What bothers me the most about the concept of the “woke cancel culture mob” “canceling” someone is I honestly don’t really know what being “woke” is and I don’t know what it means, in real terms, to be “canceled.”
I hate the idea that two abstract concepts are at the forefront of the minds of Traditionalists, who are bedrock of any traditional, stable democracy. When you lose Traditionalists, you endup with Good Germans who keep their head down in a fascist autocratic state.
Of course, some of the abstract nature of being “woke” and the power of being “canceled” is by design. The Fox News – Right wing podcast axis goes out of its way to bludgeon Traditionalists with these two concepts in such a way that they live in abject fear of having their lives ruined simply because they’re conservative.
If we all know what “woke” and “canceled” meant, if we could agree on a meaning, then our fears wouldn’t be abstract and, as such, not nearly as scary. But it serves the purposes of the fucking autocratic fascist MAGA Republicans to keep these terms abstract, so, lulz.
Just as MAGA Republicans get frustrated over people like me saying they’re a “threat to democracy” to the point that they don’t believe in democracy anymore, I’m so angry over the rise of fascist MAGA Republican autocracy that I’m really beginning to find the idea — on paper — of a National Divorce rather appealing.
But for the whole bombing ourselves into the Stone Age element of it all – sorting out what constitutes a Blue or Red state alone will be very, very violent — I would be all for it.
Wait, what?
Give me a prosperous, secular Blue Union anyday over an inward looking autocratic fascist MAGA State that was very undemocratic in nature.
I don’t think it will come to that, however. The center-Left just doesn’t have it in them. In the end, wealthy liberals will flee the country — vote with their feet –and get all their My Undies that they hear advertised on Crooked Media podcasts shipped to them in the south of France.
I really like Bill Murray — as do a lot of other Americans — and the idea that we would “cancel” a national treasure like Murray is something I struggle with. The reason is, we all have a dark side, we have all “fallen short of the glory that is Christ,” as The Bible teaches us.
And yet.
We are in a new age where seemingly no one is safe from the wrath of the “woke cancel culture mob.” And there have been some pretty disturbing alligations lodged against Murray over the years, from his ex-wife accusing him of abuse to whatever it was that caused him to fight with Lucy Liu on the set of Charlie’s Angels.
I suppose what bothers me, though, is it’s all kind of murky. So he problematic, it’s not like he married his step daughter, you know? I think the question at the moment is if the current trouble he finds himself in is a mortal blow to his career, or if it will just blow over and be forgotten.
Some of all of this is we don’t even really know what being “canceled” means in the first place. All your typical conservative knows is they fear they risk, an abstract way, their entire life being ruined simply for being conservative. Even though, really, the whole thing is generated by the hot air of Fox News and Right wing podcasts than anything else.
I mean, if you can’t tell me what you’re afraid of, aren’t you really telling me that you just don’t like, in general, the mentality of center-Left people who you don’t understand don’t really want to? You want things to go back to the way they used to be when you were young, only with wifi and Netflix.
But the key thing to remember is many, many of the people who are allegedly “canceled” either haven’t been canceled in real terms — Dave Chappelle, Louis CK — or what they did was REALLY BAD and they deserved it (name any number of cretens who were exposed because of the #MeToo movement.)
My gut tells me that Murray is down but not out. He’s always been a unique fixture in American pop culture and I just can’t see him being totally excised from American life because of what’s going on. At least, I hope not?
It’s been an open secret for ages that Bill Murray has a dark side. And, yet, to date, his persona has been such one of a lovable eccentric that we’ve collectively agreed to look the other way. In particular, there was the allegations of domestic abuse against him by his ex-wife and the bad blood between Murray and Lucy Liu on the set of Charlie’s Angels.
And, yet, the last year or so has not been kind to Murray. First, there was the turmoil around Aziz Ansari’s movie that Murray was set to star in. Now, as I understand it, Geena Davis has also suggested that Murray acted inappropriately with her at some point.
I don’t know what to tell you. It’s something of a conundrum because it’s easy to see Murray’s fate becoming yet another partisan issue in the woke cancel culture mob wars that we seem to be engaging in now. There will be plenty of people who are willing to forgive Murray for his transgressions because we’re all human and we all screw up. Meanwhile, there will be more Left leaning people who will want to throw the book at Murray for being a dick and HE CAN NEVER BE FORGIVEN.
