# How "woke" are movies really? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [June 8, 2022, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849 "2022-06-08T00:11:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/41 "2022-06-08T23:43:38Z")
The Cain Mutiny Marjorie Morningstar Youngblood Hawke War and Remembrance ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/42 "2022-06-09T00:04:37Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > A little while ago, someone called me ‘woke’ because I mentioned in passing that I dislike wasting food. Eh, they could have accused you of virtue signaling I suppose. Their using “woke” there is indicative of it having turned into simply a snarl word – ISTM it’s more like, when you say you don’t like wasting food (or insert any resource here) they are primed to read that as you making an indictment of the general consumer society and now they feel compelled to question if they agree with that. Because to them your mission as author/artist/entertainer is to reaffirm what gave them enjoyment before, full stop, and _they don’t want to hear anything else_. “Shut up and just dribble the ball.” ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/43 "2022-06-09T00:09:44Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > The Cain Mutiny > Marjorie Morningstar > Youngblood Hawke > War and Remembrance Woke? Is that how Wouk is pronounced? I always thought it was pronounced _wook_. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/44 "2022-06-09T00:15:37Z")
If you’re snooty Trans-Atlantic _and_ socially enlightened, you’re “”wook” ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/45 "2022-06-09T01:00:39Z")
It is pronounced woke. But it’s also The **Caine** Mutiny, so no points for Hufflepuff. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/46 "2022-06-09T01:03:05Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Are you implying that you are surrounded by people who say things like that so frequently that the absence of such comments in this case says something about the rarity of this opinion on Holywood? Otherwise why would you bring up the “not in person” part? I bring up the not in person part because I have a strong suspicion that such voices are amplified online. That because of this amplification, these voices seem more numerous than they actually are. But maybe I’m naive, and people are worse than I think they are. > [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > A ton of people lost their shit over that. Judging from what I saw online, yeah. Of all the people I’ve talked to, that wasn’t their complaint about the new Star Wars movies. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/47 "2022-06-09T03:20:54Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Eh, they could have accused you of virtue signaling I suppose. Their using “woke” there is indicative of it having turned into simply a snarl word – ISTM it’s more like, when you say you don’t like wasting food (or insert any resource here) they are primed to read that as you making an indictment of the general consumer society and now they feel compelled to question if they agree with that. > > Because to them your mission as author/artist/entertainer is to reaffirm what gave them enjoyment before, full stop, and _they don’t want to hear anything else_ . “Shut up and just dribble the ball.” “Woke” came to be used by the black community first to denounce unfair acts that a good number of minorities were also missing or not pushing back. Considering how the right wing turned the word into a slur, a lot of the time the slur is directed to businesses that are too friendly (in their opinion) to minorities. After years of looking at how it is being used, by many on the right wing, it is used as a more polite way to say ‘don’t be a “Ni\*\*\*\* lover”’; just as it was, [and is still](https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/no-charges-for-lehigh-valley-couple-making-racist-comments-in-lyft-drivers-video/3248482/), directed to many white people that do care about injustice towards minorities. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/48 "2022-06-09T06:47:24Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Eh, they could have accused you of virtue signaling I suppose. Oh, I get that too. Same crowd, I think. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/49 "2022-06-09T06:50:47Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > After years of looking at how it is being used, by many on the right wing, it is used as a more polite way to say ‘don’t be a “Ni\*\*\*\* lover”’; just as it was, [and is still](https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/no-charges-for-lehigh-valley-couple-making-racist-comments-in-lyft-drivers-video/3248482/), directed to many white people that do care about injustice towards minorities. A lot of it seems to come from (or at least be propped up by) notions of ‘established tradition’. Sort of: “if racism was good enough for my grandpa, it’s good enough for me”. People see the world changing in a way that means they themselves might need to change, and they don’t like the idea that they might need to change. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/50 "2022-06-09T06:59:14Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > It costs Disney as much to show two men sharing a peck upon the lips for a split second as it does a man and a woman, and if push comes to shove they can always edit those few frames out for “select markets.” > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > […] and cannot help take note of the fact the studio is comfortable with removing the momentary representation from some markets. Studios sometimes change some scenes for release in foreign markets but I can’t think of an example of different edits for different U.S. markets. I know that something like a director’s cut might not be booked in a theater that had booked the original because the new film\* is super-raunchy, for example. But you imply a mass-market movie having different scenes in New York than it has in Peoria. Does that ever happen with wide-release films? \*that’s an entirely different film though. It’s not just deleting 10 frames of a woman’s breasts or gay men kissing. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/51 "2022-06-09T10:18:20Z")
