Woke Washing

Have you ever wondered why recent sequels, prequels, and reimaginings of already established productions often feature race and gender swapped characters? Welcome to the world of woke washing. 

Originally pioneered by Sony with the female iteration of GhostBusters the argument for woke washing originally centred around the excuse that producers were simply casting “the best actor for the job.” But in 2022 with Disney and Amazon following suit it is painfully obvious that this is an intentional corporate decision to spark division in the fandom and in turn sell a product by hate-baiting and gaslighting the audience. 

If you haven’t seen the big picture yet, rage-baiting is a powerful marketing tool allowing corporations to cut costs and use fan bases as useful idiots to push a mediocre product on the market. Ask yourself, how many people were actually interested in a live adaptation of The Little Mermaid? How many people would have talked about Ariel if Disney had not decided to race swap her to antagonise consumers? 

Disney of course hasn’t created an original story since Frozen in 2013, and instead has been churning out mediocre live adaptations of older intellectual properties. A corporation which was once a behemoth of American storytelling is now just a McDonald’s of children's entertainment, serving fans mediocre produce they only devour because they are gaslit into believing that such products are beacons of social change.

The excuse of course is that Disney wants to maintain its intellectual properties in perpetuity. As such, they must periodically put them on the big screen so that they do not fall into the public domain. This is a pitiful excuse—consumers do not own stocks in Disney, and we do not care about its economic aspirations. We want good entertainment, not mediocre live adaptations butchering plots we already know and love.

Of course, Disney knows this. By changing the race of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, they are banking on the fact that people will immediately start talking about it. In turn, the media will begin to write articles, giving the film free publicity.

This is why Amazon’s first promotional poster for Rings of Power featured actress Sophia Nomvete, the black dwarf queen. Within minutes, pre written articles from various media outlets called out concerned fans as “racists,” despite the fact J. R. R. Tolkein’s fantasy epic never featured black dwarves. Corporations know to take advantage of the current state of American culture, under which perpetual moral panic around racism has left Americans terrified to speak up. Thus, establishment movie critics are incentivised to support arbitrary diversity hires and condemn those deemed “toxic and racist.”

On top of this, corporational powers have allowed companies to remove negative reviews as did Amazon when fans spoke negatively about Rings of Power on IMDB, a site which they own. They can pressure social media companies to change their search engine algorithms to hide negative reviews and the mainstream media will remain silent. Though many view the establishment’s actions as supportive of the fight against “racism,” companies in reality set minority actors up to get abused online, using the backlash to then justify the company’s financial interests.

The last nail in the coffin is that companies can save money through pushes for diversity. Instead of hiring talented people, they can claim they are hiring based on diversity and inclusivity. They can hire nobodies who have very little to no experience in the industry, which is why most of these projects are mediocre at best, disastrous at worst. 

Just imagine how much money these companies are saving on scriptwriters alone and you'll know why every single remake/reboot also has mandatory woke washes of at least one character. 

This goes far and beyond investors and ESG scores. This is a tactic directed at purposefully cutting costs of production by hiring nobodies and talentless people and hoping the outrage and gaslighting of consumers will get sufficient people interested as to turn up some marginal profit.

The solution to this is to simply not engage. Do not even hate watch these productions. Let them die out. They are so mediocre that even the people they cater to refuse to see them. Do not talk about them. Your time is precious, do not waste it on promoting cheap products that have no place existing in the first place.

A Romanian persecuted for trying to put smiles on people’s faces. Took over This Week in Stupid (TWIS) video series.

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