How woke is too woke? Every day Americans thought social justice culture crossed the line decades ago, but the people in control of our entertainment and platforms seem to think that if a little wokeness is good, then an entire mountain of it shoved down the throat of every person on the planet must be better. It’s getting to a point, however, where even the people with platforms are getting sick of it.
Take, for instance, a recent run-in Khal Drogo himself had with a New York Times journalist. When Aquaman star Jason Momoa got cornered with a question during an interview about his Game of Thrones character’s rape of Daenerys Targaryen on their wedding night.
As the New York Post reported, Momoa was asked about the subject by New York Times reporter David Marchese as to whether or not he regrets playing out that scene for the show. Momoa gave a very solid answer, pointing out that he was playing out a character that mirrored Ghengis Khan and that, despite the difficulty of doing the scene, was important to show who that character was.
After that, the rest of the interview became awkward and cold, with Momoa almost refusing to answer questions with any elaboration, and outright refusing to delve into certain topics. At the end of the interview, Momoa called the reporter out:
“I wanted to bring something up that left a bad feeling in my stomach. When you brought up ‘Game of Thrones,’ you brought up stuff about what’s happening with my character and would I do it again. I was bummed when you asked me that,” Momoa said.
“It just feels icky — putting it upon me to remove something. As if an actor even had the choice to do that. We’re not really allowed to do anything. There are producers, there are writers, there are directors, and you don’t get to come in and be like, ‘I’m not going do that because this isn’t kosher right now and not right in the political climate.’ That never happens. So it’s a question that feels icky. I just wanted you to know that.”
What was icky about it?
Everything.
For one, the question was a trap that would have caused Momoa to go from skyrocketing star to public pariah in the span of a tweet. Had he capitulated to the woke crowd that has become so zealous about depictions of women to the point of it being a religion, he would have limited his career options and been forced to behave a certain way in films for the rest of his life. Breaking from it would not only get him in trouble with the people he just bowed to, but he would have been called a hypocrite by everyone else.
Moreover, it’s a question that reinforces an idea that censorship is good and that was is and isn’t okay in art should be subject to the whims of socio-political movements.
Why should Momoa regret the scene? It was part of the story and part of the character he was playing. The scene didn’t just define his character, it gave stakes and drive to the character playing opposite of him. Momoa wasn’t actually committing rape and he definitely wasn’t promoting it. He was performing a scene with an actress who also agreed to do the scene herself in order to tell a story about these two characters, and the world they lived in.
Any person with two brain cells to rub together would understand this, but journalists have a beast to feed, and perhaps Momoa would trip and fall into its mouth. Marchese would have a scalp to his name and been lauded in his woke circles.
Momoa was right to be angry and what’s more, he was right to call the question out as wrong. Journalists are irresponsible to ask such questions, especially in a climate where one false move could send a person’s career, and indeed his life, spiraling into the abyss. Momoa wasn’t on trial for his role, he was promoting a new one.
But again, modern journalists can’t allow escapism to happen unscathed. No movie, sporting event, or library gathering can go without first being molested by modern leftist politics.
It makes one stop and wonder who’s really guilty of rape in our culture.
