Conservatives spend a lot of time talking about how “wokeness” has infected the culture. The steady increase in the amount of socially liberal storylines is, indeed, difficult to ignore. Endless gay characters, forced diversity, and social justice plot lines have spoiled a majority of newly produced media.
Woke media has been a growing nuisance since the early 2000s, but it was allowed to reach its apex during the Biden administration. The former President focused much of his public messaging on DEI initiatives, “pride” events, and climate change activism. Under his misguided leadership, companies and consumers were urged to follow suit. Corporations stocked their shelves with merchandise for pride month, colleges ignored civil rights laws to have inclusive student bodies, and plastic straws were replaced with paper ones so that environmentalists could “save the baby turtles.”
“Woke” is a game. “Woke” is playing chicken. Think of it like Jenga: A normal, functioning society relies on certain cultural norms. For example, the notions that you can’t change your gender or that the police are valuable. Each of these represent a block in our Jenga tower.
In order to be more “woke,” you have to take away one of those blocks. When a liberal states that there are more than two genders and the government agrees, one of those blocks is removed. When a protester claims that we need to abolish ICE, another one of those blocks gets removed. Eventually, after enough of the social truths our society was built on get removed, the tower collapses. Some of the blocks of truth might still remain afterwards, but they no longer fit together in a cohesive structure.
So, sure, conservatives spend a lot of time talking about how woke things are. But it’s an important conversation. If we ignore the woke-ification of American culture for long enough, America will collapse into a pile of lousy half-truths that don’t mean anything.
The ending of Stranger Things could’ve been a cutaway gag from Family Guy. Most people only saw the six-and-a-half minute clip where one of the main characters, Will, comes out as gay in the series finale. The writing is sloppy and the cinematography makes the scene feel like an awkward spoof. In context with the rest of the show, it feels tonally askew.
When Stranger Things debuted in 2016, it was met with rave reviews. Older audiences appreciated the show’s retro references, with the kids’ adventures making them nostalgic for their own pre-internet era childhoods. Younger audiences were enamoured with the interesting storytelling and the unique aesthetics of the 1980s. Despite having horror elements, the show did a great job of romanticizing the America of decades past. In comparison, the show’s finale betrays 1980s America in favor of pushing identity politics into the plot.
Stranger Things is engaging in a subtle form of revisionist history. When Will confesses that he is gay, all of the other characters rush to his side to reassure him that he is loved and accepted. It is a very 2020s response. After all, many LGBT activists spend countless hours talking about how America is an inherently homophobic country, with a hateful history. However, this show that is supposed to be set in the 1980s, is instead arguing that Americans have always supported gays. It’s a contradiction from the Left. They want it both ways: to be constant victims in need of reparations and to rewrite American history so that gay lifestyles have always been common and welcome.
The Stranger Things contradiction removes one small but very real block from the tower of American society. Piece by piece, the things we know to be true are twisted, tapped out, and taken away. Piece by piece, we surrender the foundations of civilization. It’s easy to roll our eyes whenever another show inserts a bit of woke propaganda into its storyline, but its important that we continue to call it out for what it is: a gross rewriting of American history. A way to demoralize a nation through its media consumption. A gradual disgrace of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
It’s 2026, don’t let them play the game.
