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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.
Jaguar is like “hold my beer”
“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).