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      ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Enters the Pantheon of Conservative Fan Fiction

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      The American right has embraced Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster, hailing the movie as a patriotic gesture produced in defiance of “woke” liberal elites and the Chinese Communist Party.Today’s newsletter is a guest dispatch from the Culture desk of The New York Times. Marc Tracy, who regularly covers the intersection of culture and politics, writes about Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster — and the conservatives who are singing its praises.“Top Gun: Maverick,” the inescapable Tom Cruise blockbuster sequel, has been hailed as a cinematic throwback.Many critics have interpreted its story of an increasingly obsolete pilot being called back to teach today’s young people a thing or two for one last mission as a not-so-subtle allegory for the film itself. The movie uses relatively few computer-generated effects, stars the now-60-year-old Cruise and still managed to rake in more than $1 billion globally.But amid praise from filmgoers who enjoyed the realistic dogfights, filmed with real planes that the real actors rode in, another community has embraced the movie for representing its values and vindicating its outlook: conservatives.A sampling:Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida: “Any movie that’s not, like, overwhelmingly woke can actually appeal to normal people.” (DeSantis had not seen the movie at the time; he later saw it with his wife for her birthday, he said.)The Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We’ve been longing to see a movie that’s unapologetically American, and we finally got it.”Tomi Lahren, of the conservative sports outlet OutKick and Fox: “The undeniable success of Top Gun is proof Americans are sick of WOKE and just want to watch good movies without a grandstanding social justice message!!”The right vs. HollywoodWhat’s going on here?There is a long tradition in which conservatives seize upon a cultural artifact produced by the entertainment industry, which is generally seen as left-leaning, and claim it for themselves.“This goes back years,” said Doug Heye, a Republican consultant, “and included when we had a Hollywood actor or a reality TV star for president. They feel besieged by the culture. That feeling has only increased, and it’s increased because there’s even more substance behind it today.”In a recent essay that discussed movies including “Top Gun: Maverick,” A.O. Scott, The Times’s co-chief film critic, argued that one notable aspect of the conservative movement is its antagonism toward the entertainment industry.“The modern right,” Scott wrote, “defines itself against the cultural elites who supposedly cluster on the coasts and conspire to impose their values on an unsuspecting public. In this account, Hollywood acts in functional cahoots with academia and the news media.”And conservative activists’ enmity toward Hollywood and other cultural tastemakers has perhaps never been more conspicuous.DeSantis, whose ability to channel the movement might outstrip any other politician’s (including, arguably, Donald Trump’s), made waves this spring by revoking special tax and self-governing privileges that Disney had enjoyed for its enormous theme park in his state. The governor and the company had clashed over a newly passed state law that bars instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in some grades.‘Top Gun’: The Return of MaverickTom Cruise takes to the air once more in “Top Gun: Maverick,” the long-awaited sequel to a much-loved ’80s action blockbuster.A Triumphant Return: At a time when superheroes dominate the box office, the film industry betis betting on the daredevil actor to bring grown-ups back to theaters. It paid off.The Secret Ingredient: Cruise’s potent mix of athleticism and charisma goes a long way to explain why “Top Gun: Maverick” is a hit.Review: The central question posed by the movie has less to do with the need for combat pilots in the age of drones than with the relevance of movie stars, our critic writes.Your Burning Questions: How similar is it to the original? Who’s back? Who’s absent? We have answers.So when “Top Gun: Maverick” entered this culture war with its uncomplicated, feel-good patriotism — it is, among other things, a movie about how awesome U.S. Navy pilots can be, particularly when fighting America’s enemies — conservatives’ sense of alignment arrived naturally.“When something comes out,” Heye said, “and it’s another version of ‘Rocky IV’” — the 1985 movie in which Sylvester Stallone’s working-class boxer enters the ring with a Soviet fighter named Ivan Drago — “that becomes something that, for the activist part of the base that is looking for something that isn’t critical of their values, they’re going to grab onto.”This is not to say that Maverick, Hangman and the other pilots in the new “Top Gun” film face off against today’s equivalent of the Soviet Union, whatever country that might be. As in the first “Top Gun,” which came out in 1986, the enemy is not explicitly identified.Nor are conservative politicians and media personalities claiming that the movie makes a compelling case for policies like tax cuts or gun rights. Their argument has less to do with what the film is than what it is not; less to do with its specific plot or characters than with its vibe.“It’s political in being apolitical,” said Christian Toto, a conservative film critic and the proprietor of the website Hollywood in Toto.He contrasted “Top Gun: Maverick” with some films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the gender-swapped “Ghostbusters” reboot. Their efforts at inclusivity — diverse casting, same-sex relationships — could come across, he said, as ham-handed, particularly to conservative audiences whose antennae are already on alert for filmmakers they see as trying to sneak some spinach in with the cinematic candy.The conservative allergy to such moviemaking decisions flares up, Toto said, “when the audience gets a sense it’s being put in there awkwardly or there’s a message being sent as opposed to organically woven into the story.”That the pilots training for the daring raid in “Top Gun: Maverick” appear to come from a variety of backgrounds seems not like liberal messaging but realistic detail, Toto said.