CULTURE.
Hollywood’s Uprising of Activism While conventional wisdom suggests that the arts have been depoliticized relative to the 1960s, there’s been a surge of celebrity engagement since the Trump years. BY DA N N Y G O L D BE RG F
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Brendan Gleeson portrays Donald Trump in Showtime’s The Comey Rule, directed by Billy Ray.
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egardless of what the recently convened House select committee ends up conveying to the public about January 6th, Hollywood is already on it. Last year, Billy Ray wrote and directed The Comey Rule, a two-episode miniseries based on the former FBI director’s memoir that featured the first full dramatization of Donald Trump as president, in a memorable portrayal by Brendan Gleeson. The day after the insurrection, Ray approached Showtime with an idea for a film about Ashli
Babbitt, the pro-Trump protester who had been killed after invading the Capitol. Showtime and Ray decided to widen the focus, and the currently untitled “Jan 6th series” will consist of six one-hour episodes about the insurrection. Shooting begins in January, and it will be broadcast before the midterm elections. The main characters will be three to four insurrectionists, three to four cops. and one member of Congress (no casting yet).
Ray, whose credits include the screenplay of The Hunger Games, told me, “It’s the obligation of people who can get things made to make things that reflect America back to itself, that paint an accurate portrait of where we are as a country.” In an era when conventional news media reach a fraction of America’s voting population, alternative populist messengers play an outsized role in shaping public opinion. Rightwing propagandists have a pipeline into most of the talk radio audience, and Trumpists like Ben Shapiro and Franklin Graham dominate the daily list of top ten Facebook posts. The left still dominates in show business. Although there are a few Trumpist entertainers like Kid Rock, most artists are progressive, and the singers, writers, actors, producers, and directors who became part of the resistance to Trump have stayed engaged in America’s political conversation. That is upending a familiar trope in recent decades, asserting that art has become depoliticized relative to the activism of the past. Baby boomers like to romanticize the role of popular music in the movement against the Vietnam War. As Jimmy Iovine observes in the Apple miniseries 1971, The Year That Music Changed Everything, songs like Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” served as a “Trojan horse” in which anti-war ideas were delivered by addictive melodies and rhythms. And it’s true that many artists spoke out on civil rights, Vietnam, and other hot-button issues. Yet even in that storied era, activist artists like Gaye, John Lennon, and Eartha Kitt were the exception. In the Trump era, they were the rule. When Jon Stewart began hosting The Daily Show in 1999, it was the only weeknight program in which the comedy revolved around politics. After Trump became president, every show, every night, followed this model. Before Trump, pop divas like Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston rarely alluded to political issues or elections. With Trump in the political mix, Cardi B, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish were among dozens of outspoken stars. Before Trump, most show business activism came from a small group of “usual suspects.” After 2016,
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