Is ‘Woke’ Dead in Hollywood?
Strap in, this is going to be a bumpy ride. Yesterday, as I was killing time on the couch, dreading the work week to return, I saw a few random discussions on Twitter where everyone was chiming in about the Sydney Sweeney ad, the cancellation of Colbert, and the box office of some recent superhero movies like Superman.
Apparently, when you spin all that together and huff it from a bag like paint, it means that “woke” is dead in Hollywood.
Today, I want to dive into that cesspool of online discourse and give you my two cents. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that the world desperately needs another white middle-aged male blogger to go over the political machinations of the terminally online left and right.
Let’s dive in.
What’s Woke, Anyway?
The word “Woke” refers to the awareness of social and political injustice, with an emphasis on racial prejudice and discrimination.
But, thanks to the caustic online discourse, “woke” is now just a word white people took from black people and repurposed to mean anything that covered basic diversity on and off screen.
A Word On Woke
‘Nope’Credit: Universal
Hollywood is the junction of art and commerce. We will talk about that extensively later. But I’m just going to spend a second at the top here, telling you that I think if you get your panties in a bunch about a word, but can’t get upset at a vast history of inequality and societal damage, I do not care about your opinion. It means you’re not willing to have this discussion in good faith, and I don’t want to waste my time or your time. So stop reading.
Woke Is Dead!
The most recent version of this conversation has to do with Sydney Sweeney doing an ad for American Eagle, which caused a sort of fake outrage (one no one really saw, but everyone said existed) because she’s an extremely beautiful woman in an ad for “good jeans.”
It seems like there was a tangential argument online in which someone thought that the “good jeans” line was Hitler coded and a dog whistle for those who are pro-eugenics. “Good jeans” = “Good genes” — Sweeney is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white woman — get it?
When society cast off that notion, a certain level of chronically online people decided that meant “woke” was dead.
This is one of those things that everyone overreacted to.
It was an innocuous ad with one of the hottest women on the planet.
Get over it.
What makes me so mad is that it felt like not a single person was able to just sit there and think critically about the situation.
Hot woman sells jeans with an aspirational photo spread. THAT’S ALL.
You could teach an entire course on media literacy just on this last stupid week.
But instead, we got this conversation.
How Did This Happen?
Culture is so finicky. I legitimately think the conversation has gotten rid of nuance. People are so eager to fight and not to think about situations or context.
Everyone is upset because the world right now is not great to look at.
And they want someone or something to blame.
I think the post-COVID world has become so binary; people are so desperate for issues to be black and white and to have an antagonist that they make them out of nothing in order to make sense of how messed up the world has become.
And that enemy became “woke.” And that word became a stand-in for anything they felt like meant the world is stacked against them.
Guess what, it is! But it’s pretty much stacked against anyone who did not grow up rich or with generational wealth, because we have created a society that does not honor basic human needs like education, health, and shelter.
It’s not because Rey Skywalker is a woman.
And it’s not because of “woke.”
Woke Hollywood
‘Sinners’Credit: Warner Bros.
For maybe the last decade, Hollywood has actually tried to reconcile with a past that included pushing diverse people and projects out of the industry.
We had a lot of studies about the amount of money left on the table because of that, and those numbers ranged in the billions of dollars.
That knowledge of a new market, along with major successes like Black Panther and even Barbie, pushed Hollywood’s even most cold capitalists to see that there was money on the table.
This basic diversity came to a head when popular franchises like Star Wars and Marvel, and even The Terminator, added storylines that covered social and political issues, particularly those related to race, gender, and LGBTQ+ rights.
When some of those movies and TV shows underperformed, there was this rise in anger where people assumed that they failed because they were woke, even though there was no real correlation there.
Most movies fail due to 1. not being good, and 2. marketing.
Movies like Disney’s Lightyear, Elio, and Strange World, which featured brief same-sex kisses, underperformed at the box office and led critics to claim that audiences were rejecting politically charged messages in their entertainment.
But if you look at the reviews of those movies, you can see it’s more likely due to flawed storytelling.
Making movies and TV is very, very hard. When they’re good and they work, it’s a miracle. When they don’t, it’s a blame game.
Now, you could point to COVID, advertising, and the general quality of the movies and TV shows that underperformed as more likely culprits.
Woke or not, movies that are good or that have great brand recognition have performed well.
That is undeniable.
The Shift In Woke
Okay, so with all that happening, Hollywood started looking for new ways to service another audience. One that hated “woke” but felt like they had no entertainment to service their needs.
Now, I don’t think Hollywood was actively getting rid of those stories and ideas; I think they just saw another outlet for cash, and you had studios each opening branches that could make faith-based ideas as well as other stuff to get cash from these people.
This is not to say that diversity is being abandoned, but rather that the execution is being reevaluated.
Hollywood is just finding new ways to make money.
