The problem with “Woke”- and it’s not what you think…

For a period, beginning in the 1980s, catchphrases in comedy were all the rage. Yet they weren’t simply catchphrases. They were catchphrases that parodied the comedy stylings of an earlier age; catchphrases done in a sardonic way and aware of the banality of this old comedic trope. They became badges of principal and perhaps even anti-catchphrases.

At times back then, it could be hard to spot the difference between the traditional and alternative forms of comedy. The alternative could be as offensive as anything from the 1970s yet done in a self-aware way that was meant to excuse its excess. Whereas Sid James would previously leer at a woman and make gurgling noises in his throat, Rik Mayall would leer but then start caressing himself so that the joke was turned on him. Was that progress or plus ca change? It was difficult to tell.

In terms of catchphrases, the new comedy also came perilously close to the old comedy it professed to hate. There were echoes of Carry On in the parody but so too Frankie Howerd, who unsurprisingly enjoyed a late-career comeback as a cult act for university crowds. That’s how we came to have “Oo er… Sounds a bit rude” which would be so typically like Howerd had it not come from the Edmondson/Mayall/Elton vehicle, Filthy Rich and Catflap.

Other comedians simply played with the cultish tedium of the oft-repeated phrase.

“That’s you that is…” (Newman and Baddiel)

“You wouldn’t let it lie…” (Vic & Bob)

“Loadsamoney!” (Harry Enfield)

It was all pantomime, done with a nod and a wink, and then, moving into the 1990s, a greater sense of abstracted absurdity that reached its zenith with the hugely formulaic Fast Show, entirely built around the catchphrases that fans would repeat ad nauseum – “Suits you”, “Does my bum look big in this?”, “I’ll get me coat”, “I was very, very drunk”, “which was nice…” These were still anti-catchphrases in that the game was firmly postmodern but popular too among those who wanted to show they were part of the fashionable set.

Yet, as is often the case with fashions, novelty can soon become decadent. What began as a commentary on the excesses of the 1970s itself became a trope indicative of the often humourless angst of the 1980s. The self-referential anarchy had been fun for a while but even the high priests of the hyperaware had to evolve, which many did, becoming a new establishment indistinguishable from the old. The Comic Strippers became the ever so Absolutely Fabulous Vicars of Dibley. Meanwhile, the old catchphrase game got boring (those of Little Britain and Catherine Tate feel listless now) as if audiences finally began to realise that catchphrases had little in the way of meaning, being pure sound and fury, signifying an exhausted comedic trope.

This brings us to that persistently voguish word, “woke”, which appears unrelated to the above yet shares some telling similarities.

The ubiquity of the term establishes its importance in the new language of politics. There are others but it’s “woke” that dominates, used by those on the right and centre, but also by some on the centre-left who feel their arguments are undermined by the aggressive (and often nonsensical) ultra-progressives.

Our politics, like the comedy of the 80s, has hardened into sometimes crude oppositional stereotypes in which the language of one side has been commandeered and then reappropriated by the other. In the case of “woke”, it was first used by American progressives to describe their awareness of prejudice. It was then adopted more broadly as a pejorative, more sarcastic than serious, more mocking than meaningful, until its popularity has known no end. Its novelty has grown to the point where it is now embraced by the Prime Minister and is found everywhere and anywhere such that it has become as rampant as Japanese knotweed.

Yet it’s also understandable why it’s overused. It’s a four-letter catchphrase that fits neatly into any sentence or context. It can be an adjective or an adverb, a noun or a verb.

Such a woke wallflower…

He feels woke about the plight of the cis-gendered sea urchins…

The woke are up and bleating early today…

He woke to the ethics of nutmeg consumption in the Kalahari…

As such, it is more of an exhausting comedic trope than it is political commentary. Like Rik Mayall grinning wickedly into camera, there’s some devilry being had. The knowing use it knowingly; the less knowing habitually to the point of tedium.

