To understand why liberals continue to dominate American culture despite being bludgeoned in the political arena, consider two recent creative properties.
The first is Good Night, and Good Luck, the Broadway play starring George Clooney. It tells the story of the 1950s Red Scare and the media’s opposition to Sen. Joe McCarthy. Good Night, and Good Luck, adapted from the 2005 film of the same name, was recently simulcast live on CNN to a global audience.
The second cultural property is The Devil’s Triangle, a screenplay based on my book of the same name. The Devil’s Triangle tells the story of the Left’s psychotic campaign in 2018 to keep Brett Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court. The story has drama, real characters who are flawed, religion, and flashbacks to the 1980s.
So why is George Clooney’s play, which depicts events from over 70 years ago, getting a worldwide platform while the script for The Devil’s Triangle, which depicts events from not even a decade ago, can’t get any backing?
It’s because conservatives don’t support the arts. Over the past century, liberals have supported projects that advance their worldview, and conservatives have not. Early on, the Left supported a show like Saturday Night Live, launched on a shoestring budget and airing in a “dead spot” late at night in 1975. Or a magazine like Rolling Stone, produced for $7,000 in 1967. Or a controversial book like Ulysses. These things go on to change the culture.
For the last 50 years, conservatives who want to create a healthier culture have missed opportunity after opportunity to do just that. Conservatives are great at position papers, conferences, and arguments about the Constitution. They are lousy at supporting artistic projects that can move the public, slowly and subtly, in the right direction.
“We don’t tell our own stories.” That’s what a conservative friend recently said to me. It echoed a conversation I had in the fall of 2018, right after the Kavanaugh circus. I got a call from an experienced Hollywood actor. This person has been in several movies, including one with Johnny Depp. He knew my name because I had gone to high school with Kavanaugh and had been a target of the Left’s war at the time.
“So,” he said, “how many offers have you gotten for your story?”
“None,” I replied.
He couldn’t believe it. I had just survived one of the most dramatic episodes in modern American history, a story tailor-made for the big screen. The Left had used extortion, opposition research, and even a honey trap to try and get me to destroy Kavanaugh. This was a movie — or so thought the actor on the other end of the line. “It’s just so typical,” he said. “Our side just doesn’t have the guts or vision to pull something like this off — a story that will reveal the evil of the Left is just dropped in our laps.”
He went on: “One thing was absolutely clear: Had you failed, had Kavanaugh imploded, Hollywood would immediately be in production depicting a film about it. In fact, there would have been several films in production.”
Ryan Anderson, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, recently published an essay in First Things magazine. “The Way Forward After Dobbs” outlines what is needed to transform American culture. “We now need culture-forming, opinion-shaping organizations,” Anderson wrote. “What might this entail? We might task a small group with studying how other groups have succeeded in their domains, and devising a plan for meaningful reforms in new areas.”
Anderson observed that “cultural progressives have constructed a massive infrastructure that supports up-and-coming left-wing graduate students, academics, and researchers who are willing not only to teach at all levels, but also to testify, give interviews, write reports, and engage politically to advance their social values. There is no comparable support for socially conservative scholars on the right.”
BEYOND THE KENNEDY CENTER: TRUMP STAGES PUBLIC ARTS TAKEOVER IN SECOND TERM
What is needed, he continued, is a “cultural incrementalism” that “can be broad-spectrum: new TV shows and movies that aren’t hokey after-school specials, policies to protect kids from the harms of social media and online pornography, effective church ministries. The task is enormous. But we haven’t devoted enough time, treasure, or sophistication to it.”
If we found the courage to make one single movie, The Devil’s Triangle, it could be the start of that enormous task.
Mark Judge is the author of The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs. The New American Stasi.