With the infection of the woke mind virus spreading throughout Western culture and plaguing everything you’re nostalgic for, one of the constant excuses I see from the radical left who actually enjoy watching message-first storytelling is that the franchise or property in question has always been “woke.”
You’ve probably seen these posts on X yourself. Two shows, in particular, are always held up of examples of a show having always had the same principles as the people who think “gender fluidity” is real and that it should be pushed on children.
“Star Trek”…
Star Trek has always been woke. pic.twitter.com/3i7xIqD1Lf
— Trek Politics Podcast (@trekpolitics) May 23, 2023
…and “Doctor Who.”
Chris Chibnall on responding to Doctor Who's gone woke complaints:
— WilliamWho (@WilliamWhoDW) October 22, 2022
"I think the world has changed, the show hasn’t! They should go and have a look at some of the past episodes. It’s a show of great empathy and humanity and tolerance and always has been, right from the start." pic.twitter.com/mIjdmp84tQ
But like many points that the woke left makes, it takes an element of truth and builds a lie around it.
First, let’s get something straight. Wokeness identifies itself as liberalism or the idea that someone can be free to be themselves and practice whatever lifestyle they like. Wokeness is the bastardization of that idea, and the two are actually not related. Like an attention seeker looking for clout, wokeness is just pretending to be related to someone famous.
As YouTuber Ian K. (aka ComixDivision) noted in a recent video on the subject, many of these shows indeed had many themes and moments that could be considered “progressive” but they didn’t force it down your throat and made a point about tolerance to allow people to live how they want to live. While some lifestyles or choices depicted are popular with the left, the idea of being left alone to live how you want to live is a concept that is appreciated by both sides of the aisle, so even right-leaning people were fans of these shows and movies.
Liberalism, or “classical liberalism” as it’s now called, is a liberty-centric concept of live and let live.
But this isn’t what wokeness wants.
Wokeness doesn’t want liberalism. It doesn’t even want tolerance. What wokeness wants is forced acceptance.
Wokeness says “You will bear witness to my lifestyle, you will applaud it, and you will stand silently by while I teach your children to believe and live as I do. Resistance is futile and all who oppose us will be destroyed.”
In every show I’ve ever seen that these wannabe social justice dictators claim has always been “woke,” it was usually the bad guy who laid down that kind of goal. This is the threat of the Borg in “Star Trek” and the Cybermen in “Doctor Who.”
But those infested with the woke mind virus have convinced themselves that they’re just like the good guys in all these shows because they’re pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable by traditional society and that’s why they’re hated. Their solution is always the same; we need to do it more, do it louder, and make it popular with the kids.
But the truth is that what people hate isn’t the individual for being gay, trans, or any other kind of identity that the radical left claims to be under constant attack. What they hate is the activism behind it that forces everyone to love it or participate in it in some capacity. That’s the bottom line.
Liberalism, or true liberalism, is the belief that two people can live radically different lives that the other disapproves of and…leave each other completely alone. Yeah, they live in the same society, but the Christian and the homosexual can live next door and not try to force their ideals on each other. They tolerate each other, and maybe even over time, they grow friendly with understanding.
But wokeness doesn’t want tolerance. It doesn’t even want individual liberty and understanding. It wants forced acceptance and obedience. That’s not the message a lot of these shows were trying to get to its audience back then.
So no, the show wasn’t always woke. The show always looked down on wokeness. A lot of the pushback you’re seeing is from audiences rejecting the sudden ideological about-face.
