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      The Independent review – Jodie Turner-Smith and Brian Cox chase political scandal

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      ReviewThe Independent review – Jodie Turner-Smith and Brian Cox chase political scandalTurner-Smith and Cox team up as journalists investigating a presidential candidate. But there is none of the insider authenticity of director Amy Rice’s earlier Obama documentaryFilm-maker Amy Rice spent two years on the campaign trail with Barack Obama to make a 2009 fly-on-the wall documentary. So it’s massively disappointing that her new fictional political thriller is so insipid and unsatisfying, and completely lacks any kind of authentic insider knowledge of Machiavellian political skullduggery. It’s as generic as they come, though British actor Jodie Turner-Smith is brilliant as a rookie reporter for the fictional Washington Chronicle who uncovers a scandal with the potential to blow open the presidential race.Turner-Smith’s character, Eli James, is increasingly frustrated at having to write clickbait lifestyle articles such as “college dorm must-haves”. But when she uncovers a lottery scandal, she teams up with the paper’s Pulitzer-winning columnist Nicholas Booker (Brian Cox, giving a lefty-intelligentsia version of his alpha-ego male in Succession). Their relationship is nicely played, especially by Turner-Smith, who makes Eli a satisfyingly complicated woman: super smart and competitive, a bit reckless and most of all determined – as she’s had to be as a woman of colour in a largely male, mostly white world.The lottery scandal is linked to political funding and seems to lead right to the Republican presidential candidate Patricia Turnbull (Ann Dowd, channelling Matilda’s Mrs Trunchbull). She’s neck and neck with the Democratic incumbent; then an independent enters the fray. This is mega-celebrity Olympic gold medallist Nate Sterling (ex-WWE wrestler John Cena): he’s promising to take action on climate change, and has the right kind of lantern-jawed all-American jock appeal for rightwingers. Eli’s boyfriend Lucas (Luke Kirby) is a speechwriter for Sterling – who may be too good to be true.There’s a twist at the end that is anticlimactic and uninteresting, and the script is unforgivably clumsy in places. Twice, characters obtain vital information illicitly from computers left unlocked by individuals with a lot to hide. Cox’s veteran journalist is famous for eating his steaks cooked bloody – not just rare. But really this film could be juicier.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTopicsFilmThrillersUS politicsNewspapersBrian CoxreviewsReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s been very dark for all of us’: film-maker Alexandra Pelosi on a family on America’s political frontline

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      Interview‘It’s been very dark for all of us’: film-maker Alexandra Pelosi on a family on America’s political frontlineDavid Smith in Washington With her father recovering from a brutal hammer attack, the director’s latest film shows her mother Nancy Pelosi resisting the January 6 insurrectionAlexandra Pelosi is at home in New York, preparing a birthday party for her 15-year-old son, and pops up on Zoom beside a sign that says: “Don’t work for assholes. Don’t work with assholes.” When our interview begins with the most unimaginative of queries – “How are you?” – she is in no mood for casual conversation.Pelosi in the House: documentary captures speaker’s January 6 struggleRead more“How am I supposed to answer that question?” the fast-talking film-maker bats back. “Look, I don’t know how you do polite small talk because I’ve just been through basically like both of my parents’ funerals.”To be clear, neither of Alexandra’s parents is dead. Her father Paul Pelosi, 82, is undergoing a slow and painful recovery from a hammer attack in late October by a home intruder. Her mother Nancy Pelosi, also 82, last month announced her retirement as Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, assured of a place in history as the first female speaker.Alexandra, 52, recalls that, when her father emerged from intensive care, his house looked like a funeral home because so many well-wishers sent flowers. “I was reading the notes from his friends and I was like, this is great, ’cos you get to go to your own funeral, ’cos you get to see what people say about you when you die. I’m putting a good spin on it, trying to cheer him up.”Then she went to Washington for her mother’s long goodbye. “If you’re in politics and you step down, it’s like going to your own funeral because you get to read your own obituary. Essentially it’s like I’ve read both of my parents’ obituaries and now I have to keep living with two living people. That’s surreal.”The pitiless assault on Paul Pelosi was one of the most disturbing examples yet of America’s increasingly coarse, polarised and violent political culture. He has told how he was sleeping when a man he had never seen before entered his bedroom looking for Nancy, who was in Washington at the time.Officers responding to Paul’s 911 call found him and David DePape, 42, fighting over a hammer, according to a federal indictment. An officer ordered DePape to drop the hammer but he responded, “ummm nope,” before forcefully swinging it at Paul, who was treated at a hospital for a fractured skull.DePape last month pleaded not guilty to federal charges of attempting to kidnap a federal official and assaulting a federal official’s family member. Paul, wearing a hat and glove on one hand, made his first public appearance since the assault at the recent Kennedy Center Honors in Washington.“Wasn’t that amazing?” asks Alexandra, who has been struggling to sleep and has had nightmares about the incident. “Come on, you can’t be a bitter old journalist! I think every member of our family cried when they saw that because that’s the first time he left the house. That was a nice 10 seconds of his life but he has to live with traumatic brain injury for the rest of his life and he’s 82. If it could’ve been me, I would have loved to have been in his place.”She reflects: “It’s been very dark for all of us. We all process it differently. I’ve been very dark because the minute it happened I got on a plane with my mom and went to San Francisco. We sat in the ICU for a week and I was very upset because my mother loves to tell the story that, when I was 16, she came to me and said, ‘Mommy has the chance to run for Congress and I will only do it if you give me your permission but I’d have to be gone three nights a week.’ I was like, ‘Mom, get a life!’“She loves that story and so then we were sitting in the ICU 35 years later and I was like, ‘If I had known that this is where it was going to end, I never would have given you my blessing that day 35 years ago.’ But my dad was like, you can’t say that because it’s not fair to erase her career just because of this; you have to say, if you came to me today, I would not give you my permission because of how toxic the social media environment is.”Alexandra’s son, Paul, is named after her father and worships him. He was with her at the US Capitol when it came under attack from a mob of Donald Trump supporters on 6 January 2021. “He was asking me that day, ‘Mom, why do all these people want to kill MiMi?’ I couldn’t come up with an answer. Because of the Affordable Care Act? I don’t know.“I know that if you watch Fox News, you hate Nancy Pelosi because they’ve programmed you to hate Nancy Pelosi and, if I watched Fox News, I would hate Nancy Pelosi too. But I don’t know how it gets from that to, ‘I want to break into her house and try and kill someone in her family.’ That’s a leap and so it’s been a lot for my teenagers to try and process that.”The Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, and Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake made fun of it while Trump’s son, Don Jr. retweeted a “Paul Pelosi Halloween costume” featuring a hammer.Alexandra, who had to clean up the mess and has photos of her father’s bloody pyjamas on her phone, comments: “I can’t see how the governor of Virginia can make jokes about it or the wannabe governor of Arizona can make jokes about it and then how elected members of Congress can tweet these insane Pizzagate-style conspiracies. That’s unforgivable. That’s who I’ll never forgive. I’m trying to make peace with that.”Both her parents feature in her latest film, her 14th documentary for HBO, broadcast on Tuesday. Pelosi in the House is shot in a cinéma vérité style across three decades with plenty of shots of Nancy’s back as she strides through the corridors of power. At one point she is seen putting Vice-President Mike Pence on speakerphone while doing household chores.Alexandra admits: “She never gave me permission. She has not signed a release. She has not seen the film. She does not know what this is. I don’t know if she’s ever going to watch it.” Indeed, Alexandra could never get her mother to sit down for an in-depth interview. “This is watching her work because Nancy Pelosi is her job. The only way to understand her is to watch her work so the only way I could explain her is watching her work. But if I tried to talk to her or ask a question, it just wouldn’t work. She just didn’t play ball with me. That’s not what she does. ”The documentary sometimes revels in the quotidian but, when it arrives at January 6, moves to a different plane. Watching on TV as Trump delivers an incendiary speech urging his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, Nancy vows to “punch him out” if he sets foot in the US Capitol, her sacred ground.Alexandra recalls: “She was protecting her turf. It was the House of Pelosi and they broke into her house and tried to kill all of her family members because the caucus is her family. Nancy Pelosi has two families. She has us, her children and grandchildren, then she has her political family, the members, the caucus.”Whipped up into a frenzy, the mob marched on the Capitol. Alexandra’s husband, the Dutch TV journalist Michiel Vos, was outside reporting the drama; she and her teenage son were inside, watching with alarm. “I was looking out the window: ‘Oh, look at those protesters out there.’ I’m trying to get her [Nancy’s] attention because she’s very laser-focused. Then my son kept saying like, ‘What if they stormed the Capitol?’“At some point the security came over and said we’re leaving. They [the mob] had already broken the window to come in. The security camera shows that the protesters were two minutes from us but we found out that after. At the time we did not know how close they came so it wasn’t as scary as it seemed.”Nor did the threat come as a complete surprise. “The Republicans have spent hundreds of millions of dollars demonising her and turning her into a target. The Capitol police have protected her for decades. There was a pig’s head on her doorstep in San Francisco a few days before that attack. It’s not as if this all came completely out of the blue.”Alexandra accompanied her mother into the back of SUV that sped them away to safety. The speaker, full of cold fury, and other congressional leaders gathered at a military base, working the phones to demand that order be restored so they could certify Joe Biden’s election victory.Alexandra melted into the background and filmed for posterity. Some of the footage made its way into the House’s January 6 committee hearings. “It’s like a soccer player. What do you do when you put a ball in front of me? I’m going to kick it. I knew my job was to kick the ball.”The rioters, meanwhile, had overrun the Capitol and were ransacking the speaker’s office. Among the most haunting footage from that day is the sound of one demanding, “Where’s Nancy?” Subsequently Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, reportedly said he wanted to hang Nancy “from the lamp-post”.Jokes about Paul Pelosi aren’t just in bad taste. They normalize political violence | Arwa MahdawiRead moreAlexandra reflects: “Stewart Rhodes was prosecuted so my son comes down for breakfast the other day and he’s like, ‘Hey, did you see that this guy was found guilty? He said he wanted to hang Nancy Pelosi from a lamp-post. Why did he want to hang Nancy Pelosi from a lamp-post?’ I don’t know. I still haven’t been able to come up with a good answer for Nancy Pelosi’s grandchildren about why people want to hang her from a lamp-post.”Such unanswerables underline that it has been a bruising couple of months. But a trip to Washington boosted Alexandra’s spirits. First, she was reunited with her “old friend” former president George W Bush – a relationship that bemuses her liberal friends. “It’s renewing my faith in humanity because I know there’s hope that the Republican party does have a life after Donald Trump and then I can live in America and we can all live happily ever after.”Then she attended a state dinner at the White House, sitting across from Biden and next to the guest of honour, the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “Let’s face it, I’m the least interesting person at the table so it’s my job to entertain them.” She began with a mother-in-law joke for Macron’s benefit: “When I met my husband’s mom, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Why can’t you be French?’”Now, in another welcome diversion from her parents’ “funerals”, she has to get ready for her younger son’s birthday party and so ends the interview with a final plea. “Be nice,” she says mischievously. “Haven’t the Pelosis suffered enough? I don’t want to retraumatise my family when they read the Guardian. That’s all.”TopicsDocumentary filmsNancy PelosiUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Pelosi in the House: documentary captures speaker’s January 6 struggle

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      Pelosi in the House: documentary captures speaker’s January 6 struggle Film by her daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, captures how Nancy Pelosi fought to preserve democracy in the dramatic hours of the Capitol attackThe struggle of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, to preserve American democracy in the dramatic hours of the January 6 attack are captured in a new documentary film shot by her daughter.Pelosi is seen watching on TV Donald Trump’s incendiary speech to his supporters, getting rushed out of the US Capitol building and making calls to Vice-President Mike Pence and other officials from the Fort McNair military base, where congressional leaders took refuge from the mob.Despite the chaos and confusion, she is immediately clear that Trump is responsible for instigating what she describes as an “insurrection”.The blow-by-blow reconstruction of the assault on democracy is contained in Pelosi in the House, produced and directed by the speaker’s daughter, film-maker Alexandra Pelosi, broadcast on HBO on Tuesday. Some of the behind-the-scenes footage was seen in edited form during the House January 6 committee hearings.Early in the day Pelosi is in her office, wearing a face mask and adjusting her hair, as three TV screens show Trump whipping up his supporters at the Ellipse and vowing never to concede the 2020 presidential election. She tells her staff with a laugh: “Tell him if he comes here, we’re going to the White House.”Watching through a window, Alexandra’s teenage son, Paul, spots a flag-waving mob gathering ominously outside the US Capitol. Pelosi’s chief of staff, Terri McCullough, reports that the Secret Service have dissuaded Trump from coming to the Capitol because they would not have the resources to protect him.Pelosi replies defiantly: “If he comes, I’m going to punch him out. I’ve been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds, I’m going to punch him out and I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”Members of Congress adjourn to consider objections to the 2020 election results. A car has “Trump” and “Pelosi is Satan” signs