Yet this is hardly a new phenomenon. We’ve long had partisan semaphores that pass in and out of fashion. From the 16th century, “popish” was a common insult in Protestant England, as the term “Jacobite” would later be used as shorthand in English propaganda directed against Scotland. Writing in 1845, John Mason Neale described the first parliament of George I’s reign, where “every one who did not agree with the ministry was called a Jacobite and a Romanist”, which is not that different to how language worked in McCarthyite America of the 1950s, where “red” and “commie” became stock insults and remain in use to this day with Republicans routinely describing Joe Biden’s politics in the most exaggerated terms.

And that is a key point about the ludicrous. Few of these terms persist with the force they once had. What the decline of the comedic catchphrase should remind us is that parody often precedes a precipitous decline. Think of a joke too deeply and it no longer remains a joke. Engage in the game of oppositional politics too long and it no longer is about politics but unthinking opposition.

Once we become seduced by words, we need new words and “woke”, like so many catchphrases before it, had reached that point of saturation; a point where it is stifling debate and, even worse, getting in the way of clear thinking. In this year’s Queen’s Speech, for example, the government’s eagerness to score easy points against “woke” exposes Johnson to accusations of hypocrisy around fundamental questions of democracy and freedom.

In a recent, wonderfully articulated piece for American Consequences, “We Need More Cancel Culture”,  P.J. O’Rourke playfully suggests we should cancel the number nine (“To this day when I see 9 x 9 I want the result to be 99“) yet also turns it around to express sympathy with the other side. “Having once been young, hip, with-it, and the 1960s equivalent of woke, I sympathise,” he writes. “This battle is being fought with the kind of high-minded idealism that we are always encouraging young people to have”.

The point is a good one to remember. Before “woke” there was “politically correct” and, before that, words like “with it”, “hip”, “hippy” or even “green” would vaguely reference some mawkish stereotype. “Everyone seems to agree that hippies have some kind of widespread appeal,” wrote Hunter S. Thompson about the hippy movement, “but nobody can say exactly what they stand for. Not even the hippies seem to know, although some can be very articulate when it comes to ‘details.’”

And that’s the problem with gestural language. It is not so much performative as it is postural and, as with so much posture, the effect can be limited and leave one open to looking foolish over time. The Romantic poets, for example, were at thei worst when indulging in the vagaries of “ennui” and the culture of the “Mal du siècle”, and at their best when talking about the gnarly stuff of love and politics, sex and violence. Dickens too was infinitely better when working through character rather than the long social commentaries which are often forgotten, overlooked, and always expunged from dramatisations of his work. Writers who transcend their time do so because they don’t entirely anchor their work in fashion. It is why – whisper it quietly – the alternate comedy of the 80s is rarely spoken of as a golden age. It’s so rooted in that time and milieu that you had to be there to “get it”.

Likewise, “woke” (alongside all the arguably less successful pejoratives on the left) feels significant in the moment but its influence will wane and, like many fashions, become counter-productive after a time. We might well have reached that point. It would certainly be refreshing if we have. The hard lesson learned by Labour in the recent council elections is that the electorate dislikes the most “wokeish” policies – all that “hedgerows are people too” and “turn off your fridge freezer and learn to love mouldy food” nonsense that excites Gwyneth Paltrow in her placenta-filled bathtub.

The danger for the Conservatives is if they mistake any of that for the moderately progressive arguments around which Labour could yet re-orientate itself. This is why it’s notable on the back of his re-election that Andy Burnham is already talking about public travel costs across the North. It would be healthier for our politics if others would follow. The challenge for Labour is to relearn the language of the working class and make “wokism” a non-issue at the next election. The challenge for Tories is to avoid the hubris that comes from believing that screaming “woke” all the time is enough to sustain them.

A few in Labour seem to have realised that the party needs to wake up. If they do, it will then be time for Tories to forget “woke”. Then we might all be able to move on.