Hollywood’s Trump-baiting Oscars

Donald Trump’s election marked a “cultural tipping point”, Mark Zuckerberg declared as he hastily reorganised his company last month. After abolishing fact-checking and promising to move staff from California to Texas, Meta’s boss donned a gold chain and went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to talk about his love of martial arts. Meta is not the only Silicon Valley firm to have undergone a MAGA-friendly makeover. Elon Musk, who says he adores Mr Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man”, has rewired liberal Twitter as right-wing X. TikTok, whose users skew young and Democratic, thanked Mr Trump for postponing its national-security ban and sent its chief executive to his inauguration. Nearly every big-tech boss showed up; several made a personal donation to the festivities.

Yet if America has passed a cultural tipping point, no one seems to have told Hollywood, the country’s primary engine of culture. On March 2nd America’s movie industry will hold its annual Academy Awards, featuring the most gloriously woke line-up in years. Leading the nominations is “Emilia Pérez”, a bilingual musical about a transgender Mexican cartel boss. “I’m Still Here”, a Brazilian study of authoritarianism which attracted protests from the far right, is another shortlisted for Best Picture. One nominee for Best Actress was born male; a contender for Best Actor plays Mr Trump in “The Apprentice”, a highly unflattering biopic. The Oscars look like something from a parallel universe in which Kamala Harris romped home to victory last November.

Why are the new-media moguls of Silicon Valley and the legacy studios of Los Angeles reading from such different scripts? Tinseltown and techland both lean Democratic. Both are powered by youth and migration. Both now compete in the streaming business. But lately they have diverged. Silicon Valley’s dormant libertarian streak was awakened by a regulatory onslaught during Joe Biden’s presidency, and further provoked by San Francisco’s ultra-liberal, ultra-ineffective city government. Hollywood, meanwhile, has edged leftward. The #OscarsSoWhite and #MeToo movements exposed its failings on race and sex, forcing it to embrace diversity. Lean times in the tv business have impoverished below-the-line workers and raised demands for better social protection.

Hollywood’s workforce is also more organised. Whereas unions are barely tolerated in Silicon Valley, the movies are a closed shop where everyone from the leading lady to her make-up artist carries a union card. Labour has real power: film production shut down for much of 2023 after writers and actors went on strike. Studios adopting MAGA-friendly positions therefore risk unrest. Disney staff walked out in 2022 after the company failed to oppose a Florida ban on schools discussing sexual orientation or gender identity with young children. Netflix was picketed by workers after it aired a comedy with jokes about transgender people. Some at Meta may grumble about the firm’s Trumpy new vibe, but their resistance has gone no further than covertly restoring sanitary products to the men’s loos. Social-justice warriors have avoided working at Facebook since long before its makeover—and employees with qualms tend to feel better when payday rolls around.

Some Hollywood executives also say there is little incentive to get along with Mr Trump. In Silicon Valley the political agenda is overflowing: artificial intelligence, antitrust, cryptocurrency and the tech race with China are among the issues where the government could make or break an industry. By contrast, the number of favours Mr Trump can do the movie business is limited. From the disruption caused by streaming to the flight of production overseas, “Hollywood’s problems are of its own making,” admits one Tinseltown bigwig.

Yet studios cannot ignore the tv addict in the White House. Mr Trump has launched a battery of dubious lawsuits against news outlets. Many are choosing to pay up rather than make an enemy of the president. The social platforms of Silicon Valley can shrug off these shakedowns as a regrettable cost of doing business in the new America (Meta paid Mr Trump $25m in January for blocking him in 2021; X will reportedly pay him $10m for the same reason). But for legacy media, which live or die by their reputation for accuracy, such cases are damaging. ABC News, owned by Disney, apologised and paid Mr Trump $15m in December to settle a defamation case that most lawyers thought winnable. Paramount is considering settling an even flimsier claim by Mr Trump against CBS News. Folding would infuriate the newsroom and trash the CBS brand. But fighting might derail Paramount’s forthcoming merger with Skydance Media, which Mr Trump’s allies have the power to veto.

Exit, stage left. Enter, stage right

Structural changes to the media business threaten to make it more malleable to whoever is in the White House. Tech companies are eating Hollywood’s lunch, as young audiences abandon television for user-generated content. Even old-school TV production is increasingly run by Silicon Valley. Amazon has America’s second-largest subscription streaming service, Prime Video, which is making a flattering documentary about the First Lady. Apple’s streaming platform is just as reluctant to rock the boat, parting ways with an uncomfortably political comedian, Jon Stewart. If Paramount’s merger goes ahead, it too will be owned by tech money: its would-be acquirer, David Ellison, is the son of Oracle billionaire Larry (who has been put forward by Mr Trump to buy TikTok). Ever more of the media reads from Silicon Valley’s script.

Hollywood still has a powerful platform. Stars picking up Oscars may feel inspired to share their thoughts on the new government. But don’t bank on it helping. “The public are sick of being berated by actors,” laments one weary agent. “Nobody cares.”■

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