When Will the Arts Realise Woke has Peaked?
In a recent staging of Jack and the Beanstalk, the giant was revealed to be ‘Mother Earth’, enraged by humanity’s littering and environmental destruction. This dreary and outdated message was delivered to a blameless audience of children and elderly relatives in a tidy, entirely litter-free West Country market town only last week. It was humourless, heavy-handed and left the audience distinctly unmoved. Letters of complaint have been submitted by the grandfather who generously purchased tickets for 14 members of his family. The pantomime nonetheless served as a neat illustration of what might be termed ‘the lag’ – the woke hangover in the arts – which we should expect to persist into 2026. While the EDI/DEI and Net Zero supertankers are indeed beginning, slowly, to change course, a substantial volume of pantomimes, television series, radio plays, advertising campaigns and even £100 million Church of England ‘reparations’ funds were commissioned during the high-water mark of the woke era and have yet to emerge. They will continue to trickle out over the coming months and years, and are unlikely to dry up entirely until late 2027.
The question of whether culture is upstream of politics is a tough one. Andrew Breitbart famously argued that “politics is downstream of culture”, and the recent case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah appears to support the claim. Politicians responded eagerly to public appeals from actors including Olivia Colman and Emma Thompson to secure the release of a supposedly gentle poet, only to discover that they had taken up the cause of an individual who has posted openly antisemitic and anti-white material online.
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The arts have been “woke” for as long as I can remember. I grew up in the 70s. Some of the more extreme stuff might fade but I don’t see much prospect of any fundamental change in my lifetime. I largely ignore them.
My wife and I agreed to watch AMADEUS because we like Mozart. Normally once I saw all the wokery (black people in 18th century Austria) I would refuse to watch – But we ploughed on anyway with this one.
Ofcourse I remarked on the amount of black people in the program to my wife and so we googled it. It turns out there were a couple of dozen black people at most in Austria in the 18th century——–I think they all must have appeared in this series.—- I simply cannot understand this need to have black people in a program like this where it is obvious there would not be any going about in the 18th century. Do these program makers not see how absurd they are with this “colour blind casting” nonsense? ——-Would they make a TV series about the Congo in the 18th century full of white people? I don’t think so for one moment. Would they make a film about Nelson Mandela and cast George Clooney in the lead role? —NOT ON YOUR NELLY
There is no physical resemblance between the film’s Da Ponte and his authenticated portrait. Cultural misappropriation at its worst. As you say, in reverse we would never hear the end of it from these resentful hypocrites.
wink——-Diversity only ever works in one direction—–LESS WHITE PEOPLE.
It is worse than that. It is assuming the credit for something not achieved. A pretence or lie. Da Ponte was not black. How is this different from other kinds of racism?
It isn’t any different at all. ——It all emanates from ESG where the Social Engineers that have infiltrated every area of life try to create the world as they would like it to be rather than present it as it actually is.
But it was not just the one character that was black. The program would have us believe that in the 18th century in Austria there were very large numbers of black people. But in fact at most there were only a couple of dozen. It is blatant social engineering via drama programs. It is the presentation of a world as the ESG complaint want it to be rather than how it actually is.
Fewer
I’m sorry, but a liking for Mozart is not justification for watching DEI propaganda. Down vote (if you can) and switch it off.
I said in my post that I normally would not view blatant wokery. On this occasion I did and as result of viewing it I was able to make the comments I did. ——-I have had plenty to say on websites like this about these pathetic programs that try to influence public perception.
Imagine a remake of ‘Zulu’ with a huge number of white natives charging towards the outpost of Rourke’s Drift defended by black soldiers.
It is totally absurd. —– Check out my George Clooney analogy
Would that be Clooney as Mandela straight up or will he be blacked up? Oh the fun we could have if it was the latter.
Just say no! Refuse to watch their propaganda and refuse to pay the licence fee.
Yes I understand what you are saying. ——I refuse to watch most of the “propaganda”, but you must realise that there are two people living in my house and my wife, although aware of this stuff is entitled to her choice of viewing as well and is often prepared to dismiss some of the wokery, because lets face it, it is everywhere. —-It would be extremely anti social of me to never watch drama with my wife. I never watch it on my own, only with her.
“If you find yourself quietly rolling your eyes at the television or cinema screen when an improbable actor is cast against type….”