on its windscreen. The chanting, horn-blowing mob attacks police, smashes windows and force its way into the building, shouting: “This is our house!”Pelosi escapes with just two minutes to spare. At 2.15pm she is escorted to safety down a staircase. She asks: “Are they calling the national guard?” A woman replies: “Yes. Yes, ma’am.”Hastening through a tunnel, she asks: “Did you reach McConnell?” – a reference to the then Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Someone says: “We did.” Pelosi: “And will they call the national guard?” Reply: “That’s correct.”Upstairs, the rioters are demanding to know where votes are counted. Walking through another corridor with aides around her, Pelosi evidently realises what a perilous moment this is for democracy. She says: “If they stop the proceedings, they will have succeeded in stopping the validation of the president of the United States. If they stop the proceedings, we will have totally failed.”She is then seen on a phone, telling an unidentified person: “We have got to finish the proceedings or else they will have a complete victory.”Both Pelosi and her daughter climb into the back of a black SUV so they can be taken to safety. Upstairs, her office is being ransacked by Trump supporters. One thinks he has found Pelosi’s laptop. Another asks: “You want Nancy’s pink boxing gloves?” Someone shouts with primal rage: “Fuck Nancy Pelosi!”Sitting in the moving vehicle, the speaker is livid at the disruption of Congress’s sacred duty. “So what’s the prospect? We’re gonna stay here all day, for the rest of our lives, or what? We’re here until what, until the national guard decides to come and get rid of these people?”By now the insurrectionists are inside the Senate chamber. One demands: “Do you see Nancy Pelosi?” Another asks: “Where the fuck is Nancy?” Outside, a bearded man in a “Maga” cap picks up a phone and shouts: “Can I speak to Pelosi? Yeah, we’re coming, bitch.”Pelosi is seen entering the military base at Fort McNair. As Congressman James Clyburn looks on, she says: “There has to be some way we can maintain the sense that people have that there is some security, some confidence that government can function and that we can elect the president of the United States.”Chuck Schumer, then the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, informs Pelosi: “My wife just called watching TV. There are people with guns trying to get into the House chamber.”Pelosi had to leave the Capitol without her phone so is forced to borrow others’. Sitting and studying a photo on one phone, says: “Oh, one of them is in the president of the Senate’s seat.”Schumer notes that some senators are still in hiding and pleads by phone with Ryan McCarthy, the army secretary, to send in military personnel. Pelosi, watching the carnage on CNN, speaks to Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia: “They’re just breaking windows. This is horrendous. And all at the instigation of the president of the United States.”She tells Schumer that Northam agreed to dispatch 200 state police and a national guard unit.At 3.30pm Pelosi and Schumer speak by phone to Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general. Pelosi tells him: “Safety just transcends everything but the fact is, on any given day, they’re breaking the law in many different ways and, quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States.”Schumer adds sharply: “Why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility? A public statement they should all leave?”Rosen begins to say his team is “coordinating as quickly and as –” before getting cut off by Schumer, who demands: “No, no, no – please answer my question, answer my question!”Congressional leaders then have a call with the acting defence secretary, Christopher Miller. Pelosi says forcefully: “Just pretend for a moment it was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege. You can logistically get people there as you make the plan and you have some leadership of the national guard there they have not been given the authority to activate.”Then Pelosi speaks to Pence as he waits in a parking garage beneath the Capitol, where rioters chanted for him to be hanged.Taking a seat beside a plant and cabinet full of decorative plates, the speaker says she and other congressional leaders are OK, then asks: “How are you? Oh, my goodness, where are you? God bless you. But are you in a very safe –?”She says she has been told that it will “take days” to clear the Capitol and that Fort McNair has facilities for the House and Senate to meet, adding: “We’d rather go to the Capitol and do it there but it doesn’t seem to be safe.”Pelosi continues: “We’ve got a very bad report about the condition of the House floor, with defecation and all that kind of thing.”She is then seen using her teeth to help unwrap a beef jerky stick and eating while holding the phone in her right hand. She tells Pence: “I worry about you being in that Capitol room. Don’t let anybody know where you are.”Finally, Trump releases a video calling his supporters to go home, but Pelosi and Schumer are not impressed. She comments: “Insurrection. That’s a crime and he’s guilty of it.”By 5.45pm the security forces have regained control. Pence informs Pelosi and Schumer by phone that Congress will be able to reconvene. The backup plan of doing so at Fort McNair is therefore not necessary.Sitting in a vehicle heading back through darkened streets, Pelosi expresses her disgust towards Trump. “I just feel sick at what he did to the Capitol and to the country today. He’s got to pay a price for that.”Back inside the Capitol, Pelosi is informed that the sign outside her office has been taken. She responds phlegmatically: “They took the sign? We’ll get another.”Entering the office, she is warned that there is still a lot of broken glass. A gold framed mirror above the fireplace is smashed. She observes: “Boy, the staff looks scared. They’re traumatised.”The Senate reconvenes around 8pm and the House around 9pm. Pelosi watches on TV as Schumer compares the insurrection to the attack on Pearl Harbor as a “day of infamy”. At 3.48am on 7 January, Joe Biden’s election victory is ratified after all.At 9am Pelosi is in a car, telling Clyburn: “We have to stop this man, the insurrectionist in the White House.” Clyburn warns that invoking the 25th amendment would be a “complicated process” and there may not be enough time, “but there is enough time – and it’s rather simple – to tag him with the uniqueness of a second impeachment”.On 13 January, a week before he left office, the House voted to impeach Trump by a vote of 232-197 for incitement of insurrection. He was the first president in history to be impeached twice.TopicsNancy PelosiDocumentary filmsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Borat targets Trump, Ye and antisemitism at Kennedy Center Honors

