Sydney Sweeney and the Culture War

In addressing the culture war as I do here I would like to be clear that I do not write of the genuine differences in values among the American people, the inevitable arguments over them, or the reality that many of those arguments--like that over reproductive rights--are serious and indeed frequently life and death matters for the public. Rather I address elites' cynical mobilization of the often less thoughtful or principled motives bound up with the arguments as they tie up the disparate arguments into One Big Argument whose conduct on the most narrow-minded and emotional terms possible they encourage relentlessly as they position that One Big Argument to overshadow everything else so as to keep that broad public at each other's throats as they realize their political ends. These most obviously include their making it harder for anyone to discuss anything else, not least those things that the elite truly care about, like the economy or foreign policy, while also warping the discussion of those things when they do come up (like making of the hard science matter of fossil fuels and their effect on the climate a "culture war" issue!).

One may fairly describe the resulting political scene as characterized by, among other things, associative, symbolic, even magical thinking of the kind anthropologists once called "primitive," tribal loyalties and tribal hates equally describable as primitive, hyperbolic rhetoric, and moral panic in relation to trivia, like the disposable crap of pop culture, all further stoked by accusations made in complete bad faith for tactical ends, and amplified by a lobotomized Internet culture which excels at turning any and every little issue into a three hour tempest in a teacup before all involved forget about it completely as they get caught up in the Next Little Thing. (They tell us that the Internet Remembers Everything. Internet users Remember Nothing.) It is all such that any person with the least capacity to stand back and look at the scene in an objective manner cannot but be overwhelmed not merely by the extreme stupidity of what they see, but the sheer strangeness of many aspects of the situation.

Such as the manner in which Ms. Sydney Sweeney has time and again ended up at the center of said culture war with "tradition"-minded conservatives' embracing Ms. Sweeney as an icon of opposition to "wokeness" (a situation not so consequential, I should think, as the foolishness about fossil fuels and the climate crisis cited above, but if anything even harder for a rational person to work out). After all, Ms. Sweeney is an actress not long ago little known beyond the small minority of people that actually watches prestige TV--with, of course, those who have recently come to be Ms. Sweeney's champions especially unlikely to be among those euphoric about Euphoria and what they could be expected to dismiss as "woke" coastal elite-pandering edgelord crapola. Attempting to explain the situation many have dissected particular episodes in which she has been involved, like Sweeney's guest hosting Saturday Night Live, or her participation in an ad campaign for American Eagle jeans, and argued that the controversy was manufactured. However, even when taking the trouble to argue this they tend not to discuss the cultural context that made it possible for such claims to gain traction, above all the particular gender politics that mattered most "in the mix."

Considering those politics one is obliged to look away from the diversity of the political tendencies with which the right is at odds and instead focus on that particular tendency that the mainstream media has fastened on as its orthodoxy, such that this is really the right's direct opponent in such controversies--and indeed just those aspects of that tendency most relevant to that particular matter. That tendency, thoroughly "bourgeois," "postmodernist" and "identity politics"-minded, is at ease with and even defensive of the status quo on the whole but ferociously combative in its area of concern, where, standing on its claims for women's subjectivities, by which it sets great store as a standard of right, fairness and need, and to which it expects deference, it assumes a stance of highly categorical and militant opposition to traditional conceptions of gender. Specifically rejecting the old stress on biological sex as the determinant of gender in favor of an emphasis on what it sees as its "social construction," this entails on its part a particular rejection of the idea of distinctly male and female qualities, roles, norms and expectations as the imposition of a socially constructed "patriarchy" ("rule by men") which is "structurally" and "misogynistically" oppressive of women. In opposing this construct this tendency goes beyond the idea that people should not be bound by traditional expectations in the area to regarding the very idea of those expectations as threatening, and conformity to them even suspect as endorsement of "the bad old ways," and thus threatening to the progress they want to make (to be found in, for example, the difference between the view that women should have choices beyond the traditional domestic role exemplified by the "trad-wife," and the view that any woman's being a homemaker is in itself somehow pernicious). Indeed proponents of this view, which for lack of a more satisfactory term one might refer to as "woke gender politics," go so far as to hold that women's subjectivities require protection from the oppressions of the conventional, "patriarchal" male subjectivity, which is, at best, something out of which men have to be "educated." This defensive and educational effort is manifest in the assumption of a critical stance toward what they deem to be "wrong" male thought, speech and action, with a significant pop cultural reflection its products' constant "role reversal" of the positions of men and women from the standpoint of gender stereotypes, as seen in how even old movie franchises are now reworked to present their female characters as the embodiments of traditionally masculine virtues such as intelligence, strength, courage, and the male characters as stupid, weak figures who, even when not actually villainous, prove helpless or irrelevant in the crunch as the women dismiss or dominate them (such works meeting stereotype with "counter-stereotype" supposed to "free minds" of the conventional associations as they "masculinize" the women and "feminize" the men). Meanwhile respectable comment lays great store by protecting women from men's reactions to a depiction they can be expected to find objectionable. (Thus do they hold that a man's characterizing such material as puerile and mean-spirited power fantasy is illegitimate, and proscribe the use of the term "Mary Sue" on the grounds that male disrespect toward such images of female prowess and power is a patriarchy-affirming threat to women's aspirations.)

