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Economic Times

The anti-woke can be as woke as the woke

NOT YOUR IDEA OF DAVID COPPERFIELD, EH? I consider myself to be slept, not woke. Each time I learn about some school in Britain pulling some book out of their library on account of it being 'regressive' - or, not 'progressive enough' - I chuckle and eyeroll at the same time like a gay John Wayne, thinking of the books they pull out of American school libraries for being 'progressive' - or, 'too progressive,' as my grandma would like to call people who 'live in sin' (unmarried cohabiting couples). But let's just say there are sins far graver than excessive or performative activism - that is, being woke. Sure, finding 'narcissistic behaviour' or 'cultural appropriation' lurking under every lamp post can make a chic virtue out of virtue-signalling. But what was considered woke yesterday (without the word being invented then) - whether it be demanding a 'benign' colonial power to bugger off, or being against 'disciplinary' corporal punishment, or finding 'tough love' domestic violence to be abhorrent - can become SOP good sense today. But being anti-woke has also emerged as a new form of intelligence-signalling. There are people who can now make a living (read: dinner party conversations and columns) by woke-hunting. This is especially evident whenever traditional depictions in pop culture are stitched to PC culture. Like, say, Disney's depiction of a Black actress as The Little Mermaid in the eponymous 2023 film. 'This is the limit!' scream the anti-wokemeisters. I recently watched Armando Iannucci's The Personal History of David Copperfield, a cinematic adaptation of Charles Dickens' 1850 novel. True, meeting the Victorian hero-narrator and finding him being played by Dev Patel was unexpected, especially for us honed on our Occidentalism via Dickens, Enid Blyton, James Bond, Jeeves, and Britannia biscuit diet. But after the initial 'What the Dickens!' surprise of a Brown Copperfield - and other non-White-as-the-cliffs-of-Dover actors - the film proceeds wonderfully with its modernist wit, charm, and freshness. No shred of DEI-ness creeps in to provide any diversity message on the sly beyond the obviously visual. In fact, very subtly, it brings a new layer of depicting how universal Dickens' Victorian characters are to this day, in any society. When I saw Peter Brook's cinematic version of his and Jean-Claude Carriere's 1985 stage play, Mahabharata, in Kolkata in 1989, the terms 'DEI' and 'woke' would have sounded Jesuit Latin and wrong English, respectively. Almost all the characters were played by (non-Hindu) non-Indians, with only Malika Sarabhai as Draupadi. Senegalese-French actor Mamadou Dioume's performance as Bhima left me with goosebumps all over my nominally Hindu, Bengali brown skin. Brook's superb treatment, part-Shakespeare, part-Kurosawa, was far-removed from the opulent kitschof BR Chopra's immensely more popular 1988-1990 TV series on Doordarshan. It gave out no smoke of woke. Instead, it was 'just' a powerful reinterpretation, the 'visual' deviation from standard ethnic depiction adding to its universal power. A new stage production of Ramayana has been making waves in Karachi this month. Directed by Yogeshwar Karera and produced by Rana Kazmi of Mauj Theatre Group, it's incidental that barring the director and two actors who are (Pakistani) Hindu, all other members of the production team are (Pakistani) Muslim. What holds the Karachi Ramayana's appeal is its interpretation not of a religious epic done with a secular mission, but of a human classic staged for thoughtful entertainment. A particular kind of anti-woke brigade rails out against any form of deviation from the original 'purity' of Western-White-gendered tropes - 'Black James Bond!' 'Woman Hamlet!' 'Chinese woman Dr Watson!' Which is as dogmatic as shouting one's head off about Alauddin Khilji being depicted as a 'depraved Muslim' in a Bollywood movie. And as silly as removing golliwogs from Enid Blyton's Noddy books, or changing language deemed offensive from Roald Dahl's children's books. While the public may never take to a Chinese Superman - after all, immigrants from Planet Krypton have to be White as created by Jerry Siegel (Praise Be Upon Him) - a wok Clark Kent needn't be woke. In the head of a clever writer-director, it could be what Shakespeare in his play, Vishal Bhardwaj in Maqbool, and, more recently, Anirban Bhattacharya in Mandaar, superbly did to Holinshed's Macbeth. Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. 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