I agree with the OP, just wanted to add a couple of notes: 1. Obviously the ethnic status of the lead is insufficient information on how woke a film is. It’s OK when giving a general accounting of films in general (as the OP is) but may be misleading on an individual basis. 2. These days I only hear “woke” as a pejorative, by people on the right complaining about it. So I fear that the word now intrinsically implies a number of negative connotations and feature creep (e.g. dictating that all black people must be shown in a positive light). I can’t think of a better alternative word though. 3. British TV is quite “woke” now. That is, almost all new shows seem to have ethnic minorities, gay people and women going against stereotypes, and disabled people played by disabled actors. I’ll confess that at first I did roll my eyes, but I think that was just because it was quite noticeable. Once adjusted, of course it makes sense for the people on screen to look the same as the people around me. Hollywood has a looong way to go to match this. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/52 "2022-06-09T16:30:51Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > 1. Obviously the ethnic status of the lead is insufficient information on how woke a film is. It’s OK when giving a general accounting of films in general (as the OP is) but may be misleading on an individual basis. Yeah, it doesn’t mean anything when you look at any one individual movie. It’s only when you look at a significant sampling of movies, and look at the collective statistics, as the OP has done, that you can draw a conclusion about movies as a whole. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/53 "2022-06-09T16:46:20Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Once adjusted, of course it makes sense for the people on screen to look the same as the people around me. I mean they don’t, not really. We may have increased the diversity in gender, sexuality, and race, but what about us ugly people, when are we going to get represented? If the people on screen looked like the people around me, they’d have crooked, stained, and missing teeth. They’d be overweight, with no makeup, shabby and mismatched clothes, and unshaven. The few times I see someone who looks like _me_ on the screen, it is a signal to the audience that this is a loser who plays video games in his mother’s basement while eating cheetos all day. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/54 "2022-06-09T16:51:52Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > We may have increased the diversity in gender, sexuality, and race, but what about us ugly people, when are we going to get represented? Genuinely on the first draft of my last post I mentioned this. 🙂 I left it out just because it was another tangent in an already somewhat long post. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/55 "2022-06-09T17:06:20Z")
Arguably the move toward diversity began in the world of High Fashion approximately 30 years ago, with eye-catching, norm-challenging multiracialism and homoeroticism. But High Fashion is _not_ about egalitarianism whatsoever. So while the backlash certainly stems from racism, it’s also a response to “we’re rich and beautiful _and also_ your moral superiors.” ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/56 "2022-06-09T17:06:21Z")
To be fair, I was being a bit facetious with the first part. I don’t go to the movies to see the people I see at Wal-Mart. But as to the second, they could stand to be a bit more “woke”, as it does seem as though anyone who is portrayed as having less than a perfect body has something _wrong_ with them. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/57 "2022-06-09T17:31:17Z")
In response to the OP, I don’t think the complaint about wokeness is necessarily about the race/gender of the characters themselves but their message. Conservatives would throw a huge fit over white men preaching a leftist message, and be just fine with minority women touting a right-wing message. When it comes to LGBT, though, that’s probably where they still draw the line no matter what. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/58 "2022-06-10T02:15:47Z")
> [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](#): > > Studios sometimes change some scenes for release in foreign markets but I can’t think of an example of different edits for different U.S. markets. […] > > […] you imply a mass-market movie having different scenes in New York than it has in Peoria. Does that ever happen with wide-release films? I know you’re talking about what’s done nowadays, but I would just note that this practice was by no means unheard-of in the US at least up to the mid-20th century or so. For instance, some scenes with black performers such as the Nicholas Brothers and [Bill Robinson](https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/this-shirley-temple-dance-was-censored-from-theaters-for-1-reason.html/) and [Lena Horne](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/5-ways-lena-horne-revolutionized-the-entertainment-industry/16654/) would be cut out of movie prints shown in southern US theaters: > [@](#): > > Despite her level of fame, Horne only ever had two speaking roles, in the films “Cabin in the Sky” and “Stormy Weather.” The rest of the time, she appeared in films as a singer. This allowed Southern distributors and censors to cut her scenes out if they wanted to, without affecting the storyline. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/59 "2022-06-10T02:49:39Z")
Scenes were cut only if the black performers were featured rather in demeaning servant roles. Those got through just fine. But the practice of individualizing films for locations was far more prevalent than that. Most states and many cities had their own censorship boards and they would force a variety of cuts before they would pass the movies. There could be literally dozens of variants of individual films. And most countries demanded their own cuts as well, although by the late 50s many European countries would allow nude and other so-called risque scenes and many movies had them added for extra viewership overseas. Movies you wouldn’t imagine, like _Sex Kittens Go to College_, which was utterly clean in the states but had a robot fetishing scene abroad. Most of this nonsense in the U.S. stopped six decades ago, of course. You’d have to be very old to have ever experienced it. Television prints were normally made from a single master, so most of the variants appear only in collections. Changes for other countries still abound. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849/60 "2022-06-10T02:57:45Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Scenes were cut only if the black performers were featured rather in demeaning servant roles. Those got through just fine. ? I don’t quite get this. Did you perhaps mean something like “only if the black performers were featured other than in demeaning servant roles”? Yeah, I agree that even southern theaters seem to have had no problem with movies depicting black performers as domestics and other subservient roles. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-woke-are-movies-really/965849.md?page=4)