Star Trek (1960s), MASH (1970s)—shit, the entire history of sitcoms that are regarded as decent-or-better is mostly just one fairly "political" series after another, going back to the earliest days of TV. I mean FFS today people'd probably complain that the first Star Wars movie (not just ROTJ, to which you allude) is "woke" because Leia's the only consistently-competent character out of the three leads, and is by far the least-whiny. "Boo! Why is the elite-educated noble woman who's also already deeply involved in an armed resistance so much cleverer and more-effective and cool under pressure than our farmboy hick hero who's away from home for the first time and wallowing in a whole pile of recent trauma and grief, and this random flaky braggart scumbag they picked up?"
Anyway, stuff like Dirty Harry or a bunch of traditional Westerns are extremely political in the same ways that "woke" movies are (presenting and normalizing certain roles and behaviors, presenting politicized views of history and of certain groups, ways of life, and attitudes, and using caricatures of their political opponents as bad guys), they're just not liberal so that means they "aren't political".
Hell, most of the silent films that were good enough that anyone still gives a shit about them are plenty political, and often (but not always) rather liberal.
> I mean FFS today people'd probably complain that the first Star Wars movie (not just ROTJ, to which you allude) is "woke" because Leia's the only consistently-competent character out of the three leads
Compare+contrast with 'The Last Jedi'. Turning the male characters into total idiots and sending them off on a massive wild goose chase, before the day is saved by completely breaking the physics of the Star Wars universe, making all the previous heroes look like idiots for not using a relativistic kill vehicle against the Death Star!
I don't remember hearing any complaining about strong female characters in the era of Leia, Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Major Kira, Susan Ivanova, and so on.
Anyway, stuff like Dirty Harry or a bunch of traditional Westerns are extremely political in the same ways that "woke" movies are (presenting and normalizing certain roles and behaviors, presenting politicized views of history and of certain groups, ways of life, and attitudes, and using caricatures of their political opponents as bad guys), they're just not liberal so that means they "aren't political".
Hell, most of the silent films that were good enough that anyone still gives a shit about them are plenty political, and often (but not always) rather liberal.