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November 21, 2024 - 7:00pm
There’s something perfectly fitting about Shane Gillis appearing in Bud Light’s latest commercial. Here’s a football player-turned-comedian, cancelled by Saturday Night Live in 2019, now helping America’s most cancelled beer find its way back to cultural relevance. The ad isn’t just damage control for a brand still reeling from its disastrous, boycott-inducing partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney — it’s corporate America’s way of declaring that the progressive revolution is officially over.
The timing of the ad, which follows Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, feels right on schedule. Gillis, with his aw-shucks demeanour and decidedly un-PC comedy, represents exactly the kind of normal-guy sensibility Bud Light desperately needs to appeal to after alienating its core audience. His presence in the ad, where he plays a guy who has wandered into a perfume ad by mistake, sends a clear message: Bud Light is for people like him, and people who like him. It’s the kind of cultural realignment we’ve seen before, reminiscent of how the greed-is-good Reagan era transformed ageing, out-of-touch 1960s and 1970s counterculture figures into cautionary tales or the butts of jokes.
Just as the gung-ho cowboy-movie masculinity and straight-laced conformity of the 1950s gave way to the counterculture before swinging back, we’re watching Obama-era progressivism complete its own cycle. What started as “hope and change,” evolved through Trump resistance, and peaked with BLM protests and Covid-19 lockdowns in the summer of 2020, is now facing its own form of cultural exhaustion.
The evidence is everywhere. Celebrity activists who once commanded attention now struggle to impact elections despite a constant mainstream media presence. Corporate DEI initiatives face unprecedented pushback. Previously untouchable progressive orthodoxies are being challenged not just by edge cases like Gillis but even by more controversial figures like Sam Hyde, who’s again finding a modicum of mainstream success despite — or perhaps because of — that reputation.
What makes this moment particularly fascinating isn’t just the shift itself but what it suggests about where American culture is heading. Gillis, with his college football background and everyman appeal, could follow the path of Will Ferrell, transforming from SNL reject to mainstream star. But unlike Ferrell, whose eccentric comedy largely avoided in-your-face progressive politics until recently, Gillis’s appeal rests specifically on his willingness to poke at or push back against progressive norms.
The Gillis ad feels like the moment we’ll look back on as the turning point — the point when the waves of “resistance” finally broke and rolled back. It’s not just that Bud Light chose him for their post-Mulvaney redemption tour; it’s that they clearly believe he represents something their audience wants to return to — a time when beer commercials could just be funny without becoming political statements, when a brand could reach middle America without having to leverage a rogue’s gallery of DEI-mandated inclusive performers. Take note, Jaguar.
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SubscribeMessage to the non-woke, as long as the borders are de-facto non existent, every victory is pyrrhic, or a sleight of hand by those who hate you. Your way of life is not a value, but a concrete thing.
“follow the path of Will Ferrell, transforming from SNL reject to mainstream star”
That would be noted SNL reject Will Ferrell who was an accalimed cast member of the SNL in the 90’s? The guy they had play George W. Bush in the debates with Gore (“strategery”)? He left to do movies like many of the more well-known SNL alums before him. He was not a reject unless you don’t know what that word means.
If you’re going to try to do cultural commentary and cite a tv show, it is probably helpful if you’ve ever watched it (or at least look it up on Wikipedia).
Jaguar is like “hold my beer”
I am of the opinion that most of the appeal to wokeness from the corporate world, particularly in advertising, was simply another insincere gesture in their never ending quest to appeal to younger demographics and win lifelong customers. Budweiser probably assumed none of their older, traditional customers would pay much attention to a random influencer on a newer media that most people didn’t know existed. After all that’s what usually happens. Nobody boycotted the people who advertised on that controversial new MTV thing back in the 80s nor when they switched to internet banner ads in the 90s or social media in the 2000s.
The problem is that Gen Z’s big new thing “wokeness”, unlike those others before it, was inherently political, divisive, and immediately loathed by older generations who were experienced enough to recognize silly nonsense. Previous generations wanted companies to come to them through new media or using new technologies. The woke generation wanted companies to appeal to their fragile emotional state and show how inclusive and tolerant and diverse they were so everyone would feel comfortable and welcome and nobody would be offended. That was obviously doomed to fail regardless, but it also got drawn into the building political conflict between rising populism and falling globalism, which the same corporations also had a hand in.
The woke generation has some tough times ahead. Now that it’s clear there is no money to be made and plenty to lose from woke virtue signaling, the corporations are dropping it like the live grenade it is. Further, the generation coming behind them is showing signs of being a lot less progressive, which will leave them even more out in the political wilderness. I expect them to become a very bitter, disillusioned and frustrated generation along the lines of the so called lost generation who saw the last great globalist age end in the trenches of WWI.
Celebrating too early. Woke ideology is here to stay. Unfortunately.
What makes you think that?