Just saw this, so I figured I should respond:
Hollywood was much more organized in 2017-2020.
How are we measuring this? I imagine Biden’s election lowered the salience of Hollywood’s most outspoken actors’ pet causes rather than any actual decline in Hollywood’s political organization, whatever that means.
They flexed their media muscle pushing #MeToo into the mainstream.
This issue was (and remains) very contentious. There were certainly Hollywood stars that advocated vociferously for Me Too, but recall that the foremost opponents or “enemies” of that movement came from
within Hollywood, particularly at the executive level.
They got Time Person of the Year.
I was Time’s Person of the Year in 2006. And besides, I don’t particularly trust their editorial board to make sound judgements about America’s political economy.
They made a big impact on the discourse around Brett Kavanaugh, let alone Trump.
This is true, insofar as interest groups or individual actors are concerned; the same could be said for most other professional interest groups and associations that seek to influence political debate.
They turned BLM from a few small protests into a nationwide movement. Practically all of your favorite celebrities endorsed that. The Black Square movement was turbocharged by Hollywood.
Disagree. That was the work of activists on the ground (for better or worse) between 2014 and 2020. Hollywood was only marginally attached to these decentralized and sporadic protests. The “black square movement” was a *reaction* to the salience of BLM in May 2020, not a forerunner.
In
2018 and
2020 they were huge donors and supporters of the Democratic Party.
These sums sound large, but other interest groups have consistently matched or exceeded the contributions of various Hollywood personalities or executives. Car dealerships and their interest groups, for example.
They helped focus the party on college-educated women, which is clearly paying dividends.
How so? This has been an ongoing trend since the late 80s and has little correlation with political advocacy from Hollywood.
It’s hard not to see how activist Hollywood was 5 years ago. But backlash was coming. DeSantis is persona non-grata on this forum due to LGBT but the pushback to Disney didn’t come out of nowhere. And Hollywood has clearly toned it down.
I really don’t see how DeSantis’ quixotic battle with Disney (and hilarious campaign for the Presidency) is all that relevant to a discussion about Hollywood.
