Jake Gyllenhaal doesn’t like us very much (I think)
Well, at least he didn’t dump us during our respective birthday parties, but I think certain parts of the opinion section of the New York Times seeped into this cute cabasa of his, and what comes out at a time of massive social upheaval is... some poorly rehashed Reaganist bullshit. Could this be sarcasm? Maybe. Was I a real blonde for those ten years? Absolutely not.
This week is a scorcher. I was never meant for the heat; I come from a land where the sun only tentatively sneaks in from underneath a thick cloud formation, and has never single-handedly activated the melanin in my genetic disposition. My skin remains freckled and my eyes are deep whirpools of a color unknown to those who have never hiked our rolling hills under a rainstorm, turning the grassy fields into turf-inundated sinkholes. I am melting, but try to remain sharp and alert. After all, (redacted profession) requires it year round. During a media round-up yesterday, partner and colleague described us as “media-savvy”. That’s how I landed onto this gem. What the fuck have we ever done to you, Jakey-Jakes?
What happens during this strange period when several industries are out of work and have to postpone their performances is that they’re trying to keep their spot in the, well, spotlight, by opining on things. There is plenty to opine on. Brexit is one thing. As far as I know, Jake has not called the Kentucky Attorney General to ask that the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor in her sleep be arrested. We have already covered that Jakey-Jakes is not interested in opining on the following:
Whether Black Lives Matter
The importance of community-based initiatives during a pandemic
The accountability of police forces
Lack of PoC representation in Hollywood
His role in #OscarsSoWhite
Whether dating women that are just 20 when you’re 40 constitutes predatory behavior
All of those issues are just like Black, indigenous, and queer lives: they matter. Jake isn’t interested. He also isn’t interested in criticism of movies in which he appears, such as the gratuitous rape scenes in Denis Villeneuve movies, the fact one of the directors he worked with praised Roman Polanski, or that it’s frankly quite odd women had to perform the emotional labour of explaining to him sexual harassment was Bad (TM). All of those are issues that only this new generation cares about, because it was so much better before. Anyway, people are asking what Jake Gyllenhaal is watching during his self-imposed exile. Instead of answering “I’m rewatching Friends while playing Words with Friends on my phone”, like everybody else, here’s what he served us:
So many opportunities to do the right thing, absolutely none taken.
“... would not have passed muster with the woke police”, let me translate this for you.
“It contains absolutely unacceptable homophobic / racist / sexist tropes that society has decided was no longer going to be the norm.”
“the woke police” is a term usually leveraged by conservative twitter pundits, aka URL Badmen, who are angry at The Youf for having values; who praise the status quo of a bygone era in which considerable sections of the population were deprived of rights and/or had to live in fear of retribution, humiliation, or destitution because they were not recognized as being the white straight male dominant force. Anything that goes against this is usually called “the woke police”. Again, for someone who is much too often parading his subscription to the Democratic party (which, I have to say, means jack shit to me), I have to stand up for my generation, which is Jake’s, and apologize to any person this is obviously seeking to offend.
I don’t give a flying fuck if he likes me. Interview after interview, he keeps saying he wishes people would have a conversation with him, instead of just taking a photo. It would help if he didn’t constantly look as if it was a chore, but I thought I would one day take him up on this offer: “hey Jake, how are you? Good performance tonight, thank you. How do you feel?” or something like that. I would probably be taken away by security for being so daring, mind you, but at this point I just kind of want to ask: what did we ever do to you? We are simply asking to exist, and to advocate for ourselves, right here. No one asked you to absorb Tom Friedman’s columns.
So I went on the internet to find the recesses in which the phrase “woke police” lies, usually in some corners that I avoid. Well, the first google searches are in: conspiracy theorist peddling Spiked Online, “Why i’m anti-woke”; Conservative and populist NY Post “Why the woke police have ruined entertainment”; the even more populist and downright racist Douglas Murray in the Daily Mail, “good riddance to the woke kids”, an obscure South African website’s opinion section that argues demanding the end of racial or sexist slurs (which, frankly, is just what being “woke” is) is the end of free speech. Yo, no one is an absolutist over here, whatever-your-name-is! My god, every undereducated white dude is qualified to be a columnist these days. Let me give you more exemples of where Jakey-Jakes may have gotten his not-so-cute little quip: right wing UK paper The Telegraph, and because I already feel I need to shower, I will give you far right extremist Ben Shapiro on Fox News. For those of us who live and breathe politics and international relations, and who happen to be progressive because human rights matter, the Guardian, who published an interview of Jake Gyllenhaal where he bullied their journalist, is explaining that this is a myth:
Woke – a term once used by African Americans to denote people who were alert to racism and social injustice – has been retired. As is often the case with black innovations, overuse by the white mainstream killed off its authenticity. Today, the person using the word is likely to be a rightwing culture warrior angry at a phenomenon that lives mainly in their imagination.
In short, we moved on, because we became tired to fight for what we believe was a basic standard of decency, and then whypipo used it to make fun of us, so we picked something else. “Political correctness” is extremely triggering in some circles, I found. So we tip-toe around the issue to preserve the fee-feels of people who still think watching The Cosby Show is palatable entertainment and who turn a blind eye to Roman Polanski because he’s talented, or really do question whether Ke$ha stood to lose her entire career after her sexual assault. There is no woke police, because as this blog keeps mentioning and as those who know me know I write about a lot, law enforcement is not exactly about enforcing the law as much as it is enforcing state power (we will not be discussing whether the law is in itself an instrument of state power in this blog, you will enrol in my classes and pay the tuition fees), but also because policing? Eh. Nah, we got our share.
But the truth is, there are no woke police. Instead there are – and here is the real enemy of the reactionary right – a lot of people who recognise that the progress that has been made is all the result of struggle. Barring those who would still like to deny women reproductive rights, who use overtly racist language (among these I include our prime minister) or who dislike the idea that Black Lives Matter, mainstream opinion no longer advocates a return to segregation, violent racism or the formal exclusion of women from social, political and economic life. But these gains are the result of constant, relentless struggle, as each era has battled against the conservatism of the time. A struggle in which people like Murray have always been on the wrong side, but whose gains end up benefiting us all.
There you go, Jakey-Jakes. You can enjoy your quaint little show that is perpetuating sexism and immigrant tropes because you feel this odd sense of nostalgia from the last hoarse breaths of the Cold War, the way I sometimes lose myself in thought over the “Fallout Shelter” metal sign I unscrewed from a brick wall nearby and rescrewed on my apartment door. The most ardent defenders of a boomer version of Jake Gyllenhaal would point out he said “fair enough” afterwards, but let’s all be honest with each other here and realise that was not him conceding he was wrong, but doing the equivalent of an eyeroll to appease the family at the Thanksgiving table.
Yesterday I came across this series of slides on instagram that explained why silence is violence, and why choosing not to be political or to remain silent in this specific era when a movement is building to entirely restructure a nation, and maybe the world, is inherently racist. I would say it’s definitely inherently privileged as fuck, to be able to choose whether or not one would engage. But the slides did make me think. Not engaging in civil rights movements is not a free ride theory exemption. There is no conflict, just transition. As such, it requires the participation of all. You can check those slides here and make up your mind. You might disagree and that’s alright.
