One unfortunate aspect of wokeness is what it's done to the protest song. I'll spare your ears the audiovisual proof, but you can find it on your own. Songwriters with Something to Say now try to say it in academic jargon. But for the song to be any good it has to work on a primal level. Lennon understood that, as did Gil Scott Heron. Even that schmuck Bono knows it.
Sam Kriss recently took on the definition of woke. His article/essay begs to be read, and I think he gets a lot of it right. Especially in woke not really being a politics, at least not in the sense of trying to get things done. As for whether it's really dying, as he claims, that's a complex subject. All those DEI departments aren't going anywhere overnight, but the vacuity of the underlying philosophy has been exposed.
One hopes, anyway. CNN shows some signs of desperation when it tries to take the term "digital blackface" mainstream. The idea that using images of black people from popular culture is akin to blackface is a willful misunderstanding of online―or any―communication. If you express ridicule with a gif of Robert Downey as Tony Stark rolling his eyes, you're not actually claiming to be an obscenely wealthy man with substance abuse problems, played by same.
2 comments:
I actually spend as little time as possible thinking about 'woke' as the subject never arises in my day to day life. Of course, considering how I spend most days that seems logical enough - the checkout clerks at the grocery store don't care and neither do the outdoor creatures who entertain us. I enjoyed reading Kriss's breakdown of what constitutes the definition - he found some good examples.
There does appear to be a performative 'wokeness' going on in society today and I think it’s important to point some fingers at the hypocrisy. That people will agree that being good, addressing personal biases and blocking microagressions, is even more worthy a goal than doing something tangible to improve someone's life is clearly deluded. One can only hope this is another dying fad. Remember how Hogwarts recently turned into an enormous best seller? Twitter is enjoying great success now that it's largely 'woke' staff have been dismissed and Netflix showed the way to the door for any who objected to Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais. I'm hoping this gradual withdrawal continues.
There's a huge difference between what happens on the intertubes and what the chattering classes like to witter on about. How they can be so bored is beyond me. Any discussion of 'digital blackface' is yet another example of how 'Idiocracy' has warped grownup conversation.
I know you likely watched it a few months ago when it first appeared but your mention of protest songs made me go and find What Happened. It's worth watching twice. Meanwhile, I look forward to the day when we can laugh at Yes, Prime Minister in public again
I certainly can't blame you for not thinking about woke when you don't have to. Otters are definitely more fun. It seems very much to me like an attempt by technocrats and academics to reshape reality to their own whims. Can they succeed? I doubt it in the long run, but they can do some damage in the attempt. One thing that interested me about Kriss's essay was his tabulation of people who have radical ideas and are serious about them, but aren't woke, Cornel West being one of his examples.
The microaggressions thing drives me crazy, although putting it in those terms is obviously another microaggression. The thing is that anything can retroactively be deemed bad or hurtful if it's in someone's interests to say it is, and it almost always is in someone's interest. A lot of the changes you mention are for the better. Elon Musk is more trustworthy on that score than the people he took over from, although he tends to be his own worst enemy, making changes in policy that aggravate users.
One side effect of civilization as most of us define it is specialization. People concentrate in different fields. Some of these are useful and some aren't. Those whose specialties are of little use or even interest to others will make an extra effort to dominate the conversation. The "digital blackface" chatter is an example of that, I believe.
I had forgotten what "What Happened" referred to but when I saw the guy it all came back. Hey, he knows what he's protesting at any rate. And yea to laughing at the antics of Sir Humphrey again.
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