In late March, 2026, “Tiger King” star and convicted felon Joe Exotic commented the words, “it’s all corrupt girl” in response to a user asking how he was accessing social media from prison.
It’s a trivial phrase, one that sounds almost too obvious to claim any mineable substance. Living my adolescent years in the 2020s, it feels like the only world I’ve known is a volatile one — scrolling past countless atrocities is my daily routine, my mind has been conditioned to tune out ceaseless discourse. Digital convenience and isolation have unwittingly pervaded all my habits. Political and corporate corruption have dwindled to become background noise, a successful ploy of inundation to hide nefarious actions in broad daylight.
So yes, Joe Exotic, it is “all corrupt” girl. Tell me something I don’t know. But somehow, against my own better judgement, the Tiger King’s words kept festering in my mind. It’s ALL corrupt girl. We have grown to become terrified of direct confrontation. So many ostensibly critical statements are rife with placating words and pathetic attempts to play to both sides. In hopes to piss off as few people as possible, we tiptoe around the flame when we should be jumping into the fire and braving the burn. Maybe Joe Exotic did just have to lay it all out there and call it what it is. Maybe it really is all corrupt, girl.
Rapper Macklemore was removed as one of the opening acts of Ed Sheeran’s “Loop” tour following his pro-Palestinian remarks during his set at MetLife Stadium. According to Sheeran, New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium owner Robert Kraft personally called him to issue an ultimatum to drop Macklemore from following shows, allegedly rallying other “Loop” tour venue owners to do the same. The ability of stadium owners to censor the content of an artist’s show reveals a glaring infringement of artistic freedom by corporate interests. When artists don’t have full creative liberty over their work, whether it be political or not, it sets an alarming precedent in which those in power have the authority to dictate what is and is not acceptable for public dissemination. When this sanitizing, corporate filter is deemed indispensable, institutions completely control the narratives we unquestionably take as truth.
According to Sheeran’s Instagram post, the reason for removing Macklemore wasn’t the content of what was said, but rather how he “conveyed part of his message,” claiming that his tours are “about unity, joy, escapism, love, and a place for everyone to feel welcome.” When political expression is branded as inherently violent, it becomes incredibly easy to suppress. When our moral judgement is weaponized, and free speech is deemed an aberration from obviously virtuous qualities like “unity” and “love,” we must condemn it. If corporations slowly encroach on more and more artistic liberties, artists will no longer be artists, they will become tangential corporate talking heads. Art has historically been used as a vessel for political discourse, so the question of who gets to dictate which politics are acceptable and which are not is crucial. When that power is officially bestowed to specific individuals, those who wield it have complete control over anyone’s ability to express themselves. It doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on — if they do it to them, they’ll do it to you.
At the very next show following the controversy, Sheeran stated that he has resisted becoming an “activist musician” or “political commentator,” choosing to remain apolitical and center his shows around “love, not division,” around “humanity, not politics.” The line between simply expressing one’s beliefs and making a public commitment to politics has become increasingly blurred. Expressing one’s beliefs about social issues does not require the sacrificing of one’s art and a complete devotion to politics — it is possible to be both an artist and public figure who vocalizes their personal stances.
This issue of political suppression is not exclusive to the music industry. Paramount Studios has created a “blacklist” that delineates a “list of talent it will not work with” due to “overly antisemitic” rhetoric and signage on an open letter pledging to boycott Israeli film studios. The “blacklist” includes notable names such as Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo, Emma Stone, and Joaquin Phoenix. Prior to this corporate demarcation of those vocal about the war in Gaza, the industry had already taken measures to punish those who have partaken in specific forms of political activism. Actress Melissa Barrera was fired from her leading role in “Scream 7” after criticizing the killing of Palestinian civilians on social media; industry veteran Susan Sarandon has publicly discussed how opportunities have “dried up” due to her activism regarding Gaza; Sarandon and actress Hannah Einbeinder also were among 30 people arrested at a protest outside the UN against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly.
In an industry that is supposed to champion personal expression and artistic liberty, this mass excising of individuals due to political beliefs sets an alarming precedent for the regulation of artistic endeavors. If those who control the output of films, shows, and other media weaponize their power to control who is allowed in the industry, opposing political beliefs will be easily suppressed and soon extinct. Hollywood will evolve into a small group of like-minded elites who completely dictate the media the public consumes, placing the art they deem acceptable on a silver platter for us to mindlessly consume as truth.
