The Anti-Woke Mind Virus
Have you ever seen the series “Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeast?” I haven’t, but I’ve heard quite a bit about it from someone in my life who is addicted to the show. Exactly out of curiosity one morning, I looked through the Wikipedia entry for the show, and two words jumped out at me: casual queerness. This immediately grabbed my attention. And then, because this is a Netflix series, my mind went to “woke Netflix” and all of the scandalous speculation about why Netflix has lost share price in recent months. So let’s take a look at that speculation.
Is it woke that’s harming Netflix? Is there too much casual queerness in Netflix shows? But to answer that question, we have to ask a different question too: was Netflix ever “woke” in the first place?
One thing that we all tend to forget is that Netflix is a business, and has never been particularly woke. They, like many other corporations, have increased their public support for ideas that people might see as woke, sure. But rest assured, that was a business decision more than anything else. Increasingly, the people with the money — still the educated middle class — want content that more represents the diversity of their experiences. This includes LGBTQ+ representation, which was something that Netflix delivered handily through some of its content. Disney has been more woke, and for much longer, than Netflix ever was. Theirs was also a corporate decision. They wanted families to visit, and for a very long time, families were interested in teaching their children about diversity and other cultures, however heavy-handed Disney might have been in their approach (looking at you, Small World After All).
Netflix was innovative, but I’d argue that woke isn’t something they ever were. Consider this — “woke” content is controversial, and controversial captures attention in a world that seems to be choking on the information. Controversial is a way to punch through. So for Netflix, it made sense to push some woke-ish programs. But Netflix has a massive catalog, and there’s a lot of “touched by an angel” type of stuff on Netflix as well as the more edgy shows like Kipo (which, frankly isn’t that edgy but is dystopian and has a gay black dude in it).
Any time we start talking about woke, by the way, my mind goes to the outrage that having an androgynous main character in Star Trek generated. How many people spouted that Star Trek was falling victim to the “woke mind virus”? How many had any idea how “woke” Star Trek has always been?
This brings me back to my point. Few are talking about “woke” Disney (well, except Ron DeSantis, but that guy’s got some personal issues to work through, clearly). Why? Because Disney, like Star Trek, has always been “woke”. It’s just that in the mainstream, being accepted across cultural boundaries and different lifestyles has been generally common sense, whereas now it’s being challenged.
There are two points here: 1) Netflix isn’t losing money because it’s “woke”, but because they have made some bad business decisions, and 2) Netflix isn’t all that woke, but instead is both responding to cultural trends to stay relevant and is creating content all over the world, which frankly, is for the most part more liberal than the United States (with obvious exceptions). The losing money part of this? Competition and the general overall drop in the streaming market. Anyone who’s looking at the industry through non-partisan glasses can see that. In fact, here’s a decent article on it.
So what’s the deal with all the casual queerness and the 15 series about trans kids and the rest? As it turns out, the majority of Americans are just fine with these ideas. In fact, the majority of Americans don’t care. Love is love. Etc. Etc.
Acceptance isn’t woke agenda — it’s American culture. So why are we even talking about this? Because there is a minority of Americans who have control of the narrative thanks to a massive mouthpiece called Fox News and have isolated themselves so much from our real American culture of acceptance that they’ve had book burnings, book bans, banned treatment for trans children, and are in the process of banning abortion. Absolutely none of the above represent real American culture, even if they pretend that it does.
But there’s a danger. If we don’t reign in these anti-woke neanderthals (there, I said it), then the minority will impose these tools that they’ve begun building, and in 10-20 years, we won’t even be able to recognize the United States. Remember that relative you lost to Ultra-MAGA? That’s the real mind virus. And as that spreads, it leaves behind the crippled, mottled remnants of what American culture used to be, sacrificing acceptance and love on the altar of their anti-woke, anti-CRT, anti-abortion, anti-governing ideologies.