Woke gender politics' reading of male identity and subjectivity as an oppressive and misogynistic social construct extends to that most sensitive aspect of traditional male identity and subjectivity, male heterosexuality. Thus proponents of this politics relentlessly turn "queer theory" on male heterosexual identity and behavior to the point that they can make male heterosexuality seem merely "performative," a front for a pathetic mass of ugly insecurities, as they even appear intent on replacing a "heteronormative" culture with a "homonormative" one--and "homophobia" with a "heterophobia," certainly going by their particularly extreme scrutiny of male thought, speech and action in this particular area of life. Thus do feminists denounce male (sexual) "objectification" of women, and all associated with it, like the "male gaze," and conventional male valuations of the attractiveness of women (standards of beauty, femininity, etc.), with this having significant pop cultural manifestation in recent years in the Gamergate and Comicsgate episodes; the media's barraging the public (especially post-#MeToo) with expressions of disgust from famous actresses at the male gaze and the ways in which their careers had made them its object; filmmakers (to great fanfare) eliding the "male gaze" from even movies of types conventionally aimed at a male audience; a great deal of advertising and such longtime showcases of female beauty as the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue replacing traditional beauty standards with "diversity" and "body positivity"; and (to go by the "CalArts style" controversy) animators even altering the art styles of cartoons to avoid producing anything a possessor of a male gaze might find appealing(!). Rounding out the image, the same tendency treated the thwarting of male preferences and expectations (with the pointedly unconventional casting of particular roles, onetime sex symbols playing against that image on screen, etc.) as victories to be celebrated by all right-thinking people.

Of course, a great many see all this as male-bashing, anti-male, misandrist, and a substitution of one set of prejudices for another, with those inclining to this view finding particular grounds for their position in woke gender politics' numerous double standards, like its practitioners' not turning the same kind of hostile scrutiny on other gender identities--with its "interrogation" of male heterosexual identity using queer theory not matched by similar usage of the theory against other groups, for the self-identifications of whose members woke gender politics demands respect (evident in, for example, the complete rejection of the view of LGBTQ+ identity as changeable, and the associated rejection of "gay conversion therapy" as destructive quackery). Meanwhile, as the proponents of these politics condemn the objectification of women by heterosexual men, they take no apparent interest in other forms of "objectification" (not least, an objectification of men that men may plausibly find at least as objectionable as women do objectification of their sex, the more in as they experience it as both an assault on male identity and, often, a piece of conscious vindictiveness). Indeed, just as woke gender politics celebrate the scrubbing pop culture of anything reflecting or legitimating conventional male perspectives, the woke also celebrate the increasing prevalence of the "centering" of other perspectives in the manner exemplified today by shows like Bridgerton and the films of Emerald Fennell, especially insofar as those "perspectives" are conspicuously at odds with the conventional male preferences (all but reveling in their "transgressiveness").

