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Controversial ad campaigns for jeans are nothing new. It was a regular part of the 1980s and 1990s. It worked better when the Conservatives had all of the power. In the Reagan era, for instance, Madonna was a walking controversy. From her crucifix to her wedding dress and “Like a Virgin,” nothing she did was without controversy. It’s what drove her to become one of the biggest stars in the world.
Even though religious Conservatives can still react to a controversial ad (like Bud Light), they’re less likely to be scandalized by, say, Sam Smith flirting with Satan at the Grammys than mocking it. The New Right is a little different than the Old Right. They are now a meme factory, funny people – much funnier than the Left, that’s for sure. Even South Park somehow comes off as a wee bit out of touch by comparison. If you aren’t following the Wild Wild West of the Right, you will be missing much of the most interesting news.
Everything has flipped because now it’s more likely to be the Left that flips out over something someone says or does than the Right. But lucky for all of us, this unbearable, oppressive, terrible moment in cultural history is almost over. There were already signs it was headed in that direction, but the latest Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad proves the vibe shift is real and nothing will ever be the same.
The pendulum is swinging away from the monoculture of the Left, and nothing makes that more evident than the ads featuring Sweeney for American Eagle. As Justine Bateman accurately states:
Five years ago, the ads would be taken down, apologies would be forced, and Sydney Sweeney would be targeted and destroyed. But guess what? That didn’t happen. Oh sure, they were very loud about it on TikTok. This one is probably the most unintentionally hilarious — a woman who berated some poor tech support worker as a performative act:
They look ridiculous to any casual observer. If only Hollywood gave itself permission to ruthlessly mock them, but no. They don’t. They can’t. It’s blasphemy.
A year or so ago, American Eagle’s brand was, like everything else, reflecting what they thought Gen-Z wanted: intersectional, inclusive, aspirational. An example of their previous ads:
This reflects the monoculture perfectly. Everything looks, sounds, and feels exactly the same. A perfect world of euphoria and conformity. And oh, how boring all of it is. No amount of good intentions or desire to make everything and everyone “equal” can take the place of why we need art at all. We need it to scratch away at the layers of deception and delusion and reflect some kind of truth.
Hollywood’s utopia, or Woketopia, has strident rules that must be followed or else. One of those rules is that blonde, blue-eyed white women are to be de-centered and flanked by an array of marginalized representations. They aren’t considered individuals. They represent a group and thus, they protect the (mostly white, mostly male) people at the top. But the activists just want their demands met. They care less about any other part of it.
This manifests in strange ways. For instance, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie mostly centers on a hot blonde, as required by the doll and the brand. But to absolve themselves of their sins of whiteness and privilege, they had to be inclusive and representative with all of the other Barbies – Black, Brown, disabled, fat, transgender. Barbie eventually escapes, but Barbie is not really allowed to be the hero of the story. The hero must be America Ferrera.
The vibe shift isn’t the Sydney Sweeney ad. It’s the reaction to it that is remarkable. It was proof of the failure of the education system to condition whole generations to see people only in terms of their designated categories — those categories decide their worth.
Directing, for instance, is now yet another way for women to show how empowered they are. That they are directing is the activist move. How good their films are comes secondary to that. I find it insulting and depressing to the great women filmmakers that it’s come to this, but it has come to this.
Listening to all of them freak out about this ad because Sweeney is making fun of her GIANT RACK, you fools, they’re called boobs, ed, not her blue eyes and blonde hair. Sweeney is also starring in a film coming out at the end of the year, The Housemaid. It’s a great part for her and a great part for her co-star, Amanda Seyfried. I just hope that this hideous discourse doesn’t rise back up when that happens.
I predict the film will do well. There is only so much they can do to screw it up because it’s such a great story. Will people scream and yell, and hiss that it stars two blonde white women? Probably. I’m sure the production will find a way to adequately signal their virtue to get the activists off their backs.
Either way, I think American Eagle is doing what all corporations will eventually do — out of necessity. Remember what sells and why it sells. Sex will always sell. We’ve lived through an era where women have been desexualized on the big screen — all women, but specifically white women. Men have been desexualized too, and made to be more feminine.
Basically, Hollywood aims all of its content at your typical gender studies major at Oberlin College.
The Alpha Voices
What is most exciting about this time is those voices existing outside the mainstream. They don’t make studio money, but that also means they are free to talk about whatever they want. One such person is Coleman Hughes, who now does a podcast for The Free Press. He recently had free-thinking rebel Justine Bateman on his show to talk about why she thinks modern movies suck:
Bateman understands and can see the difference between an industry that celebrated excellence and what we have now — what she calls a “Costco of content.” She’s right, of course. It’s so bad that most people have turned away from storytelling and Hollywood and found their way to True Crime podcasts or TikTok, or even politics, which is ten times more exciting than anything Hollywood is putting out.
Why, because everyone is getting paid. It is top-down, corporate monopolies with very few studios still invested in excellence. I applaud Warner Bros. and Universal, Neon, and A24. Netflix has Fincher, and for that, they will still be in the business of excellence. But that’s only because Fincher himself demands it.
But speaking of Fincher, The Social Network 2 is coming, though it will be written by Aaron Sorkin, who is, I believe, very much inside the bubble.
His version will be a story worth telling, but it will be a version that appeals to the people who watch Colbert and MSNBC, read the New York Times. It won’t be a movie that tells the truth about this moment in time and Facebook’s role in it, I don’t think. Maybe it will if it helps explain why social media is so dangerous to our minds. But I also think it will have to do what all art seems hellbent on doing now: showcase one side as being “good” and the other side as being “bad.”
I’m sure it will be fine, but the kid in me who grew up on the greatest movies ever made, we’re gonna need better than fine. Or it might as well be AI.
What is exciting now, at least to me, are people who are brave enough to speak the truth at a time of extreme self-censorship, like Ms. Bateman.
But to find people really willing to talk big picture, one must drift outside the bubble. Here is Emily Jashinsky and Spencer Klavan on this cultural moment (a conversation you will never hear on the Left — in fact, you’ll hear condemnations of Eddington from, say, Manohla Dargis):
But it’s this disconnect, this conflict between inside the bubble and all of the wildly explosive content outside of it that keeps me engaged.
I know that out of this dreadful era, creativity will grow, like that little plant in Wall-E back when Pixar made great movies.
Art has to be free to tell the truth, not the truth inside the bubble, but THE TRUTH. To express it, you have to be able to see it. To express it, you need courage.
A Cultural Renaissance is Coming
We’ve been living through a major pendulum shift away from collectivism and toward individualism. This happens all through history, according to the book, Pendulum: How Generations of the Past Shape Our Present and Predict Our Future by Roy H. Williams and Michael R. Drew.
The idea is that it takes about 40 years to cycle through either end of the pendulum. They wrote the book in 2011 and yet somehow managed to accurately predict exactly where we’d be in 2023 — what they call the “witch hunt” phase, which is the darker side of collectivism.
They also say that we won’t be out of this completely until 2030, four more years or so from now. But we’re on the tail-end of the collectivist cycle. The “witch hunts” came right on time.
Witch Hunt phase is when it’s “I’m okay, you’re not.” Cancel culture in a nutshell, but also what happened to the Democrats and their 10-year war to stop Trump, only to have him win again in 2024. The next part of this should be that we all get along again and there is no division, no polarization, no accusations. And finally, the cycle begins anew.
Not much will change in Hollywood in the short run. Most of the movies coming out reflect the ideology of the Woketopia. This is what people inside the bubble still passionately believe in and find interesting, even if the rest of the country doesn’t as much. Sooner or later, though, there will have to be a letting go.
In the meantime, there are very few journalists in showbiz coverage who can risk stepping outside of their comfort zone for fear of being canceled or who even have any interest in understanding what is happening. We get their perspective from inside the bubble, and that is limiting. It tells you what the people who watch Colbert and Maddow think. Most Oscar voters are people like that.
It doesn’t tell you, however, what is humming and thriving and evolving outside of it. Inside the bubble, the Sydney Sweeney ad was tone deaf. Outside the bubble, it was thrilling to see any company now decide to address the rest of the population outside the confines of the internet. That’s roughly 70% of the United States that no longer has any interest in what happens inside the bubble.
And people wonder why Colbert was canceled, why the box office is struggling (but for a few IP hits and Sinners). They wonder how Trump could have won twice after their endless, decade-long obsession with bringing him down. Sooner or later, they will have to let down the drawbridge and face the teeming masses that keep banging on the castle walls.