And new people to get it from.
Haters of “woke” like to point to series like Yellowstone as indicative of the masses rising again. But that show featured a pretty diverse cast, and the series ended with the cowboys giving the land back to the Native Americans.
So, what does “woke” even mean anymore?
If you look at movies that came out this year and made big money like Sinners and Captain America: Brave New World, or even Lilo and Stitch and Jurassic World: Rebirth, these are all movies starring diverse leads that rank at the top of the domestic box office.
So yeah, “woke” is not dead, it’s just shifted.
The emphasis now appears to be on weaving inclusive narratives more organically into stories.
A lesson learned from failures — imagine that!
Look, the modern conversation around “woke” online is downright racist and sexist. We don’t need to amplify those voices, so let’s just say that over the last, maybe, ten years, Hollywood made a lot of “woke” projects.
A lot of them worked and made money. Some of them did not.
Like all forms of entertainment, there was a fervor and capitalistic urge to cater to what audiences wanted.
And when things didn’t pay off, Hollywood shifted.
Hollywood isn’t Woke; It’s Capitalist
‘Wolf of Wall Street’
Credit: Paramount
Like I said and outlined above, Hollywood exists to make money. And in recent years, it’s been shown that it does not control culture anymore.
It exists to react to culture.
The reason for that is not because they made woke or not woke a thing — it’s because Hollywood studios are all owned by big corporations and they have begun favoring content over quality.
They are making all decisions with their pocketbooks and not with their politics. They are after whomever they think will go to the movies or go to their streaming service and spend money.
And they will always make movies and TV shows to service that.
They are apolitical capitalists trying to make a buck.
That’s how they can have a naked Trump on South Park and also have the Guttfelds of the world making fun of Biden.
If you can make Hollywood money, they want to be in business with you!
Just in the last year, you can point to projects that honor either side of the political spectrum and probably the fringes, and they were all made to make money.
Are there politics buried in movies? Yes. That’s called having a point of view.
But if you look at most mainstream studio movies, they are rather innocuous statements of equality. I think we should all be mature enough to handle that.
The real crime here is that because everything is content now, we’re losing out on new voices and new stories and new artists who are having trouble breaking in.
That’s not woke or not woke’s fault — that’s unchecked capitalism’s fault!
Art Used to Work With Commerce
‘Girl With the Pearl Earring’
Credit: Pathe
The loss of the art side of commerce has been felt all over. Now, to break out in Hollywood, you basically need to make something completely independently and then sell it back to the town to get noticed. It’s harder and harder to break in with a spec script, because so few of them sell and get made.
You’re writing for free until you get something produced. And until you direct your own thing, you’d better make money in commercials or another venture, because Hollywood is rarely handing things out to first timers.
The difficulty of this environment is not just everything I’ve outlined here, but you also need Hollywood to see you as a marketable brand, not just as a person with good ideas.
Can They Make Money Off You?
If you want to be an executive, you’re seeing a decrease in actual job opportunities as studios and production companies consolidate.
In addition to all that, we’re seeing the very real contraction of our industry again, a place where we need diversity in executives as much as we need it in creators, because we need people with an inherent knowledge of what will work for different groups, so Hollywood can make money from them.
All of this is a conglomeration of problems that do not have to do with “woke,” but somehow I see people talking about them like they do.
Again, the problem is that the people with the money have fundamentally changed how Hollywood works, and everyone outside it is just trying to catch up and to break in.
Now, more than ever, it’s every person for themselves. And networking and being easy to work with probably trumps talent at his point, since most people want to work with predictable people.
How Can We Fix Hollywood to be Fair And Equitable?
‘Babylon’
Credit: Sony
This question is way above my pay grade. I’ll tell you, I wish Hollywood functioned like the NBA or NFL. I wish it were a place where you just needed to prove you had the talent to make the league money in order to be a starter.
A place where there was a filmmaker draft and people got selected to make projects that would make each studio money and keep them gainfully employed.
But it’s not like that.
To me, we really need a lot more programs for budding writers and directors of all ages, where the studio pays them a yearly stipend to like train behind people or shadow them and develop their own projects. They could use these classes to also train younger execs and build out their rosters of talent from within.
I’m also not sure that’s realistic, so I’m hoping our readers have some ideas, because Hollywood is being rebuilt in front of us, and I think we should take an active role.
Regardless, we need to find a way to pay people for entry-level work; otherwise, only rich people are going to be able to participate in this calling.
Summing It All Up
This is my point of view. You can get mad and tweet at me, or you can choose to help rebuild a better Hollywood that’s not reliant on buzzwords you think are alive or dead.
In order to have a career out here, you need talent, connections, and gumption. Those things cover the most successful people, no matter what their genetic makeup.
I truly cannot believe an ad about jeans brought us here.
I hope we can all do better.
Sound off in the comments.