Woke is a word commonly used now to describe someone who believes in certain ideals, that tend to be more left leaning but what does woke actually mean? Some people believe that being “woke” is believing in trans people or believing in gay people, but it’s been around since before either of those were considered widely accepted. The word woke actually was used to refer to the awareness of political and social issues involving African Americans, not like how people use it today.
Modern marvel fans have been using the word woke to describe a lot of their recent comics, like the comic where instead of hawkeye being a middle aged white man, they’re a young indigenous non-binary person. A lot of people were furious at the change in Hawkeye’s character, but they seem to forget the whole purpose of some of the Marvel projects, like the X-Men.
The X-Men are a group of mutants meant to represent a variety of marginalized groups. In the X-Men universe, even though they’re heroes, the mutants are treated like monsters just because of their species. Similar to racism today, it obviously affected them in a negative way. There were two general groups of mutants, those who tried to prove the oppressor’s wrong (the X-Men) and those who wanted to get rid of the oppressors all together (Magneto). Even though Magneto is seen as the Villain of the series, his reasoning was more human than the actual humans in the series.
Another thing is that modern Marvel fans are lumping the entirety of Marvel itself as a “Woke mob mindset” even though that is also not true. One of the biggest, most beloved marvel characters, Captain America, is actually used to represent military and American propaganda. Similarly, another well known marvel character, the winter soldier, is used as an anti military propaganda as his story goes through the torture and abuse that isn’t commonly portrayed in the media about being in the military.
Marvel isn’t just one person with just one mindset. Marvel is a large group of people working together to create many different projects that try to bring entertainment and a space of belonging to people all over the world. So in theory, the people calling the recent marvel comics “Woke” is wrong because marvel has always technically been woke.
