genre

In the working-class city of Commerce, where cars speed past on highways and the Citadel Outlets tower over neighborhoods, there is a steakhouse named Stevens. By day, it’s a classic and charming old restaurant where working people go for quiet, hearty meals.

But every Sunday night, the outside world disappears.

As waiters whisk about in starched button ups, couples lead each other by the hand toward the dance floor in the restaurant’s ballroom, where Stevens’ tradition of Salsa Sundays has been bringing the community together for 73 years.

At 7 p.m. every Sunday, beginner lessons start at Stevens Steakhouse.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

An eight-piece band plays brass, electric guitar, bongos and timbales, filling the room with music as dancers twirl in a dizzying array. One attendee, 29-year-old Amy Hernandez, greets a few familiar faces before she steps onto the dance floor, spinning in confident steps with a wide smile on her face.

Hernandez is part of a revival that’s been getting younger people excited about salsa music — and flocking to Stevens. She grew up watching her father dance salsa, but started diving back into the genre on her own to find comfort during the L.A. wildfires earlier this year. She credits Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” for re-sparking her interest.

“It was very healing for me,” she says of the album, which blends old-school Puerto Rican boricua samples with Latin dance and reggaeton influences for an emotional imagining of Puerto Rican identity.

For decades, Stevens has brought friends, couples, and families together for live music and dance.

(Emil Ravelo/For The Times)

When college friends recommended Stevens as an affordable place to dance, Hernandez mentioned it in passing to her dad. “He laughed and said, ‘I remember that place. I used to dance there too,’” Hernandez says.

The increasingly mainstream artists of Latin fusion genre reggaeton are returning to tradition. Along with the music of Bad Bunny, who’s headlining the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show, you can find classic salsa references in reggaeton star Rauw Alejandro’s latest album “Cosa Nuestra,” and in Colombian pop star Karol G’s multi-genre summer album “Tropicoqueta,” which will be at the center of her headlining Coachella set.

“You can feel the younger energy,” says longtime Stevens salsa instructor Jennifer Aguirre. “It makes me really happy to see a younger generation take on salsa. Because I was worried for a bit. I didn’t know how salsa is going to continue.”

Los Angeles has a unique relationship with salsa, the Afro-Caribbean dance born from Cuban mambo. In cities like Miami and New York, salsa arrived with Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants. Instead, L.A.’s salsa influence came from Golden Age Hollywood, where Latin dance in movies produced a singular, flashier Angeleno style, characterized by quick turns and theatrical movement, according to salsa historian Juliet McMains.

The 1990s were another high for the genre, when West Coast pioneers like the Vazquez brothers and their first-of-its-kind dance team Salsa Brava sparked a local dance craze. The Vazquezes introduced the “on-1” step and innovated a flashier, dramatic style of salsa in L.A. that brought crowds to competitions and congresses through the 2000s. Legendary late promoter Albert Torres founded the L.A. Salsa Congress in 1999, the first congress on the West Coast, drawing a worldwide audience for Angeleno salsa.

Opened in 1952 by Steven Filipan (and located on Stevens Place), Stevens in Commerce became a local hub for Latin music. “The interesting part was that the area wasn’t Latin at all,” says Jim Filipan, Steven’s grandson and now the third-generation owner of the restaurant. “My grandfather had a foresight that this genre would be the future.”

Jim recalls his childhood growing up in the restaurant. “We would have hundreds of people on Sundays,” he says. “The ballroom, the restaurant, everyone was dancing salsa, and it was incredible. My dad took over in the ‘70s, and I was running it with him in the ‘90s.”

Yet by the 2010s it was apparent that another genre was taking hold of the Latin dance scene: bachata, ushered in by smooth-singing New York stars like Prince Royce and Romeo Santos. Salsa quickly went from being considered hip to rather old-fashioned.

During a Stevens dance lesson, guests learn how to spin on the dance floor.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

Aguirre witnessed the genre lose interest firsthand. “It was like an immediate switch,” Aguirre says. “Salsa just wasn’t as popular anymore, and people would walk over to the other side of the restaurant to take the bachata lessons.”

The pandemic also dealt a large blow to local salsa clubs, as peers in the long-standing dance club industry fell to lower attendance rates and rising rent. And in the last year, two historic venues, the Conga Room and the Mayan, closed permanently.

Stevens almost had the same fate. The financial burdens during the pandemic made Jim consider closing for good. But he couldn’t help but consider the responsibility of his family’s legacy and the special place Stevens holds for local dancers.

“It’s very emotional for me because I have four generations in this restaurant, and now my daughter works here,” he says.

When Stevens reopened, the community came back in droves, ushering in a new era of excitement for salsa.

These days, at the beginning of every class, dance instructor Miguel “Miguelito” Aguirre announces the same rule.

“Forget about what happened today, forget about your week, forget about all the bad stuff. Leave it at the door,” Aguirre says. “It’s going to be better because we’re going to dance salsa.”

Dance instructor, Miguel Aguirre, right, mans the DJ booth alongside DJ Pechanga, another longtime employee of Stevens. Every weekend, the duo brings Latin music to the forefront of the space.

(Emil Ravelo/For The Times)

Aguirre has taught salsa at Stevens for 30 years. In many ways, the steakhouse has shaped his life. It’s where he discovered his love for teaching dance and much more.

“I started coming here in the ‘90s, sneaking in through the back door. I was a teenager, so not old enough to show my ID, but one day, Jim just said, ‘You guys cannot come in through the back anymore. You can come into the front,’” Aguirre says. “And then one day he said, ‘Hey, we are missing the instructors. They’re not coming in. Can you guys teach the class?’ And, I’m still here.”

Jennifer Aguirre, a fellow dance teacher at Stevens, is his wife. She met him one day at Stevens’ annual Halloween party.

“He asked me to join his class because they ‘needed more girls,’” Jennifer says, laughing.

Now Jennifer teaches the beginner’s class, while Miguel is on intermediate. But once 10 p.m. hits, it’s social dancing time. The whole floor comes together and a familiar community converges. If attendees are lucky, they might catch Jennifer and Miguel, a smooth-dancing duo, letting loose, stepping and dipping effortlessly.

On a recent Sunday night, the low-lighted ambience of the restaurant met the purple lights of the dance room, with people sitting all around for a peek at the moves on display. Buttery steaks and potatoes cooking in the kitchen tinged the air as the dance floor came alive with women spinning in dresses and men in shining shoes gliding to the rhythm of the music. Miguel Aguirre manned the DJ stand, asking two singles if they knew each other and encouraging them to dance.

Gregorio Sines was one of the solo dancers on the floor, swaying partners easily under Miguel’s encouragement. Years ago, his friend, who frequented Stevens, dragged Sines out to dance socials, telling him it would be the best way to meet people and open up.

As someone who began with anxiety to dance in front of others, Sines now performs in Stevens’ dance showcases. He says consistently returning to the steakhouse’s historic floor and immersing himself in the supportive community not only changed his dance game, but brought him out of his shell.

“I tell anyone, if you’re scared to dance, you just have to get out there,” Sines says. “There’s a community waiting for you.”

There’s a good chance that a horror movie will be nominated for the 2025 best picture Oscar.

And if Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” or Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein” make the cut, it will be the first time in the Academy Awards’ 97-year history that a fright film has been nominated in consecutive contests.

It’s long overdue. And if you believe part of Oscars’ purpose is to promote the industry and celebrate its achievements, there’s no better time for the academy to get over its traditional disdain for cinematic monstrosities.

As most other sectors of Hollywood’s film business look precarious — adult dramas, the traditional awards season ponies, are dropping like dead horses at the box office, while attendance for the once-mighty superhero supergenre continues to disappoint — horror has hit its highest annual gross of all time, $1.2 billion, with a good two months left to go.

“Sinners,” released in April, remains in fifth place on the domestic box office chart with $279 million. Its fellow Warner Bros. offerings “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” “Weapons” and “Final Destination: Bloodlines” occupied slots 12 through 14 as of mid-October.

Mia Goth as Elizabeth and Oscar Isaac in “Frankenstein.”

(Ken Woroner / Netflix)

“Horror has been, historically, the Rodney Dangerfield of genres,” notes Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends for global media measurement firm Comscore. “It can’t get no respect.

“But horror is very important to the industry on so many levels now,” he continues. “We have four horror movies in the top 15 this year, all of those generating over $100 million in domestic box office. And to make a significant scary horror movie, you don’t have to break the bank. Look at [‘Weapons’ filmmaker Zach Cregger’s 2022 breakout feature] ‘Barbarian’; half of that was shot in a basement.” Similarly, compare “Sinners’” $90 million price tag to “Black Panther’s” $200 million.

Horror’s popularity has gone in cycles since Universal’s run of classic monster movies in the early 1930s. But profitability has been a reliable bet more often than not — and Karloff’s “Frankenstein” and Lugosi’s “Dracula” still resonate through pop culture while most best picture winners of the same era are forgotten.

Still, it wasn’t until 1974 that “The Exorcist” received the first best picture nomination for a horror film, and ahead of the success of “The Substance” at the 2025 Oscar nominations the genre’s fortunes had only marginally improved. Indeed, many of the titles usually cited as a mark of horror’s growing foothold in awards season — “Jaws,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Black Swan,” 1991 winner “The Silence of the Lambs” — are arguably better characterized as something else entirely, or at best as hybrids. (To wit, the sole monster movie that’s won best picture, Del Toro’s 2017 “The Shape of Water,” is primarily considered a romantic fantasy.)

Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Fright films’ reputation for delivering cheap thrills to undiscerning audiences was often deserved, but there were always stellar horror films that the academy overlooked. And more recently, films such as “The Substance,” “Sinners” and Jordan Peele’s 2017 nominee “Get Out” have pierced ingrained voter prejudices against the genre by adding social commentary and undeniable aesthetic quality without compromising gory fundamentals.

“The horror genre really does seem to be attracting great directors who are immersed in it, have a real auteur point-of-view and make interesting movies that have horror elements but explore other themes as well,” notes The Envelope’s awards columnist, Glenn Whipp. “‘Sinners’ is Ryan Coogler’s vampire movie, but it’s also about the Jim Crow South and American blues music. How can you resist that if you’re an academy voter?”

And with horror packing in filmgoers like no other genre, high-profile nominations could help the Academy Awards broadcast attract the bigger ratings its stakeholders have been desperately seeking at least since “The Dark Knight” failed to make the best picture cut in 2008.

Austin Abrams in “Weapons.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

“That was the whole reason we went to 10 potential nominees,” Dergarabedian recalls. “We wanted to have more blockbuster representation at the Oscars. This may be the perfect storm. If I were an academy voter, I would vote for ‘Sinners’ and ‘Weapons.’ I don’t think that’s an overstatement, given the films that have come out this year.”

Even beyond this “perfect storm,” though, Whipp sees a sea change afoot.

“Everything’s an Oscar movie now if it’s well made,” he says. “Studios aren’t really making traditional, grown-up dramas and the academy can only nominate what’s in front of them. Horror is being produced at a rate that is greater than it used to be, and at least two of these Warner movies really landed with audiences and critics. The genre is attracting some of our top filmmakers right now, and that’s something that will trickle down to the Oscars.”

“This is not a blip,” Dergarabedian concludes. “It’s a trend that feels like it’s happened overnight but it’s been a long time coming. Back in 2017 we had our first $1-billion-plus horror movie box office. If they stop making good horror movies it might be a blip, but I think Hollywood should take this and bloody run with it.”

Beyond the Cuban diaspora, the genre known as reparto is overwhelmingly unknown. But on the streets of Havana and Hialeah, Miami, reparto is inescapable, pulsing from balconies and portable speakers on the beach.

Born in Cuba’s working-class neighborhoods — known colloquially as repartos — this hyperkinetic fusion of reggaetón, timba and Afro-Cuban rhythms has become the island’s score. In the mid-2000s, artists like Chocolate MC and Elvis Manuel built the genre’s sound on distorted synth stabs, shouted call-and-response hooks, and the distinct Cuban clave beat that makes your body move before your brain can even catch up.

