Preaching about social justice worked in the 60s... not today

Probably the most often repeated defense I hear about this series (in response to people referring to it as "woke") is that this is how The Twilight Zone has always been. It's always tackled social justice-themed topics. And this is completely true.

However, that was the 1960s.

The 1960s is when we began the Civil Rights movement, when many people were being legally discriminated against (or literally just stopped being discriminated against) due to things like sex and race. It was a time when discussing these topics on film and television was rare and groundbreaking. Not to mention important for the betterment of society. It was a fight with an actual opponent with a real goal trying to be achieved. Now it's just kicking a corpse after alleging that it looked at you funny, and expecting people to high-five you for showing it who's boss.

Since the 60s, we've had the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Violence Against Women Act, Affirmative action, "unconscious bias training" (oy). We managed to pummel the religious right so bad that "No Religion" has somehow become America’s fastest-growing religion and BC/AD is being referred to as BCE/CE (oy, again). Diversity is so normal on film and television that it's reached unrealistic levels (we've even gone back in time to insert it in stories about Vikings). There are no sexist laws left in the books, no racist laws left in the books, in less than a decade we’ve gone from half the country being adamantly against gay marriage (including liberal politicians) and talking about it nonstop to gay marriage being legalized and that topic almost never coming up anymore (not in any big way). Everyone in America (liberal AND conservative) has become wildly more liberal. In 1960, for Pete's sake, more women approved of husbands slapping their wives than men do now. Liberals elected a black president. And, before he dropped out of the race due to allegations, republicans almost elected one too. An unarmed black male is statistically more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killed by police. "Hate crimes" have been in the single digits almost every year for many years. Who the heck are we still fighting against in regards to these topics? A fringe of a fringe?

I'd keep going, but there's a character limit. The point is: these topics aren't relevant like they once were. They may as well be making episodes about how we shouldn't feed Christians to lions, how the earth is round, or how Hitler sucks. Despite the tiniest minority, most people know and agree already. "Racism and sexism is bad" isn't a taboo topic anymore that needs to be discussed. In fact, it's talked about so much that it's become a hack point.

When the OG Twilight Zone did it, it was brave and original. Doing it now is just trendy and eye-roll-inducing. There are so many other topics that they could have been tackling instead that would've been so much more thought-provoking and engaging. Black Mirror, for instance, shelled out quite a few of them in regards to where we are (and where we're going) with technology. For my money, if any show took the reigns of the original Twilight Zone, it was that. This felt more like Twilight Zone cosplay, where even the host is clearly just doing a silly Rod Serling impression.