Racism
Because the term “woke” when used as a criticism is literally just a dog whistle for racists, misogynists, and homophobes.
The word “dogwhistle” has also lost all meaning. I mean that’s its mostly used to patronize the other side. Much like how they use woke. There are reasonable people on both side and none of them use these words.
If a dog whistle no longer means “something that is said with the intention of most people hearing something harmless and others knowing what the speaker actually means” please enlighten me.
Seems like an accurate usage to me.
People who complain about things being woke are not rational
It’s not woke if all the characters are black. Can you provide some examples of this?
It can feel “woke” if the characters were white and are now black, or if the character’s skin color is paraded around as some virtue signal or trophy. If the skin color of a character breaks an already established rule of the story world (for example, black skinned dwarves or elves in Lord of the Rings), that can also contribute to a “woke” feeling. The established rules of the world or story should not bend around or break just to ensure a diverse skin color of every race in the story.
Nobody complains about Mr. T in the A-Team, Denzel Washington as Robert McCall in The Equalizer, or Samuel L Jackson playing Mace Windu in Star Wars, because the color of their skin is not their only defining quality. They are well written and highly beloved characters that are important to their story, have equally as good acting and dialogue as the other characters in their stories, and are played by actors that are well qualified. Their characters feel like they were always meant to be there, and when they were written into their story, their skin color didn’t matter.
Some ahem were complaining about all black movies such as Wakanda Forever and Black Panther being woke.
Is Wakanda Forever too ‘woke’ for Marvel’s own good? | Stuff - https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/300737260/is-wakanda-forever-too-woke-for-marvels-own-good
Nelson Peltz Criticizes Disney’s “Woke” Strategy With ‘Black Panther’ - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nelson-peltz-disney-woke-black-panther-marvels-1235859565/
I haven’t watched Wakanda Forever, but I am going to guess it is accused of being woke because it probably tries to push a political message or ideology and doesn’t do a very good job of weaving it into the story (very common for modern Disney). Looking at some of the complaints, it appears to have a similar problem to other modern Disney films, in which women are put on an elevated pedestal and men are left to be bumbling idiots completely incapable of basic human functions. This is the most common complaint I see in the reviews, but I don’t see any specific complaints that every character is black. I’m sure its possible some people might complain about it, though I doubt it is a significant portion of the complaints if I haven’t seen it mentioned in the 100 or so reviews I quickly skimmed through.
I did watch Black Panther, but I don’t remember much about it. I remember the bad looking CG, and there being some points where I felt modern Disney’s political messaging was poorly written and “too obviously preaching to the audience,” for a lack of a better way to put it. Not because all the characters were black in the story that literally takes place in Africa. I do recall noticing that Disney chose only white actors to play all the villain roles in Black Panther, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem but in the context of modern Disney and when you have all the black people as “the good guys” and all the white people as “the bad guys,” that is probably going to be taken by a lot of people as political messaging. I didn’t have any issues with Chadwick, he was a good actor for the role of Black Panther IMO. I was sad to hear about his passing. I don’t recall being particularly irked by any other character than that one girl that was his science assistant (I think, I dont remember fully), but I also only watched the movie once in theaters when it came out. So it has been a while.
That’s not to say people are incapable of being racist, but most of the time something isn’t called woke only because the entire cast is black, unless the story was supposed to have white characters that are suddenly black instead (like the live action Little Mermaid, for example). It needs some other context to be called woke other than just “the whole cast is black.”
While I’ll entertain a discussion on whether equalizer movies are (over)woke for swapping the lead - despite Denzel kill-ing-it and already a national treasure, which will be my rebuttal there - I will not tolerate any blasphemy of mace windu being miscast. Down to the purple lightsaber, it was perfect, and I’m only sad our time was so short with that – I really wanted to see SLJ kicking some seeeerious butt.
And really. Who else but Mr Washington can play Robert McCall now? Affleck as a batman/accountant meld? Lou Diamond Phillips as himself? Nah. Denzel owns it now; he bought it fair and square, and we got the better on that deal.
Man the whole theft of “woke” and the subsequent use of it as a form of slur should point to the answer.
Being Woke means that you are aware of systemic inequalities and biases. That’s it. The word originated as a term for that among the black community, specifically about systemic racism.
It did spread among other marginalized groups, because it is such a simple and powerful word for a giant concept. That concept applies to more than just racial issues because systematic bigotry is so fucking ingrained into the social structures of the world. And I mean world, not just “the west”. There are forms of bigotry and inequality everywhere. But it is essentially an English term, and is mostly a US term. The concept behind it is universal.
Yet again, racists and bigots stole something from black people amd turned it against them.
Make no mistake, anyone using the word Woke in a negative sense, as an insult towards something is 100% dog whistling their bigotry. They are absolutely racist, even if only by the appropriation of the word and using it against marginalized groups other than black people.
So, stay woke, people. Systemic bigotry exists, and you can become a target of it.
It’s just like their previous theft of the term “bleeding heart”. A person with the bleeding heart was someone who just cared so fucking much, and so they mocked bleeding heart liberals for caring so much that their hearts just bleeding away, wah wah way.
And used that term to justify the hardness of their own hearts and to somehow imply that it’s manly to not have feelings.
racists gonna racist 🤷♀️
I used to read a lot of books. And while not coming straight out and say this person is white or whatever I got that the characters where just like me and I think that is what all authors want without saying it straight out. The purpose of a book or story is to let the reader decide. Woke just reminds me of the new Jim Crow laws cry.
Cause of racism. -_-
Thanks to Ibram X Kendi’s books that helped me become anti-racist.
You see, the dominants start to express their disapproval by downvotes. Would not be surprised to see my own brother among them -_-…
It’s always comfortable to be a dominant and ignore the sensitivity of the dominated
