Have you ever noticed that in the last several years so many movies, TV shows, etc. have become barely watchable or readable? From children’s stories to late-night television, nearly everything these days has come under the ‘yoke of woke’. So, what exactly do people mean when they say something is “woke”?
The characteristics
There are quite a few characteristics of “wokeness” in entertainment. These include: protagonists not being relatable, interesting, or endearing; reboots; soft reboots; remakes; live action remakes; re-imaginings; gender swapping; “rainbow washing” (making classic heterosexual characters homosexual for virtue signal points); they often feature strong female leads; people of colour have prominent roles, and they have characters who are LGBTQIA+.
The main reason it fails
The writers may have good intentions, but they often fall short in the execution, relying on stereotypes and cliches to convey their message. For example, particular groups are only defined by their struggles instead of including positives as well. This is the main reason woke entertainment fails, as it results in the entertainment being preachy, didactic, and too niche. They try to be inclusive but don’t do their research, resulting in a lack of credibility. As a result, not enough money is made for it to be considered successful.
Not enough action
It’s also not unusual for woke entertainment to not contain enough action. The plot is often driven by conversations and character development rather than action, which can be engaging, but usually isn’t as people aren’t really able to connect with characters if they don’t have enough opportunity to see them in action.
Woke entertainment often has poor production values, resulting in it looking cheap and amateurish. They are poorly written and directed. A lot of times, the people behind those movies and shows don’t seem to actually understand what they’re trying to say or how to write a story properly, and ending up writing something too heavy-handed and preachy. The shows and movies take themselves too seriously and aren’t fun to watch. They forget audiences want to be entertained, not lectured to.
Another trait is the poor treatment of diverse characters. It becomes apparent that the diverse characters are simply there just to tick a box; they’re not well—developed or three-dimensional, which is a huge turn off for audiences.
A losing formula
If you consume enough “woke” entertainment, eventually you may notice that it follows a losing formula. That formula works something like this:
1) Co-opt a classic character/franchise that has pre-existing audience appeal; never try to create anything original if you can help it.
2) Market the new movie, etc. as a return to nostalgia to get audiences excited 3) Get rid of as many heterosexual, male, or white characters as possible and replace them with token diversity.
4) Portray all men as weak and incompetent.
5) Portray white people as stupid or racist.
6) Portray black people as perpetual victims.
7) Portray women with overtly masculine character traits, but also as victims at the same time.
8) Make everyone in charge a woman, homosexual, or both.
9) If a man’s in charge, make sure he’s being controlled by a woman.
10) Make sure your main character’s constantly lecturing everyone else and the audience about woke virtues.
11) Make sure there’s a perfect pie chart of ethnicity in every scene despite the statistics and demographics of a place or time
12) If a classic character cannot be changed without alienating potential customers away from spending their money, pretend they’re a major part of the story in order to trick people into cinemas, then make them weak and pathetic, or just kill them
13) Steal plot points, story beats, and even dialogue directly from other more creative entertainment products then pretend you came up with all their stuff on your own, or do a reboot, and copy an older production directly while adding your own woke changes wherever possible
14) Market the product as a reimagined version updated for modern audiences as justification for abandoning all canon; immediately attack anyone who might criticise the product before they ever do so
15) Make customers and fans into villains if they refuse to give you their money 16) Accuse them of bigotry and blame your inevitable failure on racism, sexism, etc.
Some examples
Some examples of woke entertainment failing and why include the gay romantic comedy “Bros” and Amazon’s “The Rings of Power”. “Bros” lead actor Billy Eichner threw a fit on social media and blamed “homophobia”, somehow believing that a movie full to the brim with gay orgies was going to appeal to mainstream audiences. He argued that people must go see his movie in order to make a “political statement”. The result was that hardly anyone had any interest in watching it.
“The Rings of Power” (which just happens to have the biggest budget of any TV series in history) crumbled in the ratings with its intersectional messaging. Similarly, we’ve seen cancellations of the gay Superman comic book title “son of Kal-el, more than likely due to poor sales.
Hopefully from now on, as people continue to show their displeasure at being put under the yoke of woke, the entertainment industries will stop churning out woke rubbish, and return to telling good stories.
Katelin Staples is from Gladstone, Queensland. By day Katelin is employed as a proofreader. Katelin has a passion for discovering the deep things of God and how they affect the world around us.