Commercial Possibilities

There’s an adage about who wields influence in American life that rings true to committed members of both the left and the right: The left controls the culture, the right controls political power.

It makes sense. Republicans have commanded more state government trifectas since the early 2010s, reaped the benefits of our intentionally counter-majoritarian institutions—the Senate and the Electoral College—and, of course, won two of the last three presidential elections. Progressives, meanwhile, have been generally overrepresented in our opinion-and-elite-making institutions, from corporations, nonprofits, and big tech, to the academy, journalism, and Hollywood.

We can quibble about the exceptions, but the broad sweep of American life has generally skewed rightward in elections and leftward in the culture—which is why it’s notable that our latest season of cultural artifacts seems to be shifting noticeably to the right.

Elite campuses are adopting statements of institutional neutrality and abandoning identitarian requirements. Canceled figures like Woody Allen and J.K. Rowling have gotten a second hearing from contrite detractors and corporate patrons. Disney cut out a subplot about a transgender character from a Pixar original series. And, as I recently discussed on The Skiff with Emma Camp and Christine Emba, the three biggest pop stars of the summer released music that bemoaned the emptiness of casual hook-up culture and even toyed with—or outright extolled—the allure of pregnancy. Not exactly intersectional vanguardism.

There’s a subtle and, to my mind, fun aspect of these cultural shifts that has been largely underdiscussed—namely, the changing vibes of major commercials.

Consider Bud Light. After incessant backlash for picking Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman, as a corporate spokesperson in early 2023, the beer company subbed in comedian Shane Gillis for its recent batch of ads. The latest one is a hilarious spoof of the bohemian auteur commercials typically trying to sell you some fragrance, but what’s more notable is that arguably the most popular beer in America chose a guy who was canceled from SNL and who fellow comic Louis C.K. once described as a “red state product.” 

There was also Apple. Early this year, the tech giant launched an ad for the iPad Pro that would have made Russell Kirk and Roger Scruton wince. It showed a room full of instruments, paintings, statuettes, records, and more being flattened and giving way to an impersonalized iPad screen. Flash forward a few months to the company’s ad for its newest AirPods Pro, and it’s a whole other story. Techno-utopianism is out and the little platoons are in, with a tearjerker of a spot that showcases the commonplace joys of family life as a father replays memories of his daughter growing up. After three weeks, the commercial has more than 40 million views on YouTube.

And then there’s Volvo. It’s not uncommon to find blatant dismissals of childbearing in the culture. A decade ago, an issue of TIME magazine explored the benefits of the “child-free life.” Public figures, from the renowned philosopher Martha Nussbaum to pop star Miley Cyrus, have openly discouraged having kids given concerns over climate change and “overpopulation.” And yet, the Swedish car manufacturer nevertheless hired Academy Award-winning cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema to direct what Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips called “the most moving, pro-family, pro-life car ad of all time.” That might be a bit hyperbolic, but there’s something to it. If you haven’t watched the spot yet, it’s such a genuinely moving exploration of the uncertainties of childbearing and life that you almost forget its main purpose was to sell a luxury car.

All of this is a notable cultural change from the consensus of just a short time ago. In 2019, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh was touring campuses declaring that the left is “taking over the culture.” Four years later, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid agreed, saying in 2023, “The culture wars are over and the left won.” Unsurprisingly, some on the right have responded enthusiastically to recent shifts, including about each of these three commercials. Some lauded the Bud Light and Volvo ads as long-coming departures from woke culture. As for the Apple ad, none other than right-wing provocateur Benny Johnson remarked, “I’m stunned. Apple just released the single greatest pro-parenting ad in the history of American advertising. The pro-family cultural revolution is here.” (Emphasis added.)

From a conservative standpoint, it’s tempting to agree, to simply rah-rah the changing cultural tide. But this type of triumphalism about the present state of the culture fails on two counts. 

First, though turning from leftward excess in the culture is welcome, it’s important not to forget it came at a cost. Yes, many corporations and academic pillars have changed course due to public outcry, principled opposition, and, of course, concerns about reputational and financial blowback. Yet certain institutional shifts were also the result of coordinated pressure campaigns from people like Robby Starbuck and Chris Rufo—activists committed to remaking culture through an alternative kulturkampf.

Moreover, as the writer Tyler Austin Harper argued in The Atlantic, there’s a good case to be made that for all the talk about left-wing wokeness, we’ve ignored a corollary right-wing snowflakiness in the process. (Notice Elon Musk complaining about “heterophobia” or a Claremont Institute fellow writing a book titled The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart and you’ll see what Harper is referring to.)

We on the right may welcome the changes in the academy, corporate practices, and even commercials. But we shouldn’t ignore that some of those changes were at times the result of a corrosive process, one that doubled down on a tendency to see political opponents as all-but-enemy combatants. And questionable means can sully even defensible ends.  

There’s a second reason I’m skeptical of the triumphalism. Conservatives are often fond of repeating Ronald Reagan’s famous observation that freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction,” a remarkable piece of rhetoric that reminds us of the fragility of liberal democratic capitalism. That’s largely a good thing, a helpful reminder to be grateful for the institutions we inherited.

But rather than gratitude, the sense that, well, everything that’s good and true about America is slipping through our fingers like sand seems to have fueled fears of leftward cultural dominance. That seems to be the attitude of the Starbucks and Rufos of the world. Misapplied, “one generation away” can elevate the stakes of politics and put us on edge that things are really falling apart.

So perhaps a better lesson from these moments on the flip side, moments when the cultural winds seem to be blowing in conservatives’ favor, isn’t to read them as a harbinger for the eschaton but as another example of the ebb and flow of American life in our time. As Yuval Levin wrote in his 2016 masterpiece, The Fractured Republic:

Life in America is always getting better and worse at the same time. Progress comes at a cost, even if it is often worth that cost. Misery beckons relief, so that our virtues often turn up where our vices have been. Decay and decadence almost always trail behind success, while renewal chases ruin. In a vast society like ours, all of this is always happening at once.

Perhaps ours isn’t so much a time for choosing as it is a time to recognize the inescapability of two-way change across our culture—commercials included.