#and kind of frightening too | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

adarkrainbow · 7 months

Note

what exactly is 'the bad “woke movement'. you mean Disney's attempts at political correctness in their casting choice? describing it as "woke" is a serious misuse of black slang.

I was a bit confused at first since I have switched the subject out of the Disney Snow White controversy some times ago.

I am sorry to inform you that the use of "woke" as a deragoratory term to designate the people we once called ironically "Social-Justice Warriors" is actually not a "black slang" anymore. In fact I didn't even know it was supposed to be a "black slang" originally, my perception of it was that it was originally a term that was created on the Internet in a positive way, to designate people that were actually fighting against all sorts of discriminations and social problems, and opening their eyes to the wrongness of societies and modern age... Only to then be switched, by the Internet itself at first, and then by the media who took the word back, to be used as a designation of extreme social-justice warriors, or people who'se extreme self-righteousness, mixed with either hypocrisy or just ignorance, resulted in them coming of as a more mad or harmful than helpful.

If you do not like me using the term, unfortunately for you you'll have to go after pretty much every American media, then after after European media - and I am not even counting the politics of both America and Europe! The term "woke" has left its Internet-exclusivity a long time ago, and now is used even in non-English speaking countries (such as France) to designate the extremes to which some people or groups carry on the "social war". Now the thing to be careful of is that many extreme-right or very hateful people will use "woke" as a way to degrade or humiliate rightful defenders of things such as feminism, transgender rights, homosexuality, etc, etc... So I want to insist: I am not susbscribing to any extreme-right ideology, and I know very well they are using this term for their own negative agenda.

But I am not of the extreme-left either, and as someone who saw very well the dangers of any kind of extremes, I have to recognize that there is indeed a bad, extreme "woke" movement, that ranges from the ridiculous to the hateful. It exists. To imagine that all fights for the right reasons are done with the right means is to be too naive.

A very recent case - which is not woke, because it isn't about social justice or social blights, but about ecology, however it illustrates VERY well the stupidity and hypocrisy of some of these modern extreme groups. In France there is an extreme ecological group that has been making a lot of noise and some extreme actions to alert people and authorities about climate change and asking for something to be done. Interesting, right? Good, right? Except that their actions are VERY dubious in effect. For example some times ago they did protests related to, I think it was the droughts and water supply handlings? I can't recall exactly the why of the protest - but they did so by destroying entire fields and putting several farmers in difficult position because they had their entire crops gone. It wasn't some big mass-industrial farming, it wasn't genetically modified stuff, it was just your regular farmer with his fields, and he had his whole crops destroyed by the group's protect - which wasn't even aimed at him (if I recall there was something about them mistaking his field for another nearby, or something). Now my memory of this case is very blurry as you can see - but one other case popped up just two days ago so I can clearly tell you the problem this time: a few days ago, the group protested against the instalation of a toxic waste disposal site near a city and precisely near a river that passed by the water's city. To protest that and alert the city's citizens, they poured tons of products in the river's water that turned it bright, glowing green - to show them the fear of toxic products reaching them by the water.

But what's the twist of the story? To make the water bright green, they poured ACTUAL toxic chemicals and colorants in the water, which resulted in killing numerous fishes of the river. It went viral on the Internet, the whole "ecologists kill fishes" thing, but it shows how by ignorance (here ignorance of the toxicity of the products you use), those who fight against pollution become the pollution-makers themselves.

Now, that was not related to social things so "woke" isn't to be applied to them - but it is a good illustration of how fighting one extreme can lead to another. But if you want a case of "bad woke" actions I have a perfect one for you - which is from before the term "woke" was taken back by the media. It was something that happened in the French part of Canada (and in general when you want some misguided and extreme woke behavior, you can go to Canada, they are very talented here at misguided good actions). It was a gesture done by Christian (Catholic) religious groups, related to the whole dreadful rediscovery of the horrors of the special so-called "schools" they had prepared for First Nations kids. You know, the ones with mass graves and such. To show that they wanted to bury the past behind them and reject the discrimination of Native-Americans, they decided to collect all sorts of old classics of French childhood literature that had depictions of First Nations people deemed offensive (for example Lucky Luke and Asterix comic books)... and they burned it in a huge bonfire.

Of course, thats CERTAINLY the best way to prove you want to help the people you have persecuted and killed for so long: do not give them money, do not change the laws, do not actually do something for them, just become book-burners! That's CERTAINLY going to help and that's CERTAINLY going to make you the "good guys".

