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IT IS increasingly difficult to find a good movie or series that is not full of wokeism, that is, all the fetish themes of progressivism. Many times we waste too much time looking for what to watch, and when we finally find something that seems interesting, it turns out to be unbearably woke and we have to start the search all over again.
While the easiest thing to do would be to dismiss all Disney and Netflix programming outright, there are a few tricks that would allow us to avoid the ones that are, at the very least, insufferably woke.
5 tips to detect wokeism in series and films
1. Intersectionality
“Intersectionality” is the word that progressives have invented to define the phenomenon whereby for every individual who supposedly suffers oppression there is another who holds a privilege, according to different social categories.
Woke films star women oppressed by specific men or by the heteropatriarchy in general, racial minorities subjugated by people of other races (although coincidentally, the oppressors are always white), poor people exploited by evil rich people, people of any possible gender versus heterosexual people, and so on.
In many of these films, we are shown protagonists who have the full combo of possible oppressions, in others they only add up to a few points of oppression, and sometimes the oppressions are spread across several characters.
New things are added to the “intersectionality” — we must recognize the inventive capacity of wokeism —– such as obesity, mental illnesses, or physical disabilities, always shown under a victimizing light and blaming a third party, without the slightest hint of responsibility on the behalf of the protagonist.
For example, in Prey, the latest in the Predator saga, we are shown a female protagonist ignored by men, who is also Native American, and who has to face not only the alien but also the white man. Evidently, it turned out to be riddled with wokeism.
2. Humiliating treatment of men
From the first moments of the film, a man who is not the villain is shown as clumsy, cowardly, lout (at best), or evil and sinister (in the most extreme cases), to whom the “intersectional” protagonist gives lessons and surpasses him in all aspects, we are most likely facing a product full of wokeism.
This circumstance is especially evident when the man should be the protagonist, or is a heroic character of yesteryear who is now being demystified.
This is what is known, in woke slang, as the deconstruction of toxic masculinity. In normal language it would be the emasculation of the male, depriving him of any traditional masculine characteristics such as strength, courage, bravery, heroism, loyalty or honor.
We have witnessed this in series such as Obi-Wan Kenobi or She-Hulk, in which the famous Jedi and Hulk are humiliated and overshadowed by their female counterparts.
3. Woke promotion
If the advertising for the series or movie in question focuses on highlighting the “diversity” and “inclusiveness” of the cast or crew, we are looking at a red flag of wokeism.
If, in addition, to define the subject of the film they add the adjectives “courageous” and “necessary,” or that it gives “visibility” to some kind of social problem, we already know what we are dealing with.
When this happens, we can almost be certain that quality will be conspicuous by its absence, constrained by the political agenda they pursue. The important thing is the ideological message they want to convey, completely relegating things like the script, character storylines, dialogues, interpretations and even coherence.
Buzz Lightyear or Thor Love and Thunder are very clear recent examples. They put together products that had nothing to do with their sagas, neither in quality nor in essence, with homosexuality as a central axis.
4. Disparity between critics and the public
An increasingly infallible indicator to detect wokeism is to notice if there is a great disparity between the score of the specialized critics and the one given by the public. If the difference is very large, with the critics praising it and the public trashing it, it is very likely that we are dealing with a product with wokeism sky high.
Amazon‘s The Rings of Power series is a clear example of this
This trick also works the other way around. If the public gives high scores but the critics don’t like it, we are probably looking at a series or movie that is not at all woke or even anti-woke. As an example of the latter, we have the series The Terminal List, also from Amazon.
5. Attacks against critics
If the production company and the media in its service accuse those who are critical of the series or film of being “toxic,” which can range from homophobic, racist, misogynist, incels, to ultra-right-wingers, or even all of these at the same time, we are facing something really woke.
If they also use terms such as “review bombing” or “gatekeeping,” they are fighting like hell to prevent the public from finding out how bad the production in question is.
This last point we have been able to observe in all the examples mentioned above, which would come to show that more than toxic fans are like the old food tasters. What is toxic is wokeism and they are just warning us not to swallow it.
Ignacio Manuel García Medina, Business Management teacher. Artist and lecturer specialized in Popular Culture for various platforms. Presenter of the program "Pop Libertario" for the Juan de Mariana Institute. Lives in the Canary Islands, Spain // Ignacio M. García Medina es profesor de Gestión de Empresas. Es miembro del Instituto Juan de Mariana y conferenciante especializado en Cultura Popular e ideas de la Libertad.
Social Networks: @ignaciomgm