The Excerpt podcast: Is pop culture becoming more conservative?

On a special episode of The Excerpt podcast: Whether it's politics, sexual identity or women's liberation, Hollywood has a well-earned reputation for slanting liberal. The conservative viewpoint, meanwhile, has struggled to gain a strong foothold in American pop culture, whether that's through television, movies or music. That trend seems to shift a little bit this year. Is that likely to continue? Joel Penney, associate professor at the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University, joins The Excerpt to explore the political gains that can be won through entertainment media.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, December 13th, 2023, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

Whether it's politics, sexual identity, or women's liberation, Hollywood has a well-earned reputation for slanting liberal. The conservative viewpoint, meanwhile, has struggled to get a strong foothold in American pop culture, whether that's through television, movies, or music. The trend seems to shift a little bit this year. Was this completely organic, or was it by design? And if pop culture is now a battleground, is anyone winning? Here to dive into it with me is Joel Penney, associate professor at the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Joel, thanks for joining me.

Joel Penney:

Thanks so much for having me today.

Dana Taylor:

Okay, so you've said that there's now more of a concerted effort in the conservative world to push into pop culture as one of their big battlegrounds. What's taken them so long?

Joel Penney:

For a long time there was this attitude in conservative media and conservative circles that the world of pop culture, specifically Hollywood, was sort of a bridge too far. It was untouchable. But that's changed recently because they really do feel that there are gains to be won politically from engaging more proactively with pop culture, particularly with entertainment media.

Dana Taylor:

Well, political satire and American pop culture, that's nothing new. Shows like Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show, along with all of the popular late-night talk shows, they help shape public perceptions about politics and politicians. Is late-night pretty much still the realm of liberals?

Joel Penney:

Late-night television is really not what it used to be. That really has to do with the technology and broadcast television, not just having that huge audience that it used to. Those kinds of shows now are really producing content for online clips to go viral. So the real power players in the late-night comedy world really aren't what they once were, but there is increasingly more and more outlets for political satire. Obviously, this happens a lot on the web, and a lot of digital sites, including conservative sites, are producing content for their audience, really targeted to their audience. They don't need the broadcast networks to do that. They're now creating their own media infrastructure to really go around some of the major players and contact and relate to their audience pretty directly.

Dana Taylor:

Well, I was going to ask, outside the world of cable news, if anything is being produced in that vein that speaks to a more conservative audience, and you're saying just not on the scale of network late-night television.

Joel Penney:

There's a lot of efforts to create an alternative media infrastructure for conservative news and opinion, and increasingly entertainment. You have sometimes major investors getting involved with this. A lot of this stuff is going towards streaming and towards these niche services that are, again, really all about serving the audience directly through digital means and really bypassing all that kind of old-fashioned media infrastructure, particularly broadcast TV, which as you said before, conservatives often perceived to be completely liberal in terms of its politics.

Dana Taylor:

We saw some viral media that was trending this year that conservatives sort of touted as extolling their values, regardless of the content creators' intentions. Two examples. The song Rich Men North of Richmond, and the movie Sound of Freedom, which so far is 2023's most successful indie film. Do you think that that could jumpstart conservatives' efforts to bring their perspectives into more media?

Joel Penney:

Those were definitely big moments this summer, kind of proof of concept that conservative entertainment could find an audience. There have been efforts like this going on for a while, and sometimes it hasn't really turned out so successfully. Something like the movie Sound of Freedom is really marketed as a thriller and having this social commentary on the issue of child trafficking. So it wasn't necessarily branded as entirely a red state or Republican kind of movie, although it did kind of take on that character.

Of course, the Oliver Anthony song, Rich Men North of Richmond, was a TikTok hit, and it was very much a viral video, so it was using social media distribution, including a lot of major conservative public figures were sharing it on their social media accounts as soon as it was released, and that really helped it find an audience, again, without necessarily commercial radio stations or the usual major labels. It was an independent release.

Dana Taylor:

Well, for decades, celebrities have made a point of addressing politics during award shows like the Oscars. Do you think that we've gotten to a point where fans expect or even demand to know where the celebrities they support stand on cultural issues?

