As was apparent at Sunday’s Academy Awards, Hollywood activism—and more specifically Hollywood social justice activism—isn’t going away any time soon. Fearless pontifications about adversarial art in the age of Trump will litter award show stages for the next four years (eight if they continue down this path).
Celebrities have made it known over every social media platform that any personal branding of their films or albums will now take on some kind of higher meaning. Katy Perry has made this known by transforming herself, post-Hillary election embarrassment, into some kind of super total woke sci-fi space activist by releasing a song with totally woke lyrics that abandon all structure of a good pop song and feature a Jetsons’-style music video about becoming totally woke.
But beyond creating a brand of virtue signaling to sell new albums, there’s not much substance behind Perry’s activism. The same can be said for most of Hollywood, where it’s popular to give lectures of solidarity in expensive gowns from award-show stages in rooms protected by barriers and men with guns.
Jennifer Garner, on the other hand, has decided to pass up the hot trend of speaking out against Trump to look cool to her industry friends. She is getting involved on the ground, in a part of the country that Hollywood and media love to look down on from their high towers. Garner, who campaigned for Hillary Clinton, has put the devastation of the loss behind her and is working to support early education in poor rural communities, the kinds of communities that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump
Garner gave an extensive interview to the Washington Post while lobbying at a meeting of governors this past weekend on behalf of of her Save the Children foundation, which she has co-chaired for the past nine years. She gives several eyebrow-raising quotes that will perplex her totally woke peers in the industry.
The Post piece says: “Garner returned home to West Virginia last year to help raise money after devastating flooding in the state. Reliably Democratic during her childhood, West Virginia ended up giving Trump his largest margin of victory—something she could see coming by talking to people in economically depressed areas.”
“’People felt like Trump really understood them, that he was going to come in and create jobs for them,’ she said. ‘They felt like they needed something to just turn everything upside down.”’
She goes on to say: “I really think it’s great, if he’s willing to help the poor kids who got him elected.”
The Post piece continues: “Very much in the former camp, Garner acknowledged that some of her friends ‘want to turn their back to this administration . . . [and] just wouldn’t even want to engage.’
“Not her. ‘If he’s willing to help the poor kids who got him elected, then let’s do it. They certainly think he’s going to,’ she said.”
Garner is taking a cause she genuinely seems to care about, and putting aside the reservations she has with Trump, who could very well fail on election promises to bring jobs and wealth back to these failing rural communities. She isn’t pointing and laughing with sick burns on Twitter, or threatening to burn the White House down from a protest stage. Instead, Garner is recognizing that the America Trump spoke about, and the communities who elected him—the communities like her home of West Virginia—are in desperate need of change and revitalization.
“Send me a ticket to Mar-a-Lago.” she declared in the Post article. “I’m ready to go down and have a steak and a good chat.”
