My wife and I watched Toy Story 5 over the weekend, and afterward I started seeing some conservatives criticizing it as “feminist” and even “anti-white.” See, for example, Michael Knowles’s tweet: “If you can get past the relentless feminism and apparent extinction of white people, Toy Story 5 is a cute movie with an important message.” This has become sadly predictable, this trying to be culturally relevant by latching onto every cultural artifact and complaining about it as the latest evidence of decay. I don’t mean to suggest that conservatives should never criticize Hollywood, but by doing so reflexively and thoughtlessly we make the same mistake we spent years criticizing the Left for making.
The Left approaches virtually every movie, television show, and commercial as though it were a political manifesto. They search relentlessly for hidden sexism, racism, homophobia, or some other perceived offense, and if they can’t find any they just imagine it. It’s become impossible to just enjoy a story without someone insisting that it contains a deeper ideological message that manifests some shortcoming, some injustice that needs to be remedied. That mindset is exhausting, and conservatives, and everyone else, rightly mock it.
Lately, however, I’ve begun to notice some conservatives doing exactly the same thing. Every movie is presumed guilty until proven innocent. Every casting decision is interpreted as a political statement. Every female lead is labeled “feminist,” and every diverse cast is accused of being “anti-white.”
I’m sorry, but Toy Story 5 just doesn’t fit that description. It’s a clean, entertaining family movie that seems to have been made for everyone. Having a prominent female character does not make a movie feminist any more than having a prominent male character makes it misogynistic. If your definition of “anti-men” is simply that a woman gets to share the spotlight, perhaps the problem isn’t the movie, but that you’re a weak man with severe insecurities that you need to address.
And the claim that the movie is somehow “anti-white” is even stranger. Woody is white. Buzz is white. Jessie is white. All are played by white voice actors. The primary child in the story is white. Most of the central cast is white. For goodness’ sake, Conan O’Brien is in the movie prominently, and he’s so white he’s practically fluorescent! Calling a movie “anti-white” under those circumstances stretches the term so far that it loses any meaningful definition. If everything is anti-white, then nothing is.
What’s especially ironic is that the movie’s central theme is one that many conservatives have been making for years. At its heart, Toy Story 5 is a story about the importance of imagination, relationships, and human connection in an age where what we knew as childhood seems increasingly rare, and quaint. It emphasizes the importance of family and good parenting in a traditional model, and warns against children being instead raised by electronics. That is not some progressive manifesto. If anything, it reflects a deeply conservative instinct, that there are certain timeless aspects of childhood and family life that are worth preserving against the encroachment of modern technology, or other forms of “progress.” It seems odd to dismiss a movie carrying that message simply because it also happens to feature a female lead, or because a handful of characters are not country-club white.
Are there movies that substitute activism for storytelling? Absolutely. Are there studios that sometimes feel more interested in checking demographic boxes than telling a compelling story? Of course. Criticize those films when they deserve it. But not every movie is a culture war, and not every creative decision is evidence of ideological capture.
Sometimes it’s okay to put your guard down, take your kids to the theater, eat some popcorn, and simply enjoy a story. If conservatives become known for finding imaginary grievances in every piece of entertainment, we will only weaken our arguments against genuine examples of ideological preaching. Discernment means recognizing the difference between a movie that is trying to indoctrinate you and one that is simply trying to entertain you.
If conservatives become incapable of distinguishing between genuine ideological activism and an ordinary family film, then we haven’t defeated identity politics. We’ve simply adopted our own version of it. That distinction is worth preserving, along with our sanity.
You may also be interested in:
- The Devil Wears Boring – Conservative Opinion
- Adultery, American-Style: Hollywood’s Gospel of Sanctified Betrayal – Conservative Opinion
- The Office Spin-Off Is a Wall Street Fire Sale Disguised as Entertainment – Conservative Opinion
- Righteous Indulgence: White Lotus and the Gospel of the Rich Liberal – Conservative Opinion
- The Surprisingly Christian Message of “The Ides of March” – Conservative Opinion
- Saturday Night Left: How SNL Ignores the Absurdities of the Left to its own Detriment – Conservative Opinion
