Just a few weeks into Donald Trump’s second presidential term and some of America’s most powerful institutions are already bending to his whims. In Hollywood, that has begun to manifest through the dissolution of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, among other signs that artists might find troubling. “We’re in a state of whiplash at the moment, just trying to catch up and figure out the implications of what we’re experiencing, the likes of which, even in authoritarian governments rarely happen this quickly,” May December director Todd Haynes says in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Looking at the current entertainment industry landscape, Haynes—who is currently serving as the head of the jury at the Berlinale—observes, “This kind of almost advanced self-censorship or yielding in advance that we are seeing [from media companies], the various DEI programs that have just fallen like dominoes, the corporations and companies and people thinking, ‘I’ll start more passively, and hopefully, I’ll gain my footing and start to think about a long game.’ But I think what we’ve learned historically is that once you start to yield, they don’t reward you for submission. These kinds of people are insatiable. We have to be really careful about not yielding.”
The director acknowledges that there may be more important areas of resistance than in film, but “it’s through this medium that we’ve survived even worse historical crises in the past.” He adds, “The particular situation we’re in now is so violent and so extreme that one can only hope that it also is met with a kind of necessity on the part of filmmaking. The need for filmmakers to speak out feels more urgent than ever. What they have to say matters, and there are people who need to hear it, and a community can be reformed around what’s happening now through film. That’s the best-case scenario. It will still be balanced by, at times supported by, and at times forced to struggle under, the commercial forces of Hollywood.”