“The cast is moderately diverse; there are women as pilots,” he said. “But they don’t comment on it; they don’t base the script around it. It’s assumed these are just very talented people willing to risk their lives for the mission.”Cruise at the new movie’s global premiere in San Diego. The film has made more money in the United States and Canada than in the rest of the world.Vivien Killilea/Getty Images Paramount PicturesAn All-American hitBox-office information does not contradict conservatives’ case. About 55 percent of the opening weekend sales, an unusually high proportion, came from ticket-buyers over 35, according to Paramount.And — atypically for big box-office hits in this era — “Top Gun: Maverick” has made more money in the United States and Canada than in the rest of the world, according to Box Office Mojo.Which is itself a point of pride for some of the film’s conservative backers: “‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Reaches $1 Billion Worldwide — Without China,” read a Breitbart headline last month. (The film was not released in China; earlier, a Chinese company withdrew its share of financing for the film because of its pro-American message, according to a Wall Street Journal report.)Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative pundit who co-founded the website The Daily Wire, had predicted in his rave review that the movie would do better domestically than abroad. “The film itself is pretty red, white and blue,” he said. “That’s just assumed as the backdrop. Which is the way movies used to be.”Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California who studies China’s film industry, said in an interview that “Top Gun: Maverick” represented an emerging idea that “Hollywood doesn’t need China the way it used to.”The film’s success could signal that the days of Hollywood studios altering story lines to make their releases more palatable to Chinese censors and audiences — a trend documented in a recent book, “Red Carpet” by Erich Schwartzel — might slowly be on their way out.And, Rosen added, whatever the film’s actual political message, the argument that it has one at all might have its own uses.“The controversy over wokeness or whether this is Reagan-era nostalgia,” he said, is “very good for the box office.”What to readDepartment of Never Tweet: The Securities and Exchange Commission is broadening its inquiry into Elon Musk’s disclosures about Twitter, Kate Conger reports. The agency questioned whether a tweet Musk sent in May about the acquisition of Twitter should have been disclosed to the agency and investors.Natalia Winkelman reviews “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” a new documentary about the former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who was shot in the head at a political event in 2011.Follow the latest news from President Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia.HOW THEY RUNVice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California are longtime allies and possible future in-state rivals.Lucy Nicholson/ReutersTable for twoGavin Newsom, the governor of California, is sitting down for lunch on Friday in Washington with Vice President Kamala Harris, two of his aides have confirmed.For Newsom, the trip, officially made so he could accept an award and discuss policy issues with lawmakers and Biden administration officials, has doubled as something of a cleanup tour.On Thursday, Newsom said clearly that he supported President Biden to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in 2024, amid a swirl of reporting by my Times colleagues and others suggesting that liberal voters are not especially enthused about another term for the 79-year-old commander in chief.News reports, including in this humble newsletter, have noted that Newsom’s rise as a leader in the Democratic Party could put him in competition with Harris, a longtime ally and possible future in-state opponent, in a hypothetical Biden-free presidential primary.Those stories have gotten the attention of the vice president’s office, while amusing the governor’s staff back home in California. Both camps insist there’s no rivalry between the two leaders.Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Newsom volunteered that Harris had been “wonderful” as vice president and said they were just going to “check in, as we do constantly.” He alluded, however, to unspecified “constraints” Harris had faced in office and said it was “a difficult time for all of us in public life.”Asked what was on the lunch menu, a Newsom aide joked in a text: “Arsenic and arm wrestling. The usual.”Thanks for reading. — BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      in Movies

      How Hollywood and the Media Fueled the Political Rise of J.D. Vance

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      “Hillbilly Elegy,” a best-selling memoir that became a star-studded film, raised the profile of the onetime “Never Trump guy” who won an Ohio primary with the help of the former president.Members of New York’s smart set gathered on a warm Thursday evening in the early summer of 2016 at the ornately wallpapered apartment of two Yale Law School professors in the elegant Ansonia building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to toast a Marine Corps veteran, venture capitalist and first-time author named J.D. Vance.They were celebrating Mr. Vance’s new memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicled his working-class upbringing in southwestern Ohio and an ascent that brought him to Yale, where his mentors included Amy Chua, one of the party’s hosts. Mr. Vance seemed modest, self-effacing and a bit of a fish out of water among guests drawn from the worlds of publishing and journalism, a half-dozen attendees later recalled. “It was almost stupid how disarmed the people were by that,” said one of them, the novelist Joshua Cohen.