Industry figures might march in protests or give critical speeches, but waging a crusade against the White House is not in the job description

Trump v Hollywood? Don't expect to see the culture war play out on screen

Meryl Streep used her Golden Globes acceptance speech to fire what appeared to be an opening salvo in America’s latest culture war: Hollywood v Donald Trump.



The actor excoriated him as a xenophobic bully in a podium address that turned her Cecil B DeMille award into a rallying cry against the president-elect.

Donald Trump hits back at 'Hillary lover' Meryl Streep after Golden Globes speech Read more

The assembled film-makers stamped and cheered and tweeted, a surge of star-studded liberal solidarity uniting the likes of Ben Affleck, Julianne Moore and Viola Davis.

Robert De Niro followed up with a congratulatory letter amplifying Streep’s call to arms. “I share your sentiments about punks and bullies. Enough is enough ... it is so important that we ALL speak up.”

Trump led a counter-charge by branding Streep, probably Hollywood’s most revered actor, “overrated” and a Hillary Clinton “flunkey”, attack lines echoed by his supporters.

And so, days before the Trump era officially begins, battle is joined. Hollywood’s cultural avatars going up against a president with the nuclear codes and a Republican Congress.

It would make a great movie, but there’s the rub – Hollywood’s enmity may not transfer to the screen.

Industry figures may march in protests, fulminate in speeches and donate to Democrats yet channel little of that ardour into films and television shows.

“It’s more about box office than any other agenda,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst for the box office tracker comScore. “I don’t see any particular agenda besides lots of franchises to bring people into theaters. More Marvel superheroes, more DC superheroes, more sequels.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Meryl Streep used her Golden Globes acceptance speech to criticize Donald Trump. Photograph: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

He was referring to big studio fare, but the industry as a whole could disappoint those hoping for a liberal, inclusive wave from Los Angeles to counter rightwing populism from Washington.

Hollywood, after all, is still dominated by white men who like to make films and shows built around other white men, fictional and real, who slash, shoot and zap other characters in the hope, ultimately, of putting butts in seats. Waging a cultural crusade against the White House is not in the job description.

“You will see people stand up and use their star power to say things in front of an audience, but studios look at the bottom line,” said Michele Burke, a makeup artist with two Oscars. “Truly we are artists, and most people here want to create great films, great stories. But at the end of the day this is a huge money-making machine.”



Nobody denies this, but Tinseltown’s self-mythology dwells on its progressive, tyranny-fighting credentials – Charlie Chaplin mocking Hitler in The Great Dictator; Humphrey Bogart resisting Nazis in Casablanca; Kirk Douglas, in real life, facing down McCarthyite witch-hunts.

Stars who blunder, such as “Hanoi Jane” Fonda posing with North Vietnamese troops during the Vietnam war, are usually forgiven. (Likewise, the music industry shook off the row about Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks chastising George W Bush.)

Hollywood’s left-leaning tilt is undeniable. Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other Democrats have long used it as an ATM, minting millions at fundraisers hosted by the likes of George Clooney and Jeffrey Katzenberg. The political analytics firm Crowdpac studied federal campaign contributions dating back to 1980 and concluded the entertainment industry was one of America’s most liberal professions, along with academia and news media.

You'll see people stand up and use star power to say things in front of an audience, but studios look at the bottom line Michele Burke, Oscar-winning makeup artist

Stars occasionally make films that echo their political views – for instance, Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck or Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs.

Boris Zelkin, a film composer who leans politically libertarian, said liberal bias was ubiquitous. “Can you name a show where there’s a sane or compassionate conservative? Or smart Christians without a skeleton in their closet? Or a non-evil corporation? It doesn’t have to be an active jab at conservatives, it’s what they don’t show.”

Mary McNamara, the LA Times’s TV critic, in contrast, scotches the notion of progressive bias, saying Hollywood wallows in nostalgia, elides class and relies on white male heroes “across galaxies, through the centuries, in every genre imaginable”.

Explicit political partisanship seldom works well on screen, said Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California. “Hollywood is most successful – creatively as well as commercially – when it conveys the American dream and the struggles to realize it. The industry loves stories about people who succeed against long odds, no matter what their backgrounds, because the audience loves those stories, too.”

Movies that show struggles against prejudice, poverty, ignorance, oppression and fear reflect liberal values only in the sense that “reality has a well-known liberal bias”, said Kaplan, quoting Stephen Colbert. “If there were big money to be made telling stories celebrating home schooling, semi-automatic rifle ownership, the bullying of gays, white supremacism, misogyny or xenophobia, Hollywood would be racing to make them.”

Will Trump affect storylines?

He exploded into the presidential race in June 2015 by calling Mexican immigrants rapists and swiftly became the Republican frontrunner, without noticeable effect on studio output, said Dergarabedian, the analyst. “This cycle went on for 18 months but I didn’t find any impact.”

Donald Trump’s vandalized star along the Hollywood walk of fame is tended to and cleaned up before being replaced. Photograph: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

A liberal response is now stirring. The executive producer of Jane the Virgin has reportedly ditched the show’s Ivanka Trump shoes and urged the writers to insert a storyline about registering Latinos to vote. ABC’s Black-ish devoted an episode to his win.

But Hollywood may also start paying more heed to white, working-class Trump supporters, on and off screen. ABC Entertainment Group president Channing Dungey told an industry summit that the network had overlooked “some of the true realities of what life is like for everyday Americans in our dramas”.

Natalie Portman, who campaigned for Clinton in Pennsylvania, told the Guardian that her liberal bubble had blinkered her to Trump’s rise. “That’s maybe part of the problem. We don’t interact enough with people from different political persuasions.”

Another problem is Hollywood’s gender imbalance. Bashing Trump for sexism, on or off screen, is awkward given an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation into Hollywood pay discrimination.

“Somewhat remarkably given ... the abundant attention the diversity issue has received over the last couple of years the percentages of women working in important behind-the-scenes roles actually declined last year,” said Martha Lauzen, author of annual Celluloid Ceiling reports.

The most recent study, out this week, found that women comprised just 7% of directors on the top 250 films, down from previous years. “Either by accident, design or training, behind-the-scenes individuals tend to create characters reflecting their own sex,” Lauzen said.

Some critics dismiss the culture war idea as absurd given that Trump, a Manhattan tycoon-turned reality TV star, is a product of Hollywood.

Not only that, but the industry paved his political insurrection with films such as Jimmy Stewart’s crusading outsider in Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Sidney Lumet’s Network, which encouraged everyone to open their windows and scream, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more”, argued LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan. “The movies were key in creating the cultural forces that made voting for Donald Trump seem like a fine idea.”

If Streep’s broadside at the Golden Globes was any guide, the Oscars will crackle with more denunciations, which will in turn provoke reactions from the new president and his supporters. A collision of art, celebrity and politics that, however heartfelt, will entertain, and ultimately perhaps add up to just that – entertainment.