Can Ayn Rand help the right-wing remake of Hollywood
A new wave of right-wing filmmakers is drawing on the author of The Fountainhead, praised by Donald Trump almost a decade ago, in a bid to reshape American culture.
Back when he was just Donald Trump and not President Trump, the subject of Ayn Rand came up and, in particular, her novel The Fountainhead.
“It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions,” Trump said almost a decade ago. “That book relates to ... everything.”
Trump added that the novel’s protagonist, Howard Roark, was a character he could identify with, raging against the establishment as he designed skyscrapers that would dominate all around them.
Trump was not alone. Rand has long been a darling of US conservatives with devotees including Alan Greenspan, the banker appointed to serve as the chairman of the US Federal Reserve by Ronald Reagan, who attended Rand’s funeral in 1982.
Other prominent Randians have included figures from Trump’s first term, such as Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo.
Then there is Peter Thiel. If Rand is where America’s conservative movement and big tech find common ground, Thiel is her greatest cheerleader.
The billionaire tech investor and Trump supporter first read Rand as a student in the late 1980s. Back then, he admitted, it was all a “little bit too negative and pessimistic”.
Later, after the financial collapse of 2008 and incoming Obama administration, the self-declared libertarian had come around to Rand.
“It was all in Ayn Rand in 1957,” he said of America’s economic collapse. “It has grown on me over the years as an incredible thing.”
Today, a group of tech investors linked to Thiel are hoping to use Rand’s works in an attempt to remake what they view as a failing symbol of liberal America – Hollywood.
Based in Dallas, Texas, Founders Films is backed by senior figures from the software company Palantir, which was co-founded by Thiel, according to the news website Semafor. It is seeking investors for films that would be unapologetically conservative.
A pitch deck shared with potential supporters outlines its approach as: “Say yes to projects about American exceptionalism, name America’s enemies, back artists unconditionally, take risk on novel IP.”
Projects said to be in the pipeline include a film about the evacuation of the World Trade Centre on 9/11, another about the drone strike on the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, and a three-part adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, a novel written by the Russian-born Rand who was once a Hollywood screenwriter.
The Fountainhead was published in 1943 and features an idealistic architect. A Hollywood adaptation starring Gary Cooper in the lead role was released in 1949.
Atlas Shrugged, considered by Randians including Thiel to be her masterwork, extolled the virtue of the individual over the collective. A three-part adaptation was released from 2011 to 2014, but the films were poorly reviewed. That has not deterred Founders Films from attempting its own version.
Elan Journo, a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, said the author’s work remained influential because it opposed ideas that have dominated left-wing politics for decades, adding: “Our culture is increasingly dominated by various forms of collectivism and anti-freedom ideas – think of ‘woke’ and ‘identity’ tribalism, populism and nationalism, authoritarianism and socialism, xenophobia and anti-trade policies – all of this underscores even more just how radical Rand is.”
Rand can claim to be among the most influential authors of the 20th century. Critics, however, have often been scathing, describing her prose as tedious and her books as overly didactic.
Journo argued that many critics miss the point of Rand’s work.
“Rand wanted to reach what she called ‘my kind of reader’, someone who’s active minded, seeking to understand, willing to think deeply about life’s big questions – someone who is a truth-seeker and genuinely idealistic,” he said.
“Such readers, by the hundreds of thousands, pick up her books every year. But I wish there were more intellectuals and critics who seriously engaged with her artistic vision and radical arguments, rather than following the herd and rejecting idealism.”
In addition to Rand, Founders Films is planning action films with patriotic themes, including the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Paul Bond, a journalist at Newsmax who spent more than 20 years covering conservatism in Hollywood, said that the industry leaves dollars on the table due to its treatment of right-wingers.
“They should stop intentionally trying to alienate them with their subtle and not-so-subtle leftist messages,” he said. “Where anything smacking of conservatism is portrayed as extremism, racism, xenophobic, homophobic, whatever the flavour of the day is.
“This attitude has many conservatives swearing off mainstream Hollywood content entirely. And it is simply bad filmmaking.
“When Hollywood shows you a character who is patriotic, or is reading a Bible, or hangs a cross in their home or flies an American flag outside of it, you know they’re foreshadowing the bad guy. It’s a lazy, overused trope.”
Trump’s second election victory is changing how Hollywood behaves, Bond says, because it “no longer feels pressured into inserting woke messages into its content”.
However, “the true believers – and there are many in Hollywood – will do so, regardless”.
Producers making films celebrating traditional values may be striking at the right time.
Paul Anleitner, a cultural analyst, believes there has been a societal “vibe shift” in America. Audiences, he said, are exhausted by the cynicism and irony that have dominated pop culture since the 1990s. Instead, there is a yearning for sincerity.
Anleitner cited as examples the new Superman film and Ted Lasso, the comedy series featuring a folksy, good-natured football coach. “There seems to be this increasing desire for wholesomeness,” Anleitner said.
The Times
More Coverage
Add your comment to this story
Young Brits prefer Corbyn to Starmer
Labour’s move to lower the voting age to 16 could spell trouble for Sir Keir Starmer, with Jeremy Corbyn proving significantly more popular than the Prime Minister with young people.
Is the world’s biggest polluter finally cleaning up its act?
China’s carbon output dipped last year even as energy use rose. Now there’s hope it signals a permanent switch that shows a different kind of power is possible – and ends the ‘but China’ argument by countries seeking to justify climate inaction.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout