Credit: Frank Micelotta / Disney / Getty
Earlier this year, conservatives on social media claimed an unlikely new icon. It wasn’t a podcaster with questionable views or a libertarian businessman selling a course or any particular ideology. It was actress Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria star and the recent lead of the rom-com Anyone but You.
Following her Saturday Night Live hosting gig in March, two conservative outlets published columns heralding Sweeney as a return to conventional beauty standards of the ’90s and early 2000s — or as, Bridget Phetasy for the Spectator put it, “the giggling blonde with an amazing rack.” Both pieces postulate that, by wearing low-cut dresses and playing up her sexuality, Sweeney was inviting men to gawk at her, therefore raising a middle finger to “woke culture” and the Me Too movement.
Sweeney hasn’t publicly aligned herself with the right in any way. (Her family’s politics, though, were the subject of controversy in 2022, which may have […]
This is a very superficial analysis to a much more complex phenomena having to do with climate change, fertility, and the societal conflicts over the nature of reality. It is this last area which is the most contentious battleground in politics, but the other two will have their influence. The article’s usefulness comes at the very end, when it states:
“Penney says corporations will try new strategies and pander to different audiences, as they’ve done with Marvel and Disney’s diversity pushes in recent years, based on what they think will benefit them financially. They’re not really thinking about political impact.
“That was very much the reality of capitalism at work,” Penney says. “[Disney] was trying new strategies, not because they were really, truly convinced that they were going to save the world through expanding diversity, but they were getting a sense that that’s what the audience wanted. It was a response to Me Too and Black Lives Matter and things that actually resonated with our culture to a degree.” ”
The Cinema is a lens to our culture wars via the marketplace, it is not a vision leading us forward. Much more of a mirror than a crystal ball. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.