How Comedy Will Help Win The Culture War
How Comedy Will Help Win The Culture War
After a comedy dry spell thanks to self censorship and wokeness, 'Lady Ballers' proves the counter-culture can beat Hollywood At its own game (Spoiler Free/Synopsis Only)
How did we get here?
How did America go from segregated water fountains to a black president in a relatively short time?
How did we go from openly referring to clerical work as “for broads” to firing men for complimenting female coworkers’ hair?
And how did we go from requiring years of therapy for sex changes to starting children on puberty blockers?
Obviously, laws and policies evolved.
But what pressured lawmakers and policymakers?
The short answer is culture, whether for good, such as racially integrating society, or for not good, like legalizing child sex changes.
Politics is downstream from culture. -Andrew Breitbart
Over the past century, Hollywood and corporate influence exploded, allowing film and advertising to influence public opinion.
To Kill a Mockingbird (originally a book) addressed race, Thelma and Louise targeted “the patriarchy,” and Brokeback Mountain taught us the hardships of being a gay cowboy, to name a few.
The moral of all these stories is that the status quo must be challenged.
Yet, as society progressed, the entertainment industry eventually shifted from fighting for equality to insulting traditional values.
But once again, the cultural tables are turning, and Hollywood has a serious bogey on its tail.
Comedy As a Weapon
Comedy films of the 1980s to mid-2000s succeeded because breaking the rules is fun.
Following them is boring.
Would it have been entertaining to watch Ferris Bueller attend class?
Would Old School be funny if Mitch, Frank, and Beanie went to work instead of starting a fraternity as adults?
How about watching the cast of American Pie exchange promise rings while enjoying sodas at a properly chaperoned youth group retreat? Exactly.
If it went against the cultural grain, it sold tickets.
By default, then, tradition and conservatism became the butt of the joke.
But Hollywood knew what sold tickets, and since they benefited from free speech, they had free content reign.
But the anti-establishment of yesterday is the establishment of today.
Lady Ballers
On December 1, The Daily Wire released Lady Ballers exclusively for subscribers, receiving mixed reviews, as expected.
DW CEO Jeremy Boreing wrote, produced, and stars in the film as Rob Gibson, a washed-up high school basketball coach who discovers he can use woke culture to his advantage.
After rounding up his former team, he convinces them they can win the “Global Games” by competing as transwomen.
Since its release last week, the “triggering” comedy continues to receive overwhelming support from viewers.
I thought it was hilarious, but I’m biased.
Still, the producers did a great job mimicking the raunchy and satirical formula that made comedy legends of the 1990s to the mid-2000s.
It was funny because they made fun of off-limits material.
The very thing Hollywood did to make billions.
As expected, the film received plenty of backlash, as supporters and nonsupporters were reported as rating the movie before it was released.
LGBTQ media group PinkNews called it a “transphobic sports film,” and The Decider said the production was “racist, sexist, transphobic and antisemitic, and there’s really no debating that.”
Hilarious.
Obama Throws Wet Towel On Comedy?
We’ve been in a comedy drought as we’ve been told that everything is racist and offensive, and political messaging is baked into almost all new movies.
The days of Tropic Thunder, 40-year-old Virgin, and Step Brothers were gone as the establishment monopolized entertainment.
In Tropic Thunder, Robert Downey Jr’s entire role was blackface.
Why does it seem like comedy lost traction after the 2000s?
Boreing said this at The Lady Ballers premiere last week:
(Barack Obama) he essentially said to all of the the immune system type professions: journalism, academia, the medians-he said, historically you’d seen your role in the world as challenging the status quo, challenging power, speaking truth to power-from now on, you shouldnt make that your identity, your identity should be to be agents of social change. -Jeremy Boreing
But creating competition for Hollywood didn’t arrive on a whim. It took years for the young media company to find a position to produce a film to this degree.
Ben Shapiro commented at the opening:
When Jeremy and I built The Daily Wire, we did so with the explicit intent to one day be able to foray into broader media culture-so it started off as a marketing company that did politics, but the idea was to build a machine large enough to support all types of content that was just not in the marketplace. -Ben Shapiro
Finally, there’s enough money and support for the counter-culture they can sling back at what’s been slung at everyday Americans for years.
And mock they do, calling out the lack of common sense with the whole trans movement and wokeness in general.
But they do so without overdoing it, and the film concludes with a positive message.
What’s Next?
Fortunately, The Daily Wire is just getting started.
Adam Carrollas' adult animated series Mr. Birchum is on the horizon, starring prominent voices like Megyn Kelly, Roseanne, and Danny Trejo, and we can expect more as DW grows.
And that's how we influence laws and policies. The longer this nonsense goes on, the longer girls lose.
Just last week, two biological men took first and second place at the Chicago CycloCross Cup, and the highest-paid “female” CEO is a man.
If you’d like to tell your grandkids how you helped win the culture war, subscribe to The Daily Wire and get access to Lady Ballers plus the entire library.
Its one thing to mock something, its another to mock something that should be mocked -Jeremy Boreing