“Hillbilly Elegy,” which came out as Donald J. Trump was overcoming long odds to win the presidency, became a phenomenon, and Mr. Vance — a conservative who reassured Charlie Rose that fall that he was “a Never Trump guy” and “never liked him,” and later said he voted for a third-party candidate that year — became widely sought out for his views on what drove white working-class Trump supporters, particularly in the Rust Belt. The book, which had a modest initial print run of 10,000 copies, went on to sell more than three million, according to its publisher, HarperCollins. It was made into a 2020 feature film by Hollywood A-listers including the director Ron Howard and the actresses Amy Adams and Glenn Close. But the J.D. Vance story did not end there.The former “Never Trump guy” went on to embrace Mr. Trump last year, and eagerly accepted his endorsement in the Republican primary for an open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio that he won earlier this month. Mr. Vance, who once called Mr. Trump “reprehensible,” thanked Mr. Trump “for giving us an example of what could be in this country.”Mr. Trump’s endorsement proved critical in the race, along with the financial support of Peter Thiel, the conservative Silicon Valley billionaire, and favorable coverage by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. But Mr. Vance’s political rise was also made possible by the worlds of publishing, media and Hollywood, fields long seen as liberal bastions, which had embraced him as a credible geographer of a swath of America that coastal elites knew little about, believing that he shared their objections to Mr. Trump.“The reason ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ was such a high-octane book was academics, professors, cultural arbitrators — liberals — embraced it as explaining a forgotten part of America,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University who once introduced Mr. Vance at an event. “They wouldn’t have touched Vance with a 10-foot pole if they thought he was part of this Trump, xenophobic, bigot-fueled zeitgeist.”Mr. Howard, who has said that he sought to downplay the political implications of “Hillbilly Elegy” in directing the film, describing it as a family drama, declined to comment for this article. But he told The Hollywood Reporter that he was “surprised by some of the positions” Mr. Vance has taken and the “statements he’s made.” He has not spoken with Mr. Vance since the film’s release, he said.Many of the entities in publishing and Hollywood who helped fuel Mr. Vance’s rise — including HarperCollins, which published his book; Mr. Howard and his co-producer, Brian Grazer; and Netflix, which financed and distributed the film — declined to comment on his reinvention as a Trumpist who rails against elites and who campaigned with polarizing far-right figures, including Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida.“Hillbilly Elegy” was made into a film starring Amy Adams and Gabriel Basso.Lacey Terrell/NETFLIX“Hillbilly Elegy” was published by a subsidiary of News Corp., which is controlled by the conservative Murdoch family, but through a flagship imprint that puts out broadly appealing books. It did not originally mention Mr. Trump. In an afterword added to the paperback edition, Mr. Vance wrote that despite his reservations about Mr. Trump, “there were parts of his candidacy that really spoke to me,” citing his “disdain for the ‘elites’” and his insight that Republicans had done too little for working- and middle-class voters.Mr. Vance’s book had a modest initial print run of 10,000 copies but ended up selling more than three million, according to its publisher, HarperCollins.HarperCollins“Hillbilly Elegy” tried to explain some of those voters’ concerns, and in appearances on CNN (where he was named a contributor) and National Public Radio, as well as in opinion essays in The New York Times in 2016 and 2017, Mr. Vance tried to connect those concerns to their support for Mr. Trump.“He owes nearly everything to having become a ‘Trump whisperer’ phenomenon,” Rod Dreher, whose interview with Mr. Vance for The American Conservative in July 2016 was so popular it briefly crashed the magazine’s website, said in an email. “The thing is, he didn’t seek this out. J.D. became celebrated because he really had something important to say, and said it in a way that was comprehensible to a wide audience.”But he also found a particular audience among liberals. “Though ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ was read widely across the political spectrum, my impression was that the book helped liberals to understand the causes of what had happened to them in the election of 2016,” said Adrian Zackheim, the publisher of several Penguin Random House imprints, including Sentinel, which focuses on conservative books.Mr. Vance’s work was embraced at a moment when Mr. Trump’s surprising election prompted many media executives to consider what audiences they had been overlooking. ABC, for instance, decided to make a reboot of the sitcom “Roseanne,” a lighthearted prime-time portrayal of people who supported Mr. Trump, including Roseanne Conner herself. (The show was later canceled after its star, Roseanne Barr, posted a racist tweet.)In 2019, Netflix won a bidding war and pledged a reported $45 million to finance the “Hillbilly Elegy” film. It received poor reviews, but was reportedly among Netflix’s most-streamed films the week of its release in November of 2020. Both Mr. Howard and Mr. Grazer have been generous Democratic donors, according to Federal Election Commission filings. In the run-up to the 2020 election, Ms. Close, who played Mr. Vance’s grandmother, put up a series of social media posts urging voters to support Joseph R. Biden Jr. Ms. Close’s representatives did not respond to inquiries.As Mr. Vance ran as an outsider and a conservative, some of his opponents have sought to link him to Hollywood.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesLast year, as Mr. Vance began his Senate run, he renounced his earlier criticism of Mr. Trump. He deleted some old tweets, including one that had called Mr. Trump “reprehensible.” Last month, Mr. Trump embraced Mr. Vance as a prodigal son “who said some bad” stuff about him, using a stronger word than stuff. (Mr. Vance’s campaign declined to comment for this article.)As a Republican candidate in a Republican-leaning Midwestern state, Mr. Vance did not appear eager to tout the central role the publishing, media and film industries played in his rise. But his political opponents have been more than happy to draw the connection.An ad last month for Josh Mandel, a Republican who ran against Mr. Vance in the primary, said Mr. Vance “wrote a book trashing Ohioans as hillbillies, then sold his story to Hollywood.” And Elizabeth Walters, the chairwoman of the Ohio Democratic Party, charged that Mr. Vance had landed “a New York City book deal to cash in on Ohioans’ pain” and made “untold millions from a Netflix Hollywood movie.”Accepting the nomination, Mr. Vance attacked “a Democrat party that bends the knee to major American corporations and their woke values, because the Democrats actually agree with those ridiculous values, you know, 42 genders and all the other insanity.”The fact that a rising star in the Republican Party, which has recently emphasized cultural grievances with the likes of Twitter, CNN and Disney, came to prominence through elite media institutions is not surprising to scholars and cultural critics who have long understood the symbiotic relationship between those ostensible antagonists: the conservative movement and the media-entertainment complex.“To establish populist bona fides — since they represent economic elites — cultural elites are the ones they can rally against,” said Neil Gross, a professor of sociology at Colby College.Frank Rich, an essayist, television producer, and former New York Times critic and columnist, said that some of the contemporary Republican Party’s biggest stars — including Mr. Vance, Mr. Trump and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri — are “the products of elite institutions” whose “constant railing against the elites is just odd, because it’s so disingenuous.”“Where would Vance be if it hadn’t been for mainstream publishing and book promotion, if it hadn’t been for Ron Howard — an important person in show business who identifies as liberal — and Glenn Close and Netflix?” Mr. Rich asked. “Where would Trump be without NBC Universal, Mark Burnett, the whole showbiz world?”Kathryn Cramer Brownell, an associate professor of history at Purdue University, situated Mr. Vance in a lineage of figures from the entertainment world who became Republican politicians, including George Murphy, an actor turned senator from California; Ronald Reagan, whose success as a film actor helped him become California governor and president; Arnold Schwarzenegger, another movie star and California governor; and Mr. Trump, a longtime tabloid fixture who gained newfound celebrity during the 2000s as host of the NBC reality competition show “The Apprentice,” created by Mr. Burnett.“This is something they are really quick to criticize the left for — relying too much on Hollywood for support and glamour,” Brownell said.“But,” she added, “the Republican Party has been more successful at turning entertainers into successful candidates than Democrats.” More

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      in Theater

      As Mamet Returns to Broadway, His Claims on Pedophilia Get Spotlight

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      The playwright fueled outrage with his claim on Fox News that teachers were “inclined” to pedophilia as he promoted a new book that decries “the Left’s anti-Trump psychosis.”David Mamet’s latest character describes an airplane pilot who gets lost because his map is incomplete. “The pilot’s answer to the question ‘where am I?’ lies not on the map, but out the windscreen,” says the character, speaking in the everyday language set to staccato rhythm that has come to be known as Mametspeak. “That’s where he is.”This new monologue is not delivered in one of Mamet’s dozens of plays or films, but in a friend-of-the-court brief that Mamet filed last month. He wrote it in support of a Texas law intended to prevent social media companies from censoring conservative voices. (The law has been challenged on the grounds that it could prevent private platforms from reasonably moderating content.) The legal setting helps explain the absence of one typical Mamet feature: profanity.With a revival of “American Buffalo,” his classic 1975 drama about small-time hustlers in a Chicago junk shop, opening Thursday night on Broadway in a production starring Laurence Fishburne, Mamet has been engaged in a blizzard of activities that are hardly standard fare for preshow publicity. But they are very much in keeping with his long history of pushing hot buttons — and with his late-career embrace of conservatism and support for former President Donald J. Trump.Mamet claimed on Fox News that “teachers are inclined, particularly men, because men are predators, to pedophilia.”In addition to the amicus brief, Mamet released an essay collection this month, “Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch,” in which he complains about the “plandemic” coronavirus lockdowns, decries “the Left’s anti-Trump psychosis” and suggests that it was Democrats and the media who threatened “armed rebellion” in the event that their preferred candidate lost the 2020 election.Then, over the weekend, Mamet fueled outrage by claiming on Fox News that “teachers are inclined, particularly men, because men are predators, to pedophilia.”He made the remark while discussing a Florida law prohibiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in certain younger grades, a law opponents have labeled “Don’t Say Gay.”“If there’s no community control of the schools, what we have is kids being not only indoctrinated but groomed, in a very real sense, by people who are, whether they know it or not, sexual predators,” Mamet told the host, Mark Levin.“Are they abusing the kids physically?” Mamet added. “No, I don’t think so. But they’re abusing them mentally and using sex to do so.”In response, the Tony Award-winning actor Colman Domingo wrote on Twitter, apparently referring to another Mamet play, “Speed-the-Plow,” “American Theater. Do your duty. Take out the trash. Buffalo’s, Plows and all.” And the culture writer Mark Harris wrote on Twitter, “At a time of increasing threats to gay people, David Mamet has chosen to ally himself with the purveyors of a vicious ugly slander that will endanger teachers and LGBT Americans. It’s inexcusable.”Mamet declined through a representative to comment for this article; in “Recessional,” he dismisses The New York Times as “a former newspaper” and suggests that The Times and other media insist on works that “express ‘right thinking,’ that is, statism.”Mamet, 74, came to prominence in the 1970s with a series of plays including “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” and “American Buffalo.” His 1984 play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” two acts of profane one-upmanship among desperate real-estate salesmen, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. He has worked extensively in Hollywood, receiving Oscar nominations for his screenplays for “The Verdict,” a 1982 movie starring Paul Newman, and “Wag the Dog” in 1997, which he wrote with Hilary Henkin. He wrote and directed a number of films, including “House of Games,” “The Spanish Prisoner” and “Heist.”He first announced his rightward turn in a 2008 Village Voice essay, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal.’” (He said on a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that he had intended the essay to focus on “political civility,” and had been surprised by the headline.) He wrote last year on the website UnHerd that he had been “elected a non-person by the Left many years ago,” and added: “It’s uncomfortable, and it’s costly and sad to see the happy fields in which I played all those decades — Broadway, book publishing, TV and film — fold up and Hail Caesar, but there it is.”The new revival of “American Buffalo” — one of his most admired works, and one often read as a critique of capitalism, in a production starring Fishburne, Sam Rockwell and Darren Criss — will test his ability to play on one of his main fields, Broadway. And it will offer an indication of whether, at a moment of intense political polarization, audiences are still receptive to works by artists they may disagree with.In his new book, Mamet is pessimistic on the market for challenging plays, warning that theater on Broadway has largely been replaced by pageantry, complaining of the “fatuity of issue plays” and bemoaning the demise of the “knowledgeable Broadway audience” in an era when its theatergoers are mostly tourists.The new revival of Mamet’s “American Buffalo” stars, from left, Darren Criss, Laurence Fishburne and Sam Rockwell.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“They come to Broadway exactly as they come to Disneyland,” he writes in “Recessional,” published by the HarperCollins imprint Broadside. “As in that happiest place, they do not come to risk their hard-earned cash on a problematic event. (They might not like the play nor appreciate being ‘challenged’; they might just want a break after a day of shopping.)”His recent publicity (he “seems to be doing his best — or worst — to make headlines,” Deadline noted) may also affect the box office.When Mamet appeared on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher” recently, Maher challenged Mamet on some of the views of the 2020 election he expressed in his book. “You think the attempted coup was from the Left; I think it was from the Right,” Maher said.“I misspoke,” Mamet said, urging people to skip that page of the book.But Mamet, for all the concerns he expresses in his book of being blacklisted, is unlikely to be canceled from the canon. “If I was teaching a class on contemporary American drama, I would teach Mamet,” said Harry J. Elam Jr., a longtime scholar of 20th-century American drama at Stanford University who is now president of Occidental College, speaking before Mamet’s most recent comments. “He has that type of importance.”Gregory Mosher, who has directed nearly two dozen Mamet plays — including the 1984 premiere of “Glengarry Glen Ross” — said that Mamet’s influence extended beyond his own plays and films to other spheres. He sees Mamet’s mark on works of prestige television such as “The Wire.”“Mamet made it OK to write about worlds that we now take for granted on HBO and elsewhere,” said Mosher, the chairman of theater at Hunter College, “and of course to say the word you can’t print.”The last two weeks of preview performances of “American Buffalo” played to houses that were 93 percent and 88 percent full, according to the Broadway League. (Through a representative, the production’s director, Neil Pepe, and producer, Jeffrey Richards, declined to comment.)Mamet embraced the Trump presidency; he told The Guardian earlier this year that Trump had done a “great job” as president and suggested that his defeat in 2020 was “questionable.” In “Recessional,” he writes that Trump “speaks American, and those of us who also love the language are awed and delighted to hear it from an elected official.”“One of the reasons my friendship with David has survived all these years,” said the comedian Jonathan Katz, “is we never discuss politics.”Much earlier, Mamet appeared to question the liberal outlook that he has said surrounded him in the theater world with his 1992 play “Oleanna.” Depicting a disputed sexual harassment allegation a female student makes against a male professor, it was read as interrogating political correctness. For Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, “Oleanna” — which Eustis saw in its original run at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village featuring Mamet’s longtime collaborator William H. Macy and Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet’s wife — was evidence of a shift.Mamet’s early plays, Eustis said, are “tremendously morally ambiguous and complex.” With “Oleanna,” argued Eustis, who has never worked with Mamet, “he actually started to put his finger on the scale.”But Leslie Kane, an English professor emerita at Westfield State University who wrote several scholarly books about Mamet and said she grew close to him and his family, perceived a through line between Mamet’s long-held obsessions as an artist and some of his later political stances. “His concern is language and the ability to use language,” she said, adding, “I think that’s what he believes: In our current environment, restrictions on speech require that people in society must watch what they say.”But Mamet, who has made free speech a central issue lately, is not a fan of post-show discussions of his own works featuring members of the productions. In 2017 he made news with a stipulation that none of the discussions, known as talkbacks, could be held within two hours of performances of his plays, calling for a fine of $25,000 for each offense. In his new book he says talkbacks are “transforming an evening at the theater into an English class.”One person who thinks that the politics of Mamet’s plays — to say nothing of his punditry — are largely irrelevant to his plays’ success is Mamet himself.“For fifty years I’ve paid my rent by getting people into the theater,” he writes in “Recessional.” “There are several strategies for doing so, but from the first I’ve relied on the most effective I know: be good.”The technique was not infallible, he notes.“And the audience and I sometimes differed about its definition,” he writes. “I did, however, know one certain way to keep them away: tell ’em the play was good for them.” More

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      in Television

      Pat Robertson Ends His Long Run as Host of ‘The 700 Club’

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      Mr. Robertson, the evangelical leader who started the show in the 1960s to help save the Christian Broadcasting Network, said his son would take over as host of the program.The evangelical leader Pat Robertson said on Friday that he was stepping down as host of the “The 700 Club” after more than 50 years at the helm of a program that channeled Christian conservatism into millions of American homes and turned him into a household name.“It’s been a great run,” Mr. Robertson said on the show, adding that his son Gordon Robertson would take over as host.Mr. Robertson, 91, made the announcement at the end of the broadcast on Friday, the 60th anniversary of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which Mr. Robertson started in a small station in Portsmouth, Va., in 1961.“The 700 Club” grew out of a series of telethons that Mr. Robertson began hosting in 1963 to rescue the network from financial troubles. At the time, Mr. Robertson said he was unable to pay for a suite of offices the network had added to the station.“I was praying on my knees with the staff,” Mr. Robertson said on Friday. “I needed $200,000, and I was praying and praying for the money.”It was then that Mr. Robertson said Jesus appeared to him with a “vision for the world.”“Our job was to reach the world, not just pay the bills,” he said.The network began holding telethons, asking for 700 viewers to pledge $10 a month to the station. The efforts inspired the “700 Club” name.The show transformed evangelical broadcasting, moving it away from scripted sermons and recordings of tent revivals and turning it into a cozy talk-show format where Mr. Robertson discussed topics such as nutrition, relationships, marriage and politics, said John C. Green, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Akron.Mr. Robertson greeting supporters outside a union hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1988 during his campaign for president.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesEvangelical Christians have long used stories of wayward people saved through the teachings of Jesus as a way to spread the Gospel and gain followers. Mr. Robertson’s show featured “very vivid presentations of these testimonials,” which engaged audiences, Dr. Green said.“It was through the success of ‘The 700 Club’ that he was able to have a real impact on politics,” he said.Mr. Robertson interviewed President Ronald Reagan; Shimon Peres, the former prime minister of Israel; and other world leaders. In 1988, he ran as a Republican candidate for president and made strong second-place finishes during the primary, performances that underscored the organizing potential of evangelical Christians.Through the show, Mr. Robertson “helped cement that alliance between conservative Christians and the Republican Party,” Dr. Green said.The show also gave Mr. Robertson a regular platform to vilify gay people and Muslims. He often quoted Bible verses in a soft, gentle voice to justify remarks that infuriated Arab Americans and gay rights organizations.In 2002, he described Islam as a violent religion that wanted to “dominate and then, if need be, destroy.”In 2013, a viewer sent a letter to the show asking how Facebook users should respond when they see a picture of two men kissing. Mr. Robertson said, “I would punch ‘vomit,’ not ‘like.’”He dismissed feminism as “a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”He once told the story of an “awful-looking” woman who complained to her minister that her husband had begun drinking heavily. Mr. Robertson said the minister told her that it was likely because she had gained weight and neglected her hair.“We need to cultivate romance, darling,” Mr. Robertson said. He blamed natural disasters and terrorism on moral and spiritual failings. In 2012, after deadly tornadoes pounded the South and Midwest, Mr. Robertson said that God would have intervened if “enough people were praying.”He also made comments that surprised both his followers and critics.Gordon Robertson, chief executive of the Christian Broadcasting Network and son of the founder Pat Robertson, in 2018. He will take over as host of “The 700 Club.”Steve Helber/Associated PressIn 2011, Mr. Robertson said that a man whose wife had Alzheimer’s disease should be able to divorce her and find a new partner. The next year, he called for the legalization of marijuana, saying that the “war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”“I believe in working with the hearts of people, and not locking them up,” he said.During Friday’s broadcast, the show steered clear of Mr. Robertson’s divisive comments.Instead, it showed clips of Mr. Robertson embracing diversity — the program named the Rev. Ben Kinchlow, a Black minister, as Mr. Robertson’s co-host in 1975, a time when there were few Black television hosts. Another clip showed Mr. Robertson asking President Donald J. Trump if the women in his cabinet would earn the same as men.Mr. Robertson said he told his son to expect him to return to the show from time to time.“In case I get a revelation from the Lord, I’m going to call you” and participate in the show, he said. “I’ll come in as a commentator, as a senior commentator, from time to time.” More

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      Donald Trump Lost His Battle. The Culture War Goes On.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCRITIC’S NOTEBOOKDonald Trump Lost His Battle. The Culture War Goes On.The reality-TV president was a practitioner, and a product, of a style of pop-cultural grievance that will outlast him.President Trump gloried in inviting conservative celebrities like Kid Rock, right, to the White House.Credit…Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesDec. 14, 2020You could say that the Trump presidency effectively ended when the polls closed election night or when news outlets called the contest for Joseph R. Biden Jr. four days later. You could say that it ended when the Electoral College voted on Monday to make Mr. Biden the president, or that it will end when Mr. Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20.But by one measure, the Trump presidency ended in mid-November, when online conservatives went bonkers over a picture of Harry Styles in a dress.The photo of the British singer on the cover of the December Vogue prompted the YouTube personality Candace Owens to tweet, “Bring back manly men.” To Ben Shapiro, the photo shoot was an assault on the concept of manhood itself: “Anyone who pretends that it is not a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses is treating you as a full-on idiot.”What does all this have to do with the president’s impending exit? First, it suggests that other conservatives are retaking the role of Troll-Warrior-in-Chief that Mr. Trump conferred on himself.But it’s also a reminder that the kind of button-pushing cultural politics that predated him — that in many ways helped make a President Trump possible — will survive his tenure.‘Duck Dynasty’ PoliticsA million years ago in the Obama era, proxy wars over culture were handled on the periphery of conservatism, in social media and right-wing talk. It was the era of the Gamergate attacks on feminists in the video gaming community, of umbrage over the foreign-language lyrics of a Coca-Cola commercial and over a female-cast reboot of “Ghostbusters.”With the election of President Trump, a pop-culture figure himself who intuited the connection between cultural fandom and political tribalism (he himself made a “Ghostbusters” outrage video the year he announced his campaign), the political and culture-war wings of conservatism merged.For four years, we had a president whose portfolio of concerns included protests at N.F.L. games, speeches at TV awards ceremonies, the loyalty of Fox News and the reboot of “Roseanne.” He scoured and fretted over Nielsen ratings — his own and those of shows he saw as allies and enemies — with the intensity a wartime president might devote to troop movements.Now, with a waning Mr. Trump self-soothing with OANN and Newsmax and tweeting out the elaborate sci-fi serial that the election was stolen from him, command of that battle is returning from the White House to the field.Phil Robertson, who was briefly suspended from the reality show “Duck Dynasty” in 2013 for homophobic and racist comments, with Mr. Trump at a 2019 rally.Credit…Larry W Smith/EPA, via ShutterstockFor decades, the expression of politics through culture war has been a staple of conservative media. Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing online publisher, declared that “politics is downstream from culture” (borrowing an idea from Marxist theorists like Antonio Gramsci). Fox News made an annual production of the “war on Christmas” (with occasional spinoffs like “Santa Claus and Jesus are white”).The appeal was emotional; people have a personal connection to family holidays and their favorite shows that they don’t to, say, marginal tax-rate policy. But it was also a way to appeal to a specific audience in a country where, increasingly, people had not just different political beliefs but entirely different cultural experiences.As far back as the early 1970s, the “rural purge” in TV — which eliminated bucolic sitcoms like “Green Acres” to make room for urban ones like “All in the Family” — reinforced the idea that there were different Americas with different, and even competing, popular cultures. This dynamic only spread with cable TV and the internet, which sliced and diced us into a nation of niche demos, sharing a geography but occupying different psychic spaces.As the historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer write in “Fault Lines,” their study of American polarization since the 1970s, all this led to “a world with fewer points of commonality in terms of what people heard or saw.” This was true in politics and in entertainment, and the two often overlapped.There was now identifiable red and blue pop culture. A 2016 Times study found a TV divide that mirrored the rural-urban split in the election. “Deadliest Catch,” the reality show about Alaskan crab fishing, was popular in red America; in blue zones, “Orange Is the New Black,” the Netflix drama and critique of the prison system.The brief suspension of Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the “Duck Dynasty” clan, had divided the country.  Credit…Gerald Herbert/Associated PressA 2014 poll found that 53 percent of Democrats, compared with 15 percent of Republicans, believed “Twelve Years a Slave” should win the best-picture Oscar. Neither party had taken a position on the movie; the culture war was just well-enough ingrained that people could intuit where their side would land, just as the Iraq War movie “American Sniper” became a conservative favorite and liberal target.Knowingly or not, audience members enlisted in the culture war as volunteers. For conservatives in particular, the liberal tilt of Hollywood was a useful font of grievance, allowing them to claim cultural victimhood no matter how much political and judicial power they held.And people increasingly saw their favorite stars as their proxies and champions. When Phil Robertson, the bayou patriarch of “Duck Dynasty,” was briefly suspended from the reality show in 2013 for homophobic and racist comments, one America saw it as political correctness taking down a beloved star for speaking his mind. Another America — if they had ever heard of “Duck Dynasty” at all — saw a bigot getting what he had coming to him.The