The term “vibe shift” has been bandied about quite a bit since Donald Trump won the 2024 election in spectacular fashion.
The viral American Eagle “good jeans” ads featuring Sydney Sweeney are a prime example. For starters, such a campaign likely wouldn’t have even been pitched – let alone made – four or five years ago. And then there is the fact that the hysterical reaction from the angry leftist mob couldn’t coax an “apology” from the brand or the “cancellation” of its star.
But it’s not just politics and fashion that are seeing the shift. A veteran entertainment journalist believes a sea change is underway in Hollywood as well – declaring, in a guest essay for The New York Times, that Tinseltown’s “progressive snowflake era” is over.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show, to discuss the op-ed, how the left lost its stranglehold on culture, and why it is up to artists on the right to fill the void.
‘Hot, Horny, and White’
In an essay titled “Hollywood Is ‘Hot, Horny, and White’ Again,” Sharon Waxman, founder and editor-in-chief of The Wrap, argued that studios are now turning away from DEI and the “socially conscious framework” that controlled “narratives, casting, and green lights” for more than a decade.
Waxman cited the recent sale of an “anti-woke” reboot of the 1992 Paul Veerhoven film Basic Instinct as one example of the pivot. On the small screen, she said the new Netflix series The Hunting Wives, starring Malin Åkerman as a gun-toting Texas socialite, is a show where everyone is “hot, horny, and white” (i.e. the antithesis of “woke”).
She noted that, “at the talent agencies where Hollywood’s hustlers are out selling scripts and projects, no longer are queer writers of color, for example, so much in demand.” Moreover, “no longer are preferred pronouns expected on your email signature.”
The shift was a long time coming, in Waxman’s view, but she acknowledged that President Trump’s return to the White House has sped up the process. “Hollywood is in the business of giving its audience what it wants, not what it thinks it should want,” she wrote. “In a place that remains a bastion of liberal values, a quiet conversation is underway about what those values really mean, what they cost, whether resistance to the most showbizzy of presidents is worth the price, and whether the liberal pendulum swung too far in an industry aimed at serving all of America.”
Filling the Void
Klavan, who has spent his career in arts and entertainment as a bestselling author and screenwriter, agreed that the United States is “definitely” experiencing a cultural “change” and “vibe shift” in which the woke left is losing control.
But he said the success of the movement depends on whether the right steps up to offer an alternative. “Things have definitely changed, but they are not going to continue to change unless the right also… learns to create and make art – not just complain about art, not just complain about the culture,” Klavan explained. “Hollywood is not going to reform itself in any real way, unless it has competition, unless there are new studios built, unless there are new methods of distributing arts, and unless new publishing companies come into being.”
In Klavan’s view, you cannot trust the industry that “created the mess in the first place” to clean itself up, which is why he said it is time for “more people on the right fulfill Andrew Breitbart’s vision of ‘cultural awareness'” by creating awards to honor artists and offering “knowledgeable reviews” of art and culture.
“Until the right shows up for the arts, until they make themselves not just artists, but also an audience for the arts, it is going to go back to being woke and it is going to go back into the monopoly of the left,” Klavan noted. “And it shouldn’t. There’s nothing inherently leftist about the arts… [but] they have been dominated by the left and they have been killed by the left.”
While he said the “monoculture” has been “shattered,” he believes the true sea change will come when people on the right start to create things. “This is going to take money. It is going to take people who are aware… It is going to take creative people who have been blacklisted from these businesses… You’ve got to nurture them. You’ve got to bring them back,” Klavan concluded. “We’ve got to start caring about it… This is the moment, and the field is open.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Klavan by tuning in to episode 1,126 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.