The New The Naked Gun and "Get Woke, Go Broke"

Those at all attentive to pop cultural controversy these past few years are likely to have encountered the phrase "Get woke, go broke," or its more popular derivative, "Go woke, go broke." Actually emanating from the science fiction community (which as I argued recently has been having these cultural battles since at least the 1950s, as you can see for yourself reading Earl Kemp's fascinating artifact, Who Murdered Science Fiction?) right-wing science fiction author and political commentator John Ringo coined the phrase in the wake of the controversy surrounding his appearance at a convention (in light of the content of his "Ghost" novels in particular). At least in the usage which has gained traction since then, the premise of the claim is that wokeness is something elites are foisting on a public uninterested in or broadly opposed to it; that "woke" propaganda ruins the artistic and entertainment value of any material it touches; and that offended and annoyed consumers will promptly punish the purveyors of woke material by refusing to pay for it. Of course, wokeness is a slippery term often used as simply a pejorative rather than a descriptor by the right in reference to things they do not like, possibly for any of a number of reasons. However, it is fair to say that even they are most likely to use the term in reference to what the word may more usefully denote, the call for social justice as specifically conceived by the advocate of postmodernist identity politics on behalf of those society has marginalized, particularly on grounds of race and gender.

Considering the recent "reboot" of The Naked Gun I wondered at the response of those inclined to the "Get woke, go broke" argument. Granted, the film did not have race-lifted or gender-swapped characters in the manner of, for example, Paul Feig's much-criticized remake of that other '80s comedy classic Ghostbusters. Still, it is notable that the film cast as the remake's female lead and femme fatale a 58-year old actress who has recently embraced a feminist public image (certainly evident in her recent comeback film, The Last Showgirl) extending to what came across as a personal rebellion against makeup--with this the case on camera in this film as well as off of it, and one might add, the camera generally treating her very differently from how it did her predecessor Priscilla Presley, distinctly post-#MeToo and post-Wonder Woman in its attitude toward "the male gaze." There is the changed attitude toward the gags, which like the original film contains plenty of crudity, but with the more sexually-themed bits pointedly eschewing away from playing off of female sexiness to stressing male discomfort and humiliation. (There is no cop car driving into a female locker room in the opening credits, and certainly anything like Frank Drebin's misadventures on the ledge of a certain tall building are unthinkable here.) If anything, the contrast is even more pointed when one compares this Pamela Anderson film to the Naked Gun film that so prominently featured her fellow '90s sex goddess Anna Nicole Smith, with regard to a film's sheer delight in glamorized pulchritude (and one might add, the humor it was prepared to mine from its part in the goings-on, down to Smith's last scene in the film)--all of which, going by the comment I have seen on the Internet, remains much appreciated.

In short, if these aspects of the film are more subtly woke than many of those things that set off alarm bells among the anti-woke it was still, as a new take on a beloved franchise that when compared with the original can seem thoroughly accommodating of present-day identity politics the new Naked Gun would seem exactly the sort of thing to agitate them--the more in as the first film's cowriter and director David Zucker had plenty of critical words for the project, and the movie's box office seems a far cry from that of the original, and what might have been hoped for by producers doubtless hoping not for a single hit but a franchise, in a summer and a year where if there were certainly other targets about there was none that towered over the cinematic scene the way, for example, Barbie did back in 2023. However, rather than having a field day with it the film's wokeness was scarcely remarked--with one explanation, perhaps, that besides fans of the old Naked Gun films ignoring what was so obviously an unnecessary remake, or treating it rather lightly when they did see it, their antenna for such things may have become less sensitive. Perhaps acclimated to the cinematographic and comedic tendencies of more recent film in spite of themselves (Hollywood's been so ungenerous to the male gaze for so long they don't expect of it what they used to), it can also seem that the dissectors of pop cultural wokeness are also paying less attention for having simply declared victory in the War on Woke, and if not altogether moved on, then at least ceased to bother in the absence of bigger grounds for argument than that.