Commentary: How Hollywood lost the culture war

The most perceptive joke to air on American television in the last 10 years goes something like this:

Attorney Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski), liberal lioness of “The Good Fight,” awakes one morning to find that Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, has won the 2016 presidential election. Struggling to assimilate the joyous news, Diane describes the Trump years to colleagues at her Black-owned Chicago law firm as one would a bad dream: “He kept calling Nazis ‘very fine people.’ And he did a Senate campaign for a child molester. And he put children in cages ... And antisemitism and racism were on the rise.”

Wait, partner Liz Reddick (Audra McDonald) interrupts, “Where were the Obamas during all this?”

Diane pauses, searching her memory for a moment, then matter-of-factly delivers an indictment for the ages: “They had an overall deal at Netflix.”

Premiering in April 2020, “The Gang Deals With Alternate Reality” finds Robert and Michelle King’s legal farce at its most laceratingly funny — and the deepest cuts are reserved for the Democratic Party and the donor class that sustains it. Diane soon discovers that #MeToo never happened, watching as Harvey Weinstein, protected by his checkbook and a coterie of don’t-rock-the-boat political operatives, receives an award from a group called Women Unite for Change.

As any student of the Kings will know, the point is not to conjure up some Pizzagate-style conspiracy about a cabal of liberal Hollywood predators. “The Good Fight,” like its predecessor “The Good Wife,” focuses on the moral and mental gymnastics of center-left elites — white-glove attorneys, influential producers, tech entrepreneurs, corporate consultants — because it takes the right’s penchant for selfishness, corruption, vanity and vacuousness as an absurd given. Rather, “The Gang Deals With Alternate Reality” skewers the failure of a major American political party and its allies in the world’s foremost cultural economy to conceive an appealing vision of progressive America, much less bring it to fruition. Even in Diane’s fantasy, Democrats’ ambitions top out at putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.

After an election in which countless celebrity endorsements, speeches, concerts and fundraisers; coconut memes, camo hats and fan cams; late-night TV interviews, daytime talk show spots and “Saturday Night Live” sketches left Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Gov. Tim Walz no closer to victory than their counterparts, Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine, eight years ago, “The Good Fight’s” slings and arrows seem right on target.

Hollywood, the de facto public relations arm of the Democratic Party, has come to reflect, and reinforce, its political partner’s worst instincts, ceding the initiative for understanding and delivering what Americans want in order to chase the chimera of a stable, focus-group-approved midpoint in the culture. What’s left presents an impoverished picture, not only of the progressive future but of Hollywood’s own: the entertainment industry equivalent of “America is already great.”

This failure of imagination reminds me, in fact, of another joke — the oft-screenshotted moment in “The Holdovers” in which cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) chides classics instructor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) as one might the doomed alliance that gave us Trump 2.0.

“You can’t even dream a whole dream, can you?”

I. Going high

When Barack and Michelle Obama founded their production company Higher Ground in 2018, the notion of a postpresidential portfolio built around culture-making seemed both a canny innovation and a comfortable fit.

Although high-profile talent, powerful executives and well-connected agents had long been vital to Democratic fundraising efforts, the pact between Netflix and the Obamas formalized the relationship in a new way, and the former president and first lady — gifted orators as capable of cheesing with the Muppets as delivering a keynote at the DNC — were ideal impresarios. Other dignitaries with a liberal bent soon followed suit, including Hillary and Chelsea Clinton (HiddenLight) and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (Archewell), all promising, in one way or another, to inspire viewers through storytelling.

What exactly we were being inspired to do, besides fire up Netflix or Apple TV+, remained unstated — an early red flag that this new kind of Hollywood power player could not be counted on to supply studios with an appetite for risk. Perhaps inevitably, the pointedly ideological projects to come out of these partnerships, such as “American Factory,” “Crip Camp” and “Zurawski v Texas,” were accompanied by forgettable, soft-focus celebrity interviews (“Gutsy”), fastidiously self-protective biographies (“Harry & Meghan”) and scripted projects with only the most tenuous connection to their producers’ public personas. (As a friend said to me recently about Higher Ground’s “Bodkin,” “What do murder mysteries have to do with the Obamas?”)