It’s also become a platform for youth navigating scarcity, surveillance and dreams of escaping poverty. The lyrics, characteristically and unapologetically obscene, reflect the realities of life in marginalized communities. But alongside its rhythmic bravado, reparto’s explicit language often veers into the dehumanizing and misogynistic.

The music centers on women, but more often than not, as objects: the perra to conquer, the diabla to tame, the culo to catalog in explicit detail. And it’s no surprise: The genre’s blunt portrayal of women mirrors the machismo deeply embedded in everyday Cuban life.

It’s a refrain you’re bound to hear in any and every nightclub: “¿Donde están las mujeres?” But the next time 10 reparteros link up for a track, they probably won’t call a woman. Within a genre that revolves so heavily around their bodies, women’s voices still remain rare.

So, ¿dónde están las mujeres? Or, where are the women making reparto?

“Chocolate is the king, but who is the queen?” says Seidy Carrera, known artistically as Seidy La Niña. “There’s a space that needs to be filled with women. There’s no f—ing women!”

At the onset of reparto, early reparteras like Melissa and Claudia slipped brief female cameos into club anthems. More than a decade later, due to Cuba’s only recent, and still extremely limited, internet access, these artists and their collaborations have a seemingly untraceable digital footprint. Still, most playlists orbit male voices, and collaborations rarely invite women to the booth: “When reparteros come together on a track, they never call a woman,” she says.

Carrera, 32, was born in the reparto El Cotorro and raised in Miami since she was 6. The self-proclaimed queen of reparto, the paradox defines her career: She fights for space in a scene whose appeal lies in her raw neighborhood realism, but detractors question her authenticity as a gringa, or as they would call her, yuma.

“I feel resistance every day, every single day,” she says. In response, she reclaims the discriminatory language used against her; onstage, she chants “más perra que bonita,” flipping the curse-word from insult to empowerment.

“It’s empowering to say, I’m more perra than pretty. To me, being a perra is being a woman who’s exclusive, who makes her own money. In my case, … nobody opened the door for me, nobody gave me a hand.”

For Havana-based singer-composer Melanie Santiler, 24, the double standard hits her before she can even sing her first note: “I feel that I have to do twice as well. I have to put in double the thought, double the effort, double the talent, always having something more to say,” she says.

“It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting being a woman, having to get up and tell yourself, damn, I have to look pretty and put together. I spent my whole life in school with an onion bun because I didn’t want to do my hair,” Santiler says and laughs, messy bun flopping around her face.

Reaching almost 5 million YouTube views on her 2025 viral collab, “Todo se Supera” with Velito el Bufón, she’s broken into the reparto space as one of the genre’s most distinctive voices. Beside this rise, she’s faced a newfound pressure to dress a way she normally wouldn’t, a beauty standard her masculine counterparts don’t face.

Aliaisys Alvarez Hernández — better known as Ozunaje — says she doesn’t face the same criticism in the urban Cuban music scene, likely due to her sexuality and more masculine appearance. “Reparto is a genre for men, that’s how I see it,” she says. “I dress like a man, I practically live my life like a man, so what I write resembles what men are already saying. That also gave me an impulse, where I feel like more feminine artists, they have to work harder.”

A former rhythmic gymnast from La Habana, Hernández, 23, stumbled into music when friends recorded her singing a demo of “Cosas del Amor” in her living room. Someone uploaded the video, it went viral, and suddenly, she had a career. Since that start, Hernández refuses to only be compared with other reparteras.

Her goal has always been to be measured against men, since “that’s who people actually listen to.” Dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, paired with a deep, raspy delivery, helps her lyrics resonate with locals without the extra hurdle of hyper-sexualized expectations.

Hernández’s androgynous wardrobe and open queerness bring another layer of potential discrimination, but despite the rampant homophobia persistent in present-day Cuba, she doesn’t feel much resistance. “The worst word they throw at me is tortillera, but it doesn’t affect me,” she says, adding, “People like my style, they like that I dress like a guy. Everybody tells me, you have tremendo flow, I love your aguaje, so I haven’t faced any bullying. Never.”

