Danny Boyle’s Ink will be Netflix’s second play at the Oscars, after La Bola Negra. We’ll have to wait and see whether Cliff Booth will also be among these selections but for now, they have two strong players. Here is the trailer for Ink, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy. “A group of visionaries and misfits had an idea for a new kind of news — one that would give the people what they want and would change the face of the world we live in today. Based on the Tony Award-winning play of the same name.”
My first thought when I heard of this was oh boy, here we go again. Another TRUMP IS BAD struggle session. So I checked with AI, was I right? Of course I was right:
- The Rise of Populism: British critics viewed the play as an origin story for modern political discourse. Reviews in publications like The Hollywood Reporter (UK coverage) noted that Murdoch and editor Larry Lamb’s strategy of pandering to “baser instincts” paved the direct path toward the “populist manipulation of today’s British voters” and international political shifts, including the election of Trump and Brexit. [1, 2]
- The Fox News Connection: Multiple reviews pointed to the play’s closing scenes—where Murdoch explicitly states his desire to buy an American television network—as a chilling foreshadowing of Fox News. Reviewers noted that the “dark arts of tabloid journalism” mastered in 1969 London were the exact toolset later used to reshape US media and ultimately help elect Donald Trump. [1, 2, 3]
- Playwright Intent: In interviews surrounding the London premiere at the Almeida Theatre, playwright James Graham openly confirmed that watching the concurrent rise of Trump and the aggressive, populist tone of social media directly inspired him to look back at the historical roots of Murdoch’s media empire. [1, 2, 3]
This is a story Hollywood will be telling over and over, to their own detriment: how it all went so wrong with Donald Trump. How was it that they could have had everything and had it end up with that guy in power? To them, it was an invasion, a collapse. They’ve been desperately trying to regain power by any means necessary, which has included two impeachments, four indictments, a felony conviction, three assassination attempts, and nonstop attacks by Hollywood, protesters, and the corporate press.
The problem: they don’t really know or understand Trump, his supporters, or why he won a second term in 2024. To them, he is on par with Stalin and Hitler (oh how I wish I were kidding). But really, we had an alignment of power on the Left thanks to the internet that consolidated much of our culture, institutions, government in the hands of the Democrats and the establishment. The Proles were meant to stay hidden in the dark corners and not participate in our democracy.
To understand all of that, however, is to empathize or humanize the other side, not to see them as racists, transphobes, bigots, etc. But to see them as people. Your fellow Americans. Hollywood, unfortunately, has become the megaphone for the wealthy and powerful progressives and, in my opinion, lost the plot. They are also ruled by fear and thus, even if they could see the truth and wanted to tell it, they could not. Lest what happened to me happen to them.
They have never done the one thing they would have needed to do — as simple as clicking their heels together three times — which is to offer the people something better. If half the country is being left behind then something has to change. But they wanted the people to want what they built, not reject it. But reject it they did, at least half of them, as this country’s second Civil War rages on (mostly virtually).
Our last Civil War was fought as America expanded. What would the country be going forward? Would it still have slaves, which the Republicans considered against God and a contradiction to the founding principles? No, they said. Slavery will not continue and your utopian dystopia, people of the South, will have to fall.
So here, that territory is the internet, the global, virtual new world we’ve all helped build in the past 26 years online. What will it be going forward? A progressive woketopia shaped by millennial do-gooders? Or the Wild, Wild West? Clinging to utopias never works. The rules become too strident, the thought too uniform. Something — or someone — has to come along and shake it all up. That’s just evolution.
Not to say Trump is everyone’s cup of tea or that you should agree with his policies but come on, folks. Assassination attempts? He’s not the supervillain he’s become. He’s the still the same guy he was in the 1980s.
We get so many stories trying to “explain” how the Devil arrived, and Ink will definitely be among them, even if it looks to me like one of the best films of the year. I just know that what lies at the heart of this is that same obsession: Fox News built Trump. Rupert Murdoch built Fox News. It’s the Succession of it all. They see evil as embodied in Trump, so let’s do a villain origin story.
The Apprentice was more or less like what East of Eden will probably be – a way to at least understand why Trump is the way he is. Ink will be a way to help explain how we got here. None of this is or will ever be as interesting as the WHY of it, but that is something they can’t face yet. Maybe someday they will thaw out of their hate and rage at people who don’t agree with them, and they’ll understand better how we found ourselves here.
Either way, the Ink trailer looks pretty darned good, all things considered. It will do well inside the bubble where the supervillain origin story reigns supreme.
