What proportion of the top creative artists in Hollywood, the heavyweight auteurs, are men of the right?
This old question has come up again with the box office triumph of the anti-egalitarian Brad Bird’s The Incredibles 2 and the comments about Donald Trump by David Lynch, director of Twin Peaks and Eraserhead.
Lynch’s work isn’t to everyone’s taste, but obviously he’s an American original who makes movies and television shows that nobody else could (or perhaps would). If you are as admired as David Lynch (his Mulholland Drive came in No. 1 in a recent poll of critics as the best film of the 21st century, although that could be an artifact of the survey methodology), you can, hopefully, continue to have a career after saying to The Guardian:
“[Trump] could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.” While Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might. “Our so-called leaders can’t take the country forward, can’t get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this.”
Trump joked:
“There’s David Lynch. Enjoy it because his career in Hollywood is officially over.”
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The square-jawed Lynch, who identifies himself on Twitter as “Filmmaker. Born Missoula, MT. Eagle Scout,” has many obsessions, but few that overlap with those of the social justice jihadis. Fortunately for Lynch, much of the press can’t imagine that his assessment of Trump could be anything other than some complex aesthetic put-on. They assume: By definition, unique artists such as Lynch must agree with everybody you know.
Clearly, even the most valuable film directors are forced to tread carefully in today’s entertainment-industry political monoculture.
Yet, a suspiciously large fraction of this century’s most influential movies, such as Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, and Iron Man, have been devoted to conservative themes such as honor and courage.
Granted, a few major directors, most notably Mel Gibson and Clint Eastwood, dare to be outspoken in their conservatism. Several more, such as Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), would appear to lean right.
The vastly successful Marvel film universe has its corporate roots in the Israeli Zionist right. Marvel’s first black director, Ryan Coogler of Black Panther, revived conservative he-man Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky franchise with Creed; his portrayal of the xenophobic African utopia of Wakanda seemed slightly to the right of Shaka Zulu.
