Beyond wokeness, there’s no culture to even be a part of.

Woody Allen is doing a very limited publicity tour for his latest movie, which can’t get any actual distribution because the filmmaker had been canceled a while back, and was asked about the obvious.

“Someone asked me about cancel culture, and I said, ‘If you’re going to be canceled, this is the culture that you want to be canceled from.’ Because who wants to be part of this culture?” he asks, rhetorically, surrounded by emblems (remnants?) of a previous culture: the works of great authors on the bookshelves; DVDs (The Godfather, Reds, Annie Hall—three with Diane Keaton) on the coffee table.

I’m not a fan of either the man or his movies, but it’s still a striking statement coming from a man who used to be at the center of culture, dismissing the current culture as worthless.

And it’s hard to argue with him.

What is culture now? Comic book movies (woke), beach reads (also woke), soap operas pretending to be dramas (woke) and all of it feeling oddly the same like it’s all been run through the same filter. And none of it even matters because 96% of what the younger generations consume is social media.

Woody does have a point. Aside from the economics of it, what is there to be canceled from and who wants to be a part of this culture?

American culture once seduced the world. Now American culture means a recognizable IP and some special effects. Technique, narrative, and even acting are becoming lost arts like certain obscure forms of ancient pottery or the secrets of building the pyramids.

When Chaplin was prevented from returning to America, one could argue that something of value was lost (then again considering that he went on to do Limelight and A King in New York, it seemingly wasn’t), but what of value is being lost now?

I certainly don’t mourn Woody Allen getting canceled even though the charges are obviously spurious. Back when Allen was getting distributed it was through Amazon Video looking to borrow his prestige and the movies were terrible. Canceling Harvey Weinstein means we’ll miss out on more European Oscar bait, losing Kevin Spacey means he’ll play fewer villains speaking in the same menacing monotone, and losing Joss Whedon means the comic book characters will have to speak in less soulless quips.

And that’s the people from previous generations who were canceled.

The entertainment products of the last generation could vanish from the earth and very little of any value will have been lost because, among other things, there’s barely even a discernible culture here.

Wokeness is the only discernible characteristic in a culture that otherwise is a frantic remix of the past with the attitudes of the present in which everything becomes one giant mass and whose only purpose is to gain social media traction or perish.

We live in a world where Taylor Swift, who’s too bland and boring to play herself in the event that anyone ever filmed her life story, is the biggest musical act in the country.

What more needs to be said?

Country music has become so indistinguishable from pop which has become so equivalent to R&B that the big news is that Beyonce can adopt a country persona and no one can tell the difference.

As AI voices replace autotune, the idea of a performer as anything except a technological construct is passe.

Hollywood studios are folding or preparing to fold and merge what’s left ahead of the incursion of AI generated video. Their only business strategy lies in hoarding their IPs so they can go on making Avengers or Star Wars movies until the copyright runs out.

Who wants to be part of this culture? Beyond wokeness, there’s no culture to even be a part of.

Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield