Last week (the days prior to this being written), Jimmy Kimmel’s show was taken off the air. This is noteworthy because it was a transparent attempt by the owners of the ABC network to appease the current US government, and Trump in particular who has long held a grudge against the late-night host. Kimmel made some innocuous comments about the death of Charlie Kirk, nothing that could be, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as making light of the far-right provocateur/gun-rights activist ‘s death. Despite that, adding to the growing unreality of an already difficult-to-believe week, the administration claimed that this was just one more “liberal” celebrating Kirk’s death and threaten to revoke ABC’s broacasting license if the network didn’t do something about Kimmel. ABC buckled as expected since it is clear that no corporation is going to stand up to Trump, and immediately the public began to mobilize. Calls for a boycott sprang up from several different corners of the internet and various celebrities also began to cry fowl. After all, this is a blatantly unconstitutional act and as clear-cut a violation of our First Amendment rights as any other thing that’s happened in the last two years since Biden’s government began cracking down on protests against the genocide in Palestine. What made it different is that this was something that couldn’t be written off. There was no way to describe this as being anti-semetic somehow, no way for people to open up a harmful “we should debate the rights/existence of this minority” discussion, no way for ANY kind of spin since Kimmel’s remarks were public record and the Trump administration has repeatedly proven that they will lash out at anyone who pisses them off for no reason at all.

So now tons of people are cancelling their Disney Plus subscriptions (which also aligns them with the BDS Boycott, though not for the reasons given by the BDS movement), cancelling vacations to Disney theme parks, and actually talking about what is going on with the current adminstration. This event has been a lightning rod for the growing disapproval and frustration of the general US public who have long objected to what the Trump administration is doing but couldn’t respond to because there was no leader to rally behind and no direction action to be taken. Ideally, this would illustrate the public’s intentions and desire to the Democrats who’d finally become the opposition party they need to be, but I’m not holding my breath on that one. I doubt we’ll get more than another strongly-worded letter out of Chuck Schumer and a bunch fo milquetoast statements from everyone else who is a supposed leader of the Democratic party. That would require them to do some kind of work, maybe even stick their necks out a little bit, and it has been clear for a long time now that they’re not going to do that unless it somehow starts to focus test well (and it never will because of how focus tests work).

Arriving the same day that my coworkers asked me what they should be doing to resist the current government (I told them that this boycott is an excellent first step and that I’m not going to give them more unless they’re willing to clear this incredibly small hurdle since not doing that would prove they’re unwilling to suffer even a tiny deprivation in service to making their will known) was a new cartoon directed by Dana Terrace of Owl House fame. This video, the pilot of a new show called Knights of Guinevere (KoG), is the first major work by Terrace (and two of the writers from Owl House, Zach Marcus and John Bailey Owen) to be released since the unfortunately swift end of the beloved Disney show, and it appears to be made in direct response to their experiences there. Not only are there visual pastiches of common Disney figures, but the entire show takes aim at what Disney is perhaps best known for: “experience”-based theme parks. From the very opening full of in-world line notes straight out of a Disney Executive’s feedback to the last scene of the twenty-six minute pilot, Knights of Guinevere takes a square aim at what this new show’s creators fought against while they worked for Disney. As of finishing this the Monday after the pilot was released on YouTube, it has almost nine million views.

There is a growing sense of resentment in the public. Not only are the various corners of the internet that I inhabit speaking about the corruption of the current government, the creative ruination brought about by the corporatization of the creative process, and the need for change in our current socio-economic system, but now parts of the broader public are as well. Now, people are looking for something that speaks to them about the ruin left in the wake of corporations and governments, and the Knights of Guinevere just happened to release at the perfect time to take advantage of that growing mood. So many of us, the chronically online and the chronically unaware, have watched beloved show after beloved show get cancelled ahead of its time not because of a lack of popularity but because corporate interests decided it wasn’t serving them enough or because a hugely vocal but numerically tiny group of conversative reactionaries screamed about it.

It has been interesting to see these two moments play out in parallel: the death of Charlie Kirk that has been polticized and publicized like he was some famous man-of-the-people type figure and the public’s turn away from the most famous and powerful entertainment corporation in history. Kirk’s death is constantly painted as some thing of national concern, like he was a figure that mattered to millions of people rather than the small-time alt-right, pro-gun-death figure that almost no one knew existed, while the same news media is fighting against the drastic and sweeping rejection of Disney letting it’s ABC subsidiary cancel Jimmy Kimmel’s show despite only a relatively small number of people watching it. Reality is better reflected by the various YouTube view counts of KoG and of the live-streamed memorial for Kirk that barely featured the man (which has yet to break out of the five-digit range as of finishing this post on the twenty-second of September). No one gives a shit about him. So many people give a shit about good storytelling and sticking it to a corporation more concerned with kowtowing than actually doing what they’re supposedly known for doing.

I don’t think this is going to result in some kind of sweeping change. I don’t think the revolution or whatever you think it will be is going to happen this week, this month, or even this year. I just don’t feel like I’m living in a different reality from most of the general public anymore. I don’t think things are great or anything even remotely close to good, but I have seen the first glimmers that the US at large is beginning to stir to action. There’s no telling if it will push past this one instance, if the lumbering beast can be brought to bear against more than the most clear-cut and inexcusable violations of the First Amendment, but I hope that it will serve to remind people that not only can we make change if we work together, but that things can change for the better if only we put aside our own bullshit long enough to unite. We have more in common with each other than we will ever have in common with the corporate elites, moneyed class, and political “leaders” that have vastly underestimated how ready the public is willing to fall in line with a worthy cause.