In late 2019, Jordan Peterson checked into rehab in Russia, crashing from public life. A fad steak-and-salt diet “the world’s most influential intellectual” had promoted to millions seems to have left him gravely sick. The cosmic battle between Peterson with his ‘toughen up’ masculine individualism and the Fab Five with their emotional solidarity was a key front in the culture war. And the new season of ‘Queer Eye’ is a victory parade.
In season five, released on Netflix this summer, the politics stops being subtle. They help a gay pastor accept himself. They study the psychological violence of Black impoverishment in three episodes with heroes bound by its chains. They show the struggle of migrant families through the eyes of a fishmonger and a pediatrician.
They even spend a week with a young climate activist, helping ensure that she and her Sunrise Movement housemates don’t burn out in their drive to stop the planet from burning. And of course they return to their old theme of toxic masculinity.
While it’s easy to criticise the show as consumerist ‘change your wardrobe, change your life’ claptrap, the underlying messages are much more positive. Again and again, men are supported to open up to those around them, and ask for help.
Where Jordan Peterson sees a world of individuals who must make themselves strong, the Fab Five understand that we rely on each other. It’s no coincidence that the show isn’t based around a single, charismatic, middle-aged White male guru, but instead, a collective. It’s not just chance that, while Peterson is only really an expert in magical thinking, the Fab Five each have their own, specific craft.
Adam Ramsay
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/queer-eye-jordan-peterson-and-the-battle-for-depressed-men/
youth class culture: Steven Threadgold 