The “Great Awokening” changed everything in Hollywood. It changed how movies were made and how the industry voted on movies. 2020 marked the turning point when Hollywood, the BAFTA, and other groups were pressured into direct action. If change wasn’t going to come quickly enough to satisfy the demands of activists, they were going to force that change, no matter what. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
But what happens if the entire thing goes over the handlebars? That is where we find ourselves before the Golden Globes are set to air this Tuesday. Have you noticed how it’s All Quiet on the Leftern Front? We have just one movie holding the whole thing together: Top Gun Maverick, which stands like a shining beacon to remind everyone that yes, people will still come to the movies if you make movies people actually want to see.
It’s bad. It’s really really REALLY bad and the last thing you’re seeing, except for a few brave souls out there, is a quiet shunning of the Golden Globes as they try to claw their way back to their former stature. What they needed to do, in my opinion, was really fight back. Bring a Ricky Gervais on to mock the entire industry for their blatant hypocrisy. Then, people would tune in at least. There is still power in numbers. High ratings is shock and awe. It’s f*ck you money.
But they seem to have taken a different road, to pander or try to soften or try to behave in an acceptable manner to avoid criticism. I don’t think they get it and I don’t think Hollywood gets it. That isn’t going to cut it going forward. You have to be willing to stop caring what people on Twitter say about you. That’s the adaptation. You have to try your best to do your best and then write the rest of it off as the mass hysteria nonsense that it is.
That’s the way forward if Hollywood wants to survive. They have to be themselves. They have to make movies that not just reflect who they are, but movies that reflect what the majority still wants to see. In all of the years I spent writing about women and artists of color I never thought the core would ever completely collapse. I thought people want to make money above all and that the empire would not let itself die.
But I was wrong. In our post-2020 Hollywood the ONLY thing that matters is image. It matters even more than profit as it turns out. That image is to be seen as a “good puritan” in our new utopian vision of the industry (and much of the cultural and corporate institutions). Why? Because we now have a way for people to be dragged into the arena for public shaming. We have social media. Everyone has a voice. Now, anyone can be destroyed at any time for any reason.
In all of the years I’ve been covering the Oscar race I’ve never seen it quite as bad as it is right now. It’s bad at the box office, as we watch movies barely crawl along because their target audiences are staying home, waiting for movies that interest them to stream. Noble titans like Steven Spielberg who are fighting to keep movies in movie theaters alive are feeling the pain as we watch the slow drip of the box office and we KNOW the Oscar race isn’t going to change anything. It did once. Movies that won awards did matter once.
I have never seen film critics more cut off from the ordinarily lives of people — or even of the film business. They exist in this isolated bubble inside an isolated bubble and they LIKE it that way. They see no reason to change and why should they? Don’t count on them to rescue the film industry. They don’t have any incentive to do so.
The Golden Globes are set to air on Tuesday. They’ve done everything within their power to become Twitter-proof. Maybe everything will be fine. Maybe people will show up and audiences will watch. Maybe they’ll be able to scrabble back a tiny bit of their former glory. Here’s what I know: journalists and film Twitter will have their knives out like they’re watching the vote for Speaker of the House among the GOP. Yes, to them it is that menacing, that threatening. They seem to need constant fuel to fire up the machine every day and the fuel has to come from somewhere.
Why, because accusing other people boosts one’s status. Throwing people under the bus is a way of saying “I’m not like them. I’m good.” Lest we forget, even the guy I defended for years, Devin Faraci, that I took a virtual bullet for, eventually threw me under the bus on Twitter to scrabble for a tiny bit of clout. I don’t blame him. It’s hard to be on the outside unless you do what I did — and you simply walk out the front door and stop wanting back in.
That is the only way out of this mess. Stop participating in witch hunts. Stop judging people based on hysteria and assumptions. We’re all just human beings struggling daily with our better and worst natures. Hollywood, and the HFPA, have to understand WHO they are and stop trying to be what they aren’t. I wish nothing but the best for the Golden Globes.
To move through this moment, we have to be willing not to play the game of hysteria, which is hard. I am doing it and I know how hard it is. You are shunned, judged, attacked, ignored. Everything we crave from our online experience depends upon people “liking” us. The price we pay for that is joining them in hatred of the “bad” people. Sooner or later, it’s all going to evaporate, and we’ll be left with the stories we tell about this time.
