Politics are downstream of culture, and that grows truer by the day. And it’s become especially true with regard to pop culture.
Entertainment and technology are key parts of pop culture, so we’re taking you to the front lines of the culture war by addressing some of the best — and strangest — stories from that world in this recurring column exclusive to members of The Western Journal.
To say that 2023 was a rough year for the entertainment industry would be a vast understatement.
It felt like the societal pendulum swing from whatever the 2020 George Floyd riots represented had reached its full apex that year, with full-blown leftism infesting every corner of the entertainment medium — from video games to movies to television.
So then, color this writer simultaneously surprised and relieved that the aforementioned pendulum appears to have tilted back the other way in 2024.
To be clear, things are far from perfect, and the battle of the culture is nowhere near over, but with America’s general shift toward conservatism (or at least Trumpism), it’s clear things are at least shifting somewhat back to normalcy.
And in no company is that lesson clearer than perhaps the modern arbiter of leftism, the Walt Disney Company.
Just look at how the company’s fans voted with their hard-earned cash and precious free time in 2024.
Two of Disney’s biggest box office hits involve polar-opposite movies: The family-friendly “Inside Out 2” and the R-rated violent “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Were you subscribed to a streaming service in 2024?
Both of those movies raked in over a billion dollars each, according to Forbes. Love Disney or hate them, those are undeniable smash hits and it’s easy to see why.
Simply put, neither film pushed any sort of radical leftist message. “Inside Out 2” was standard animated Disney fare, so rote but safe. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” meanwhile, is gratuitously violent, and very much earns its R-rating. It’s little more than that.
Compare that to Disney’s 2024 failures, like the colossal flop known as “The Acolyte” — a show hyped as one of the company’s “gayest” ever (literally).
The project lasted all of one season, and was cancelled in 2024.
Perhaps coincidentally, Disney has since reportedly reconsidered how much it should inject LGBT themes into its products.
Even beyond Disney, you could see small — but noticeable — strides in other entertainment mediums.
Two of the most watched shows in 2024, according to The Hollywood Reporter, were the Australian children’s cartoon “Bluey” and the Paramount drama “Yellowstone.”
Neither of those could be called “conservative” by any stretch of the imagination, but they at least present certain conservative ideas to mass audiences (i.e. the strength of the nuclear family and the joys of parenting found in “Bluey” and the anti-big government/pro-Second Amendment sentiments of “Yellowstone”).
That’s all a far cry from lesbian space witches.
Another media consumption habit that hints at steering away from intersectional identity politics? The proliferation of the NFL … and subsequent ratings demise of the NBA.
As the Reporter noted, NFL consumption skyrocketed in 2024, which was quite the turnaround from swathes of boycott calls in 2016, when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling for the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Compare that to the NBA — whose biggest faces are all quite public leftists — where the league’s ratings demise is a poorly kept secret at this point.
Even in the video game space, gamers overwhelmingly voted to reject leftism in video games in 2024.
Perhaps the most heartening part of all this is that, given the way a pendulum operates, this could be just the beginning of a glorious renaissance in the entertainment industry. Americans (by virtue of what happened on Nov. 5) and consumers across the globe have made it pretty clear that they felt leftism had run amok and that it was time to take a stand for traditionalism.
If conservatives and good-faith culture warriors keep this up, 2025 could be a banner year for anyone who likes movies, television, or video games.
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