Sydney Sweeney & the Death of the Individual
She's not a 'woke' problem or an 'anti-woke' icon. She's not a toy to be propped up or to be canceled. She's an individual and the market proves it.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown tired of this absurdity surrounding Sydney Sweeney from both her “supporters” and her detractors. It doesn’t seem to matter if we’re talking about the recent GQ interview with her by Kat Stoeffel, her new movie “Christy,” bits found on SNL, or tons of memes found on X, Facebook, and Instagram. The two warring factions are equally misguided, and frankly, I am tired of the hate-filled war clogging up my social media feeds.
On one side, you have the progressive cultural critics busy analyzing her body, her background, and her public statements with a forensic intensity, searching for any evidence of “problematic” affiliations or insufficient ideological purity. They want her to atone for her genes -- or is it jeans? On the other hand, the reactionary right-wing contingent props her up as an “anti-woke” icon, simply because she does not conform to the precise aesthetic their opponents demand.
It’s such a weird time in our lives with the whole woke/anti-woke BS. I thought we had moved past all that, but apparently, in the recent GQ interview, it stirred it all back up once again. But the obsessive, polarized reaction to Sweeney is not so much about her. It is a symptom of a sickness in our political culture: the death of individualism.
Both the collectivist left and the populist right are guilty of the same sin. They have ceased to see people as individuals; instead, they choose to reduce them down to avatars in this seemingly never-ending culture war. From my perspective, the individual is the core unit of society, the tribalistic mudslinging from the Left and the Right is unproductive, and I would suggest it is dangerous for our society, mentally and otherwise. I mean, seriously, do people really care about Sydney Sweeney’s opinion? Why would the Left want her to “apologize” for her whiteness and her objectively noted great genes (yes, genes, not jeans). And why would the Right latch on so hard to this hate, feeling the need to prop Sweeney up as this anti-woke icon? How does it affect their individual lives? All each of them have done is make her brand more valuable, no matter if you hate her or love her—she’s making bank.
Sweeney is not just an actress; she is an entrepreneur. She founded her own production company, Fifty-Fifty Films, to option books and build her own projects. She is a business owner navigating a high-risk, high-cost industry. She is the free market in action. An individual identified a demand, took risks, and is now reaping the rewards. The attempt to “cancel” her for her success or her genes, or for the alleged (and entirely irrelevant) political leanings, is a purely collectivist impulse. It seeks to punish an individual not for her own actions, but for her associations and her failure to bow to a specific tribe.
However, the “conservative” defense of Sweeney is just as flawed and, frankly, just as collectivist.
The Right champions her as a “symbol” against Hollywood wokeness. They project their own social anxieties and political desires onto her, celebrating her as a “traditional” woman who represents a backlash against modern progressive aesthetics.
They are not defending Sydney Sweeney, the individual. They are defending “Sydney Sweeney,” the icon they created to use as a weapon against their political enemies. This is the very definition of identity politics, merely from the other side of the aisle. They have also reduced her from a multi-dimensional person and savvy businesswoman to a simple totem for their tribe.