It’s easy to forget how widespread the cultural backlash was to Donald Trump’s first election win. Quickly, pop culture became saturated with shallow moments of protest against a reality TV star taking office. We had pussy-hatted women’s marches; the publication of countless under-cooked self-help books that over-explained allyship. Taylor Swift endorsed a political candidate for the first time. The newly minted vice-president Mike Pence was booed and then confronted by a cast member at a Broadway performance of Hamilton. Kate McKinnon played a bereft Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live, only months after Trump had hosted the show. Markets responded to commodify these “movements”. The popularisation of self-care (as a protective response to the supposed cruelty of politics) turned this culture of soft-handed resistance into a lifestyle choice.
Not all of the media of 2016-20 was bad, nor did it all respond to the conditions that led to Trump’s presidency. When it did contend with things like inequality and corruption, sometimes it was good (Get Out, for example, thrived in cinemas just weeks after the inauguration). What we learned though was how limited the power of this self-absorbed protest culture was, which proved to be minimally – if not totally – ineffective at stemming the circumstances that caused Trump to win. It paid lip service to injustice without seriously engaging with what was needed to combat it; and preached only to the choir – focusing its praxis on the white middle and upper classes who were least likely to be at the sharp end of the policies and cultural impacts of Trump’s presidency.
In 2024, we are aware of the constraints of this kind of pop cultural response. What, then, will we see instead as we head into a second Trump term? The early signs warn of something much more sinister than the late-2010s in creative industries: we appear to be entering an era of caution, in which art becomes paranoid, and fails to take on anything we’re about to experience.
Only a few weeks have passed since the election was held on 5 November, and we’re already beginning to see examples of this culture at play. Last week, the actor Sebastian Stan, who recently depicted Trump in an unflattering light in the film, The Apprentice, said he was due to do the upcoming round of Variety’s Actors on Actors series, in which performers interview each other about their careers and recent work – however, Stan said that no other actor’s publicist would let them sit down with him to even bear witness to Stan criticising Trump, let alone do it themselves.
More positive outlooks – such as in publishing – suggest that among a slew of new books by hard-right figures, particularly within the Trump administration, there will likely be, at best, a spike in escapist, politically apathetic fiction (an even more myopic echo of the inward-turning, self-care culture that boomed post-2016). In the art world, some experts are getting excited about what a Trump presidency will yield, predicting that a reduction in taxes for corporations and the super-rich – as well as fewer regulations for things like cryptocurrencies – will lead to rising sales for high-value paintings and sculptures. “Their wealth since the election has gone up, and his policies are likely to benefit them,” one art expert told the New York Times.
Trump won’t take office for another two months, so these are early responses. But there are other conditions as we approach a second Trump presidency which suggest that post-2024 pop culture is only going to get worse. This cowed response from cultural industries may only get worse if the Trump administration defunds the arts over the next four years. Project 2025, a Trump presidency “wish list” created by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, has argued for reducing literature and art in education and banning anything that touches on subjects such as feminism and LGBTQ+ lives and rights. Trump publicly disavowed Project 2025, but he has also announced many of its featured policies as part of his new administration. Already, Trump has promised the end of the national Department of Education, as well as a rollback on LGBTQ+ protections introduced during Joe Biden’s presidency. He has more public and congressional power than he did in 2016, giving him more leeway to cut funding to national arts programmes.
But the core condition that will make left-wing pop culture less vocal than it was eight years ago is the now dominant presence of truly mainstream, explicitly right-wing popular culture. Rather than being the niche predilection of incels or the implicitly right wing, the right is firmly and loudly popular in the form of influencers, streamers and podcasters, with audiences in the tens of millions. There are the likes of Andrew Tate, but there is also a litany of smaller names who know that there is potential mainstream clout to be gained by espousing hard-right views. This is reflective of a part of the American population that is comfortable with and supportive of racist and anti-feminist sentiment at times expressed by the Republican Party.
It’s true that the navel-gazing protest culture we saw in the wake of Trump’s first presidency had limited and at best short-term gains. We have to learn from those mistakes and push for art that doesn’t encourage atomisation. But compared to what we are likely about to witness – four years pockmarked by cowardice, retreat and self-protection from those who need no real protection – it seems that we will look back on Trump 1.0-era pop culture and feel nostalgic; that, compared with today, we’ll see it as ferociously fighting back.
[See also: American labour’s realignment]
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