Remember that story about Little Red Riding Hood?
Which version of it do you tell? Is the wolf the bad character? Does the huntsman save the day? Is grandma feeble? Does Little Red still walk the straight and narrow because the whole journey symbolically talks about losing her virginity and the red denotes her menses?
It’s hard to be woke. Sometimes you lose sleep over it. Other times you lose your voice. Not laryngitis, but from other people more woke than you shaming you into silence. They don’t want you to say anything unless it’s a regurgitation of what they said or an apology. Then they judge your apology.
Political correctness is imploding, causing us to wonder what the world is coming to…the end, most likely.
We’re all taking potshots at the dominant narrative. If you don’t believe it, trying going in front of an audience and telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood. You’ll soon uncover the emotional landmines. Just establishing common ground with another person can be challenging. An entire audience is a mixed bag of tricks.
No one wants to hear that helpless woman trope anymore. If the big bad wolf eventually kills grandma, we want to hear that she whups his ass in the beginning of the fight. When the huntsman arrives on the scene, he’s backup and a couple of times, Little Red has to save him during the course of the battle.
At the same time, we want to see the good in the wolf. Don’t wolves travel in packs, displaying a strong sense of community? It’s rare and dangerous for a wolf to remain alone because their survival rate goes down outside of a pack. So, when the wolf encounters Little Red in the forest, was he looking to join her pack? Lone wolves have usually separated from their pack due to a scarcity of food or mates. Was he looking for both? Maybe grandma’s feebleness wasn’t due to a lack of physical strength, but her closed mindedness toward a wolf trying to be romantically involved with her granddaughter and start their own pack.
Now for those of you who’d dare say, “But wolves and humans can’t reproduce!” May I remind you that in this story, wolves and humans somehow speak the same language? So, we’ve already left the realm of reality straight out of the gates, but that doesn’t stop some people.
Remember during the Star Wars saga when a black actor, John Boyega, played a storm trooper and some assholes lost their minds because they didn’t believe storm troopers could be black? They could believe all that other fictitious Star Wars shit, but a black man being a storm trooper was too much of a departure from reality.
But back to Little Red. In the woke version, she’s not all pure and innocent because that’s an impossible standard. All the other characters are interesting subplots with a mixture of good and bad because they reflect us.
The truth is: everyone’s a wolf. We all have the potential to terrorize or revitalize our community. And you can’t have a community without the struggle for limited resources.
Every conflict may appear to be due to the difference of race, religion, sexual orientation, but it’s not. If you look past the flavoring, the real beef is some limited resource. Given the fact that there’s always more need than resources, some people are very committed to hoarding those resources. One of the best ways to control resources is to control the narrative.
And woe to those who find themselves on the wrong side of the dominant narrative or political correctness. And those who think that one day, someone not in their own demographic will suddenly wake up and start telling their story accurately are truly pursuing a fairy tale more than Little Red herself.
Political correctness began as a positive movement to challenge the dominant narrative that wrongfully kept resources from people who were viewed as the Other. The Lesser, Mostly Undesirable Other. I say “mostly undesirable” because the degree of otherness is how one measures status. And status dictates resources. So, no matter how seemingly homogenous a community is, we will never eliminate “otherness” as long as status and resources depend on it.
For those who desperately cling to miniscule differences among us, turning a blind eye to the glaringly obvious commonalities we share, they faithfully repeat the dominant narrative—even if they don’t benefit from it because that’s part of their American Dream. They will continue working hard and to reap the rewards because they don’t see themselves as part of the 99% Other.
For those who challenge the dominant narrative, recognizing that they are systematically denied to reap the rewards despite how hardworking they are, they faithfully repeat their own narratives.
And the one percenters? They love the clash of 99%. As long as we don’t unite against them, things won’t change too much at the top. After all, they have the most resources available to roll with the punches no matter what the dominant narrative evolves into. Why it’s rather entertaining to watch the extreme dominant narrative defenders battle it out with the extreme politically correct crusaders.
Now back to Little Red. How do you tell her story?