Alongside flattering documentary portraits of such figures as Nancy Pelosi, Stacey Abrams and Adam Kinzinger, or furious late-night segments from John Oliver, Seth Meyers and more, the films and TV series created by these production pacts slipped mostly unnoticed into the modern content mill, as ephemeral, and, at times, as cringeworthy as Texts from Hillary, “Joe-bi Wan Kenobi” or tote bags emblazoned with “Notorious R.B.G.” But as in the electoral realm, “When they go low, we go high” failed to meet a moment of profound frustration with, indeed rage at, American institutions and the elites within them. Joining the frictionless symbolism of franchise tentpoles with the defensive crouch of triangulation, celebrity political culture in the post-Obama years often appeared to prize the performance of progressive bona fides over the achievement of actual policy outcomes. No one could take the loose constellation of streaming titles, media appearances, corporate statements and #resistance memes that came to comprise this culture terribly seriously as an answer to the real problems facing the country.

So no one did. Which may explain why an electorate that overwhelmingly claims to want celebrities out of politics just voted a celebrity back into the White House, representing the same party that brought us President Ronald Reagan, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sen. Fred Thompson and Rep. Sonny Bono. It’s not just any association with Hollywood that voters reject but the specific message, and medium, of the Democratic status quo.

(Golden Cosmos / For The Times)

After all, as Democrats perfected the star-studded convention, replete with rumored performances and TV star emcees, Republicans and their allies constructed a self-sustaining, cross-platform media and entertainment ecosystem that actively prides itself on spurning “the mainstream,” even if much of its talent pool once worked in showbiz, or aspired to. Built atop existing strata of conservative newspapers and magazines, right-wing blogs, talk radio shows, Facebook groups and more, this alternate reality — think of it as Hollywood’s nimbler Wario — features not only Fox News but also Fox Nation and DailyWire+, X and Truth Social, “The Joe Rogan Experience” and Angel Studios, plus an entire universe of individual influencers.

In roughly the same period, Hollywood studios scrambled to build, program and market streaming platforms that could compete with Netflix — destroying a lucrative business model in the process — only to discover that millennial and Gen Z viewers had begun to abandon traditional movies and TV shows in favor of video games, Twitch streams, YouTube tutorials and short vertical videos on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

With both sides of the alliance caught flat-footed by changes in where and how Americans consume information, it’s little wonder that the combined reach of Hollywood and the Democratic Party has not been an ace in the hole with voters. Even those red-district undecideds who would have enjoyed hearing Julia Roberts and George Clooney discuss the secret ballot may not have received the message, for the very people such spots were designed to target were the least likely to be tuned into them. And the (presumably much larger) contingent concerned about Gaza, inflation, climate change or the housing crisis found not a no-holds-barred case for the Democratic platform but a tone poem about the White House from the cast of “The West Wing,” or Harrison Ford repeating the losing slogan from 2016.

This is the problem, of course, with the development deal as political act, “inspiration” as mission statement, celebrity as selling point. Horrifying though it may be, Republicans and their media allies drive the political agenda through culture, unafraid to stoke emotions or gin up controversy to achieve their desired ends. Democrats in Hollywood, despite having the industry’s bully pulpit at their disposal, could not even ensure that prizewinning Israeli-Palestinian documentary “No Other Land” and its labor-movement sibling, “Union,” secured U.S. distribution. Instead, more concerned with feeling good than forcing change, they have pioneered a form of safe, bland liberalism that must necessarily seem meaningless, and therefore toothless, to any American not already sold on it. We were supposed to have learned this lesson in 2016: You can’t bring a “Fight Song” to the culture war and expect to win.

II. Going ‘woke’

It would be tempting to conclude that Hollywood should heed postelection autopsies inveighing against “magic words,” “radical chic” and “going woke.” In truth, this tack to the right was already underway. Long before the friendly drop-ins on Mar-a-Lago or inauguration fund donations, it had become a fixed idea among wags and wonks that the industry had gone “too far” in its commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion after the 2020 murder of George Floyd and was due for a correction.

