So I'm watching a YouTube video of a guy going through and reviewing every episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, the 90's Nickelodeon kids horror anthology show. It's a show I remember fondly from when I was a kid, and the review video is pretty great. But one thing seeing all these clips really jumps out at me. The sheer amount of racemixing couples that were in various episodes. I've seen like 5 or 6 black guy/White girl 'relationships' so far, and I'm only at season 2. It's the usual 'oooooo she has a crush' kid shit, but it's the amount of it that is jumping out at me now. 12yo me of course never noticed, but now that I'm seeing again, and knowing how rare it was in real life back then for White girls to date blacks, I can't help but suspect this sort of thing was included on purpose to normalize it, even decades before what we now see as the 'woke' era.
Can you think of any other examples of things that you didn't notice at the time, but looking back you realize they were attempts to push woke ideology long before it was known as such?
The one that blew me away fairly recently was rewatching one of my favorite 90s TV shows, Babylon 5. Binge watching the episodes, unlike then when they were a week or more, and sometimes outright months apart, I picked up on a shitload of wokeslop and outright Leftardism that never registered before. A few of the major standouts:
When the Earth Civil War is just starting, there's a short scene where Ivonova is talking to Sheridan about President Clark's anti-alien policies. Specifically that he's "weeding out corruption and traitors" from Earthgov, and Ivonova even says "his policies have made the cities on Earth safer than they've ever been, and his popularity is through the roof." She's visibly angry about it, and they have a quick talk about how common folks are cowards who just want to feel safe. Its only about 10 episodes later that Clark is revealed to be a big bad working with the Shadows, but it absolutely comes across as a welcome excuse to Sheridan and crew. They needed a reason to oppose Clark, and the plot gave them one.
Another big one is when the Minbari Civil War ends and Delenn reorganizes the Grey Council. Now instead of consisting of 3 members each from the Religious Case, Warrior Caste, and Worker Caste, where will be 3 Warriors, 3 Religious, and EIGHT from the Worker Caste. She goes on about helping muh proletariat and how they should be the ones with the real power anyway.
Bester has a sleazy attitude, but it's also 100% true that Sheridan and company are breaking Earth laws and the Psy Corp's rules on almost a daily basis. When you stop looking at the person and just at a guy doing his job, the B5 crew are absolutely the badguys. Literally corrupt and rebellious. I think JMS picked up on this at some point because Bester was given his whole moustache twirling villain arc very late in the show's run, as if to scream YES HE'S A BAD GUY."
Then there was the whole deal with the Night Watch. Since the B5 crew weren't being very trustworthy, the President mobilized a militia of their own citizens to keep an eye on things. The show portrayed this in a very stilted, Gestapo-esque light.
There was a lot more, sandwiched between the Sci-Fi plot arcs, and more that's come out in later interviews (Delenn was supposed to be a male to female tranny, not a Minbari to Human change, but JMS couldn't get it past the censors.) The political stuff gets so stilted that if I didn't know the show was made 30 years ago, I'd swear it was taking swipes at Trump.
One scene that always stuck with me from that show is where they have some religious service where they clearly show a Rabbi, a Christian, and then Delenn and a bunch of other aliens all worshipping together. Felt old school, New World Order-ish conspiracy theory. And I don't feel like going back to confirm this, but I don't remember there being any Muslims or Hindus in that scene either, because only Christians are acceptable targets.
I watched that episode not too long ago and that part has a ton of different religions including a Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, and some kind of Native American shaman.
I thought it was weird how every other Species has a religion that their whole planet practices but Humanity has all these different religions, but I suppose that was the point.
I assume it's just lazy writing.
Like how interplanetary sci-fi shows usually have one language per planet, if they bother having anything but insert language of the dub here for the whole universe.