You see what I mean by the "bad woke" movement? It isn't a movement in itself, but just the extremes these attempts at "good" and fighting against discrimination can lead to. Sometimes to the point of just coming off as a new form of discrimination. Another case, that was in France, and done in Paris. I personally think that it was a dubious idea, and maybe someone will disagree with me, but it was a project brought forward - to handle the help provided to rape victims. The whole idea was that man should be banned of all groups, organizations and help systems brought to rape victims, because in the politician's words, women had to stay between themselves, and rape victims had to cut all ties with men to get better. Another similar dubious "woke" incident (it happened, just like the one above, in Paris, because Paris recently went through a wave of bad-woke incidents and propositions thanks to the local government in power), was when a "set of safe space" was created, from which men were banned - all men - and which only welcomed... "Women and transgenders". The phrasing and formula might seem weird, and that's literaly how it was said, and it took not a long time to understand the problem: it welcomed all transgenders, and all women, but banned all men. Aka: transgender men either had to be banned from it, because they were men (so they lied upon saying they welcomed all transgenders) ; either they were allowed in, but thus not recognized as actual "men" and still considered women.

You see how there's some good intentions buried down there, but in effect it is twisted and warped in another form of discrimination?

When it comes to my worries about the new Snow-White movie, it isn't about an active, harmful, reverse-discrimination type of "bad woke". But I do fear about the "accidentally harmful" and "plain ridiculous" bad-woke. To handle the idea that a character named "Snow-White" is black is something that needs carefulness and intelligence - and Disney's had the bluntness and grace of a hammer wielded by an angry bear recently. I have one precise fear for example that I keep repeating around: if they choose to still refer to Snow-White's name as a reference to the fact she has a lighter skin and thus is beautiful because of it, and given they have chosen an actress with a light skin tone - it can result in a scenario enacting "colorism" fully. Aka, a practice and set of worldviews put in place in the slavery and discrimination-era America, about how the lighter the Black person's skin, the "better" and more "beautiful" they were. This resulted in practices such as putting "lighter" Blacks above "darker" ones, for example choosing Black people with light skin to oversee "darker" slaves and the "lighter" ones being given a less harsh treatment than the others.

Its a whole another cesspool of discrimination born of the horror that was America in this era - but it is still something that Afro-American people fight against and dislike today, and something many media have been accused of doing by putting "lighter skinned" Black characters in the position of "prettier" or "better" characters than "darker skinned" ones.

No need to tell you the whole dwarf issue is also a big "bad woke movement" move on the part of Disney. To answer to a loud minority that thinks the dwarfs roles in Snow-White is backward and insulting, they simply decide to erase them from the story... Despite the role of the seven dwarfs being something that many actors with dwarfism enjoy and defend because it was often their first entry into the acting world, and despite the fact that the original Disney seven dwarfs were positive and complex characters that were far more compelling and powerful than many other Snow-White adaptations (in fact, that's the problem, the reason the dwarfs are seen as "backwards" today is because so many post-Disney adaptations reduced them to goofy, joke secondary characters as flat as a cardboard cut-out). There are tons of ways of making the dwarfs strong and badass and cool and powerful characters - and it has been done before. (Just remember how the dwarfs in the original Disney movie are the only ones who stand up to the evil queen, and the only ones who make her VISIBLY AFRAID as they hunt her down to kill her in revenge).

So we come with the mixed and complicated result we have: Because a role is deemed "problematic", it is erased and replaced - but as a result, erasing an opportunity for actors with dwarfism to become famous and appear in a big blockbuster seen by millions is perceived as discrimination against said actors with dwarfism, as they are replaced by so-called "normal" people. They could have simply worked on making the dwarfs' characters a badass role the actors could have had no shame of playing, and they could have just gone wth what the original movie did - make the dwarfs the true heroes and protagonist of the tale. But they rather decided to close the door and make actors with dwarfism even less visible on screen.

I hope it clarifies my whole position on the subject.

#answer #snow white #disney's snow white #woke #the bad woke movement #i am always a bit tired of having to mix politics and fairytales together #but it is something one cannot escape because fairytales are so widespread and powerful #they become political tools so regularly #it is amazing to see how throughout times so many cultures and governments used them politically #and kind of frightening too #there is matter for a whole research paper about the political nature of fairytales #but that's not for me to make i'm just here for lore and folklore #snow white live action

22 notes · View notes