Joel Penney:

Well, it's interesting. For the audience, clearly they develop relationships with their favorite celebrities, actors and actresses, and increasingly want them to reflect their values. So you could imagine a lot of celebrities are really trying to walk that line, or at least trying to appeal to a major part of the audience. But there is an expectation. Increasingly we see, and this is throughout media and also advertising and marketing, this concept of having a social responsibility and a kind of a stand that helps connect with an audience. They want to see not just their favorite stars but also their values reflected in the entertainment they consume.

Dana Taylor:

Okay, so back in September of this year, vote.org said that they saw their biggest voter registration day since 2020, and it came after Taylor Swift posted an Instagram story encouraging her fans to register to vote. They credited Taylor with helping them register roughly 35,000 new voters. Of course, she has millions of fans in her fan base. Are we making too big of a deal about the power of celebrities to influence the world of politics?

Joel Penney:

Well, celebrities could absolutely influence the world of politics. Sometimes celebrities can become politicians. Donald Trump would be a major example of that. So the thought that this world of celebrity is too frivolous or too sort of just irreverent to matter in something as serious as politics, that's not true at all. What Taylor Swift is doing with her voter registration drives is a very familiar pattern in American politics. It's not exactly a new phenomenon, but it does absolutely demonstrate the intensive power of celebrity on all aspects of our world for better and for worse.

Dana Taylor:

So, public pushback against anti-LGBTQ sentiments in the world of country music specifically is no longer uncommon. Miranda Lambert, she's been a vocal supporter of her brother and his husband. In 2012 Carrie Underwood became one of the first country artists to publicly support gay marriage. Although it can seem like we've never been more divided, do you see these debates, especially within a genre seemingly aligned with conservatism, eventually leading to less divisiveness?

Joel Penney:

It's a little bit hard to say because there are also plenty of hot, popular country songs that are on the other side of the political spectrum, not just the Oliver Anthony song, which he came out and kind of clarified, "No, I don't mean to be a conservative or Republican spokesperson." Battle lines are kind of drawn, and I would say country is something that's so big now that it could find... There are elements of the world of country that could find itself on both sides of those dividing lines, but I don't know if it really changes the fact that those lines are still there.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. So I want to turn to environmental activism. The Climate Ambassadors Network, it's made up of a group of young climate activists. They're working in Hollywood to infiltrate every part of the industry with the goal of influencing the public. Are there opposing groups working in Hollywood now to spread a more conservative view that you're aware of?

Joel Penney:

I'm not aware of an effort to influence Hollywood studios to make different kinds of messages in their films. Probably has a lot to do with the fact that they understand, any advocate group that was pushing that kind of agenda, something against the environmental movement, would probably at this point assume that a company like Disney, for instance, would be a bit of a lost cause. So they're simply going into different channels and avenues, as I was speaking about before, trying to create new movie studios that would be run by conservative people who would have those kinds of opinions and values at their core, and they would be championing those kinds of projects.

Dana Taylor:

Well, schools have become a major cultural battleground from which books remain on shelves in school libraries to which plays can be staged by theater students. Is book banning a sign of a society in decline?

Joel Penney:

Well, it's certainly a sign of this intensive backlash to a sort of progressive cultural politics around race, gender, and sexuality, and it is certainly not a new pattern at all. I mean, I think the reason why these recent book bans and even maybe sometimes book burnings, they captured a lot of the public imagination because they're so reminiscent of earlier periods of history.

A good reason to be concerned about that is certainly is a sign of not just backlash, but of these reactionary, populist movements that have certainly become very powerful in this country. I think that group that was really behind a lot of those efforts, Moms for Liberty, they just had a pretty rough election cycle. Some of their candidates that were running in certain races in the 2023 off-year elections did not win those races, and it's possible that that kind of message left a bad taste in some of the voters' mouths, I guess you could say.

Dana Taylor:

Joel, thanks for helping me unpack American pop culture and politics. Appreciate you being on the show.

Joel Penney:

Thanks so much for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Shannon Rae Green for production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcast@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Excerpt podcast: Is pop culture becoming more conservative?