Misogynistic currents in reparto mirror those in early reggaetón, reflecting the average street machismo. The genre’s marginal roots complicate blanket condemnations, since the same raunchy lyrics often encode critiques of class exclusion. Still, reaching bigger stages will require editing the most gratuitous slurs, if only to broaden the music’s export potential. At least, Ozunaje thinks so.

“Reparto came from people who were poor, who had nothing, who were desperate to get out. Nobody imagined it would get this big. Now it’s reaching the whole world, so the vocabulary has to evolve,” she says.

Santiler echoes this critique. “It’s become really repetitive. I think right now, everyone is talking about the same thing. It’s been really easy. Facilista,” she says, using the Spanish term for taking the easy way out. Santiler loves reparto’s swing, but calls most of it objectifying, pointing to Bad Bunny’s “Andrea” and “Neverita,” along with C. Tangana’s “El Madrileño,” as proof that urban music can expand beyond bedroom conquests.

“The street already says these things, and reparto just writes it. It’s an image of what’s happening. But I grew up with other types of music and other types of references, so I’d like to expand beyond that, to make something fresh.”

Santiler adds that the basis of reparto, both in her gratitude and her criticism, comes from pride.

“I love Cuba, I love my country. The current generation of Cuba doesn’t reject their identity — they’re doing the opposite. They want to create a new culture, to create a new movement, and they want the world to know Cuba again,” she says.

It’s the year for horror and “The Conjuring: Last Rites” was no exception. Its opening weekend tipped the genre over $1 billion in earnings for this year’s domestic box office.

The horror sequel raked in $83 million domestically in 3,802 theaters, making it the third-highest domestic opening for a horror movie, behind “It” and “It: Chapter Two.” It’s now the largest horror opening internationally, with $104 million in earnings outside of North American theaters.

The film also broke records for the “Conjuring” universe, securing the biggest opening weekend in the franchise. The movie’s performance is a testament to the franchise’s success in producing classic horror movies since the first film released in 2013, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for the data firm Comscore.

“Audiences know when they go in to see ‘The Conjuring,’ the minute this scary, ominous music comes up with the Warner’s logo, you know you’re in for a wild ride,” Dergarabedian said.

The film has received mixed reviews from critics, carrying a 55% on Rotten Tomatoes and a “B” CinemaScore.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return to the big screen in the ninth installment of “The Conjuring” as the paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who attempt to vanquish a demon from a family’s home.

“Last Rites” also handed Warner Bros. Pictures yet another opening weekend box office win, becoming the distributor’s eighth No. 1 debut win this year and the studio’s seventh film in a row to debut with more than $40 million domestically.

The movie’s opening weekend numbers are nearly double that of other successful horror movies this year, including Zach Cregger’s August sleeper hit “Weapons,” “Final Destination: Bloodlines” and “Sinners” — all of which are Warner Bros. releases.

“It just shows how arguably more than any other genre, horror has stood the test of time,” Dergarabedian said. “That’s because there’s nothing quite like seeing a horror movie in a darkened room full of strangers.”

The horror genre last crossed the $1-billion mark in 2023. Meeting that threshold this early in the year is unprecedented, Dergarabedian said, “because usually you need a full year of horror movie box office to bank that much cash.”

Upcoming horror films like “Black Phone 2” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” are likely to boost that number, Dergarabedian said.

“Last Rites” blew past other titles at the box office this weekend. Disney’s filmed version of “Hamilton” landed in second place with $10 million domestically. The film was “perfect counterprogramming” to “Last Rights,” Dergarabedian said.

The rest of the top spots were taken by several holdover titles. “Weapons” secured third place during its fifth weekend, bringing in $5.4 million in earnings in North American theaters. The movie’s debut partner, “Freakier Friday,” took fourth place with $3.8 million.

The crime caper “Caught Stealing,” which debuted last weekend, rounded out the top five with $3.2 million in domestic earnings.

Luna writes for the Associated Press.

It’s been a big year for música Mexicana. Corridos tumbados are still dominating the global charts, with a handful of established stars leading the charge — among them Fuerza Regida, Peso Pluma, Tito Double P, Junior H and genre newcomer Netón Vega.

But amid this flurry of new releases, you might have missed an album or two worthy of recognition. