Earlier this month Amazon announced plans to release a documentary about Melania Trump. The company is reportedly paying $40 million for its exclusive deal with the soon-to-be-again first lady, who will produce the Prime Video film herself. That’s twice as much as Apple TV+ paid in a similar deal with Billie Eilish for her documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry.
Last December the US TV network ABC settled a defamation suit taken by Melania’s husband, agreeing to pay $15 million in a case that most legal experts believed it would have won, given the strong free-speech protections in the US constitution. Many observers saw the decision to settle made by ABC’s parent company, Disney, as a signal of obeisance to the president-elect. It’s certainly of a part with the parade of chief executives who have made their way to Mar-a-Lago since last November’s election to kiss the ring, bend the knee or whichever feudal metaphor you prefer.
On Monday, when Trump returns to the White House for his second stint as president of the United States, the contrast with his first term will be stark. In 2017 Trump was seen as an aberration and a wildcard, including by many in his own party. He was treated – publicly at least – with thinly disguised disdain and distrust by the power brokers of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and met by fierce resistance from political opponents in the form of huge marches across the country.
All of that was reflected in the cultural climate that prevailed throughout that first term. From #MeToo to Black Lives Matter, progressive social movements made their presence felt in the workplaces of tech, publishing, the media and Hollywood. It was the high water mark of diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, of language policing and calling out.
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Now the forces of the progressive left that held the upper hand in cultural discourse are in disarray. American megastars from Taylor Swift to Beyoncé lined up behind Kamala Harris, Donald Trump’s rival. Most American voters ignored them. (It’s surely well past time for the Democratic Party to ask itself whether such billionaire endorsements do more harm than good.) Trump’s success, in contrast, was built on a motley gang of media outsiders from the worlds of podcasting, gaming and martial arts. The mainstream entertainment establishment got a bloody nose. It will surely take note.
[ Mark Zuckerberg’s pronouncements confirm that ‘woke’ is deadOpens in new window ]
This, then, is a time for reflection. In a recent round-table discussion on Politico about culture and Trump, one participant made the point that Hollywood’s move to foreground racial diversity over class politics “risks reinforcing the already existing impression among conservatives that identity politics ... is a tool that elite wealthy liberals use to protect their class privilege and discipline members of the non-elite classes who don’t agree with them”.
You can imagine how that critique, however accurate it might be (and it has a ring of truth), will be interpreted in the upper echelons of the American entertainment industry. The power brokers of Hollywood will already have been looking north towards Palo Alto, where their equivalents in tech are enthusiastically Magafying their operations. They will also take note of the facts that young adults shifted more significantly towards Trump than any other demographic group and that support for the president-elect has climbed in blue states such as New York and California.
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It takes a while for political shifts to be reflected in mass entertainment, particularly film and TV. The last great rightward tilt in American pop culture took place during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and it was three or four years into his first term before it found its true form in the stylised macho shape-throwing of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But what can happen more quickly is an adjustment or a greater willingness to say no. Disney (again), as the biggest beast in the jungle, may be leading the way. Having engaged in years of wrangling over wokeism with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, the company sent a rather different signal in November when cutting a transgender storyline from its subsidiary Pixar’s upcoming animated series Win or Lose.
It’s all quite a vibe shift from that dramatic evening weeks after the 2016 election, when Mike Pence, as vice-president-elect, went to see Hamilton on Broadway and was lectured from the stage by a cast member. Such a scene would be hard to imagine this time around. Those who despair of that fact might do well to consider whether the iron grip that a set of progressive principles has held on the commanding heights of big-budget American entertainment has actually served those principles well. It’s hard to authentically argue you’re opposed to elites and institutions when you’re so obviously a member of both.
