The Elephant in the Closet - Conservativism in film and Hollywood

Depends on how you define "conservative." I think we're all liberals relative to 1977.



The old school is largely retired or dead. It's not like there's some big chunk of old conservative actors who are still relevant. Indeed, most of our ageing actors are conspicuous progressives (e.g., De Niro, McKellen).


Now, if as an up-and-comer you never mention your politics, keep your voting behavior to yourself, and say everything the press people tell you to say when marketing the movie, you can get work, but you have to exist as a sort of ghost. If you're a liberal on the other hand, you can be quite vocal. You can lean into it and expect praise for your bravery for doing so. It took us forty years to finally call "bulls**t" when yet another actress claimed to be the first female action star to break that glass ceiling. Is it really Jennifer Lawrence's fault that it took us so long to notice how many times that glass ceiling had been smashed?



Moreover, today's film projects have a new generation of writers and the political signaling is louder than it used to be. Sure, you can secretly be a conservative as a DP or an actor or costume designer, but you will be collaborating to platform a message which paints your political views in a bad light. There was a time when if you were Japanese, you might get work, but that work would not be flattering to your demographic. The same is now true for conservatives. The conservative is the idiot, the bigot, the villain, the foil, the pain, the problem. We live in polarized times and Hollywood leans left. So it goes.

I'm sorry, but it's simply not true that you have to remain completely silent if you're a conservative actor. Tim Allen, Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight for example have been extremely vocal about their views, and they still continue getting work like nothing happened.

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Tim Allen was shelved as Buzz Lightyear. I'd say it's like something happened there, and Allen thinks so too.



Kelsey Grammer, as reported by his Wiki is a rarity,




Kelsey is best known to us a Frasier Crane, thus our parasocial relationship with hims that of a posh liberal intellectual.



Voight isn't really relevant and he is quite old (born in '38).



Sure, these guys can still get work (largely) as supporting actors in some projects because they have coattails, but they're the exceptions and not the rule. And it's a different story for up and comers. There are plenty of interviews where industry insiders remark that if you want to work, you'd better keep your mouth shut about right-leaning beliefs.



Could we produce a list of conspicuously liberal actors? How much longer do you think that list would be?

A term like RINO, which seems to be used as a way to purge anyone but the most extreme members of the party, sure is a funny thing to be using if one is concerned that the Republican Party has become a laughing stock.


And while I think Hollywood almost certainly tilts left (at least if you were to poll the political affiliations of most actors), the notion that there is some kind of persecution against a right leaning actors is frankly silly. Sure, there is a lot of bad press against blowhard ******** (like James Woods). Or those who espouse extremely fringe, conspiritorial, possibly mentally ill notions (Roseanne Barr, Randy Quaid). Or dogmatic narciccistic twats (Sean Penn....ooops wait, he's a lefty). But those who are simply small government type right wingers (Schwartzenegger, McConoughey, Gary Oldman, Adam Sandler, Kurt Russell for a few that haven't been mentioned) don't have their politics affect them in anyways.



And it also should be mentioned, as probably one of the more left wing posters on this site, I still adore the work of Woods and Barr and Quaid and Russell (and I guess Sandler was good in Uncut Gems). As do most of my even more radically lefty friends.



And I ****ing hate Sean Penn (but not Spiccoli who I love, such a moral quagmire of emotions)



It also should be clarified that Penn Jillette is most certainly not a lefty, as was asserted above. He's about as stridently libertarian as they come. And also a hugely respected entertainer, regardless of how extreme his political views are.

Even Bill Maher has drawn the line at the State forcing people to be injected with the goal the entire planet, on a Bond Villain scale. And Maher is the outlier and routinely mocked for that. If that's the measure of being Leftist these days -- you must submit to the State forcing injections on you and you must say that a man with a penis is a "woman", then hell yeah, Rob Schneider is a voice of sanity.

Bill Maher is and always has been an idiot whether speaking on behalf of left or right wing or centrist causes. He's a perfect example of how one can be fairly well informed and not have anything terribly smart to say. I can appreciate his resistance to living in a world of politically partisan binaries (which is always stupid as ****), but he also seems prone to find ways to fall into other binary ways of thinkin, that show he's still a giant dope about most things.



