More Election Fallout on the Entertainment Industry: Justine Bateman and Jim Cummings
I really didn’t plan on writing so much about the fallout from the 2024 Presidential election, but stuff keeps happening, particularly as it pertains to the entertainment world. And given what the last decade or so has been like, it’s a big deal that will almost certainly have ramifications on the arts in the future. The biggie on that score is that artists are showing signs that they feel more comfortable expressing beliefs contrary to the accepted Hollywood narrative. This is happening in fits and starts, of course, like a puppy or kitten getting comfortable in its new home, but the importance of it happening at all is monumental. Justine Bateman said it best in this thread:
I have found the last four years to be an almost intolerable period. A very un-American period in that any questioning, any opinions, any likes or dislikes were held up to a very limited list of “permitted positions” in order to assess acceptability. 2/
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) November 8, 2024
I’ve never in my life known that to be an American environment. It’s an environment I have encountered in smaller groupings (a church, a private club,a clique), but never before as a national blanket. It has been suffocating. Common sense was discarded, intellectual discussion 3/
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) November 8, 2024
… who did not want to follow the crowd and has their own ideas about what they needed to do. This dampened our culture and innovation, bringing people to even think that generative #AI, a regurgitation of the past, was actually our cultural future. /6
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) November 8, 2024
…labels like “Sexist,” “racist,” “homophobic,” etc, when the free-thinking and questioning was nothing of the sort. However, the mob mentality that followed caused these social convictions when there was often no evidence to support them. (See Charles McKay’s 1841 book, 8/
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) November 8, 2024
I am neither one extreme or the other, but am one of the millions of people who believe in common sense, and that everyone should be free to live their lives however they want, unless that freedom interferes with someone else’s freedom to live their own life.
That’s it. 10/fin— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) November 8, 2024
If you don’t know who Justine Bateman is, she’s a filmmaker and author (as she prefers to be called) who was once an actress; she was one of the stars of the 80s sitcom Family Ties, where she played Michael J. Fox’s sister. (Funnily enough, Fox’s Family Ties character, Alex P. Keaton, was a staunch conservative in a family of liberals.) She doesn’t seem to consider herself a conservative or a liberal; she’s more someone as fed-up with wokeness as the rest of the rational population. But since the election, she’s been posting about her sociopolitical views a lot on X, mostly having to do with free expression and the stifling, anti-American atmosphere that’s been holding it back. She created the hashtag #SocialMediaPostCritique, where she appraises videos from deranged leftists (some famous, some not) from the perspective of a filmmaker, but always in a neutral, genuine voice, and they’re funny. And even though these are just X posts, you can feel her relief when you read them, the implied breath of fresh air after years trapped in a bomb shelter (because wokeness is radioactive). She also said this, which is right on:
The fact that 40,000 of you started following this acct over just the past two days for #SocialMediaVideoCritiques is evidence that we are starved for comedy. Comedy was first on the chopping block years ago, but we NEED it. #BringBackComedy
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) November 8, 2024
One of the more recent examples of the kind of freedom Justine Bateman is talking about comes from legendary voice actor Jim Cummings. Cummings voiced characters in many Disney productions since the 80s, most famously Winnie the Pooh; he was also the voice of the title character in one of my favorite cartoons from childhood, Darkwing Duck (as well as Darkwing’s evil opposite number, Negaduck), and he voiced a few characters from TailSpin, another favorite. Cummings did plenty of work in Warner Bros. productions like Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, and Batman: The Animated Series, as well as a host of video games; check out his long list of credits. Well, the voice-acting legend drew the ire of some and the admiration of many when he commented on a post about a particularly nutty Trump critic on X (the comment has now been deleted):
First of all, taken at face value, this isn’t even an endorsement of Donald Trump; it’s just an acknowledgment of how crazy it is to equate him to Hitler, particularly in the literal terms of the sign-holder. Ironically, it’s the environment created by the people offended by Cummings’ post that make even the most mundane positive comment about President Trump – like that he’s not “literally Hitler” – a tacit endorsement of him. Given the surprise with which his comment is being received, I assume he’s never said anything political in the past, especially anything that could be construed as conservative. But looking at his X account, it appears he’s become much more vocal recently, with a series of comments on other posts suggesting conservative views (with indications that he is a Trump supporter) and sharing of Elon Musk’s recent post: “Cancel culture has been canceled.” (That makes me wonder why he deleted that initial post.)
Cancel culture has been canceled.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2024
This is an example of what Justine Bateman was talking about, that there is an atmosphere of freedom and the lessening of political restrictions going on in Hollywood in the wake of the election, and Cummings feels better able to share his honest thoughts. (That Park Place mused about whether Disney would fire Cummings for this, particularly in the wake of Gina Carano’s lawsuit against them; for that reason, I tend to think he’s safe.) I believe this is just the beginning, and as the next few months and years unfold, more scared and probably lonely voices will express their true feelings, confident that the Hollywood intelligentsia got it wrong: public sentiment is not with them, and more than likely (especially in America), it never really was.
Let us know what you think of the election’s effect on the entertainment industry in the comments!
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Comments (2)
Yeah, that’s the MO. I think it’s finally stopped working. For a long time it was effective because people didn’t want to be racist, or viewed as racist (which disproved the initial point), but they used it too much and pushed other things too far. Now, nobody cares anymore. They just kind of expect it. “I disagree; now go ahead and call me a racist, I know it’s coming.”
I think the response to being called a racist by someone on the left (or whatever buzz word they want to use) should be, “I accept your surrender.” When they express confusion, say, “You changed the subject and attacked my character; I assumed that meant you had no counterargument and were surrendering. I accepted; I’m magnanimous that way.”
Was listening to Alan from Film Threat talk about how he had friends from the whole spectrum of politics. In CA, most will be on the left. He said that, around 2012, if you even attempted to counter signal a leftist, they would just call you racist or bigot and that was the end, so he said conversation ended at that time.
For a while, that’s all they had to do, was say racist and that’s all they will ever do is say racist, so as they dismissed others, the rest of the thinking and talking people kind of wrote them off and moved on.