pale vampire basically set the city on fire. To say this reminded me of certain “mostly peaceful” protests… I won’t do that of course. And I wouldn’t go as far as to imply that this was the picture they wanted to pay, if it wouldn’t be for the setting I’m going to discuss shortly.
Police — the other side of the coin
Even though there was the clash against racist, white cops the emphasis was pretty clear on how those who deserve to become these zombie-vampires (for a lack of a better word) are just a few of the many! It isn’t exactly defending the police force, but it definitely goes away from the generalisations we are used to and hints exactly at the problem: A few rotten apples!!!
As normal as that should be, it was refreshing to get it within a format that basically turned the famous “Feminist cries on the Streets because Trump got President”-meme into a season.
Sexuality
Well, it might be subjective, but I got the feeling that the constant notion of homosexuality got toned down quite a bit from what I experienced as some form of overrepresentation. Yes, there was a main character gay couple in the second feature, yes they kissed and tend to be sort of clingy to each other BUT considering that “Halloween kills” branded Michale Myers as homophobic, because he dared to kill a gay couple I was quite surprised that of the main characters the gay couple died first. Hell, they even killed off a group of truly obnoxiously portrayed at least cross-dressing males, and not just for the story to keep up but what seemed to be more like an execution!
And just with that said I got a feeling that sexuality, as well as the presentation of sex was overall toned down quite a bit within this season.
Diversity
Another aspect that got toned down quite a bit. In both features the main characters were mainly white. The family in the first half was white, three out of four characters from the second half were white. Even though one might assume otherwise, but it is not that I really care how many white people are on screen. I do have a problem with forced diversity, though, as it is visible with so many shows and movies in current times. And that’s it in this series, there’s no character that feels forced to be there because of any reason other than character portrayal. No character seems to be put there because of quota, not many references are being made to race at all, which I have experienced as a return to storytelling over educating and representation.
Politics
Compared to some over-politicised notions (Trump is going to bring the purge f. e.) even politics have been toned down a ton. Yes, they tried to make Kennedy seem more of an empathic, righteous human being and they turned Nixxon into a literal caricature (even though I have no knowledge about how he actually was in real life, it’s just the physical appearance they choose for him). Also, Eisenhower was set up to be the bad guy, who entered this treaty with these aliens, but they still painted him as a well thought out, multidimensional character, one that fought with his decision and came to openly regret it with his last breaths. There was close to non 1-dimensional, stereotypical characters (except Nixxon, who almost hilariously got convinced to step down after getting anally probed), no notion of good guy — bad guy with those mainly implemented in the specific storyline. Even “Ike’s” wife came around at the end and tried to stop what she basically has made possible.
The Setting
“Less woke he’s saying,” I hear people contradict my point in outrage. “But there were PREGNANT men!”.
I know, there were literally pregnant men, pregnant gay men even. They even brought up the notion that men in such relationships might NATURALLY ache for the experience to have a biological child together, a topic that to be honest doesn’t cross ones mind very often. So one might come to the conclusion that biology doesn’t matter after all, am I right? Considering the notions of public conversation that “Gender is a feeling and men can be pregnant?.
But first of all, it was made clear within the context of the story that their pregnancy isn’t anything close to being natural! They’ve been abducted and experimented on by Aliens, which is quite a testimony to science if you ask me. They adressed the question “where does the baby come out of”, which would have been kinda hilarious if the situation wouldn’t have been so dire and the actual solution… well, it was bloody, to say the least. And this subtext actually continues if you consider that they basically put the story into a setting where every conspiracy theory is real: Roswell as a starter (which is actually quite necessary for the story) but after that we got the fake moon landing, Steve Jobs is still alive, oh yeah, and they even put Reptiloids in there! And even a few more intelligently woven into the fabric of seemingly omnipotent alien beings interfering with humanity.
So let me summarize: the story they’ve created, where they decided to write literally pregnant men into, which appears to be virtue signaling in the first place, but instead seems to have been put within the context of a ton of surrounding stories we consider as effectively unreal, conspiracy stories in the real world. If that’s not a shocker (and a message?), then I don’t know what is.
I wish I knew if that was just a happy coincident, if it should have been ultra woke but went completely wrong or if this is just as it was intended. If it was the latter then I have to say it’s a swing against woke culture that was an immediate homerun, Knock-Out in the first round, so to speak. And the most important thing is, that it might indicate a return to former storytelling glory, not just within the AHS-series but for all of entertainment. And wouldn’t that be a fresh breath of air.
You like my thoughts on AHS? Perhaps you might be interested in an entertainment-related article I wrote about the Netflix-series “YOU”
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Anyways, thanks for making it this far, have a beautiful day, where ever you are.