Ah yees, the modern invention of mandated vaccinations. It's almost like we didn't all live for decades in a world where this wasn't some ridiculous political issue. So yeah, I guess that's a real proper definition of madness (but not in the way maybe hoped). Now, is it good to question the efficacy or safety of vaccines. Of course. Is it good to have philosophical discussions over how much control the government has over what we can freely do. I sure hope so. And is there, also a lunatic segment of the population that wants to shut down discussion over the topics? Unfortunately yes. But the notion that a vaccination is some agenda based nonsense that is aimed at stripping us of our autonomy (and whatever else crazy shit sometimes gets attached to these ideas) isn't even worth talking about. Everyone (or at least most sane people) aim for the purest form of freedom we can realistically achieve. But only a really naive rube could ever assume the idea of absolute freedom (to do anything) is what any of us actually want. I can get into the notion that having any laws at all is prohibitive, and why we all ultimately subscribe to some amount of restrictions of what we can or can't do within a community, but I'd rather just ask the question of what should be done if an American citizen returns from another country with something as clearly trasnmissable and deadly as ebola? Are we allowed to quarantine them by force in order not to infect others? If the answer is no, I'd like proof that your not certifiably insane. But if one chooses to hedge their bet on this answer and say 'corona is no ebola', than I'd say you're admitting that there is a line somewhere when the health of a community surpasses the freedom of the individual. Now maybe for some coronavirus didn't cross this line, and I think there is a discussion to be had there (you know, to find out where we should be falling on the spectrum of doing nothing and doing way too much to stop its spread). But the sheer spectre of the notion that somehow vaccines themselves, which as stated have been mandated for many decades, for all different types of diseases, are now a de facto enemy against freedom and autonomy is a conversation I'd rather leave for people who like to scream pointlessly at eachtoher.





As for 'men with penises', the words women or men can apply to two different things. One is sex, one is gender. If you want to say someone with a penis is of a female sex, yes, that doesn't rate and is completely contradictory on its face. If you want to say someone with a penis is a female in relation to their gender, and we want to be as equally strident with the definitions of words, than it isn't remotely controversial to say that this is entirely possible and individuals have every right to be addressed as whatever gender they want to be. Gender is a social construct. It is malleable. It isn't etched in stone. And I would have thought people who are so excited about the idea of freedom would appreciate the freedom of people to be considered whatever the hell they want. And if you don't want to go along for that ride, just call them 'they', you know as in "Hey, where is Carol" "They are over there". And don't worry, no one is going to think you are addressing a non-binary person accurately. You can still say they in a completely non political way.

I'm not saying anyone crossed the line in their post, but please remember that MoFo has rules regarding political debate. I hate to see threads closed but I can see this topic could become overheated.

MoFos new rules
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They used to say Bruce Willis was conservative (was that the case?) But poor Bruce has health issues to worry about now.

Gary Sinise is most definitely conservative and I think his career has suffered because of it - he is now largely relegated to being a spokesman for a veteran housing charity group.

Mel Gibson? Was he considered conservative before his recorded bouts of lunacy (which involved misogyny, racism & anti-Semitism)? How about now that he's made somewhat of a comeback?

I think Willis was a small r Republican, but I'm not really sure. I think he was definitely with Democrats on most social issues though. Just don't touch his money!


Gary Sinise, definitely republican, has been a good character actor from time to time but his decreased profile is also what happens to a lot of second fiddle actors. I don't think anyone should be too worried it's his politics that made him invisible. That's kind of always been his thing.



Mel Gibson. Always super right wing. I don't think ever really hid it. Was a bonafide superstar. Also a deserving superstar because if anyone ever had an undefinable x factor on screen, it's that guy. Then went super crazy and behaved terribly and suffered repercussions. As anyone who behaved as badly as he did might. But being a fan of the guy on screen, as well as the notion of anyone (or almost anyone) getting second chances, I'm not wishing for him to stay in creative exile forever. I'm not hoping for some neverending boycott.

Gibson was excoriated not only for his beliefs, but was mostly treated as leper for his beating his then girlfriend.

Exactly.


And also the fact that there were recordings that anyone could hear of just what kind of maniac he could be in his private life. It isn't unfair for people to be put off someone who was saying the kind of things he was saying. It is understandable that producers might not want to cast that as their leading man.



Also, it's not actually political when the backlash you get is because of you actually doing things that are bad. And that is the crux of what happened to Gibson. Maybe some want to argue what he was screaming about when he was threatening his wife was political, but it's still beside the point. And, also, hopefully those are the kind of points we should keep as far away from politics as possible.

I think it matters when the "injection" in question is a vaccine against one of the most infectious diseases in living memory and that the people who would refuse it do so not just at risk to themselves but also to other people who want to take precautions against said disease. At that point, it becomes less a matter of conforming to a government mandate and more a matter of simple self-preservation - something that you'd think would override political differences regarding personal freedoms, but Maher's job relies on him exacerbating those differences through public discourse and that's arguably why he deserves to be mocked (as does anyone who would throw trans people under the bus, much less for the guy who played Deuce Bigalow).

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

I'm closing this thread for a bit, because it's gone well and clearly over the No Politics rule.

That may sound silly at first because the topic is inherently political, but I think the first page or two shows it can be discussed reasonably in the abstract without specific issues taking over, as they usually do.

I'll open it again tomorrow and we'll go from there.