Breaking: white people allowed to work in Hollywood again

The headline:

Sometimes, headlines can be misleading; in this case, the text is even worse:

Amazon MGM just bought a spec script from Joe Eszterhas — yes, the man who brought the sexy in “Flashdance,” “Jade,” “Sliver” and “Showgirls” as well as “Basic Instinct” in the ’80s and ’90s — in a $2 million deal to write what he has called an “anti-woke” reboot.

“I don’t believe in woke and I don’t believe in being politically correct because I think it’s not the truth, and I like the truth spoken,” Mr. Eszterhas, who gets an additional $2 million if the film gets made, told me in a recent interview about the deal. As for how the movie will be “anti-woke,” he wouldn’t say a lot other than it would be “raunchy,” but I got the impression that he’d know it when he wrote it.

“I don’t know what “anti-woke” means, and neither does he — maybe some level of frontal nudity — but this washed-up hack will be doing it.

No less an authority than “South Park” declared last month that “woke is dead” in the season premiere that went viral for featuring President Trump crawling naked through the desert in a fake public service announcement. In the same episode, Cartman loses hope after learning that “woke” has died. His once politically correct principal has suddenly embraced religion, inviting Jesus into their public school. (Cartman’s later bid to asphyxiate himself with the car running in the garage fails because it is an electric vehicle.)

I’m not sure how an anti-Trump satire, one of whose central points is that even to people sympathetic to the argument being “anti-woke” becomes a tedious bore when “anti-woke” becomes the position of the people who, inter alia, control the federal government illustrates the thesis here, but anyway.

And the furor over the actress Sydney Sweeney’s sexy ad for American Eagle in which she slithers on a couch while extolling her “jeans” (jeans/genes — you get it)? The right-wing outrage machine has revved up over a few critical comments that the ad somehow is code for white supremacy. But, surprise: It’s had no echo in Burbank or Beverly Hills, where not so long ago Ms. Sweeney might have had to apologize for her insensitivity and make a donation to the A.C.L.U.

I like how she concedes that this is completely manufactured outrage and nobody cares about the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad outside of a few permanently outraged TikToks, but makes up a scenario where she would have had to apologize anyway.

We’re pretty far into the column, and I still have no idea what I’m supposed to have been upset about or what has actually supposed to have changed.

Trends are sometimes hard to pinpoint, and “wokeism” itself is a loaded term. For the purpose of this essay, I will define it as the belief in progressive values aimed at correcting systemic injustices tied to race, gender and other marginalized traits.

It is no leap to say that Hollywood, an enclave of liberalism nonetheless largely run by white men, was generally aligned with these values for decades. But after coming in for criticism with #OscarsSoWhite and for the lack of diversity among directors and top showrunners, in recent years there was a far more deliberate effort at inclusiveness in hiring and storytelling. FX’s “Reservation Dogs,” written and starring Native Americans, was celebrated along with the long-running Amazon series “Transparent” and HBO’s short-lived Black horror show “Lovecraft Country.” Hollywood’s newest stars and power players — Ryan Coogler, Lena Waithe, Quinta Brunson — were going to change the game.

Uh, Ryan Coogler’s latest movie has made a worldwide box office of $365 million. Abbott Elementary is a commercial and critical success. Waithe’s flagship show has been running since 2018, I assume it’s made plenty of money for her partners.

That aside, the outrage here seems to be that across literal decades there has been three (3) shows that are not primarily about straight white people. OUTRAGEOUS! You can’t make a show about straight white people anymore! I mean, look at the winners for Best Drama Series at the Emmys in the 2020s, and I think you’ll find nary a white face:

2020: Succession

2021: The Crown

2022: Succession

2023: Succession

2024: Shogun

Or how about best comedy?

2020: Schitt’s Creek

2021: Ted Lasso

2022: Ted Lasso

2023: The Bear

2024: Hacks

How about the Limited Drama Series:

2020: Watchmen

2021: The Queen’s Gambit

2022: The White Lotus

2023: Beef

2024: Baby Reindeer

Yes, looking at the recent history of Hollywood, I think it’s obvious that the stories of white people simply cannot be told. Imagine trying to pitch a story about the travails of white rich people at decadent resorts. LOL good luck — why not try to cast Sydney Sweeney as a parody of a woke mean girl while you’re at it — you’d probably be permanently blacklisted! A show about a wealthy dynasty modelled on the Murdochs? Forget about it. British royalty or chess players? No chance. Uplifting comedies about good-natured white people — could never be made today.

The new rules resulted in a strict if unspoken set of boundaries that tacitly put certain topics and categories outside the accepted circles of casting and green lights. It isn’t only that conservative groups gripe that “their” stories — by which I think they mean religious stories or maybe a heroic epic about the fight to end Roe v. Wade — don’t get produced. But I also can’t count the number of times I’ve heard quiet frustration from a reasonably accomplished white male screenwriter who felt cast out by the top talent agencies. In the process of “recentering” Hollywood, some people suddenly felt shunted to the side.

As for “their stories being told” bit, well, sometimes they are. And here’s the thing: there are a lot of rich conservatives! Nothing is stopping Harlan Crow from taking some of his Supreme Court justice emolument budget and bankrolling the heartwarming tale of how a faction got a Supreme Court supermajority from one (1) popular vote win in 30 years and overruled an extremely popular decision with a glorified American Thinker blog. You don’t need a major Hollywood studio or network to get your product out there anymore. But the issue isn’t that the heartwarming story of how Sam Alito finally allowed Texas to prosecute miscarriages can’t be made, it’s that there’s no mechanism to force people to watch it and like it, rather than just ignoring it like they ignore Kirk Cameron vanity projects.

On the larger point, let’s consider the showrunners of teh aforementioned Emmy winners, shall we? The last I looked, Jesse Armstrong and Mike White and Christopher Storer and Justin Marks and Daniel and Eugene Levy and Bill Lawrence and Scott Frank and Peter Morgan and Richard Gadd are all white guys. I have to say that I’m not really seeing the anti-white-male blacklist here! Perhaps Waxman may wish to consider that her whiny white guy buddies have a skill issue rather than a “woke” issue. Almost as if that’s what this was always about — the complaint is not that white guys can never get what they want, it’s that it’s not good enough if it’s not an exclusive club.