Proponents of woke gender politics typically regard the critical response as a caricature of their position by reactionaries opposed to the progress women and the LGBTQ+ have made toward bringing about a more equitable and inclusive society--in the language of postmodernist-identity theory, a defense of the "privilege" of the "male" and especially "heterosexual male" under the traditional conceptions. Much of that criticism specifically seems illegitimate to them given their premises--for instance, a male's complaining about "emasculation," "feminization," etc. seeming to them to bespeak his attachment to the very views they are quite clear about fighting against--all as other complaints which may not seem so obviously illegitimate appear to them trivial. (Thus does it go with male complaints about misandry, proponents of these politics holding this to be at worst a problem of individual rather than "systemic" prejudice such as they regard misogyny as being, and so not properly comparable with regard to character or urgency.) There is also the more basic epistemological matter of their demand of respect for women's subjectivities, which makes male questioning as such likely to be fundamentally illegitimate. Reflecting all this there has been a strong tendency in this quarter to dismiss any questioning of woke gender politics with contemptuous dismissal as a cynical attempt to deflect the address of other groups' proper concerns. However, this has been unsatisfactory to those less than convinced by the justifications for the undeniable ambiguities and double standards involved in that position, with the refusal of every call for consideration toward men on one grounds or another easily making the reasons they give seem like rationalization rather than rationale, the more in as it has been combined with great verbal bombast (their free use of the word "misogyny" in regard to anything men think, say or do easily seeming to them a "scare word" like Communist), with all of this extending to the fundamentals of the epistemological premises of these gender politics. (If one is to speak of, for example, women's subjectivity as the measure of their situation, just who is to represent that? Not all women subjectively see things the same way, with the feminist apparently choosing her own subjectivity over the subjectivities of other women not holding the same views. And if subjectivity is the standard of unfair treatment, how can feminists justify their dismissive attitude toward male reactions, which necessarily also means dismissing subjectivity?) Indeed, skeptics of woke gender politics often conclude that their proponents do not defend themselves against their critics' charges because they simply cannot do so, and that remarks such as "Men just don't get it" are a mere "terror of obscurantism" directed at making men acquiesce in a narcissistic demand for the coddling of women's sensibilities as feminists trample with impunity on men's sensitivities, and even interests and rights of greater material consequence (with expressions of petty vindictiveness of the "Now you know how it feels" type feeding into their worst suspicions, the more in as, again, supporters of woke gender politics are inhibited about condemning such attitudes on even tactical grounds).

Of course, such objections are all but excluded from the mainstream media, where the gender politics discussed here is describable as hegemonic. The result is that a conventionally "hot" actress not lamenting and maligning the male gaze the way so many of her Hollywood peers have so much done in public but rather on the high-profile platform that is a guest spot on Saturday Night Live actually inviting that gaze, welcoming it, validating it, can seem to be all but performing a revolutionary act, with subsequent episodes like the pun about Sweeney having "good" jeans/genes in the American Eagle ad continuing the pattern. Of course, that said the right's celebration of Ms. Sweeney in this manner can seem dissonant. After all, if the right has historically stood for traditionalism in the area of gender it has not been the party of freer sexuality, heterosexual or otherwise. Quite the contrary, it has been the champion of religion, "family values," and generally bourgeois lifeways which demands the young put away even their most innocent amusements to focus on getting jobs and starting families and generally leading dull, dutiful bourgeois lives whether they want them or not (this is just what it means to "grow up," and no backtalk from you!), and never abandoned that commitment, while indeed frequently embracing newfangled gender theory in making its case. Thus was George Gilder the equal of any "queer theorist" in his insistence on the "instability of male sexual identity" in his '70s-era writing (if using it all in support of traditionalist conservative conclusions about sex, gender roles, work, family), all as there are those in the right-wing press who have denounced how many on the right have presented themselves as champions of indulgence of the "male gaze" and all associated with it. Thus a piece in Newsweek may denounce what the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue has become, but in its turn a piece in the Washington Examiner denounce the piece in Newsweek for supporting any such thing as a swimsuit issue at all, whatever the body types displayed in its pages. And thus does the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document call for the criminalization of pornography, with its authors overtly drawing on feminist language and arguments in support of that objective (not least in their denunciation of pornographers as "misogynistic exploiters of . . . women"). For all the contradictions of that stance one may yet imagine that the right's less than perfectly coherent or consistent bid for the support of young men annoyed with the media-academic-political complex's ceaseless condemnation of them and their amusements has been to the right's advantage, and the disadvantage of their opponents--but only within distinct limits. After all, in spite of the most bungled Democratic Party campaign in living memory amid the bitterly anti-incumbent mood created by a situation of genuine economic hardship the advantage it brought the Republicans was not nearly so great as to win for their presidential nominee the vote of the pop culture-attuned (and allegedly reactionary) males of the age 18-29 category in November 2024, or refute the wisdom that at election time "It's The Economy, Stupid."