The Left Wanted the Culture War They’re Now Losing

A long time ago, the 20th Century, Hollywood knew how to make movies that entertained and enlightened. Their writers weren’t young saps indoctrinated by academia-boosted French Theory with disdain for more than half the audience, or DEI hires filling a quota. They were artists who respected the world they lived in and the history they inherited, whether they liked it or not. Any criticism of either came through in their storytelling, rather than sermonizing to people who know better than they.

As both a fiction writer and journalist in the first camp, I could see the coming victory in the Culture War years ago, and its reshaping of the entire geopolitical structure of the West, and by extension the world. In an article here two years ago, “Midway in the Cuture War,” I suggested we’d just been through the societal Battle of Midway, and what remained was the counteroffensive. In this sense, I was like Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler, not in looks or panache but prescience, in the best scene in Gone With the Wind, another work of art liberals want to erase (see my 2020 piece “Gone With the Woke“).

The scene comes early in the picture, with nearly every male aristocrat at a spectacular Southern barbecue clamoring for war against the North, with utter contempt for the enemy. “The situation’s very simple — the Yankees can’t fight and we can.” “They’ll just turn and run every time.” “One Southerner can lick twenty Yankees.” “We’ll finish them in one battle.” “Gentlemen can always fight better than rabble.” When one asks Rhett for his opinion, he lets them have it, explaining that reality will always make its presence known in the face of fantasy.

“I think it’s hard winning a war with words, gentlemen.” “Are you hinting that the Yankees can lick us?!” snarls Melanie Hamilton’s brother. Rhett says, “No, I’m not hinting. I’m stating very plainly that the Yankees are better equipped than we … All we’ve got is cotton, and slaves, and arrogance.” Remarks for which he almost gets challenged to a duel. I wasn’t challenged to a duel or a fight for dismissing Marxist delusion decades ago — progressives lack that kind of courage and prowess — just unfriended by most of my Hollywood mates.

I’d said that their support for feminism and identity politics — in short, Democrats — was anti-art and would devour them as straight white males. The women in the group were already a lost cause. To paraphrase Melanie Hamilton’s brother in Gone With the Wind, “they refused to listen to my renegade talk,” so, they banned me. Then, they in turn got canceled by the very system they championed. Which turned into a woke monstrosity they couldn’t control, that has burned Hollywood like Sherman did Atlanta. And is about to singe a major director and studio.

Last week, I wrote a piece here, The Hollywood Strain, citing Christopher Nolan’s folly in sacrificing The Odyssey to the woke gods. The story has exploded since then, prompting outrage akin to when Bud Light chose Dylan Mulvaney for a spokesmodel. Even Elon Musk slammed Nolan. Clearly, Nolan and Universal Pictures don’t know what hit them.

After all, they were just following what they thought was the trend — replace masculine heroes with “complicated” men and girlbosses where there were none (the Emily Wilson translation), swap legendary characters and downgrade beauty (in both cases Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy), trying to gender swap and missing (Elliot Page as maybe Achilles or another man). They didn’t read the room — or my American Spectator articles.

Nolan began writing The Odyssey script in March 2024, adapting Emily Wilson’s ghastly feminist translation. At the time, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was facing four criminal indictments, among 91 felony counts, and more than 600 Trump supporters were in jail for the January 6th “insurrection.” Hollywood counted Trump and MAGA out.

Woke was on the rise with imminent film releases featuring alpha women and beta white men — Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Snow White, Tron: Ares, etcetera — and a black Captain America in Captain America: Brave New World. A manly mythic hero whose cunning protects his men and rescues his wife and son from interlopers was anathema. Forget his 2,000-plus years as one of the most famous characters in all literature, and men and women looking for such a hero.

Two years later, everything has changed, except Hollywood. DEI is dying everywhere, except Hollywood. In the real world, last week, Trump went to China accompanied by an army of white male business leaders and only two women, Jane Fraser of Citi and Dina Powell McCormick of Meta. The same toxic males and regressive women who sank Snow White, Tron, and Captain America will do the same to Universal and The Odyssey. The blowback has started.

Finally realizing this, to their horror, a few days ago, Variety published an article following the standard stupid policy of blasting the anti-woke complainers — people who would gladly go see a resourceful Odysseus, a masculine Achilles, and the beautiful white Helen of Troy that Homer described, not a black substitute, a signal to the diversity tribunal. The article headline said it all, ‘The Odyssey’: Why Elon Musk and His Troll Army’s Attacks Aren’t Just Silly but Wildly Inaccurate. Musk, in fact, did perfectly attack the Hollywoke Strain that destroyed Hollywood and will kill The Odyssey.

“Who specifically is the a-hole who added DEI lies to Academy Awards eligibility instead of it just being about making the best movie?” he tweeted. He’s getting closer to the next logical step — bankrolling film artists who care about doing just that.

READ MORE from Lou Aguilar:

The Hollywoke Strain

Pensiveness in the Age of Algorithms

The Lost Art of Film Advertising — and Film Making

By kevin