Now That Democrats Won The Midterms, Is ‘Woke’ Coming Back? 

As the midterm results rolled in last Tuesday, there was one common refrain I kept seeing: woke is back, baby! We’re inventing five new genders, every Thanksgiving prayer gotta start with a land acknowledgment, and we’re remaking every John Wayne movie with a queer, nonbinary lead actor. That’s just the law now, folks. Deal with it.

In all seriousness, though, the overwhelming victory by Democrats during last week’s midterms left me wondering if ‘woke’ is making a comeback. Woke has been co-opted by the right as a disparaging term to label anything that doesn’t center straight, white men with so-called Christian values, but personally, I wear woke as a badge of honor, cause f-k those cornballs. 

With that said, the 2024 election just felt awful, y’all. Now, I never really believed that Trump’s election win was an absolute rejection of diversity and progressive values. The economy was (and still is) in rough shape, and Kamala Harris was given very little time to introduce herself to voters and establish a succinct campaign message. People felt the economy was getting worse; the Democrats didn’t do a great job of explaining why the economy was getting worse, and Trump coasted to victory by making false promises of lowering prices and not starting any new wars. 

Despite Trump winning by normal margins amid depressed voter turnout, major corporations wasted no time backpedaling on their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Target was one of the biggest, uh, targets, as it announced an end to its DEI initiatives before Trump passed any legislation banning the practice. Movie studios wasted no time removing LGBTQ elements from their movies and burying their shows with Black leads.

Things were bad, but thanks to last week’s election results, we can safely say reports on the death of woke have been greatly exaggerated. 

State legislators in Texas are already working to reinstate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at publicly funded colleges and universities. In my home state of Arizona, voters struck down an anti-DEI prop with 60% of the vote. Mind you, Arizona has historically been the definition of a purple state.

Chris Pappas made history by becoming the first openly gay Senator after winning his race in New Hampshire. In fact, we saw a litany of firsts on election night! From Keisha Lance Bottoms becoming the first Black woman to ever become governor, Abdul Al-Sayed becoming the first Muslim senator, to Gina Hinojosa flipping the Texas governor’s seat and becoming the state’s first Latina governor in the process. 

The idea that Americans are against diversity and progressive values was decisively rejected by absurdly high margins last week. Add to that the fact that companies that maintained their DEI initiatives faced no financial repercussions and were viewed more favorably by consumers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see corporations bending over backward to show their progressive values.

In fact, the absolute piledriver that Democrats gave Republicans last week had me very curious about the direction Skydance is going to take with the content it produces. Skydance Co-CEO David Ellison and his father, Larry Ellison, have gotten quite close to the Trump administration. David threw several dinners for Trump ahead of the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, and even attended this year’s State of the Union with late Sen. Lindsay Graham. 

So clearly, David Ellison has sympathies for the Republican Party, which made it all the more surprising when he said that James Gunn and Peter Safran would continue to run DC Studios after the merger, given their slate of DC films were Peak Woke. Turns out that was a lie, as Ellison fired Gunn and Safran earlier this week. 

Who did Ellison replace them with? A conservative Christian who considers whether or not a movie will play to his grandma in his decision-making. The official reasoning given by Skydance was that Superman and Lanterns didn’t hit the numbers they wanted and had no cultural impact. As a result, the DCU is changing direction, and Lanterns is not getting renewed for a season two.

To say that Superman and Lanterns had no cultural impact makes me incredibly curious what culture David Ellison is paying attention to. Because the actual audience really isn’t that opposed to “wokeness,” despite what incels and bots on Twitter would lead you to believe. 

It’s why Sinners was a sensation last year, why Lanterns was all anyone was talking about every Sunday, and why One Battle After Another crushed it at the Oscars last year. It’s why Heated Rivalry, an explicitly queer love story, is one of the biggest shows of the year. Black stories, queer stories, and politically complicated stories are still driving the culture, despite what corporations try to tell us. 

With Skydance, we’re seeing a company double down on a viewpoint Americans have rejected with both their vote and their dollar. I’m curious to see if Hollywood at large is going to continue its walkback on diversity, or if they’re going to reverse course and lean into the Blue wave. 

The question “Is woke coming back?” was rhetorical, because if pop culture and the recent election have shown us anything, it’s that people didn’t lose their appetite for progressive values. 

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A Week Later, I’m Still Living For MAGA Midterm Crashouts

Democrats Won Big In The Midterms, But They Still Dropped The Ball