We live in interesting times. It will be interesting to see what happens next for Murray. Will this bad behavior gradually be forgiven….or this it? Are we going to be in the post-Murray era?
The problem with defining “woke” is it’s such a hodge-podge of different concepts that are framed relative to the needs of the Far Right. So, it’s difficult to come up with any clear sense of what it means in any practical basis.
But I guess another attempt to define it would be:
Woke, to be:Having a heightened awareness of past and current structural problems in regards to racial and gender inequality, with a particular emphasis on LGBQT+ rights.
Yet, that is not the whole picture.
Perception is a very powerful thing. And, at the moment, the perception among a lot of white conservative men is that they risk, at the hands of the “woke cancel culture mob” being “canceled” simply for being conservative and or believing in traditional heteronormative values.
This is where the idea of being “Red Pilled” comes from. For a lot of white conservative (Christian) men, there is a real fear that they are something of an endangered species with the “woke cancel culture mob” demanding that everyone become gay.
The problem is, this is a situation generated, in part, from a combination of technology and generational changes in societal expectations. It’s all happening so quick that your typical middle age CIS white man, as they say, simply can’t process or “grok” what the fuck is going on.
There is a book from the 1970s, called The Forever War, which probably is ripe for Chris Pratt to star in the big budget Hollywood adaptation. As I understand it, part of the plot is some dude coming back to earth from some sort of space war and everyone on the planet is a gay hippie. Seems like the type of subject matter a conservative like Chris Pratt might really like.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say, in part, about The Forever War.
Almost entirely through luck, Mandella survives four years of military service, while several centuries elapse in real time. He soon becomes the objectively oldest surviving soldier in the war, attaining high rank through seniority rather than ambition. He and Potter (who has remained his last link with the Earth of his youth) are eventually given different assignments, meaning that even if they both survive the war they will likely never meet again due to time dilation. After briefly contemplating suicide, Mandella assumes the post of commanding officer of a “strike force”, commanding soldiers who speak a language largely unrecognizable to him, whose ethnicity is now nearly uniform (‘vaguely Polynesian‘ in appearance) and who are exclusively homosexual. He is disliked by his soldiers and he assumes this is because they had to learn 21st century English to communicate with him and other senior staff and because he is heterosexual.
Engaging in combat thousands of light years away from Earth, Mandella and his soldiers need to resort to medieval weapons to fight inside a stasis field which neutralizes all electromagnetic radiation in anything not covered with a protective coating. Upon return, the strike force learns this is the last battle of the war. Humanity has begun to clone itself, resulting in a new, collective species calling itself simply Man. Man is able to communicate with the Taurans, who are also clones. It is discovered that the war started due to a misunderstanding; the colony ships were lost to accidents and those on Earth with a vested interest in a new war used these disappearances as an excuse to begin the conflict. The futile, meaningless war, which had lasted for more than a thousand years, ends.
Man has established several colonies of old-style, heterosexual humans, just in case the evolutionary change proves to be a mistake. Mandella travels to one of these colonies (named “Middle Finger” in the definitive version of the novel) where he is reunited with Potter, who had been discharged much earlier and had taken trips in space to use time dilation to age at a much slower rate, hoping for Mandella’s return. The epilogue is a news item from the year 3143 announcing the birth of a “fine baby boy” to Marygay Potter-Mandella.
Anyway, as I keep saying, we’re past the event horizon for something really, really bad happening at some point between now and, say, spring 2025. I don’t know what it will be, but it’s going to be bad. It could be civil war, autocracy or military junta.
All I know is — barring something I can’t predict — MAGA is going to try to steal the 2024 election in a very brazen manner and Blues either bend a knee or demand a National Divorce.
I go where this novel takes me. And when I started this latest version of this story, or put another way, when I decided to start the story not in late 2019 but in early 1995, I had no idea where things would take me. But, here I am. Staring at my computer screen trying my best to write a scene from my heroine’s POV as she swoons for a dude she ultimately has sex with.
I’m well aware that “woke” people think that by definition, I’m being transgressive by even attempting such a thing. To them a man can never use his imagination to write from a female point of view — no matter what. It’s like some immutable law of nature or something.
