e360. Selling Woke: Navigating Complexities of Capitalism and Media Bias

You know how there’s all of those weirdos who are always claiming that “you get woke and go broke” while at the same time complaining that it’s unfair that all of media is now woke and suddenly they don’t have any non-woke alternatives. This seems incongruous and like it would be pretty hard for both of these things to be true at the same time. This of course is mostly because they’re not. Does that mean that all media really is “woke” well, that’s not really true either. In fact, more often than not, media is just trying to sell itself to an audience. It is trying to anticipate what the audience wants and give it to them. And this seems ever more fluid and variable in today’s… “reTrumped” cultural landscape. On today’s episode, Mav and Wayne welcome returning guest Matthew Brake to talk all about the ways in which content sort of wraps itself in ideology in order to sell itself to an audience and how it’s a lot more complicated than simply saying something is or isn’t woke. We break down how media exploits everything from feminism, to gender and sexual identity, racial activism, and religion to elections or the wars in Gaza and Ukraine in order to sell content and then will just as quickly turn on them when no longer politically expedient. And it all starts from a discussion of recent media properties Captain America: Brave New World and Win or Lose. It’s kind of a whirlwind of an episode, so listen and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Citations and Links: * This episode’s Call For Comments * Thank you to Maximilian’s thoughtForm Music for our theme * Follow Matthew at Pop Culture & Theology * Follow Matthew on BlueSky: @popandtheology * Follow Mav on BlueSky: @chrismaverick * Follow Wayne on Instagram: @tetroc2017 * Follow us on BlueSky: @voxpopcast * Follow us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/voxpopcast * Subscribe to our YouTube channel * Make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever podcasts are found and please leave us a review!