This threat to artistic viability isn’t limited to those who engage in personal political activism — it also manifests in suppression of the content of the art itself. Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming biopic “Artificial” recounts the brief period when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was fired from, then rehired to, his position in 2023. On June 19, Amazon MGM Studios dropped its distribution rights to the film, despite both green-lighting and financing the film’s $40 million principal photography budget. This news comes four months after Amazon announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI, and though the studio never explicitly revealed why the film was dropped, an insider who saw the film at test screenings revealed that the characterization of Altman is quite unfavorable. This outcome is no coincidence. A company made a deal with another company and realized that it had to cut ties with a film that depicted their partner unfavorably. If Neon had not picked up the film’s distribution rights, it may have never seen the light of day, signaling the unnerving reality that film financiers are willing to drain $40 million to save face and protect their precious industry partnerships.
This conflict of interest between artistic freedom and commercial viability has become increasingly perilous in the wake of the prospective Warner Brothers and Paramount Skydance merger. This $111 billion merger would consolidate two of the largest media companies in the world — numerous film studios, streaming services, and major intellectual property (IP), and two major news organizations, CNN and CBS News, under one umbrella. Throughout the pursuit of both the Warner Brothers and Paramount acquisitions, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has developed close ties with the Trump administration in order to secure regulatory approval. Ellison’s billionaire father and Oracle co-founder, Larry Ellison, is also a megadonor to President Trump, having donated $45 million to Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign. After acquiring Paramount, Ellison appointed self-proclaimed “Zionist fanatic” commentator Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News, spearheading major changes to the network’s news coverage to favor the Trump administration and Israel.
We have already witnessed the ramifications of the encroachment of political agendas on the supposed free media; days after Stephen Colbert publicly criticized Paramount over a $16 million legal settlement involving Donald Trump, CBS cancelled his late-night show. Jimmy Kimmel Live! was also briefly pulled off the air and pressured to move his interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico from his normal ABC broadcast to YouTube due to regulatory pressure from the Federal Communications Commission. Not only does consolidation lead to less competition, less jobs, and fewer opportunities for funding in the entertainment industry, but this fear of censorship also severely threatens artistic integrity. With less competition and limited opportunities, artists may become forced to work within a system that actively works to compromise their work for the sake of a corporate agenda. And if they don’t comply, their work may never see the light of day.
When you start prying at the seams of corporate entanglements and the overlapping spheres of influence, the rabbit hole only grows bleaker and bleaker. Countless entertainment companies are partnering with the AI industry, many of which have ties to the Trump administration (A24 and Google DeepMind, Lionsgate and Runway, Tribeca Studios and OpenAI, etc). Meta ended professional fact-checking and began adhering to the deregulation demands of the right-wing administration, Marvel Studios has made six films with financial support from the military, the National Football League received federal advertising contracts for the military from 2011 to 2015, and now Chipotle is collabing with Palantir? The web just continues to grow and grow, and any attempt to call it out feels like a futile endeavor. Once you open Pandora’s box, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine what, if anything, has been untouched by the rapacious hands of corporate greed.
Conglomerate intermingling has long existed, and while this has historically been detrimental to workers and consumers, it is especially alarming when corporations begin infringing on industries that, in theory, champion free discourse and the production of independent art. Art has always been an agent of social change, but it can only fulfill this role when it remains independent from the entities it has the ability to criticize. When virulent industrial entanglement blights vessels of social change and artistic free expression, this newfound power to suppress all opposition creates a frightening, imminent reality.
We may never know how Joe Exotic got access to his phone in federal prison, but his illegal social media usage might have inadvertently encapsulated the current state of our world. As the web becomes more and more entrenched, blatant corruption will eventually mutate to become undetectable to our eyes — it will evolve to become so normalized and commonplace that we stop questioning it. One day, we will even stop noticing it. But we can’t just give up and accept this doomsday as inevitable.
In a world where free speech is considered a risk, everyone needs to scream until their lungs deflate. For some, that risk is still worth it. For now, it shouldbe considered worth it. But what happens if the stakes are raised, if the costs surge and we are unable to afford what should be our inalienable right? Sometime in the future, maybe sooner than we think, the risk won’t be worth it anymore. What then?