Fuck that.
If I’m going to tell the story I want to tell, then not only am I going to use third person intimate to depict a woman going on a date, I’m also going to write from the POV of a nearly 16-year-old boy. That’s just the story I want to tell because I know, in the end, the payoff will be huge in the sense that fans of this project (if they ever exist) will have five more novels (at at least) to look forward to.
I say this even as I am well aware that I have to be very careful how I proceed. I have to be very careful in what I write, very conservative about how I go about things. If I don’t, then I’m going to make a fool out of myself and join a legion of other male writers who write about “girl stuff” and do nothing but embarrass themselves and cause women to giggle.
I guess the point is — don’t assume I can’t pull this kind of stuff off just because of who I am. I do have an imagination, you know. And, for the purposes of art and fiction I’m willing to — very carefully — wade into the problematic and perilous waters of being a middle age CIS white man writing from a woman’s POV in third person intimate.
I totally get why some “woke” people hate on my ilk for doing what I’m attempting to do. I totally validate it. And, yet, those people can suck it if they say I totally prohibited, by definition, from even doing it to begin with. Judge me for what I can do, not for who I am.
The world is descending into fire and brimstone at an alarming rate, to the point that we may not live to see the next James Bond come out. But, just for fun, let’s mull how we might revamp the storied franchise.
A new Lisbeth Salander in the Bond universe?
The obvious “woke” answers are — a female James Bond. Or a black James Bond. Or an Indian female James Bond? But I think all those ideas kind of miss the point and might even kill the franchise.
What we need to do is for three movies turn Bond into the bad guy — sorta.
Use his status as the ultimate “legacy brand” to allow you to wallow in all the unwoke elements of his character one last time before even Bond is finally enveloped by the all powerful embrace of Hollywood wokeness.
Here’s how I would do it.
Have Bond up against a woman who wants the same McGuffin that he wants — or whatever. Someone who is his equal. While I think it would be neat if his foe was a Indian woman named Raj, I still believe that pulling Lisbeth Salander into the Bond universe would be a great way to juice the franchise in an interesting way.
My favorite Bond.
Get some young, tiny actress to play Salander and then let these two de facto superheroes have at it for three movies. I could see the whole thing being based on some sort of misunderstanding between the two of them. Bond does his usual Bond shit with a Bond girl…but…he’s a little too rough with her maybe? And this accidently roughed up Bond girl complains to Salander who decides to come after Bond with everything she’s got. Throw in them both wanting something from SPECTER then you really do have a three movie franchise on your hands. It would be so cool!
Given Salander’s absolute moral code, having her fight it out with the old school, rakish Bond would be very entertaining. Salander could be a proxy for “woke Hollywood” sensibilities. Or something.
Anyway, the point is, doing something to put Bond in a bad light and then have him fight it out with the equally alienating Salander would be really fun because you could have people who took Bond’s side and people who took Salander’s side. In the end, of course, the misunderstanding is fixed and the two former rivals come to respect each other as they go their separate ways.
One of my favorite media industry podcasts is The Town. It’s great. I really enjoy it and I recommend you listen to it. And, yet, this most recent episode left me thinking, “What the what?”
So, our intrepid media reporter Matt Belloni had his good buddy from CNBC Julia Boorstin on to talk about gender inequality in Hollywood. So far, so good. I was going to do some blogging this evening and that sounded like something fun to listen to while I did some writing.
And then.
Boorstin comes out swinging, saying that it’s all Hollywood’s fault that starting around 1983 smelly boys took over the software industry because of the popularity of movies like Wargames. Now, some context, as I understand it, most “computers” before the rise of personal computing were, well, people — women, specifically.
And I was a horrible college student and even I know that “correlation is not causation.” Maybe it’s not that Hollywood drove women out of the software industry, but rather Hollywood was picking up on changes in not just society, but all the wealth being generated by successful programmers. And it’s a pretty high level of “presentism” when you assume that given such a development that Hollywood execs would suddenly show a 2020s level of wokeness and decide they were going to produce all these movies showing how great it would be for young women to be programers.
