We are currently beholding a post-election malaise felt by the Democrats and those on the left. Especially hard hit, and grappling with the aftereffects, have been the members of the media. They are facing a reality that they were unable to influence the election result and are now grappling with the sense that they may have lost the stranglehold on the national narrative.
For a prime example of this dysphoria just look at the reactive outrage spewed towards Elon Musk for daring to open up his social platform to alternative voices. As the press notices people are not listening to them at appreciable levels, journalists are loudly proclaiming they are exiting Xitter and moving to Bluesky, where only certain viewpoints are permitted, and mass blocking and suspensions of divergent opinions are the norm. They feel cutting off a portion of the country is the way to rebuild their audiences.
In another example of how their struggle is real, there was this episode of the New York Times podcast “Matter of Opinion”. No, this is not a dry-as-a-rice cake rehashing of the op-ed pages from the paper, but instead more of a discussion on news items and some cultural crossover elements, discussed between three Times staffers - Michele Cottle, Russ Douthat, and Carlos Lozada. In the latest episode they attempt to look at what elements in our culture might be emblematic of “The Trump Era”.
Douthat is one of the Times’ token conservatives, but he has never struck me as a particularly deep thinker on matters. We see (hear) this as he begins with his example of an item that is symbolic of Trump, and he reaches back to the first term as president, citing the film “The Shape of Water”. He brings up the film as an example of what he calls “oppositional culture”, a work created as a reaction to Trump. This is a prime example of, not someone overthinking a concept, but under-thinking it.
Though the film was released in the Fall of Trump’s first year in office, it is difficult to say it is in any way reflective of Trump’s rise. “The Shape of Water” - directed by Guillermo Del Toro - is a retelling of “The Creature From the Black Lagoon”, told from the creature’s perspective. Here is all you need to know to disqualify this choice: The director began collaborating on the story in 2011, well before Trump was even a political consideration. Del Toro was pitching it to his lead actress three years prior to shooting, and the production took place in 2016 - when the world was convinced Hillary Clinton was a lock for the White House. Filming wrapped up two days before Trump’s upset victory.
Douthat's example is attributed to Trump as a matter of timing, not based on any content. This is the flaw in the facile analysis of cultural items. In similar fashion we saw pieces indicating the movie “Hidden Figures” - about the POC females at NASA who were crucial to the U.S. trips to the moon - was a cinematic rebuke to the rise of Trump. This was basically impossible as the film was finished and in the can by the time of the 2016 election, and released on Christmas that year, one month before Trump was even sworn in.
Michelle Cottle then throws in with her choice of a Trump cultural item, and delivers “Yellowstone”, the hugely popular family ranching drama. It is essentially a cowboy soap opera, but instead of “Don’t leave me Tristan!” levels of drama, we are more likely to see scenes of someone trussed up and tossed into the bed of a Dodge Ram so they can be pitched off of a cliff. (This is a completely paraphrase example.) Cottle states, “It’s looking at really basic American things like land and tradition and family and violence and bloodshed. So it’s a little bit like a red state 'Succession'".
Here is the problem. The creator of the show, the highly prolific Taylor Sheridan, wrote the show as a statement against the very red-state-Trump themes she points to. Sheridan has a history of drawing sympathetic themes with Native Americans and against the wealthy and corporate greed (all while operating in the corporate world of big studio Hollywood.) This is hardly a pro-Trump effort.
Sure, many on the right are embracing the show, but possibly for unintended reasons. If anything, what is more likely at play is The Swanson Paradox. This is when an attempt is made to denigrate those on the right by concocting what the leftists feel is an over-the-top caricature of conservatism but instead manage to create a favorable character. This happened on the NBC sitcom “Parks And Rec”, where the Ron Swanson character was made into a broad parody of a Libertarian, but his supposedly hyperbolic actions were seen as favorable positions, making him into a beloved figure for those on the right.
In October The Atlantic fell into this unintentional realm when it produced a cover showing Trump in a manner it felt was aggressively critical. They displayed him guiding a cart into a dark, storm-ridden D.C. with an elephant chained inside of a cage, supposedly showing his oppressive nature. Conservatives instead applauded the image, favoring him shackling RINOs and heading into the corrupt capital to fix the malaise.
Similar situation with this cover from The Atlantic, which was supposed to be scary somehow but instead just made Trump look badass. pic.twitter.com/9WvrEYHH64
— Grand Admiral Nemo (@GrandAdmNemo) November 19, 2024
If you truly want an emblematic cultural item of the Trump Era, look at the foible we saw in Trump’s first term, where “The Handmaid’s Tale” was all the rage. It was the talk of the wizards in the media, the book was adapted into a TV series, and leftist protesters were adorned in the trademarked red robes on the regular – to, ummm…protest against being made to wear red robes.
The Left latched onto this intellectual property without applying intellectual effort. They claimed “Handmaid’s” was the desired MAGA gameplan of Republicans, all while ignoring the contradictory elements; it was written by a Canadian feminist in the 1980s who claimed conservatives both hated women AND wanted to collect as many as they could, all while claiming the party that calls for less government wanted to craft an overbearing regime.
This whole enterprise at the Times’ podcast shows the flailing nature of the press today. So now they sit around and attempt to rationalize conservatism as seen through the fractured lens of a cultural item. Here’s a suggestion for the thinkers on this show: If you want to know about conservatism, how about speaking to people on the right rather than analyzing through the filter of a television show created by one man?
And as for anyone interested in figuring out Leftism, all one needs to do is head over to The New York Times.
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