Is Hollywood’s woke tide finally turning?

On reading that Dean Cain (the actor who played the television Superman) had become an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, I felt a thrill of insurrection – so hot on the heels of the revelation that naughty Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican! I imagined Rosie O’Donnell crying into her morning decaf, Lizzo swearing at her gender-fluid cat, Ellen DeGeneres taking it out on the help from sheer liberal frustration. Because celebrities aren’t allowed to be right-wing (‘right-wing’ now being dunce-speak for anyone against limitless illegal immigration and transvestite men colonizing women’s spaces.)

Undaunted, Cain told Fox News:

“I’m actually a reserve police officer… so now I’ve spoken with some officials over at ICE, and I will be sworn in as an ICE agent, ASAP. This country was built on patriots stepping up, whether it was popular or not, and doing the right thing. I truly believe this is the right thing. We have a broken immigration system. Congress needs to fix it, but in the interim, President Trump ran on this. He is delivering on this. This is what people voted for. It’s what I voted for and he’s going to see it through, and I’ll do my part and help make sure it happens.”

Cain has previous on stepping up, whether popular or not. I think we can safely say that being a “liberal” (a liberal in the modern sense, being a censorious nag, rather than the old sense, one who is inclined to live and let live) has been for a long time the only political stance acceptable in show business and entertainment, especially in Hollywood. Often, especially when used by men, this is merely a “wokescreen” – think of Harvey Weinstein, of whom Rebecca Corbett (the journalist who oversaw the New York Times investigations into allegations of rape and sexual abuse by Weinstein) said in the 2020 Reuters Memorial Lecture:

“At the beginning of the Weinstein investigation, we had no idea whether the producer had done anything wrong. He cast himself as a champion of actresses, a Democratic Party fundraiser, a feminist who joined marches – a man considered reliable enough that Barack Obama’s older daughter had worked as a summer intern at his studio.“

Dean Cain needs no wokescreen from behind which to conduct evil deeds and is therefore refreshingly honest. He recently came out as a Hollywood outsider for mocking the latest Superman film as “woke” after director James Gunn described the character as an immigrant, telling TMZ: “How woke is Hollywood going to make this character? We know Superman is an immigrant – he’s a freaking alien… the ‘American way’ is immigrant-friendly, tremendously immigrant-friendly. But there are rules… there have to be limits, because we can’t have everybody in the United States.”

Cain is an interesting man. He’s partly of Japanese descent, a Democratic voter as a youngster, teenage boyfriend of Brooke Shields when they were at university, dater of Playmates and swimsuit models, he also trolled Dylan Mulvaney in a spectacular fashion when he commented on a video of Mulvaney and another cross-dresser, saying “Neither of you are girls.”  “You were never Superman either,” snarked an “ally”. “Correct. I pretended,” Cain replied.

In 2021 he gave a sparky interview after DC Comics had Superman’s son come out as a bisexual:

“I say they’re bandwagoning… Robin, of Batman & Robin, just came out as bi or gay recently. And honestly, who’s really shocked about that one? The new Captain America is gay. My daughter in Supergirl where I played the father, she was gay… So I don’t think it’s bold or brave or some crazy new direction. If they had done this 20 years ago, perhaps that would have been bold and brave. Brave would be having him fighting for the rights of gay people in Iran, where they’ll throw you off a building for the offense of being gay… They’re talking about him fighting real-world problems like climate change, the deportation of refugees and he’ll be dating a “hacktivist”, whatever a “hacktivist” is… Why don’t they have him fight the injustices that created the refugees whose deportation he’s protesting? That would be brave.“

Cain has a hinterland, it’s fair to say. What he doesn’t have – unlike most celebrities, are “luxury beliefs,” the phrase created by Rob Henderson as “ideas held by privileged people that make them look good but actually harm the marginalized.” These can be found in many professions, but it’s probably when they’re propagated by the massively-privileged showbiz “community” that they irritate most, preaching defunding of the police from their privately-policed gated communities.

Regrettably, the stars who aren’t left-wing these days are a mixed bag. I was cheered to hear that we have Kelsey Grammar, Chris Pratt, James Woods, Alice Cooper, Gary Sinise (who, in parts both poignant and amusing, started up Friends of Abe, a support group for Hollywood Republicans) and the iconic ex-Runaways singer Cherie Currie. I am less happy with Mel Gibson, Kid Rock and Vince Vaughn. 

But does which way entertainers swing politically really matter anymore? The last American election indicated not. As I wrote in May of the actor James Corden’s political ambitions in Britain, “How dim would a political party need to be to understand that not only do celeb endorsements/involvements not work, but have an actual repelling effect? Beyonce and ‘The Boss’ sure helped cook Kamala’s goose; when the rich and famous swank around telling hoi polloi who to vote for, the masses have a habit of doing exactly the opposite.”

When that wily old fox the tax-avoiding Mick Jagger allegedly said “My heart is Labour but my money is Conservative” he was being honest in a way most pop stars (see the financial behavior of U2) would never dare to, lest their fans turn on them. Entertainers follow the path they do because they want attention and they want to be rich. If they really cared about making things better for people, they’d have trained to become nurses or firefighters.

Still, celebrity Democrats could learn a lesson from Republicans like Cain and Sweeney, who don’t see the non-famous as Deplorables put on earth to be preached at.