He’s right, you know.
That is, he’s correct.
When Australian tennis journeyman Jordan Thompson learned from a chair umpire on Monday that fans were now allowed into stadiums at Melbourne Park after every game and not just at change of ends, he was incredulous. “You’re kidding me,” he said. “This is the wokest tournament ever.”
Jordan Thompson in action.Credit: Getty Images
It’s impossible to deny. It was a woke-up call.
Not only have the Australian Open muted Margaret Court, they’ve introduced extra racket on every court, including Margaret.
Not only are they using neutral pronouns when introducing players on court, they’re turning the tournament over to any Tom, Dick or Harry.
Not only do they offer fans a range of lanyards for your ticket – standard, Pride or Indigenous – they let them wander as if they own the place.
We know this is all woke because ... what isn’t?
We can’t say that Thompson is wrong – or overreacted, or was a bit precious – because we can’t say what’s woke.
“I think woke is an unusable word – although it is used all the time – because it doesn’t actually mean anything,” linguist and lexicographer Tony Thorne told The New Yorker’s David Remnick last year. “The references to ‘woke’ before 2016, 2017, 2018 were kind of straightforward. It meant ‘socially aware’, ‘empathetic’. Then the right, the conservative right, seizes hold of this word”.
One of the main courts at Melbourne Park is named after Margaret Court, but her conservative views have sometimes been a cause of angst at the Australian Open.Credit: AP
They’ve turned woke into a pejorative. It’s the love child of “politically correct”.
Now woke’s flung about so freely that it has come to mean any standard to which you subscribe and others don’t, anywhere on the political spectrum and on either side of the net. It’s used even by tennis players bothered by a bit of bustle in the background.
So let’s work with Thompson. “Wokest ever” sounds like a stretch, but it could be so because wokeness has a relatively short history, like Australia Day on January 26. Oops, there’s a bit more woke.
It’s woke to admit fans into a stadium after every game, and it’s woke to object to their admittance.
Spectators at the Australian Open can now come and go more often.Credit: Eddie Jim
It’s woke that fans have to eat and drink so much – and so leave their seats so often – and it’s woke that the players care about this.
It’s woke to stir spectators into making a din, and woke to expect them to sit down and shut up on cue. That’s Kyrgios-level woke.
Credit: Matt Golding
It’s woke to fill every slight interval in play with so-called music, and it’s woke to expect – to demand – pin-drop silence.
It’s woke that the Open admits far more people than there are seats at any one time, so creating long queues to get in and out of courts, and longer queues for food and drink, and it’s woke to wonder why they all come anyway. It’s woke to be in the only place to be, and it’s woke not to be there.
It’s woke to come only for the tennis, and it’s a different sort of woke to come only for the party.
As for those neutral pronouns, they’re so woke, aren’t they? But wait until we get to the mixed doubles.
It’s woke that Thompson went straight to “woke” to make his point. It’s woke to call him out for saying “woke”. Woke is the new black, if that’s not too woke.
In George Orwell’s 1984, authorities manoeuvre to outlaw, abolish or consolidate words in Newspeak, the world language. By reducing the range of allowable words, they seek to narrow the range of thought.
Jordan Thompson wins a point.Credit: Eddie Jim
“In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word,” Syme, a Newspeak proselyte, says to Winston, the novel’s protagonist. “Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
And so here we are, at woke, doing all the heavy lifting, but seemingly inexhaustible. And here we are at “wokest”, at the tennis.
“Woke” used to have another meaning, as the past tense of “wake”. So let’s cross to Melbourne Park’s second arena as Daria Saville began her rousing but ultimately futile comeback against Magdalena Frech on Monday afternoon, prompting a TV commentator to exclaim: “John Cain comes alive.”
John Cain woke? Looks like we’ve missed the real story.
Watch all the Australian Open action live on Nine, 9Gem, 9Now and ad-free on Stan Sport.
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