I suggested After Yang and Montana Story as two to watch. I think you would have to swerve way out of your lane to pick a fight with either of them about subliminal woke messages. There is probably a discussion to be had about diversity in both films, but I'm not going to stay up late enough tonight to see that through. Perhaps tomorrow.
What I will say at the moment is that After Yang was written and directed by Kogonada, who was born in Seoul and came to the U.S. as a child when his parents immigrated. As a first generation immigrant, he is interested in questions of constructing an identity. This is nothing new in American cinema; we all have immigration stories in our family trees, and many movies have explored related themes. In After Yang, which is a philosophical sci-fi film, Kogonada posits a mostly post-racial world. With one exception, every family depicted in the film is blended in some way. AND IT IS SIMPLY NOT AN ISSUE. The dividing line that matters in this film is between "natural" humans and "engineered" humans: clones and AIs. The implicit argument is that the color of one's skin shouldn't matter. We should have Kogonada's back on this.
The film has been very well reviewed, but the racist wokesters have attacked it precisely for being post racial in orientation. The leftist bigots attack it for featuring an international and transracial adoption. They attack Kogonada, a Korean American, for presenting Yang as "Chinese," and never mind that Yang is an AI designed and programmed as a helper for families with Chinese adoptions. Some of the critics object to Yang being played by Justin Min, who is Korean, not Chinese. Some of them attack the young girl who plays Mika, the adopted child, because young Malea Emma's family, which is ethnically Chinese, had been part of the overseas Chinese diaspora in Indonesia before coming to the U.S., making her inauthentically Chinese. Yang is an AI, which is obviously a microaggression because it depicts Chinese people as robotic. And Yang breaks down, which is an obvious microaggression targeted at the inferior quality of Chinese technology. Etc., etc., etc.
And Mika is a Japanese name. And a cover song sung by Mitski, a Japanese American artist, features prominently. The lefties consider these as offenses as well. Never mind that Kogonada's father, a Korean, grew up as a Korean expat in Japan and that Kogonada is a reformed academic who was writing a dissertation on Ozu, a Japanese director, before he turned to filmmaking. He is just an uppity Korean who has no right to adopt a pan-Asian esthetic and blend it into an overarching American identity. And on and on.
The racist buffoonery of the identity politics left is endless. There is a LOT to discuss here if we get into it. But be mindful that the hopeful world Kogonada projects is meant to be post-racial. That is something conservatives will generally applaud. It is the racist left that takes offense.
May I suggest that you watch the movie and then we can discuss it sensibly.
What percentage of modern films are not subliminally woke? Wow. That would require a Ph.D dissertation level of research. But a lot of films are simply non-political, and a fair number are culturally and morally conservative -- again, simply because reality is conservative, so honest movies that deal fairly with serious issues will give conservatives their innings. Casting gets more diverse all the time, but that reflects the reality of a changing America. The question is whether diversity in casting is forced and artificial, in which cases the filmmakers are obviously playing quota games, or whether it emerges naturally and organically from the story. After Yang and Montana Story are two good examples of how to do it right.
Whenever I hear the liberal argument for greater representation in films, TV, etc., because "it reflects modern reality," I ask: whose reality? Yours? Mine?
I ride public transport to work and therefore sit among all kinds of people. Usually I treat everyone with courtesy. But does that mean I have to befriend them all? At the most my interactions will be superficially necessary (e.g. shopping, asking for directions, saying "Excuse me"). I'm just as marginal to them as they are to me.
A sixth of the world's population may be Chinese, but how relevant is that to a Latina growing up in Spanish Harlem? Is she required to have a Chinese best friend? No, only whites. It's OK for her to mingle in a predominantly Hispanic environment, because . . . well, you know. She's Latina. But if a white person interacts mainly with white family and friends, he or she (especially he) is racist.
The so-called representation in the media is not only simplistic, it's distorted.