How We Got Here
Utopias have two paths forward in almost every instance. They either break apart completely, or they have no choice but to become more authoritarian. That means the ideology they once suggested is now mandated across the board. This is generally what has led to some of the worst crimes against humanity and the best dystopian fiction novels. We’re not quite there yet but we’re edging ever so close to Orwell’s 1984 now that we have our “inner” virtual spaces (social media, etc) and our “outer” region, the broader public (movie theaters, TV ratings).
Our utopia began when Barack Obama won the US presidency in 2008. It was a new America, many us felt. We had, for the first time, a collective sense of purpose. Almost everyone was excited about this new America, at least at first. Discontent would begin to grow in different ways and in different places about different issues — from the Wall Street bailout, to school shootings, to transgender rights, and a reversed power hierarchy online that put marginalized people at the top with the highest level of protected status, and the least marginalized at the bottom (aka, white men).
It’s one thing for this to be how Tumblr used to function (before it was bought, upended, dismantled, and then disintegrated). It’s another thing for it to be how Hollywood functions. They’re still required to appeal to the majority but they can’t because they are too busy appealing to the loud minority of activists online.
But most of us on the Left just didn’t notice, especially not Hollywood. They began shaping their content, almost all of it except their blockbusters, to a certain type of person. A sophisticated cosmopolitan that reads The New Yorker, uses Twitter, recycles, and is a “good Puritan” in our new shining city on the hill. Or at least, that is how we would all see ourselves. Good liberals, good people, with “goodness” as our top priority because we were the mirror reflection of the Obamas, and they were good people.
And then, the “Devil” rode into Salem Village in 2016, which shook everything. Now, there was a disruption in our utopia. Hollywood and the Oscars formed the #resistance such that everything was either pro or against Trump and the more nebulous Trumpism. It was as though we were a nation at war, but each side thought they were fighting a completely different battle. On the Left, it was seen as the second Civil War battle with the second Confederacy of “white supremacists.” On the Right, it was seen, perhaps, as the second Revolutionary War against an increasingly oppressive, isolated elite.
To all of us inside the utopia, the bad people outside of it were the worst kind of evil. But they couldn’t, we couldn’t, do anything about them. So we started eating our own. The firings came fast and hard. Anyone could be fired for anything at any time. They had only to be accused, and that was enough. Confess with an apology or be banished to the outer region. Utopias probably work fine as long as everyone behaves exactly as they’re supposed to. But the fear is always that the spider is inside the tent, not outside of it. How can we protect ourselves against the enemy within?
La La Land had a “racist” angle, it was declared. Three Billboards Outside Ebbings, Missouri, was racist, it was declared. And Green Book? Well, that was the end of everything. How dare heterosexual white men make a movie about a Black gay man? Green Book won anyway and that only drove the mass hysteria to even greater heights. This was the moment when the utopia went from happy people to terrified people holding on to what they used to have, the world they knew.
On and on it went, from film critics to journalists, to editors, to directors, to actors, and anyone on Twitter who potentially stepped out of line with the wrong thing said — many of us old timers landed in the line of fire too. So it wasn’t surprising when the Golden Globes were canceled. As revelations of dubious internal dealings came out, they were dropped into the churn of Twitter, whirred around to create their own mass hysteria event. The fear was ignited once again as though yet another witch was accused in Salem.
Eventually, after a year of hysteria in Salem, it all came crashing down when the governor’s wife was accused. It was so ridiculous that it burst the bubble. The only reason we know about Salem is that a Quaker named Thomas Maule spent a year in jail making sure the story was told. They tried to bury it. His resistance eventually led to the First Amendment.
We can’t really go back to the way things were before. We have an entire generation that has demanded, and expects change.
But we can stop believing people who point their fingers and cry, “WITCH.” We have to learn how to survive that. The way you do that is to know who you are, to know you are a good person and to stand by the accused. Don’t fire people because Twitter has a fit. Don’t cast your movies from a place of fear. Be who you are. Be honest. Tell the truth.
Watch this speech. Look at the happy faces on stage.
Ask yourselves, did THEY deserve what happened to them in 2018? You know the answer is no. You know it, I know it. This industry devoured itself over Green Book.
Maybe it’s just all over. Maybe Hollywood award shows had a good run and we’ve finally reached the moment where everything falls away and something else rises. Maybe that’s the reality we must face. We’ll all have to go do something else with our lives.
But until then, I hope people show up at the Globes. I hope people watch the show. I hope.
We’ll be posting our predictions later today.
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