"The Marvels," the culture war, and "Get woke, go broke"

A good Nerdrotic video on the abject failure of "The Marvels" and what that means:

An interesting counterpoint, though, comes from my friend Bill Keezer, who makes a point about focusing on culture in a recent email he sent out to some of us:

Lately, there is a lot of talk about a cultural conflict. That is just so much garbage. Culture is not a definable concept such that one can argue its good and bad points. Culture is in the mind of the beholder.

The conflict is VALUES. Values are definable and can be debated. Values offer choices that are real, one choice preventing the opposing choice.

There are competing definitions of culture out there, of course, but if Bill's point is that there's no universally agreed-upon definition of it, then yes, I concede that point. And as I myself have argued several times on this blog, values aren't values if they're not universals. If you're an American feminist who believes in women's rights, then you should be vocally defending the rights of oppressed women in Muslim-dominant countries instead of hiding behind cultural relativism while lamely murmuring, "We have to respect their culture, not judge it." If you hold Value X, you've already judged Culture Y, like it or not.