by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
The thing about trying to understand what it means to be “woke” is the two sides see the concept so differently — and its use has become so loaded — that it’s very, very difficult to pin down exactly what the fuck it actually means in real terms.
For people on the center-Right, the term “woke” is a dog whistle used whenever they want to essentially “Red Pill” the audience into thinking the center-Left wants to “cancel” anyone white straight Christian who doesn’t want to be “submit” not just to the forces of America’s majority minority future, but be gay and secular to boot.
Meanwhile, this weird definition of what it means to be “woke” so confuses the issue that the term can pretty much mean anything it needs to mean at any particular moment for a center-Right person. For me, being “woke” is when someone from the Left of me attacks me on some cultural issue and I get really angry because we’re on the same side! The side that wants to defeat the rise of fascist, autocratic MAGA.
Generally, I believe the “woke agenda” rather pragmatic, given the changes demonstrably taking place within America’s population. So, in that sense, whenever a MAGA cocksucker starts ranting about the “woke cancel culture mob,” it’s really a rearguard action against general societal changes happening within the country at the moment.
But I even I have to admit that sometimes the center-Left is full of shit. And oversensitive shit, to boot. They can really get worked up about the minutiae of genders and pronouns, which leaves me extremely frustrated because of how democracy itself is at stake.
I’m also really annoyed with “woke Hollywood” and how they’re pretty oblivious to what audiences want at the moment. The producers of “woke” films are so busy sucking their own cocks that when they fail with yet another gay romcom they get all upset and dismayed — oblivious to the fact that MAYBE the average movie goer isn’t really all that interested in a gay romcom? I validate the gay romcom’s existence, but maybe the producers of such films should temper their expectations just A LITTLE BIT.
Meanwhile, the mood of the country is such that movies like “She Said” are dismissed by audiences as just another angry feminist “woke” movie. I say this as someone who loved the book the movie is based on and know that if the country wasn’t so fucking polarized at the moment, maybe movies like “She Said,” which apparently is a lot like the vastly more successful “Spotlight” might more mainstream success.
It is dismaying to me how the people on one of my favorite podcasts — Little Gold Men — can really be clueless as to what the average movie goer wants. I love the podcast a great deal, but, folks, did you really think Bros was going to be a mainstream hit? Really? Even if it was a regular gay Annie Hall is was going to face an upstream battle to garner any success.
Bros and other gay romcoms are coming out in the middle of the clusterfuck of the Gay Scare of 2022 and so…uhhhh….they’re probably doomed to be, like She Said, dismissed by general audiences as “too woke.”
Anyway. I think there is a media space for movies like Bros and Spoiler Alert and She Said. But maybe not right now. That’s just not the zeitgeist. The country is tearing itself apart and if you produce a movie that in any way could be thought of as “woke,” then, well, I would, like I said, temper your expectations some.
I suppose when we have a National Divorce and a Second American Civil War that the sticky wicket of what it means to be “woke” as well as “woke Hollywood” will finally get straightened out and we won’t have to worry about that anymore.
Too bad we’re going to have to bomb ourselves into the Stone Age to gain that satisfaction.
