Tom Cruise's new 'Top Gun' movie takes Griff Jenkins' breath away
Paramount Pictures' latest film, 'Top Gun: Maverick,' is expected to break box office records on its opening weekend.
While President-elect Donald Trump's decisive win on Tuesday shocked many Americans, one Christian author who seemed unfazed says the culture has been shifting for the past few years, for those who have been paying attention.
Paul Anleitner, a pastor and the author of "Dis-Ordered: A Christian Journey Through the Problem of Evil & Suffering," admits he's not an expert on politics, but argued in a lengthy thread on X that recent cultural events can account for how America voted last week.
"I don't study politics, but I do study culture, and here are some of the signs that a cultural shift has been brewing for years in America that most of the professional political analysts just completely missed," Anleitner began.
First, he recalled the massive success of "Top Gun: Maverick," the sequel to Tom Cruise's 1986 film about a group of hotshot fighter pilots. Fans cheered that the 2022 follow-up was just as patriotic and epic as the original.
"Top Gun: Maverick," Anleitner wrote, "leaned heavily on classic modernist heroism themes, embodied by a White, male protagonist (Tom Cruise as Maverick) who is a traditional, rule-breaking figure dedicated to honor, duty, and meritocracy."
"Maverick represented more traditional American values of meritocracy over aristocracy amid what was supposed to be a cultural revolution intended to set up a new inverted aristocracy," he added.
In fact, the movie was so pro-U.S. military that it sparked the ire of some commentators. MSNBC opinion editor Zeeshan Aleem called the movie equal parts entertaining and "insidious." The film, which got nominated for a "Best Picture" Oscar, "beckons for a return to accepting the American war machine as a beacon of virtue and excitement," he wrote.
Tom Cruise attends the Royal Film Performance screening of "Top Gun: Maverick" in Leicester Square on May 19, 2022, in London, England. (Photo by David M. Benett/Dave Benett/WireImage) (Getty Images)
"It’s a poisonous kind of nostalgia, one that smuggles love of endless war into a celebration of live action," Aleem added.
Still, the movie brought millions of filmgoers back to the theater, eager for some entertainment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The blockbuster scored $124 million at the box office in its opening weekend.
Anleitner said the rising popularity of nonorthodox comedians was also indicative of the current culture. Tony Hinchcliffe caused controversy after joking that Puerto Rico was a "floating pile of garbage" at a Trump rally last month, but Anleitner noted he has one of the most popular podcasts in the country. He, along with Joe Rogan, Shane Gillis, Ari Shaffir and others, he argued, have tapped into the middle-class market and each have a sense of non-"woke" humor.
"Hinchcliffe, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and others have far more influence with everyday Americans (especially men) than the old comedic vanguard of Saturday Night Live," the author said. "None of these guys would get along well with Franklin Graham or any of the older cultural bastions of the Republican Party, but their total disdain for what became known as ‘wokism’ and complete disregard for any sense of politically correct language appeals to many working-class men."
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Podcaster Joe Rogan warned in a Sept. 26 episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" that Kamala Harris would "clamp down more" on online speech if elected president. ("The Joe Rogan Experience")
In fact, political observers on both sides of the aisle argued that Vice President Kamala Harris made a grave mistake when she declined to go on Rogan's podcast. Trump sat with Rogan for a discussion that lasted over three hours.
"To people on the left, Joe Rogan reaches millions of low propensity male voters - kind of the exact population you should be trying to get in front of," 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang said when criticizing the Harris campaign's decision. "He is not a hostile interviewer - he’s curious and interested in why people believe what they do."
Anleitner also saw hints of a cultural change in education. Enrollment in Christian schools, he observed, has been surging across the U.S.
"If you talk to just about anyone who works in a private, Christian school, the post-COVID spike in enrollment has been unprecedented," he wrote. "But it wasn't just that many Christian schools found ways to provide more in-person education during the COVID years, it was that many families who weren't even explicitly professing Christians were looking for educational environments that simply weren't teaching experimental, progressive ideologies on gender and sexuality."
Cornerstone Christian Academy was a prime example in northern Virginia. Hundreds of parents concerned about progressive curriculum flocked to the school when it opened in 2022. The K-8 Christian school serves as an alternative for parents who want something other than a public school education for their children.
Students, parents and others hold signs outside the Loudoun County school board meeting October 26, 2021, in Ashburn, VA. (Photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
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"So many things happening in… the public schools, what seems like an agenda," Head of School Dr. Sam Botta told Fox News Digital. "Things like boys and girls using one another’s bathrooms that they choose, the gender issue, where they can pick what they are. Parents, not just Christian families, most families, and most parents recognize, honestly the foolishness of that. It’s almost incomprehensible that we can tell a boy that was a boy from birth, God-ordained as a boy, that we can tell them that they can choose to be a girl. And so when that happened, these parents didn’t walk, they ran."
Homeschooling rates also seemed to surge across the country in the wake of COVID.
Next, Anleitner noted the trend of major corporations making cuts to DEI programs that were introduced in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police in 2020. But critics said the programs went too far with their emphasis on racial preferences and racial quotas.
By 2023, the likes of Google and Meta cut staffers and downsized DEI programs. Further, DEI-related job postings in 2023 have declined 44%. In November 2023, the last full month for which data was available, DEI job postings dropped 23% year over year, according to data provided by the job site Indeed.
The author also suggests the "The Star Wars wars" were indicative of a larger trend.
"Star Wars has become an important myth in our culture and challenges to mythos means challenges to cultural power and influence," he wrote. So, he observed, when recent Star Wars shows like "The Acolyte" tried to focus on more progressive or "woke" storylines, fans flipped.
"Star Wars: The Acolyte," on Disney+, was a hit with critics - getting an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score - but only a 14% audience score, the lowest rating in that category among all "Star Wars" content.
"The Acolyte" was criticized by fans after it was referred to as the "gayest" ever offering from the Star Wars universe. Creator Leslye Headland weighed in on a controversial plot in episode three, which implied that two powerful witches belonging to an all-female society used force magic to generate their female offspring.
The show was canceled after one season.
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Leslye Headland attends Disney+ and The Cinema Society host a screening of "The Acolyte" at The Whitby Hotel on June 3, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Anleitner, who admitted some of his suggestions may seem a bit "absurd," wondered if the resurgence of the rock band Creed also had something to do with the shifting times. Creed, popular in the early 2000s for hits like, "Arms Wide Open" and "Higher," reunited and found new life in 2024 with a viral resurgence of their most popular songs.
"Creed is back because people are exhausted by cynicism and constant irony," he said. "The ironic enjoyment of Creed turned into the genuine enjoyment of Creed, embracing the cringe and allowing oneself to simply enjoy the wholesome."
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"If you can learn to read culture as a student of cultural texts, you won't need political polls," Anleitner concluded.
Fox News Digital's Gabriel Hays contributed to this report.
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