As much as possible, I ignore all TV programmes which persist in using black actors to depict historical white characters or to promote the LIE that this country has always been a multi-racial “nivarna” with a population which was anything up to 50% who were black.
On the rare occasions when I start watching one as soon as the propaganda starts, I down vote and switch off. If everyone did the same, they’d soon get the message.
I have nothing against black people. I just object to the propaganda and LIES which are being peddled.
Absolutely. I would love to have an honest conversation with decision makers responsible for the over-representation of every group other than straight white men in advertising, to hear how they rationalise/justify it.
When Will the Arts Realise Woke has Peaked?
Ask again when the BBC has been defunded and the Arts Councils dissolved. Nothing concentrates the mind like there being no money for ‘approved’ behaviours.
‘The Arts’ developed as a spare time activity. Society as a whole has to be rich enough to support those who do no productive work but instead focus on ‘pleasing’ output – be it music, acting, pictures, sculpture, poetry, whatever.
Written history is full of stories of poor struggling artists who die young and only achieve fame posthumously. Rich, successful artists are as rare as hen’s teeth and rather a modern phenomenon – and quite possibly used inherited wealth to fund their output.
Sure, our culture would be poorer without people performing Shakespeare’s or Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s dramas but they have no ‘right’ to be supported in that effort. Only if others appreciate the effort enough to pay will they eat.
Defund the Arts Council now..
The arts establishment in the UK is still locked into the postwar mindset of “bringing culture to the masses”, which is quite obviously a top-down elite project.
Like all forms of Socialism, it’s predicated on an established elite class which thinks it knows better than anyone else, and therefore mustn’t pass up any opportunity to remind the masses of their wayward inferior wrongthink.
Theatre, in particular, and the closely adjacent TV circus, with its parade of virtue-signalling luvvies, suffers badly from this.
Woke is only its current manifestation, but it will morph into something else as long as it’s subsidised by the state.
It’s not going to change until the state punchbowl (which we pay for) is taken away.
There shouldn’t even BE an Arts Council to spaff taxpayers’ money up the wall.
I don’t think the state has any business giving our money to “culture, media and sport” or regulating those things in any way.
My particular bugbear is adaptions from classic literature. Colour blind casting, women introduced into all male narratives, ‘girl power’ fake storylines, no aristo not a sadist etc. Don’t get me started on the appalling anachronistic dialogue…. Unwatchable.
Minds that do not want to be changed, cannot be changed.
So, all those of us genuine art lovers who have puzzled for the whole of our long lives to see the point of modern art have had a point then? It started as largely governmental rubbish?
See also the Stakhanovite movement and the posters extolling it. Bold art or governmental rubbish?
Yes, it was a load of Pollocks
Notice how all the woke films shoehorning Third World Ethnics like William Tomomori Fukuda Sharpe into historic white roles always have at least one justifiably famous white actor, in this case the renowned Paul Bettany cast as the villain, in order to lure in the viewers, who wouldn’t bother watching it otherwise.
Some of this started decades ago with the ‘obligatory spade’ policy in films. In fact yesterday had a prime example in Force 10 From Navarone made in 1978. To be fair the whole film is a travesty of the Alistair Maclean book, but there was certainly no black soldier in the book and trying to have a black man blend in without being spotted in German-occupied Yugoslavia is a big ask. Mind you, the much better Guns of Navarone changed the sex of the two local partisans from male to female for no obvious reason. And having a rewatch of the excellent Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy series after a short feature on Michael Jayston who played Peter Guillam as a normal person while in the recent film this role was made gay, again for no obvious reason. Jayston said he sadly could not reprise the role in Smiley’s People, where Guillam is married – to a woman – and has two children – presumably not transgender.
Every year in the Netherlands, a cabaretier (comedian/musician/performer – think Bill Bailey or Victoria Wood) is chosen to present a 90-minute round-up of the past year. It’s usually funny and poignant. This year it was the stand-up ‘comedian’ Peter Pannekoek, and he spent almost the whole time having a barely-factual whinge about people and events he personally doesn’t like. The was way more applause than laughter. The fact that the national broadcaster thought that was the right choice for this very prestigious slot at the end of a year like 2025 tells me they certainly haven’t acknowledged the passing of woke.