What Trump's inauguration celebrations tells us about the future of culture

At U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration celebrations, he signalled to the world how he envisions the future of culture, both through his guest list (Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg) and his choice of performers (Carrie Underwood, Snoop Dogg).

Culture critics Vinson Cunningham and Tyler Foggatt join Elamin Abdelmahmoud to read the inauguration's cues and tell us what the new president's choices tell us about where the culture is heading, as well as what resistance in art might look like.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Vinson, you were watching the inauguration on and off all day yesterday. What was the vibe and your cultural read on Trump 2.0?

Vinson: Usually the thing to look at from a cultural lens is artists, musicians, stuff like that. And sure, there were people like that around: Joe Rogan, the "comedian" and podcaster, for example. Classic, like here's a celebrity who exists outside of the world of policy or even business. But interestingly, so much of the visual intrigue of yesterday was instead these tech figures, Mark Zuckerberg, who has started to wear his hair in a flooffy K-Pop fashion, or Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook of Apple. These are cultural figures, right? These are people that literally set the tone and mood of the place where some of us, regrettably, spend too much of our time. Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a doomscrolling-even-worse-hellhole than it was before. And so these were, in some sense, the "rock stars" of [the inauguration], announcing not only a new mood in the arts or the pop culture that we take in, but on a deeper level, even the information that we receive and the mechanisms through which to receive it. That was one of the more chilling aspects of what I saw yesterday — and maybe the most doom-impending for the way we receive culture.

Elamin: I think it also really matters where those cultural figures were eight years ago. When Donald Trump was last inaugurated, a lot of those institutions, of those people had different relationships with Donald Trump. As a reaction to the 2016 election, Facebook rolled out all kinds of mechanisms that were trying to say, "OK, we're going to fact-check things more. We're going to be a little more aggressive about targeting misinformation and disinformation on the platform." And so now it's a little bit jarring to see Mark Zuckerberg on the dais right behind someone like Donald Trump. So do you want to talk a little bit about the differences for you, Tyler, between this inauguration and Trump's inauguration eight years ago? What were you reading into that? 

Tyler: I've been trying to figure out whether this inauguration is the weird one or whether the first one was the weird one. When you see all of these tech bro billionaires getting on board with Trump because they obviously have something to gain from him, that makes all the sense in the world to me. And I think what is weird is that there was actually this moment in 2017 where everyone had an opportunity to jump on board or show their true colours, and they didn't, they actually held the line. I feel like the way in which Trump has become mainstream is very interesting. People don't feel as though it's as much of a risk to align themselves with him. What you see with these billionaires who were going to his inauguration is [that] it feels like kissing the ring, it feels like there's this active quid pro quo thing going on, which, as Vinson said, is really frightening. 

Corporate CEOs are no longer afraid of backlash. I feel like they still are afraid of backlash, but it's a different kind of backlash, it's what we call "woke" backlash. And so I feel like part of what's going on here, too, is just all of these people using this political moment to create a new cultural one, which is probably going to be better for their profits.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.