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      Borat targets Trump, Ye and antisemitism at Kennedy Center HonorsSacha Baron Cohen skit receives mixed response at ceremony for lifetime achievements in the arts The British actor Sacha Baron Cohen reprised his character Borat and stole the show at America’s prestigious Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night, targeting the former president Donald Trump, the rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, and antisemitism.President Joe Biden smiled broadly and his wife, Jill, was in fits of laughter as Cohen told risque jokes in the comical accent of Kazakh television journalist Borat Sagdiyev.“I know the president of US and A is here,” Borat said to an audience including politicians and celebrities during a segment celebrating the Irish rock group U2. “Where are you, Mr Trump?”As the audience howled, Borat went on: “You don’t look so good. Where has your glorious big belly gone? And your pretty orange skin has become pale.” He then asked if the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and the nerve agent novichok were responsible.Borat, the star of two hit satirical films, added: ‘But I see you have a new wife. Wawawoooah! She is very erotic. I must look away before I get a Bono.”The comedian, who is Jewish, then turned his attention to antisemitism in the wake of Trump having dined at his Mar-a-Lago home with the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and Ye, who subsequently praised Adolf Hitler and was banned from Twitter for posting an image of a swastika.Borat said: “Before I proceed, I will say I am very upset about the antisemitism in US and A. It not fair. Kazakhstan is No 1 Jew-crushing nation. Stop stealing our hobby. Stop the steal! Stop the steal!” Some guests burst into laughter while others sat in uncomfortable silence.He continued: “Your Kanye, he tried to move to Kazakhstan and even changed his name to Kazakhstanye West. But we said: no, he too antisemitic, even for us.”Borat proceeded to sing a short parody of U2’s song With or Without You with the lyrics changed to “With or without Jews”. He broke off and asked: “What’s the problem? They loved this at Mar-a-Lago. They chose Without Jews.”The Bidens appeared to enjoy Baron Cohen’s routine but it also came as a shock in typically staid and buttoned up Washington. Asked by the Guardian what she thought of it, Biden’s sister Valerie Biden Owens said diplomatically: “I think I like U2”, while Roy Blunt, a Republican senator for Missouri, said: “Not much”.Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, said: “I was surprised to see him,” and sped away without elaborating.Along with U2, the actor George Clooney, the singer-songwriter Amy Grant, the singer Gladys Knight and the composer Tania León were celebrated at the 45th Kennedy Center Honors, the most prestigious honours for lifetime achievements in the arts. There was also an appearance from Sesame Street’s Big Bird.One audience member from the political world also received a standing ovation. Paul Pelosi, the husband of the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, used the weekend’s honors-related events to make his first public appearance since being attacked in October in their San Francisco home.The Pelosis sat next to the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband, Doug Emhoff, in a balcony. Paul Pelosi wore a black hat and a glove on his left hand.The show highlighted the five artists’ work, and represented a return to pre-coronavirus norms. There was no requirement for testing to attend and few guests wore masks. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, was among the guests.Clooney, a double Oscar winner, was also praised for his engagement in political causes and spoke to reporters after attending a White House reception.Asked how he thought Biden’s presidency was going, Clooney replied: “Beautifully. I love him. He’s a kind man with great intentions and he has some incredible legislation which kind of gets overlooked and they’re not very good at bragging about right now. He’s done a really good job and I’m very proud to be a supporter.”A follow-up question about whether Clooney, 61, would consider a career in politics prompted his wife, the barrister Amal Clooney, to smile and shake her head. The actor said in agreement: “Listen, we have a really nice life.”In a celebration at the state department on Saturday, Clooney told guests: “I’ve been lucky enough to meet millions of people, every country, literally 125 countries, and they all, without exception, agree and they’ll come up to me and say specifically that, ‘You sucked as Batman’. It’s unified. We could solve world problems if we just all could agree on more than just that I suck as Batman.”At Sunday’s main event at the Kennedy Center, Julia Roberts, who has co-starred in several films with Clooney, wore a floor-length gown with framed images of him on it and called him a “Renaissance man”. The actors Don Cheadle, Matt Damon and Richard Kind also paid tribute, with Damon recalling how Clooney once stole the then-President Bill Clinton’s stationery and wrote notes to fellow actors on it.But the one who moved Clooney to tears was his 88-year-old father, Nick, a journalist and TV anchorman. He recalled that he was hosting a TV show in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. His family came into the green room. “Seven-year-old George had a large paper bag in his hand. I asked him what in the world was in the bag.“Well, he went to the coffee table, he turned the bag upside down. Out poured all of his toy guns landing with a clack. He said: ‘Pop, I don’t want these any more. None of them. Never.’ Well, I tore up my speech. Nothing I would’ve written would have been nearly as eloquent as what George had just done and said.”Nick Clooney said he was often asked what he wanted people to know about his son. “Well, here it is: George’s best and most important work is still ahead of him.”Knight, who has won seven Grammy awards, is famous for hit songs including I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Midnight Train to Georgia as the lead singer of The Pips, which became Gladys Knight and The Pips in 1962. Singers including Garth Brooks and Patti LaBelle performed some of Knight’s songs.Grant rose to prominence as a contemporary Christian music singer who later crossed over to pop stardom, winning six Grammys. The singers Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile, CeCe Winans and BeBe Winans were among the artists who honored her.Cuban-born León is a conductor as well as a composer, whose orchestral piece Stride won the 2021 Pulitzer prize in Music. The jazz pianist Jason Moran, the singer Alicia Hall Moran and the cellist Sterling Elliott played one of her creations, Oh Yemanja.The final tribute of the evening was to U2, which, with members Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr, has won 22 Grammys. Eddie Vedder performed Elevation and One, while the Ukrainian singer Jamala joined Carlile and others to perform Walk On. The actor Sean Penn described U2 as “four scrappy Dublin punks” who were also “great musical poets of the ages”.Other guests at the event included the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, the senators Amy Klobuchar, Patrick Leahy, Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney, and representatives James Clyburn and Steny Hoyer, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, and the British ambassador, Dame Karen Pierce.Deborah Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center, said: “This is probably the largest number of the administration and of Congress that we’ve ever had so that feels really great. People are ready to be back together fully and they want to see a good show.”TopicsBoratSacha Baron CohenDonald TrumpKanye WestAntisemitismU2George ClooneynewsReuse this content More

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      Can you ignore your family’s politics? Jennifer Lawrence and Sydney Sweeney disagree

