Is the Dam Cracking?

 

Several substantial Hollywood names have just come out against aspects of the woke agenda: Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Richard Dreyfus. They might have only publicly objected to this or that point; but that does not matter. With wokeism, you are either all in, and question nothing, or you are out, and the enemy. Ask Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, or Tulsi Gabbard.

This begins to look as though the dam might be bursting. A huge proportion of people, in Hollywood and in the wider society, have been going along not out of any conviction, but either just to get along or to avoid having their career destroyed. Artists—and these people are, in the end, artists—are rarely really ideological. They don’t care about politics, and will generally just accept and roll with what those around them say. They are highly empathetic. But they are also free spirits; they will entertain any idea, however mad, but will soon hate being restricted to it. The chameleon poet. So they could embrace the woke assertions at first, and superficially, but over time, will feel desperately constrained by them. The strengthening of the woke dam, I suggest, is why the arts have been so moribund over the past few years and decades. Hollywood more than anywhere.

Pressure has been building up behind that dam. Now, if enough artists too big to be destroyed start speaking out, it will be like the tension being released in a deluge. The woke will suddenly go from being seemingly all-powerful to being common objects of ridicule. I think this is happening now to Dylan Mulvaney and Bud Light.

More evidence that the arts may be about to flip: at a recent meeting of the League of Canadian Poets, I was encouraged to hear that they were having continuing trouble finding members for their inevitable Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee—the woke police. The chair of the Feminist Caucus declared her suspicion that one current member of that DEI committee was a mole. The Feminist Caucus is feeling vulnerable. A recent online reading provoked a high level of negative comments—it got ratioed, it seems,  in YouTube jargon. So the next time they disabled comments; and found that attendance dropped by half. In other words, half their audience seems to have been coming to jeer. 

And, while the Feminist Caucus motors on, the committee for Queer Poets is moribund--not enough members any longer to hold a meeting. This despite the fact that there are a lot of homosexual and lesbian poets. The Aboriginal Poets continue, but the chair looks less aboriginal than I do—blonde, very pale of skin, with an Anglo name. By contrast, new committees for Parenting Poets and Poets of Faith have recently formed, and are apparently growing fast.

I am hopeful that things are happening, or are about to happen, in the culture.