Danny Boyle Bends the Knee to Woke Mob

Tom Hanks won a Best Actor Oscar for “Philadelphia” but later suggested he shouldn’t have tackled a role where he played a gay man.

“Let’s address ‘Could a straight man do what I did in Philadelphia now?’” said Hanks. “No, and rightly so. The whole point of Philadelphia was don’t be afraid. One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is that I was playing a gay man. We’re beyond that now, and I don’t think people would accept the inauthenticity of a straight guy playing a gay guy.”

Hanks was far from alone. Remember how Scarlett Johansson and Halle Berry backpedaled after accepting trans character roles? Woke ran wild in Hollywood for far too long, impacting art on many levels.

TV shows got memory holed. Beloved authors found their work censored for modern audiences. Comedians thought twice about the jokes they wanted to tell.

The woke revolution is ebbing, but its tentacles still ensnare some of our best artists. Take Danny Boyle, the director of “28 Years Later.”

Boyle returns to the franchise he created in 2002, earning rapturous reviews in the process.

He’s one of the industry’s most respected artists, and he cemented that position by snagging a Best Director Oscar for 2008’s “Slumdog Millionaire.”

That film told the story of an impoverished lad’s unlikely life, culminating in an appearance on a glitzy game show. The movie won Best Picture honors as well as six other statuettes.

Now, Boyle suggests that the film couldn’t be made today. Even more unnerving? If somehow it did, he shouldn’t be the one directing it.

“We wouldn’t be able to make that now … And that’s how it should be. It’s time to reflect on all that. We have to look at the cultural baggage we carry and the mark that we’ve left on the world.”

He dubbed the project “cultural appropriation” and said only an Indian filmmaker would be able to make it today.

Now, imagine all the stories that wouldn’t be told if we forbid artists from telling tales outside of their cultural experiences. It’s part of the progressive dogma, and it explains why film and TV projects wobbled during the woke revolution.

In some cases, the woke mob persecuted artists who dared to explore life outside their experiences. Author Jeanine Cummins may be the most extreme example. Her “American Dirt” novel inspired death threats and cancellations.

Her crime? She was accused of being the “wrong” person to tell an immigration yarn set along the U.S./Mexican border.

Times are changing, though.

Cummins recently released her follow-up tome, “Speak to Me of Home,” and the woke mob has stood down.

UPDATE: Amy Poehler is the latest star to apologize for her past, “problematic” performances. The host of the “Good Hang” podcast reflected on her “Saturday Night Live” tenure and the characters she shouldn’t have played.

“I mean there’s, like, even on the 50th [anniversary show] when they had that segment which was like, ‘Here’s all the ways we got things wrong’ and they showed way inappropriate casting for people you know, we all played people that we should not have played, I misappropriated, I appropriated, I didn’t know, I did know,” she said.

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