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      Can you ignore your family’s politics? Jennifer Lawrence and Sydney Sweeney disagreeArwa MahdawiThe Euphoria actor wants to keep things apolitical – but treating politics as abstract has always been a privilege Jennifer Lawrence says she “can’t fuck with people who aren’t political”. In a cover interview with Vogue, the actor revealed that she no longer has any patience for people who are passive about politics because things are now “too dire … Politics are killing people.”Politics have been killing people for a very long time, of course. Military spending decisions kill people. Austerity, and a lack of social welfare spending, kills people. Climate crisis and gun control policies, or a lack thereof, kill people. Treating politics as something abstract, something that doesn’t significantly impact your day-to-day life, has always been a privilege.I’m not here to scold Lawrence for not being woke straight out of the womb, though (this isn’t Twitter). She grew up in a conservative household in Kentucky and, as many people do, adopted her parents’ politics. Since then, however, she has evolved and been very frank about how and why she gradually moved away from Republican policies. Travelling for work expanded her worldview, Lawrence has said, and made her realize that wherever she went, wealth never seemed to trickle down but was always concentrated at the top. She wasn’t exactly radicalized but she became firmly liberal and now, she tells Vogue, she has nightmares about Tucker Carlson.Lawrence’s views may have evolved but her family’s don’t seem to have, which has caused a painful rift. The 2016 election fractured her relationship with some relatives, including her dad, she told Vogue. The reversal of Roe v Wade dealt it another blow. “I don’t want to disparage my family, but I know that a lot of people are in a similar position with their families. How could you raise a daughter from birth and believe that she doesn’t deserve equality? How?” Brett Kavanaugh, dad to two daughters, might be able to tell her.Lawrence isn’t the only celebrity whose family’s political leanings are making life hard for them. The Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney recently caught flak because her mother threw a hoedown-themed 60th birthday that looked a little Trumpy. Photos of party guests wearing Maga-style red baseball caps with the phrase “Make Sixty Great Again”, and one unidentified guest wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” T-shirt (a pro-police backlash to Black Lives Matter), went viral.Twitter detectives went to work and found a picture on Sweeney’s brother’s Instagram account of a baby with a Maga hat on outside the White House. Rumours started swirling that Sweeney’s family were Trump-loving Republicans and a lot of fans got very upset and started questioning the actor’s politics. Sweeney, it should be noted, has never said much about her political leanings but her roles in shows like Euphoria – and the fact that her breakout role was in The Handmaid’s Tale – seem to have led a lot of her young, progressive fans to assume she’s liberal.“You guys this is wild,” Sweeney tweeted in response to the furore. “An innocent celebration for my moms milestone 60th birthday has turned into an absurd political statement, which was not the intention. Please stop making assumptions.”The anger directed towards Sweeney did feel a little over the top. After all, nobody chooses their family. However, her response to the outrage also felt disingenuous. When you wear a Blue Lives Matter shirt, you’re not making a fashion statement, you’re making a political statement. As a lot of commentators pointed out, Sweeney ignoring the political nature of some of the photos and accusing people of politicizing an innocent event felt a lot like gaslighting.‘I was absolutely terrified of Olivia’: Sydney Sweeney on her White Lotus characterRead moreAgain, nobody chooses their family. But when you’re an adult, you choose how you react to your family’s politics. Lawrence told Vogue that she has she has tried to “forgive my dad and my family and try to understand: it’s different. The information they are getting is different. Their life is different.” Still, she admitted, she can’t pretend their politics don’t matter. “I’ve tried to get over it and I really can’t. I can’t.”Sweeney, meanwhile, seems to have chosen to act as if politics don’t really matter, that civility is more important than civil rights. And she’s not alone in this approach. After Trump won the presidency in 2016, a lot of outlets published advice on how to survive Thanksgiving with a politically divided family. Much of that advice was along the lines of “agree to disagree!” Vogue even suggested a game where anyone who brought up politics was fined $20.You can acknowledge the fact that your parents supporting radically different ideas to you about a woman’s right to choose, for example, is not the same as them supporting a different sports team. You don’t have to disown your parents for their views, but if you don’t confront them in some way, then you are complicit.Maybe Lawrence should take young Sweeney aside at the next Hollywood award show and talk to her a bit about how it’s no longer possible to be passive about politics.TopicsFilmJennifer LawrenceTelevisionUS televisionUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      How a documentary film-maker became the January 6 panel’s star witness

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      How a documentary film-maker became the January 6 panel’s star witnessNick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys after the 2020 election, will supply first-hand knowledge of the riots When the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack on Thursday got to the witness testimony at its inaugural hearing, it heard from an individual with first-hand knowledge about how the far-right Proud Boys group came to storm the Capitol.The panel’s star witness, Nick Quested, is an Emmy award-winning British documentary film-maker who founded the indie film company Goldcrest and embedded with the Proud Boys in the weeks after Donald Trump lost the 2020 election as part of a project about division in America.“We chose the Proud Boys because they’ve been so vociferous in rallies and protests around America, and they’ve emerged as a political voice and force, particularly in the summer of 2020,” Quested told the Guardian. “We felt they were a group worth following.”January 6 hearings get under way as US braces for revelations – liveRead moreQuested spent much of the post-2020 election period following around the Proud Boys and is considered by the select committee as an accidental witness to the group’s activities and likely conversations about planning to storm the Capitol on January 6.The documentary film-maker shot footage of some of the most crucial moments connected to the attack, starting with rallies in November and December 2020 which the Proud Boys attended alongside other militia groups including the Oath Keepers and the 1st Amendment Praetorian.Quested then managed to capture on camera a late-night rendezvous between Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, in an underground parking garage near the Capitol the day before January 6.The US justice department has referenced that encounter in indictments for seditious conspiracy against Rhodes and other militia group members, though Quested has told the select committee he does not believe that was a meeting to coordinate storming the Capitol.Quested also filmed the Proud Boys marching up the National Mall from the Save America rally at the Ellipse to the Peace Monument at the foot of Capitol Hill, where the group’s members found themselves stopped from moving further by the edge of the US Capitol police perimeter.Over several tense minutes, he photographed Joseph Biggs, one of the Proud Boys indicted for seditious conspiracy, having a brief exchange with another man in the crowd, who then confronted Capitol police in a moment widely seen as the tipping point of the riot.The confrontation sparked the crowd to overturn the police barricade – despite Quested holding on to the fencing to keep it upright – and Quested filmed the charge up Capitol Hill towards the inaugural platform on the west side of the Capitol building.“Why did I go over to the barriers in the first place? Look, there’s two types of people in this world. There’s people who walk to disturbances and people who walk away. I walk towards disturbances,” Quested said.Panel to connect Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in Capitol attack conspiracyRead more“I didn’t know there was a confrontation happening. I felt a disturbance in the crowd and I moved towards that confrontation. And that confrontation happened to be Ryan Samsel shaking the barriers. And then the weight of the crowd overwhelmed the officers at the barrier.”Late in the day on January 6, Quested filmed Tarrio’s reaction to news about the Capitol attack in real time, having gone to see Tarrio in Baltimore, Maryland, where he had retreated after being ordered out of Washington by a local judge the day before.Quested discussed his footage and more at the select committee’s inaugural hearing pursuant to a subpoena, having already testified on multiple occasions behind closed doors about his recollections and experiences around the Proud Boys on January 6.The documentary film-maker – originally from west London and educated at St Paul’s school in London – followed the Proud Boys in the post-election period after covering conflict zones including Afghanistan, Iraq, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Syria.Among other works, Quested produced Restrepo, the 2010 Oscar-nominated film that followed a platoon in Afghanistan for a year, and directed the 2018 duPont-Columbia award-winning film Hell on Earth, as well as more than 100 hip-hop videos, including with Dr Dre.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsThe far rightHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s ‘big lie’ hits cinemas: the film claiming to investigate voter fraud