Of course the did what they would always do up until Woke Hollywood — try to tell stories that got people (specifically sweaty young people who needed a dark movie theatre to make out in) into theatre seats. Again — I just don’t think you can blame Hollywood for “driving women out of the computer industry.” Hollywood is reactive, not proactive on a lot of social justice issues — and everything else, for that matter.
But, back to the story. No longer was a human “computer” using brute mental force to get us to the moon. Now, it was male programmers who were doing a totally different type of job with a totally different value in the eyes of society. And I just don’t see any scenario where Hollywood back in the day was going to say “THIS WILL NOT STAND” and be go out of their way in 1983 to make sure women continued to be “computers” only now called “programmers.”
It’s all very murky and could be interpreted in a variety of ways. It all depends on your agenda and if you want to sell books about the gender gap in high profile industries or not.
First — does pointing this out make me “problematic” and “canceled?” Probably. But, in my defense, I point all of this out because “wokeness” — specifically in Hollywood — is really, really hurting that industry. As the popularity of Top Gun: Maverick attests, sometimes, people just want to see a movie without any ulterior motive.
And, I will note, that I’m writing a six novel series with a lot of representation and a lot of empathy. And, yet, of course, given that I’m a middle age CIS white male and a lot of Leftists will probably freak the fuck out that I would do such a thing — even if I try to be as empathetic as possible to women, the LGBTQ community and POC.
Given how many non-male, non-white, non-straight characters I have planed for these six novels I’m working on, it’s going to be pretty ironic when I’m attacked when I don’t fit the media narrative on this specific issue.
And, really, like I said, this is all a matter of interpretation. It’s easy to spin the particular in either direction. But at least, even I, someone who sees himself in the center-Left spectrum of the political debate, have to admit that “woke Hollywood” exists and it’s poorly serving the audience.
Because the “woke cancel culture mob” has become such a massive abstract fear on the part of Traditionalist conservatives, and the idea of “wokeness” has been demagogued a great deal, it’s rather difficult to come up with a coherent definition of “to be woke.”
It really boils down to if you watch a lot of Fox News or not. If you watch a lot of Fox News, then your definition probably is something like:
Woke: the idea that all white, straight Christians — especially men — are evil and as such everyone should be Godless, gay and take their toddlers to drag shows.
Think of this as the “Red Pill” definition. This is the definition that is loosely used by Ben Shapiro and other leading conservatives.
Meanwhile, here’s the definition I would use.
Woke: a tendency to conspicuously note that America is browning and while acknowledging an increasing acceptance of LGBQ individuals in American society.
This is a far more accurate description of what “woke” means. But, of course, everyone wants easy, pat explanations to the complicated problems facing America. So, I don’t know what to tell you. Either you’re “Red Pilled” or you’re not.
Let me begin by saying I’m always wrong. Always. And the following is just for fun because I find myself thinking about what the fuck is going on with Olivia Wilde and this is what I manage to come up with.
Here is what might explain Olivia Wilde’s career path — she really resents how much emphasis has been placed on her good looks over the years. I think she is very tired that people think she’s hot to the point that they ignore any of her other talents.
This aggravation has driven her to be “woke.” And she has even said in at least one interview that what I propose about her motivation is right. She recalled that early in her career she was told to “sex things up” if she wanted to get an acting role.
If you wanted to make a quick, massive return on an investment and you happened to be MAGA Republican oligarch, here’s a way to both stroke your conservative ideological cock and make a lot of money — finance a series of middle-tier “anti-woke” movies with big name stars.
America can’t even agree on what’s funny.
But the key issue is you can’t be conspicuous about how you are actively being “anti-woke.” Not only is there a huge, huge audience for natively conservative songs, TV shows, movies and, hell, even comedy, but the country is tearing itself apart at such an alarming rate that all you have to is build your conservative media and they will come.
It’s not like this sort of sly messaging hasn’t happened before. As I seem to recall, there were a series of movies — Blood Diamond among them — that each addressed some sort of political cause as the basis of their plot. So, what you do is you, maybe find someone like Clint Eastwood and give him a three picture deal to essentially make a series of “anti-woke” movies that would be designed from the ground up to appeal to MAGA Republican (fascist) sensibilities in such a way that is so subtle that the average person isn’t alienated.
I’m not advocating this, but I am pointing out that money is being left on the table by Hollywood by not doing this.
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