You've probably heard the word 'woke' a lot online, and haven't really been sure what it means. That's okay, the people who use it frequently don't know what it means either. Originally, woke was used by the Black community, and meant to be aware of the injustices in the world around you, to be 'awake' to the fact that some things in life just aren't fair, and to be prepared to deal with that. As the Mario movie proves though, wokeness now means whatever you want it to mean, however you want to mean it. As politicians and influential figures continue to lean on it, it's important to understand exactly what people mean when they say it.

Over time, wokeness was adapted from meaning an awareness of injustice to instead mean pandering to social causes. Words do change meaning all the time, and while it's questionable that mainly white reactionaries felt the authority to change the meaning of a word that originated in African-American vernacular, at least that was consistent. The complaints weren't always valid, but if you claimed putting a wheelchair-bound lesbian into the third season of a sitcom to get ratings was the show 'going woke', at least we knew what you meant.

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The term became diluted when it no longer meant pandering in any real sense, but the presence of anything a right wing viewer may find objectionable. Recent Star Wars projects have been labelled 'woke' because of the presence of strong female characters and politics, even though the original movie made heroes out of characters based off the Viet Cong fighting US troops invading Vietnam and were led by Princess Leia.

A Bullet Bill carries Mario through the air at night in The Super Mario Bros. Movie

And now we come to Mario. When the Mario trailers dropped, it was quickly dismissed as too woke because Peach wore her Mario Kart biker overalls and stood up for herself, while Mario seemed to be a more comedic goofball. When the movie released, early reactionaries reviewed its wokeness with disdain. However, it enjoyed the most successful animated movie opening ever, and was enjoyed by regular gamers who just wanted to have a good time with their favourite koopa-stomping plumber (for the record, I liked it too). Then, one of the biggest names in the world of reactionary loudmouths, Steven Crowder, congratulated the "anti-woke Mario movie" for its success.

It's not really woke or non-woke. It's just a decent family movie. Crowder's reasoning was that the guy gets the girl, like good old fashioned movie heroes used to, as if Spider-Man/Iron Man/Captain America saving MJ/Pepper/Peggy hasn't been the driving force behind pop culture for the last decade, and every decade before that since movies began. But Crowder's right, Mario does get the girl. But he's also a goofball. And Peach is also a fearless leader. But she also wears a dress most of the time. None of this movie panders to anyone in particular (there is a female character in it, but that’s as close as you might argue it’s pandering, and even then Daisy and Rosalina are noticeably absent when Luma appears), it doesn't address any particular injustice, and has no discernable politics to speak of. It's just Mario, that's all there is.

Mario and Luigi look out the window of their van

But you can still describe 'just Mario' as woke because woke doesn't need to mean anything. Now that it's successful, the card is being quietly shuffled back into the deck until The Marvels rolls around, but you can call anything woke. Take the recent case of Dylan Mulvaney. You might have heard that the transgender influencer has become the new face of Bud Light and of Nike, but neither of these things are true.

Instead, Bud Light (which has been pro-LGBT since the '70s when they were the main supplier to gay bars) sent Mulvaney a custom pack of Bud Light with her face on it to promote to her followers. Likewise, Nike sent her a sports bra and yoga pants to wear in an Instagram story. None of this was being shoved down anyone's throats. It was very specifically a small deal for a trans influencer to promote two different products to her own audience of followers. Yet both companies were criticised for being woke and for insulting women with these campaigns.

Insulting or replacing women is another codeword like woke that doesn't need to mean anything. Hot on the heels of Mulvaney, an amateur ballet dancer who passed a course at the Royal Academy of Dance was accused of replacing women, and the academy itself of being - you guessed it - too woke.

Mario, Princess Peach, and Toad stand on top of a cliff above the clouds

Royal Academy of Dance is not a brick and mortar school, but an online certifier, and the dancer in question took a course in her interest for fun and passed the most basic standard. She was not placed on any elite ballet team at the cost of a cisgender woman. She also graduated in 2017, with the news only being discussed now because it's good outrage bait. There's no definition of wokeness that this could possibly break. A person paid money to an instructor and took a test, which they passed. But woke no longer means anything; it just means the presence of something that the worst among us want purged from society, whether that means people of colour, trans people, or anyone who does not fit into a conservative utopia.

This was exposed when author Bethany Mandel appeared on The Hill show Rising to discuss her new book, which contains a chapter on wokeness, and was asked to provide a definition for the term. Afterwards, she claimed it was a trick question, and she's correct in that regard. The interviewer was aware of the way wokeness has mutated into a dogwhistle against minorities of whatever description is applicable, and wanted an author who literally wrote the book on wokeness to commit to that worldview so they could debate it openly instead of hiding behind codes and winks. The result was the next best thing - a complete refusal to answer, an inability to define wokeness as anything else, and utter embarrassment.

It's funny when conservatives say Mario is woke then say it's not woke, because it shows they have no idea what they're talking about or any credibility. It's silly that a female character not constantly wearing a dress or the hero in an Illumination picture being silly is grounds for outrage, even if she mostly wears a dress and he gets the girl in the end. But it's also dangerous that a word used so readily against everything and everyone can be applied to a friendly cartoon movie, to a trans woman on a beer can, to anything and everyone powerful political parties think should not exist.

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