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      Trump’s ‘big lie’ hits cinemas: the film claiming to investigate voter fraud2000 Mules has been resoundingly debunked by factcheckers, but the film has earned praise from Trump and other Republicans The atrium of Cinemark Fairfax Corner could not be described as characterful. The yellow walls, arcade games and rows of snacks and popcorn might be any bland multiplex cinema anywhere. But the digital dashboard of films currently playing merits a second glance.Along with Bad Guys, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once, there is the title 2000 Mules. Anyone hoping for a superhero blockbuster about an army of horse-donkey hybrids will be disappointed.Republican primaries offer look into future of Trumpism without TrumpRead moreInstead, Donald Trump’s “big lie” has arrived at a cinema near you.2000 Mules claims to be an investigation of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. It purports to show that Democratic-aligned ballot “mules“ were paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, tipping swing states in favour of Joe Biden against Trump.The “documentary” has been resoundingly debunked by factcheckers who point out that its supposed smoking gun – $2m worth of anonymised mobile phone geolocation data that allegedly tracks the “mules” visiting drop boxes – is based on false assumptions about the accuracy of such technology.But that has not prevented 2000 Mules earning praise from Trump and other Republicans, gaining a limited cinema release and becoming something of a sacred text in the discredited “Stop the steal” conspiracy theory narrative.So it was that on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, a dozen people – most of them white and middle-aged or elderly – took their seats at Cinemark Fairfax Corner for a screening. Unusually and perhaps tellingly as the lights went down, there were no trailers for other movies.The main feature turned out to be more restrained than critics of the big lie might expect. Far-right film-maker and provocateur Dinesh D’Souza seeks to present himself as curious, innocent and reasonable – just asking questions – as he interviews commentators and “experts” about the conduct of the 2020 election.In fact, D’Souza is so determined to avoid the raucous tone of Trump’s rallies or Fox News’s opinion hosts that at times the 88-minute film is, surprisingly, just plain dull. But by the end he does emphatically conclude that the election was rigged and stolen by Democrats as an ominous, plaintive version of The Star-Spangled Banner swells.Among this group of cinemagoers, at least, D’Souza was preaching to the converted. All had gone in convinced that Biden is not legitimately elected president. The film, like a social media echo chamber, delivered a satisfying dose of confirmation bias.“I thought it was spectacular,” said Joe Hughes, 67, who is self-employed. “Trump never stood a chance in that election.”Joyce Gould, 69, an accounting administrator, agreed: “When Trump talked about stuff that was going to happen, I didn’t have any reason to doubt him. I figured there was a lot of cheating going on. But when you actually see the details in the film as far as the geo-technology and all that kind of stuff? Sure.“I’m just surprised at the evil that is out there in the world. You always know it’s there, but when you actually hear the details of it, it’s just very astounding to me.”A man who gave his name only as Bill, and his age as above 50, described the film as “nauseating and extremely compelling if you have an open mind”. He insisted: “I’m a very objective person. If my own children were charged with a crime, I’d be on the jury. That’s how objective I am.”But he added: “My frustration is with Trump. He knew it was going to happen. He did nothing to stop it. That’s also very nauseating to me.”Will this film actually change minds? Bill’s wife, Anna, 63, who works for an airline, commented: “It might wake up some people that aren’t woken but I don’t know who will come to watch it. I doubt some with a certain political affiliation are willing to because they don’t want to see it or hear it.”2000 Mules was produced by D’Souza and uses research from the Texas-based non-profit True the Vote, which has spent months lobbying states to use its findings to change voting laws.A special screening at Trump’s luxury Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, was attended by prominent supporters of his assault on democracy: Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell.Clips from the film have regularly featured at Trump’s campaign rallies and it was shown in full before he took the stage in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The former president has praised 2000 Mules for exposing “great election fraud”.There are signs that it could become a cultural touchstone for Republicans, granting a patina of gravitas and respectability to the big lie that does not come from rumors, speeches or internet chatrooms.Ronny Jackson, the White House’s former top physician who is now a member of Congress, tweeted: “If you don’t think there was MASSIVE voter fraud in the 2020 election after seeing 2000 Mules, then NOTHING can convince you. The amount of criminal fraud all caught ON CAMERA will SHOCK you! 2020 was NOT “free & fair” at ALL. GO SEE 2000 MULES!!”Kandiss Taylor, who ran for governor of Georgia in this week’s Republican primary election, bemoaned the lack of investigations into voter fraud: “There’s been none in Georgia outside 2000 Mules that just came out, outside of data teams all over the state that are private citizens.”However, factcheckers have eviscerated the movie, noting its flawed analysis of mobile phone location data, which is not precise enough to confirm that someone deposited a ballot into a drop box as opposed to merely walking or driving nearby.Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told the Associated Press: “You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you’re stretching it a lot. There’s always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this.”2000 Mules also contains drop-box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. But it is impossible to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose mobile phones were anonymously tracked.Critics also point out that D’Souza has form. He has spent years promoting disinformation. In 2007 he wrote wrote that “the cultural left is responsible for causing 9/11”. In 2014 he was convicted of violating federal election law by making illegal donations to a US Senate campaign only to be pardoned by Trump in 2018.Yet 2000 Mules has been released in more than 270 cinemas across the US with most distribution provided by Cinemark, the third biggest chain in the country. The Popular Information website pointed out that Cinemark’s founder and board chairman, Lee Roy Mitchell, “is a major financial backer of Trump and rightwing misinformation platforms”.Given Trump’s obsession with ratings, it would not be a huge surprise if he now claims to have rescued the American box office. But the release of 2000 Mules is very modest compared to the typical Hollywood blockbuster.Dan Cassino, a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, in Madison, New Jersey, said: “It’s not a widespread release. This is not Doctor Strange. This exists because there is a market for it.