Thomas Pynchon once wrote, “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.” Sydney Sweeney is the wrong question.
The backlash against Sweeney – the blonde, blue-eyed star of Euphoria and The White Lotus – began last summer.
Its catalyst was a now infamous ad for American Eagle jeans that featured a supine Sydney being male-gazed by the camera, along with the tag line: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” In an America which is currently cosplaying Sinclair Lewis’ It Couldn’t Happen Here, this was seen by some on the left as a not-too-subtle dog whistle to eugenics and white supremacy.
Sensing political capital to be made, the US right – including Donald Trump – came out to defend Sweeney from what they portrayed as a hate wave by the puritanical loony left (all the while dribbling with delight that for once, the MAGA side of the argument had literal rather than metaphorical boobs).
Of course, this was a false narrative. The “woke left” hadn’t really united to burn Sweeney in effigy. As the New York Times reported, a mere handful of left-leaning social media accounts with small followings had made some criticisms of the advert, nowhere near the firestorm that the right magnified and reacted to, using what I call their “stop hitting yourself” tactic.
American Eagle didn’t care, and nor, once suspects, did Sydney Sweeney’s agent. As the commentariat in the mainstream media struck up a frontlash to the ghost backlash, the company’s share price went up $2, a lot of stock was shifted and suddenly a lot of people who didn’t watch Euphoria now knew the name Sydney Sweeney.
Yet the outrage economy, which depends on ragebait cutting through, is a dangerous game to rely on. In August, it was revealed that Sweeney was a registered Republican in a time of Trump. A month later, she was revealed to be dating record producer Scooter Braun, Taylor Swift’s nemesis.
More recently, she was asked about the American Eagle controversy by a GQ interviewer, and footage shows her rolling her eyes dismissively when asked about the concept of “genetic superiority”. All she’d say on the matter was, “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.” This fed trolls on the left, who again fed trolls on the right.
And now has come a supposed comeuppance: the box office failure of Sweeney’s new film Christy, a biopic of boxer Christy Martin. It took only $1.3m on its opening weekend, one of the worst starts ever for a movie opening in more than 2,000 US cinemas. Its second weekend was even more embarrassing – just $108,000 from 817 screens, a 92% decline that was the worst drop for a big release in box office history.
Sweeney has taken much of the flak, including from actor Ruby Rose, who had earlier been attached to play Martin, and who wrote to her on social media: “You’re a cretin and you ruined the film.” Rose’s post also explicitly stated that Martin’s queerness was not being represented by a straight woman who votes Republican. Martin herself responded on Facebook that Sweeney was “her friend and her ally.”
It’s possible, of course, that the film’s failure has little to do with Sweeney. Martin’s story is compelling, but grim – she succeeded in her sport while surviving a husband who was abusive to the point of murderous. This subject matter, worthy as it is, might be more of a turn-off than the star.
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The trolls will still say: “Ha ha! In your face, Sweeney!” But allow me to quote the Buddha, who said that hating someone is like eating poison and expecting the other person to die. It’s just not good for us culturally or politically, or psychologically. And we’re being manipulated into this outrage.
There is a belief that the movie business is a place dominated by liberal moguls and progressive stars, but here are some truths. First, Hollywood has never been left wing or even centrist. The studios are run by corporations who want to make profit first and foremost and will cater for whatever they think prevailing public taste demands. They’ll make light entertainment of the genocide of the Native Americans, use racism to pick a baddie, use sexism to sell, churn out mindless copaganda and raging hardons for the military.
The National Rifle Association, a right wing-dominated pressure group against gun control, has written the script of popular entertainment for the last four decades. It can be summed up as: there’s a violent problem and the answer is more violence. The answer to a bad man with a gun is a good man/woman/child with a gun/several guns/rocket launcher.
Meanwhile, the actors and directors do what any corporate employee does: toe the line to get along. The big stars might be able to afford to look liberal but they’re mainly looking after their portfolios. “Yes, Leo, that’s interesting about the environment: do you want to fly out in my private jet for my wedding? I’ve hired Venice.” “Yes, Mr. Bezos, I’d love to.”
When former actors have won political power, they have been right wing Republicans. Tim Allen and Scott Baio might whine about how much damage being right wing has done their careers, but that’s just because they are has-been crybabies, and the right loves to be the victim. As much as Clint Eastwood rages against political correctness, it doesn’t seem to have done his seven-decade-long career any harm.
And t’was ever so. Errol Flynn was a Nazi; Frank Capra and Elia Kazan snitched to HUAC; Gary Cooper and James Stewart were well to the right, as were DW Griffith and John Wayne (obvs), John Ford and a bunch of others. This isn’t confined to Hollywood either. Ingmar Bergman never met a Nazi he didn’t love, and cried when Hitler died. Eric Rohmer was a monarchist and Roberto Rossellini made propaganda films for the fascists.
But they were blokes and old and, now, dead. Sydney Sweeney is young and beautiful and alive, like us. So why doesn’t she agree with everything we think? I get the urge to pile on. We are losing almost every election that matters. And even when we win one, it’s Keir flaming Starmer.
Celebrity hate is politics by proxy. Sweeney is an actor, and in my experience actors are not necessarily the people you want to be going to for your politics, any more than footballers, or the authors of children’s books featuring a school for witchcraft and wizardry. Doing so is the political equivalent of starfuckery. It demeans and trivialises what it purports to address.
Let’s also not lose sight of the fact that Sweeney the celebrity is not Sweeney the actress. You didn’t like her in the interview? Fine, Robert de Niro never gave an interesting interview in his entire life. Just watch the films and the shows instead.
Have a look at Euphoria if you’ve not seen it yet, or her performance in The Handmaid’s Tale, or her performance in the underseen and underrated Reality, based on the arrest of whistleblower Reality Winner. It’s longer than the jeans advert and more politically interesting. Her romcom Anyone But You showed a knack for comedy and Immaculate a talent for horror.
The chances are I don’t agree with Sydney Sweeney about politics, but since when has that stopped me liking someone?
Christy is released in UK and Irish cinemas on November 28