Culture-Troll-in-ChiefAll of this, in retrospect, was an advance trailer for the it-came-from-“The Apprentice” Trump era.Politicians, especially on the right, have dabbled in culture war before: George H.W. Bush vs. “The Simpsons,” Dan Quayle vs. “Murphy Brown,” Bob Dole vs. rap. But their forays tended to be awkward, tone-deaf and often as not, self-defeating.But Mr. Trump, a child of TV who made himself into a TV character as an adult, understood media instinctively. It was where he lived, ever since he gave up his youthful fantasies of running a movie studio, vowed to “put show business into real estate” and forged his tabloid persona in the 1980s.Having used media to build a reality-show career and a business-success myth, having experienced the rush of primetime celebrity, he knew that culture makes the kind of gut connection that mere politicians can only dream of. Ordinary politics argues: Those other people don’t believe what you believe. Culture-war politics argues: Those other people don’t love what you love.So Mr. Trump’s campaign, as much as it was about wall-building or Islamophobia or “law and order,” was also about a promise to defend and uphold his followers’ culture over the enemy’s. His rallies combined a concert vibe with the theatrics of pro wrestling (another genre Mr. Trump had experience with).To an audience that had been told for years that showbiz celebrities disdained their values, here was one of their celebrities, a real celebrity from TV, taking their side. An alt-rightist essay on Breitbart.com hailed the erstwhile NBC host as “the first truly cultural candidate for President” since Patrick J. Buchanan, the CNN “Crossfire” co-host who declared a “cultural war” for “the soul of America” at the 1992 Republican National Convention.Ted Nugent performed at a campaign event for Mr. Trump in Michigan in October.Credit…Rey Del Rio/Getty ImagesTrump’s 2016 RNC didn’t have a lot of high-profile politicians, but it did have a “Duck Dynasty” star. As president, he gloried in inviting conservative celebrities like Kid Rock and Ted Nugent (who once called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel”), as well as the newly conservative-curious Kanye West, to take photos in the Oval Office.The pictures felt like spoils of war, a political end-zone dance. And his fiercest celebrity critics often played into his me-vs.-Hollywood narrative, cursing him out at the Tony Awards or feuding with him on Twitter.He praised Western culture as superior because “we write symphonies,” tooting a white-nationalist dog whistle from the orchestra pit. And he threw himself wholeheartedly into fights like the one over ABC’s reboot of “Roseanne,” whose star, Roseanne Barr, had become a real-life, vituperative Twitter Trumpist, and which worked her politics into the story lines.He didn’t, like previous presidents attending the Kennedy Center honors or sharing a something-for-everyone Spotify playlist, see culture as a way to find common ground. He saw it as a battleground with winners and losers, and one full of opportunities to inflame divisions.When the “Roseanne” premiere dominated the ratings, he crowed about it as his team trouncing the enemy. “It’s about us!” he told a crowd of supporters.Later, when ABC fired Ms. Barr from the show over a racist tweet, Mr. Trump joined the argument, not to condemn Ms. Barr’s remarks but to accuse the network of hypocrisy because of “HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC.” It echoed his Twitter attack on the network in 2014 when it picked up the sitcom “black-ish”: “Can you imagine the furor of a show, ‘Whiteish’! Racism at highest level?”His bellyaching against Hollywood wasn’t just a bread-and-circuses distraction. It was political messaging. Pushing back on Ms. Barr’s firing — for likening a Black former Obama aide to an ape — echoed the right’s fixation on “cancel culture.” The message: Your stars are being canceled. Your shows are being canceled. You are being canceled. Only I am the network executive who can ensure your renewal.After ABC fired Roseanne Barr from the reboot of “Roseanne” over a racist tweet, Mr. Trump accused the network of hypocrisy.Credit…Brinson+Banks for The New York TimesHis fixation on ratings (dating back to “The Apprentice,” whose ratings he routinely lied about) vibed with his worldview of competition and scorekeeping. Fights about representation, American identity and the boundaries of acceptable speech aligned with messages expressed, in more blunt and ugly ways, by Mr. Trump’s campaign and supporters — especially the insidious language of “replacement.”“Now they’re making ‘Ghostbusters’ with only women. What’s going on!” was a way of telling men that he would protect them from becoming superfluous. “We can say ‘Merry Christmas’ again” was a way of saying: Your culture used to be the assumed default in America, and I’m going to bring that back. The enemy wants to demote you to a supporting player; I’m going to make you the star again.The Tug-of-Culture-War Goes OnMuch of this, of course, was a reaction to the expansion of the American story implied by the election of America’s first Black president and by the representative pop culture of Obama’s era, like “black-ish” and “Hamilton.” Often, there’s a sense (at least in retrospect) of a new cultural era beginning with a new presidential administration: JFK, the New Frontier and youth culture; Reagan, “Family Ties” and “greed is good.”Though the Biden administration has yet to begin, it doesn’t feel like that kind of definitive shift at the moment, so much as the flag moving to the other side of the centerline in a continuing tug of war. Things may get quieter on the surface; Mr. Biden is neither as big a pop-culture guy nor as zealous a culture warrior as the president he’s replacing.But as every tempest over a Vogue cover proves, the fight goes on. The divides are too deep, the incentives for widening them too great. Whether Mr. Trump continues to have a major part in this after he leaves office, or whether his ratings ragetweets simply echo in some musty corner of the internet, the ongoing narrative he has left us with will continue.The secret of a long-running show, after all, is that it can survive a cast change.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More