Has identity politics had its day?

Have we reached peak woke? In Hollywood, that seems to be the emerging consensus. Thanks to the box office success of Top Gun: Maverick and the disappointing performance of Pixar’s Lightyear, in which Buzz Lightyear’s commanding officer is a black lesbian, the studios think audiences may be tiring of being lectured to. The same is true of the streaming platforms, with the biggest hits of the year being shows that take the mickey out of corporate virtue-signalling (The Boys) or just celebrate old-fashioned American heroism (The Terminal List). In this context, the reaction of Netflix when some of its employees staged a walkout over Dave Chappelle’s un-PC jokes in his recent comedy special was a straw in the wind: the company told them that if they weren’t prepared to tolerate a broad range of tastes and viewpoints, maybe Netflix wasn’t the right place for them.

In the tech sector, too, a pushback against social activism seems to be under way.