“It’s hard to believe that this sort of very blatant propaganda that doesn’t address the question it’s supposed to is going to convince anyone who didn’t already believe that this was real. This is a way of giving additional talking points to people who already believe that the election was stolen.”Purveyors of Trump’s false election claims took a hammering in this week’s Republican primary elections in Georgia. But some watchdogs warn that, about 18 months after the presidential election, the mere existence of 2000 Mules could yet breathe new life into the big lie.Gunner Ramer, political director of the Republican Accountability Project, said: “We get angry emails in our inbox all the time – we’re dumb, terrible RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] or whatever – and one thing I have noticed is that people do mention 2000 Mules.“Among the still-can’t-get-over-the-2020-election-loss crowd, they are watching this. It has made an impact with them and reinforced the big lie.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      How Disney found its pride – and riled the American right

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      How Disney found its pride – and riled the American right Once known for its ‘traditional’ values, the entertainment giant is battling US conservatives over an anti-gay bill. Indeed the House of Mouse has had a long relationship with the LGBTQ+ community‘Christ. they’re going after Mickey Mouse,” said president Joe Biden in April, bemoaning the Republican party’s targeting of yet another American institution. A few days earlier, at a desk surrounded by small children, Florida governor Ron DeSantis had stripped Disney World of its self-governing status. Since its inception in 1967, Disney’s central Florida estate – officially the Reedy Creek Improvement District – has effectively operated under its own jurisdiction. The agreement has worked for both sides. Disney funds and manages public services in the district in return for autonomy over governance and development. Disney World has become the cornerstone of Florida’s tourist economy, employing 75,000 people locally. This is supposed to be Disney World’s 50th year, but the company finds itself in danger of being cast out of its own magic kingdom.DeSantis’s move was explicitly in retaliation to Disney’s opposition to HB 1557, better known as the “Don’t say gay” law. This vaguely worded bill prohibits discussion of, or instruction on, issues of sexual orientation or gender identity in Florida schools. After the successful weaponisation of “critical race theory” (an academic field that considers systemic discrimination in public life), Republicans have identified LGBTQ+ rights as another potential wedge issue, even linking them with paedophilia and grooming. DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, tweeted that the bill could be “more accurately described as an anti-grooming bill”. Disney responded with a statement calling for HB 1557 to be struck down in the courts. Sign up to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights.To Republicans, Disney had crossed a line by interfering in politics. “Ultimately, this state is governed by the best interests of the people of this state, not what any one corporation is demanding,” DeSantis said as he signed the bill. Viewed from the opposite side, DeSantis is using the power of the state to punish a private corporation for its political views – a significant escalation in the culture wars, and a worrying look for a democracy. How did it come to this?In truth, conservatives have been going after Mickey Mouse for a long time now. Disney, which now owns Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar and 20th Century Studios, is the US’s pre-eminent cultural superpower, with particular influence over children. In recent years it has been targeted for its “woke” values in terms of inclusion and diversity in matters of race, gender and sexuality, both in its content and its employment practices. In terms of the LGBTQ+ community, though, Disney’s relationship goes far deeper, and it has developed in ways the company itself can never have anticipated.Walt Disney was never a card-carrying homophobe but he was a steadfast conservative, and long after his death in 1966, Disney’s output continued to promote “traditional” and “family” values. That didn’t discount “coding” Disney characters (usually villains) as queer, in that they exhibited stereotypically gay attributes such as effeminate behaviour or disinterest in the opposite sex: Jafar in Aladdin, for example, or Scar in The Lion King, or even Shere Khan the tiger in The Jungle Book. And, as with all forms of culture, Disney stories have lent themselves to queer readings regardless of their makers’ intentions.Dealing with themes of fantasy and magic, many classic Disney stories concern characters moving between two worlds, feeling like outsiders in their communities, transforming and becoming their true selves. These themes could equally be interpreted as explorations of sexuality or gender identity. Cinderella goes from dowdy domestic to sparkling princess at the wave of a wand; Mowgli must decide whether he belongs in the jungle or the village; Mulan masquerades as male to join the Chinese army, during which time she forms an ambiguous bond with the handsome captain. Princess Elsa in Frozen is urged by her parents to suppress her true nature but after she is figuratively “outed” (as a sorceress), she flees her heteronormative destiny, preferring to belt out Let It Go in icy isolation: “Don’t let them in, don’t let them see / Be the good girl you always have to be / Conceal don’t feel, don’t let them know …”Disney films have helped queer people discover their sexuality, says George Youngdahl, a lifelong fan. “Tarzan, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Hercules – all of those were people who I wanted to emulate and I was attracted to. I wasn’t looking at the princesses, or I was because I wanted to be them, not necessarily because I thought they were attractive.” After his first visit to California’s Disneyland, Youngdahl applied for a job at Florida’s Disney World when he was 25. He moved to Florida and worked for Disney for 15 years.Although Disney would never admit it, queer themes have sometimes been more deliberate than accidental. One of the unsung LGBTQ+ heroes of Disney lore, for example, is Howard Ashman, the openly gay lyricist and producer, who died of an Aids-related illness in 1991. With a background in musical theatre, Ashman was instrumental in bringing Disney classics The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin to the screen, and his involvment is obvious in the final releases.In The Little Mermaid, for example, Ariel is told by her domineering father that the human world is evil and forbidden, but to Ariel, it looks like more fun. “Up where they walk, up where they run / Up where they stay all day in the sun / Wanderin’ free, wish I could be / Part of that world,” she sings. The fact that the evil sea witch, Ursula, was modelled on renowned drag artist Divine only adds to the queer appeal. (The original Little Mermaid was written as an allegory for same-sex attraction, incidentally: Hans Christian Andersen was inspired to write the fairytale by his unrequited love for another man.)“Kids, even in the most accepting of environments, grow up knowing that they’re different and unsure of how that’s going to play out in the world,” says Eddie Shapiro, co-author of Queens in the Kingdom, an LGBTQ+ guide to Disney’s theme parks. “So there’s a sense of otherness. And in the Disney universe, the characters who triumph, the Dumbos of the world, are frequently also other. And they come out on top, or they come out loved, supported, safe. And that’s a big comfort.”It is fair to also call Shapiro something of a Disney super-fan. As we speak, he is on a Disney cruise from Florida to Castaway Cay, Disney’s private resort island in the Bahamas. As with the movies, Disney theme parks have a certain appeal from an LGBTQ+ perspective, he says. “Disney offers a perfect world that never was,” he says. “You didn’t always feel safe as a gay kid, now you’re walking down Main Street, USA, and everything is manicured, everything is clean. Everybody’s friendly. It’s perfect – something that appeals to the child within.”Disney initially resisted attempts by LGBTQ+ visitors to express their fandom at its theme parks. In the 1980s, the company was twice sued for prohibiting men dancing together at Disney World, for example. But in June 1991 a man named Doug Swallow organised a coordinated mass trip to Disney World, attended by 3,000 LGBTQ+ people, wearing red shirts to identify themselves. This was the park’s first Gay Day, and it has continued ever since. The event now brings more than 150,000 LGBTQ+ people to Orlando every June.In the early years, Disney would warn “straight” visitors when it was Gay Day and hand out white T-shirts to non-participants who had inadvertently turned up wearing red. While Disney does not officially recognise Gay Day, it soon came to appreciate the commercial clout of the LGBTQ+ community. There is no end of rainbow-coloured Disney merchandise on sale, and Disney accommodates and facilitates the Gay Day schedule of events, including a week-long festival taking place across the city, with club nights, drag shows, pool parties, and special hotel deals.After his first Florida Gay Day in 1998, Shapiro founded a sister Gay Day Anaheim at the Los Angeles Disneyland. While Orlando Gay Days are more party-centric, the lower-key Anaheim event takes place mostly inside the park. There is a high level of cooperation. Disney now hosts a table at its welcome centre promoting fairytale gay weddings at Disneyland and hosts premieres at Gay Day.“Gay Day was never formed with a political agenda,” says Shapiro. The idea was always integration rather than segregation. “You’re mixing with traditional families, and hopefully changing some hearts and minds. It was not at all lost on us that we were showing up at America’s number one family destination with our families of choice, and announcing by being there, that [we] were worthy, and should absolutely be there, and stand up and be counted. And we’re still doing that.”Disney has learned to embrace LGBTQ+ friendliness on screen and off in recent decades. In 1995 it became one of the first companies to offer health benefits to same-sex partners of employees (prompting a considerable conservative backlash in the process). Meanwhile, it has taken tentative steps towards representation on screen. Even if its “openly gay character” proclamations rarely live up to the billing, there have been fleeting references to same-sex relationships in movies including Toy Story 4 (two women drop off their daughter at kindergarten); Onward (Lena Waithe’s cop refers to her girlfriend); the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake (the character LeFou, played by Josh Gad, is telegraphed as gay and dances with another man, although not even Gad was particularly proud of that one; “I don’t think we did justice to what a real gay character in a Disney film should be,” he admitted). Jack Whitehall went a step further, playing a gay man in Disney’s live-action film Jungle Cruise last year. And Pixar was recently reported to be casting for a voice actor to play a “14-year-old transgender girl” in an upcoming project.But Disney has always balanced its support for the LGBTQ+ community with its appeal to more conservative-leaning consumers, which could be seen as playing both sides. The corporation was recently revealed to have donated almost $1m to the Republican party of Florida in 2020, and $50,000 directly to DeSantis – none of which appears to have deterred him from targeting Disney.Many insiders blame Disney’s mishandling of the Florida issue on its new CEO, Bob Chapek. His predecessor, Bob Iger, is regarded as a hero for presiding over Disney’s canny acquisitions of LucasFilm, Marvel and Pixar, and launching Disney+, all while vocally supporting progressive causes such as Black Lives Matter during the Trump administration. Chapek, who came from Disney’s parks division, is reportedly more conservative-leaning, more managerial and less experienced at this kind of political diplomacy.When DeSantis first announced the “Don’t say gay” bill in early March, Chapek’s response was to stay silent. He sent an internal email to Disney staff expressing his support for the LGBTQ+ community but claiming “corporate statements do very little to change outcomes or minds. Instead, they are often weaponised by one side or the other to further divide and inflame.” This enraged Disney’s LGBTQ+ staff and their allies. Pixar employees released a statement alleging that Disney executives had demanded cuts from “nearly every moment of overtly gay affection” in its movies. In response, Chapek gave a public apology, “You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry.” That was not enough to prevent a series of staff walkouts leading up to the signing of the bill on 22 March. Hence Disney’s more confrontational statement about seeking to have the law repealed and struck down.“There is a widespread belief that this was bungled, and it’s a belief not just inside the company, but in the Hollywood community at large,” says Matthew Belloni, ex-editor of the Hollywood Reporter. “If they had remained on the sidelines, lobbied behind the scenes, and made employees know that they cared about the issue but didn’t do so in a way that provoked the politicians, they could have, in my opinion, gotten away with advocacy without becoming a punching bag.”If it happens, the removal of Disney World’s special status, which would come into effect in June 2023, is likely to hurt local citizens more than Disney itself. The burden of running the district’s public services will now fall to taxpayers, and could translate into additional bills for locals. As his public signing of the anti-Disney law, surrounded by schoolchildren, suggests, DeSantis, who many see as a presidential contender, is essentially engaging in political theatre. But potentially more harmful than the attacks on Disney is the “Don’t say gay” bill itself, which is likely to cause long-lasting harm to Florida’s young LGBTQ+ people and their educators.Cotton plantations and non-consensual kisses: how Disney became embroiled in the culture warsRead moreAs with previous occasions when conservatives have “gone after Mickey Mouse”, this latest attack is likely to blow over. “Disney is such a large corporation that I don’t think this specific punishment is going to register in the grand scheme of things,” says Belloni. “It’s more about how it moves forward, and whether it can operate as a down-the-middle, umbrella brand for everybody amid this kind of culture war that it has found itself the centre of.”Maybe Disney doesn’t have to pick a side. The Republicans’ current tactics feel like an attempt to turn back the clock – ironically to an era and a set of values Disney once embodied. But Disney is compelled to look in the opposite direction, led by a market that is increasingly global, young and diverse. While Disney’s centrism can be interpreted cynically as playing both sides or, more generously, catering to all tastes, the important thing is that “centre” has moved a considerable way during the company’s lifetime – and Disney has moved with it.TopicsWalt Disney CompanyLGBT rightsAnimation in filmFilm industryUS politicsFloridaRon DeSantisfeaturesReuse this content More