Out of the closet and into the limelightby Nick Kenrick

“Should a grown man pretending to be a woman be allowed to use the women's restroom?" begins Ted Cruz’s latest TV ad – the vile opening gambit in his defence of North Carolina’s ‘Bathroom law’, which forces trans and non-binary people to use the toilets consistent with the sex on their birth certificate. Appalled? So was Bruce Springsteen, who cancelled his upcoming gig in the state, with others such as Ringo Starr following suit.

Aside from the predictable slurs that Springsteen is a “radical leftist” and so on, more substantive objections hold that such boycotts are at the very least unfair on fans – at worst, shallow virtue-signalling with little real world effect. To my mind, though, it is silly to claim culture is wholly separate from politics.

Now of course Born to Run is no Nineteen Eighty-Four – but nor does Springsteen exist in an apolitical vacuum any more than Hogarth or Wagner did. For him to have brought his iconic feel-good American anthems to the site of a profoundly un-American assault on individual liberty would have been entirely the wrong message at a time when North Carolina lawmakers ought to be made to feel ostracised by the nation.

It’s true that some 15,000 fans are missing out, not to mention the estimated $100,000 loss to the venue and the knock on effect for local businesses. But these fans and business owners are not an uninvolved third party; they live in a representative democracy, and are far from powerless to effect change. Whilst the loss of ‘The Boss’ – or any other artist – is in itself unlikely to prompt a change of heart, if it raises awareness of the law and provokes public pressure for repeal it will have been a deserved success. Springsteen and co. are modelling an exemplary commitment to political engagement – showing that it isn’t enough to vote every few years and wash your hands of any decisions made: that there are some issues on which silence is tacit consent, which should not be offered lightly.

Closer to home, however, last May TV presenter Paul O’Grady declared “I cannot live under this bloody government anymore” – claiming he would emigrate to Venice if the Conservatives won the election – in what he presumably envisaged as a powerful show of solidarity with those struggling to make ends meet… Though sadly he is still here, the threat does perhaps cast light on the line between civic responsibility and sanctimony.

Notwithstanding the capacity of some to produce thought-provoking social commentary, the publicising of the political opinions of the cultural elite does not seem entirely healthy. There is a difference between making a principled stand as Springsteen did – refusing to be associated with a profoundly unjust law – and wading into debates by dint of your fame. Be it Emma Thompson’s description of Britain as a “cake-filled misery-laden grey old island” as she came out for Bremain – or the recent Sunday Times front page splash that Ian Botham was ‘batting for Brexit’ – from newspaper reports to TV ‘talking heads’, we can’t seem to escape celebrities’ political opinions.

Aside from the fact that if people base their vote on June 23rd on what Nanny McPhee said we really are misery-laden. Even as someone who follows politics closely, does a degree in it, and writes articles probably boring people silly about it, sometimes I quite like to escape from it.  I’m not particularly interested in hearing the opinions of the pop culture pseudo-intelligentsia, not because their opinions don’t matter, but because they don’t inherently matter any more than anyone else’s. When the political sphere subsumes all else – when everyone becomes a political figure – you lose the benefit of politics: to leave people free to live the lives they choose without being burdened too heavily by it. 

And indeed, there’s a kind of tyranny about an on the whole fairly privileged elite, however talented, using their position for political ends – speaking with all the confidence and publicity of politicians but none of the scrutiny. When was the last time Paul O’Grady got a grilling from Paxman or Ian Botham sat down for a friendly but robust chat with Evan Davis?

This is particularly problematic in comedy, which can become a repressive, unchallengeable tool to shape popular discourse and stifle debate.  The example of the treatment of Michael Gove, so often the punchline in tired, predictable jokes, seems especially pertinent. Now I’m no Gove devotee – his legacy as Education Secretary should very much be up for debate – but the problem is, it isn’t really; the shallow popular caricature of him as the evil/incompetent Tory-sadomasochist who spent four years bent on making our exams harder endures. When you get your political commentary from Bad Education, Gove-hating becomes normalised – unthinking, an accepted punchline; any nuance is buried, either about his record or his personal story: the son of an Aberdeen fishmonger who worked his way up into a Cabinet dominated by millionaires.

The trans-rights movement deserves allies, and in Springsteen has found one infinitely better than some of the militant opponents of free speech who attend our university and others. But if we look too often to celebrities and popular culture for political leadership we will be on a slippery slope indeed.