What is a "Woke" Game

[the-pi-guy]

sundin13 said:

Of political media, my go to example would probably be Metal Gear Solid. That series in insanely political. 

I would generally consider things like The Exorcist and The Shining to be pretty apolitical. You can perhaps read into some stuff like the Native American Burial Ground stuff in The Shining as "political" but that is enough of a fringe topic in the movie that I don't think it's worth mentioning. 

I would personally define a "political" piece of media as something that takes a stance along the lines of some pre-existing political division. 

The Shining pretty strongly is anti Domestic Violence, but as there isn't really much of a political division about attempting to dismember your wife, I don't think it makes sense to call it political.

Some people would even argue that those are political in some sense or another.

There are plenty of articles about the politics of The Shining. 

"The Shining" is "woke," both in that the movie subtly addresses complex social issues and because the in-universe clairvoyant act of "shining" allows characters to see past and future atrocities (some politically charged) that occurred in the Overlook Hotel.

I haven't seen the Shining, so I have no real idea about the movie. 

Some people have said that everything is political, but I wouldn't go that far. You can easily argue that a lot of stories talk about power dynamics, but simpler stories definitely don't. And a lot of stories are not overt about it's positions. 

I think it's also important to note that the political messages are often the opposite of what they basically appear to be. You can tell a story about domestic violence, and show how terrifying it is, for example.