We’ve seen this playbook before.
Hollywood went all-in on behalf of illegal immigration over the past decade. Documentaries. Feature films. TV show plots. The messaging proved consistent and one-sided.
We need open borders, even if they never said those words aloud.
Now, Hollywood is tag-teaming more specifically against ICE and any attempt to arrest illegal immigrants. And if what’s past is prologue, reality will prove superior to Hollywood fiction.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
First, a quick review of how aggressively Tinsel Town promoted the open-border madness under Democrats.
Take Fox’s hit series “Party of Five.” The show centered on a tight-knit family surviving after the loss of their parents. The 2020 reboot on Freeform followed a similar storyline, except the parents in question were deported to Mexico.
And, yes, the messaging was as heavy as possible. Newsbusters dubbed the pilot episode pure “parody,” while the saga got a jump on the current anti-ICE mania.
HBO uncorked not one but two open-borders documentaries in 2019, and the titles spoke volumes — “Torn Apart: Separated at the Border” and “Liberty: Mother of Exiles.”
More examples? The final season of “Orange Is the New Black” pushed family separation plot lines, while the villain in the third “Descendants” film for kids tried to ban immigration.
Selena Gomez used her clout to promote the docuseries “Living Undocumented.”
Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Netflix
Subtle? Hardly. And what happened next?
Donald Trump got re-elected by promising to slam the southern border shut. And when he did just that, by sheer coincidence, America celebrated its lowest national murder rate in more than a century.
Hollywood’s all-powerful messaging machine had failed. So why not try it again, but this time directly targeting ICE?
It started with “One Battle After Another,” a cinematic love letter to violent revolutionaries. Leonardo DiCaprio played a stoner rebel cosplaying as an anti-ICE warrior. His fiery gal pal (Teyana Taylor) was the real deal, using any means necessary to free illegal immigrants and attack U.S. officials.
Films take much longer than TV shows to produce and release, but writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson somehow grasped his industry’s zeitgeist with Kreskin-like accuracy.
Just days ago, Hollywood gave it the Best Picture Oscar.
Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for HBO Max
TV show productions happen faster, allowing small screen scribes to indoctrinate on demand. That allowed HBO’s hit series “The Pitt” to pick up the “OBAA” propaganda baton. A second season story arc follows an illegal immigrant being treated for a shoulder injury in the show’s Pittsburgh emergency room.
The ICE agents are portrayed as aggressive and unfeeling, while patients and workers alike recoil at their presence.
Source: HBO Max/The Pitt
Then, according to The Hollywood Reporter, things get personal:
…at the end of the episode, nurse Jesse (Ned Brower) gets detained for stepping in to protect the patient when the ICE agents get too aggressive.
Over at CBS, the “Matlock” reboot concocted its own anti-ICE narrative. An episode dubbed “Collateral,” during the show’s second season, finds Kathy Bates’ character defending a client detained by ICE agents. That bleeds into a larger story with both the client and his family trying to stay in the country despite their illegal status.
The government’s “deal” is cruel, including a demand that the client pay up to $6 million in restitution with zero path to citizenship. Boo! Hiss!
Meanwhile, the just-released second season of “Daredevil: Born Again” tackles ICE in a less heavy-handed, but equally negative fashion. The villainous Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio), now the Big Apple’s mayor, begins rounding up citizens without due process. That’s been the Left’s battle cry against ICE arrests across the nation.
Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images
D’Onofrio’s character is an obvious stand-in for President Donald Trump, or at least the cartoonish version Hollywood holds dear.
The show’s creative team has been coy about any real-world comparisons, but that may be a case of artists trying not to steamroll a show that hasn’t lit up the ratings world upon its belated return.
“Daredevil: Born Again” co-star Michael Gandolfini didn’t follow that advice. He praised his show for speaking, wait for it, truth to power.
We do a lot of safe things in film now. To do something risky that says something is rare.
More shows will likely follow. These stories aren’t isolated incidents. Late-night TV hosts routinely rage against ICE efforts in their monologues.
NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has done the same via its Weekend Update faux news desk.
“I get that ICE agents are people, allegedly, and they have a job to do. But at some point while you’re pepper-spraying old ladies or shooting at a nurse, do you ever stop to ask yourself, ‘Are we d*cks?’”
Stars have been raging against all things ICE from their favorite bully pulpits — awards season stages. “White Lotus” alum Natasha Rothwell expressed her feelings at the recent Spirit Awards:
I’m gonna go to the prompter, but I just want to say, ‘F*** ICE.’
“ICE Out” buttons have been the fashion accessory of the season at these events, and stars have used their red carpet remarks to blast any attempt to uphold the law.
Just don’t expect any shows reflecting heinous illegal immigrant murders, like the deaths of Laken Riley or Sheridan Gorman. Nor will a star or starlet name-drop either victim as they collect their new shiny trophies.
Their names won’t be found on any chic Hollywood buttons, either.
The facts behind their tragic deaths are chilling and undeniable, but they’re inconvenient to the narrative in play. And Hollywood is all about narratives, especially the fictional ones.
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Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic, and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. Follow him at HollywoodInToto.com.
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