But this notion is built on a convenient fiction. Despite consistent pledges to improve diversity since at least 1999, when a consortium of watchdog groups threatened to boycott the broadcast networks over the whiteness of their fall lineups, Hollywood has made only modest progress toward inclusion — certainly nothing on the order of a revolution to be reversed. The ratio of men to women with speaking roles remains largely unchanged since 2007, for instance, while Latinos have lost ground as their share of the population grows. Pipeline programs for underrepresented groups have not prevented the ranks of directors, screenwriters and executives from remaining predominantly white and male. And leaders with the ostensible authority to drive systemic change have been “managed out” before being given the chance to do much of anything. All of this against the backdrop of study after study after study showing that diverse storytelling and diverse audiences are sound business, not “virtue-signaling.”

For Hollywood to pander to conservatives by rolling back progress it hasn’t actually made, or self-impose a gag rule so as not to ruffle the feathers of President Trump, is not an adaptive response to consumer demand. It’s a capitulation to the asymmetrical political polarization that inflects seemingly every aspect of American life. How else does one explain the hypocrisy of claiming to value LGBTQ+ creators, audiences and employees, then forging lucrative, multiyear relationships with transphobic comics or excising a trans storyline from a children’s series? How else to justify paying more for the resuscitation of Brett Ratner and Melania Trump than the cost of three best picture winners?

In the aftermath of two bruising strikes and a protracted slowdown, Hollywood’s susceptibility to such forces should be no surprise. The chasm between the industry’s haves — highly paid CEOs, marquee mega-producers and A-list stars — and its have-nots — the dying middle class — continues to expand. And the drumbeat of stock sales, tax write-offs, brutal job cuts and obscene bonuses has made it ever harder to separate these haves from the tech oligarchs who’ve infiltrated our halls of power or the quasi-sovereigns of the last Gilded Age. For the leaders of today’s cultural industries, films, TV series, albums, even books seem to be no more than widgets on an algorithmic assembly line, as fungible as yards of textile or gauges of steel.

Against the devoted coalition of evangelical Christians, neocons, pompous billionaires and MAGA Republicans who now dominate the other side of the aisle, this prevaricating has failed to muster enthusiasm for the Democratic Party or much of the industry’s own product. A system in which the rank-and-file are weakened to the point of “exodus,” the most prominent are silent for fear of reprisal and the most powerful are willing to throw both under the bus at the first sign of trouble is a system only an expert in mergers and acquisitions could love. It’s a potent reminder that Hollywood’s claims to represent us were never a foundational ideological principle nor an act of political solidarity. They were a form of trend forecasting, no different from putting a finger to the wind and assessing whether slim-fit or boot-cut jeans will be “in” this season.

But when you show yourself to stand for anything, you prove that you stand for nothing at all. What happens if Hollywood manages to alienate the 48.4% of the electorate who voted for Harris by pursuing the 49.9% who voted for Trump? Perhaps nonvoters, for whom the 2024 campaign did not offer a stark enough choice, constitute an untapped market. Perhaps the median consumer of Hollywood fare will join the fickle ranks of the undecided voter. Either way, the situation presents an opportunity for progressive audiences, who for all the bluster about their hegemony have been taken for granted — expected to show up, shell out and shut their mouths for too long.

Loyal consumers have certainly accrued the capital to demand better; audiences share more of the burden for the industry’s ups and downs than ever before. TV has evolved into a costly, complicated bundle of streaming services for which viewers must pay for the privilege of being fed ads. Theatrical films have become “premium” experiences, defined by high-end formats, cushy seats, expanded concessions and exorbitant prices to match. And Hollywood, for all its supposed reluctance to wade into politics, has not shied from applying pressure to the progressive conscience, with viewers tapped to maximize the “completion rate” of their favorite inclusive series and encouraged to buy tickets in the service of historic firsts.

Like progressive voters who are urged cycle after cycle to contribute, to sign up for door-knocking and phone banks to get out the vote, progressive fans have surely done their part. They might well expect the industry, like the party, to hold up its end of the bargain.

III. Going, going, gone

In the summer of 2022, at the behest of a visiting friend and fan of the podcast, I attended a live taping of “Lovett or Leave It,” the culture-and-politics show hosted by former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett.

Goofier (and gayer) than “Pod Save America,” the flagship he hosts with Crooked Media co-founders and fellow Obama alums Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor, “Lovett or Leave It” has the pleasantly rambling energy of very-late-night TV. But something about seeing its listeners, the choir to which Crooked preached, unsettled me. What was the object of this exercise? To build a global California where progressive ideals reign supreme? Or to believe that such an outcome could be achieved without disrupting the good vibes?

I thought back to that night this summer as President Biden, reeling from a disastrous debate performance, seemed destined for defeat, and again the day after the election, when Vice President Harris conceded hers. I see now that the liberal fantasy of “Lovett or Leave It,” the calculated inoffensiveness of Higher Ground’s portfolio at Netflix and the fleeting dopamine hit of childless-cat-lady memes are all of a piece, signaling the ultimate irrelevance of the liberal consensus. And voters’ belief that its beneficiaries are complacent elitists skilled only in symbolic victory can no longer be blamed on brainwashing by right-wing media. It’s time to admit that the losers in the culture war have also brought this on themselves.

The costs of cable, streaming and a night out at the movies have combined to push consumers into the arms of conservative or “independent-minded” podcasters and YouTubers whose content is free. Nor would what’s on offer from the major studios and networks, in the aggregate, convince skeptics that the industry is in touch with the common man: the IP-driven “cinematic universe” and other forms of conglomerate-made “culture”; streaming pablum to fold laundry by, whether labeled “casual viewing” or “mid TV”; every flavor of luxury, quiet or otherwise, from media magnates to mega-ranchers to Real Housewives and the capitalist origin stories that got them there. Even the principal exceptions, often in the form of allegories that point to the brokenness of our world without depicting it directly — “Severance,” “Squid Game,” “Andor,” “Dune” — easily segue into yet another form of self-congratulatory back-patting. Consider the speed with which the barn-side-broad parable of “Wicked,” based on a book published during Bill Clinton’s first term, was subsumed into a narrative by which Hollywood would embrace its “radical” message and perhaps award it best picture at the Oscars to thumb Trump in the eye.

The answer is not a sudden profusion of expressly political films; didacticism doesn’t win elections any more than it does the box office. Still, the shuttering of Participant Media and the travails of Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” coming in tandem with C-suite fantasies of a politics-free popular culture, suggest an unwillingness to make waves that profoundly misunderstands our moment, where fortune — think Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake, or Chappell Roan — favors the bold. Perhaps most worryingly, there were vital examples of civic life to be seen onscreen last year, with citizens debating the fate of their communities and protesting the tyranny thereof. It’s just that all of them depicted societies abroad: “Evil Does Not Exist” (Japan), “Dahomey” (Benin), “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Iran), “I’m Still Here” (Brazil). The last time authoritarianism was on the march, Hollywood responded with bold, courageous filmmaking that confronted the threat head on. This time, it seems far more likely to turn a blind eye.

In a sense, the entertainment industry and other influential, at least nominally liberal forces in American life have come to echo the moment in “The Good Fight” when the co-founder of Women Unite for Change questions Diane’s effort to jump-start #MeToo in her alternate reality: “If Hillary doesn’t win, Trump wins. Then what do we have?” Now, on the eve of Trump’s second inauguration, with a solidly conservative majority ensconced on the Supreme Court and Republicans in control of the House and the Senate, the disastrous consequences of that logic are upon us — as is the urgent need to develop and promote a progressive alternative to climate catastrophe, white nationalism, imperial adventure and middle-class collapse that is capable of persuading voters, whether inside or outside the Democratic Party.

The celebrity political culture of our time, a far cry from the audacious front-line activism of Harry Belafonte during the civil rights movement or Jane Fonda against the Vietnam War, turns out to be the logical end point of the fear that Obama’s 2008 slogan, “Hope,” was fundamentally empty if it didn’t specify the hoped-for. The unifying feature of Hollywood’s current relationship with the Democratic Party, after all, is inscrutability — politics as scrubbed clean of potential controversy, and therefore of power, as a corporate press release.

For many, of course, participating in this culture has been a source of succor, whether in the dog days of “brat summer” or the depths of election week 2020. There’s no need to censure the desire to forge kinship, to lick one’s wounds, to seek respite or joy. At a certain point, though, communing only with other true believers, lashed together by shared values and secret language as if at a church service, cannot be counted on to transform society in tangible ways. Indeed, such a strategy might eventually come to resemble the conservative practice of placing faith over works: As disciples of Jon Lovett might say over their ethically sourced Crooked Media coffee, thoughts and prayers never stopped a school shooting.