“Tár,” the best film of 2022 no matter which motion picture the
Academy decides to honor, is a movie about contemporary culture wars that
refuses to participate in them. It portrays the generation gap that yawns
between liberal elders and progressive juniors in many cultural institutions,
it illustrates the potent influence of cancel culture and #MeToo and it uses
both forces in a believable (if hallucinatory or supernatural) way to propel
the spiraling descent of its title character, Cate Blanchett’s fictional
conductor, Lydia Tár. And it does all this in a spirit of controlled ambiguity,
from a vantage point outside the forces it depicts — one that allows for
varying judgments on the main character’s undoing, in the same way as
comparable downfalls in real life.
اضافة اعلان
Most art is not this independent of its own cultural matrix,
which is why the pattern in the age of wokeness — or whatever you wish to call
the distinctive form of social justice progressivism that has swept through
elite institutions in recent years — is for cultural territory to be either
colonized by the new rules and shibboleths, or else to develop a reputation as
a zone of anti-woke resistance.
Examples of the first category are legion, from museum curation
to young adult fiction; stand-up comedy and Substack essay writing are arguable
examples of the second category. (Even if, yes, there are plenty of progressive
comics and Substackers.)
But the movies are an interesting case. Have cinematic politics
changed all that much since, say, the middle years of the Obama administration?
“Tár” happens to be a film about wokeness
(and many other things besides). But is there a current of wokeness in cinema that is
distinctive to our era in the way we look back and see certain movies embodying
the lefty cynicism of the 1970s or the Reaganite patriotism of the ’80s?
It is a tricky question because Hollywood always produces a lot
of movies that lean left explicitly (along with a lot of movies that lean
rightward more tacitly — like every Christopher Nolan film and most horror
movies). So just identifying liberal message movies does not tell us that much
about what has changed in recent years.
Hollywood always produces a lot of movies that lean left explicitly (along with a lot of movies that lean rightward more tacitly — like every Christopher Nolan film and most horror movies). So just identifying liberal message movies does not tell us that much about what has changed in recent years.
The politics of a movie like James Cameron’s “Avatar” sequel,
for instance, about a pristine ecosystem despoiled by settler colonialism and
defended by Indigenous resistance, could be reasonably described as woke. But
they are just the same politics as in the 2009 original, which was made at the
high tide of post-racial optimism and technocratic liberalism, and which
recycled archetypes that go back to movies like “Dances With Wolves”. Likewise,
the past year’s spate of class warfare movies — “The Menu”, “Triangle of
Sadness”. the god-awful “Glass Onion” — are left-leaning in some sense but not
in a way that seems specific to this era’s progressivism.
Clearly the age of social justice has influenced representation
in Hollywood (although not enough, if you think “The Woman King” deserved an
Oscar nomination). There is more diverse casting, more minority-led projects, a
certain premium on nonwhite and female-centric narratives. And when people look
back on the cultural politics of this era, the controversies about
representation will no doubt be remembered — the fan wars over “The Last Jedi,”
the backlash to the all-female “Ghostbusters” and so on.
But the push for diversity has not necessarily affected a larger
thematic transformation. Having more roles for racial minorities in comic book
movies has not especially radicalized the bland politics of the Marvel
juggernaut, for instance. (Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger gets the best
lines in “Black Panther,” but he is still the villain.) And in the blockbuster
industry writ large, there is more continuity than change in the last decade or
so.
In prestige moviemaking, meanwhile, you can identify a few key
moments and movies that seem emblematic of a political shift: The surprise
victory of “Moonlight” over “La La Land” in the 2017 best picture race had an
intersectionality-defeating-whiteness vibe. The next year’s best picture
nominees included two movies that could lead any cinema of wokeness syllabus
decades hence: the excellent “Get Out,” with its horror-movie sendup of white
Obamaphilia, and the not-so-excellent “The Shape of Water,” with its alliance
of subaltern identities defeating Michael Shannon’s cishet Cold Warrior
villain. (A side note: There is a great essay to be written about “Get Out” and
2008’s “Rachel Getting Married,” two very different views of interracial
romances and nice white liberals, as bookends of the Obama era.)
But the range of prestige movies since 2017, including this
year’s roster of best picture nominees, does not bespeak a dramatic
transformation in Hollywood’s default political worldview. The dwindling
audience is the shift that matters, and while some politically themed movies
were part of the recent autumn of tanking, the box office failure of films like
“The Fabelmans” and “Babylon” and even “Tár” cannot be chalked up to the
industry going woke and going broke. It is a problem of entertainment, not
politics.
In one place, though, I do think you can see a clear
political-cultural shift: In children’s movies, animated and Disney movies
especially, which show a real disjunction somewhere in the 2010s. There’s
diversification and multiculturalism, with the old European fairy tale
narratives having their last hurrah in “Tangled” and “Frozen” and then giving
way to the Polynesia of “Moana”, the Southeast Asia of “Raya and the Last
Dragon” and the Colombia of “Encanto”. But beyond this there are also big
thematic changes, which do seem connected to the new kind of progressivism.
For instance, romance is emphatically out; a kind of therapeutic
management of family trauma and drama comes in. The antagonists cease to be
personal villains and become increasingly structural or miasmic; conflict is
borne out of misunderstanding or accident or environmental degradation instead
of jealousy or the will to power. Or else the real bad guy is some authority
figure who has misled everyone into unnecessary conflict: There is an emphasis
on deconstructing false histories and false family mythologies, or at least on
waking up from the spell cast by prior generations’ narratives.
In this era’s movies … the older generation is still usually mistaken or unsympathetic, but the spirit of individualism is diminished. The goal is now cultivating allyship, embracing sibling relationships and friendships, rather than falling in love, with the magical adventure a kind of group therapy for the community, a source of reconciliation more than transformation.
Older Disney movies, especially from the 1990s, often put a
liberal-individualist gloss on traditional fairy tale structures, with plucky
self-actualizing heroines finding adventure and their soul mates in the shadow
of a bumbling or clueless or unsympathetic older generation. In this era’s
movies, starting to some extent with “Frozen” and developing more fully
thereafter, the older generation is still usually mistaken or unsympathetic,
but the spirit of individualism is diminished. The goal is now cultivating
allyship, embracing sibling relationships and friendships, rather than falling
in love, with the magical adventure a kind of group therapy for the community,
a source of reconciliation more than transformation.
And too much adventuring is somewhat frowned upon as well. As
The Washington Post’s Sonny Bunch noted recently, 2022 brought two major kids’
releases, the Disney-Pixar production “Lightyear” and Disney’s “Strange World,”
which were movies about explorers whose message was effectively anti-exploration,
teaching their protagonists to stay home, embrace sustainability and be content
with diminished expectations — almost as if their creators had read a bit too
much Tema Okun and decided that the hero’s quest is just another facet of white
supremacy culture.
Both “Lightyear” and “Strange World” were also commercial
disappointments, and it is not clear to me that any of the children’s movies
whose themes I have just described are particularly powerful or memorable as
works of art unto themselves.
But maybe that is precisely what makes them a useful indicator.
Like middling ’80s action movies, this sort of kids’ entertainment is a kind of
background music or cultural wallpaper for our moment. Not necessarily what
kids want, but what the culture wants for them. Not a cinema of wokeness in
some grand and obvious way, but an ideological ethos that comes sliding in
unbidden on a Saturday afternoon when the whole family is tired and out of
ideas — but at least there’s a Disney+ subscription, and the remote is close to
hand.
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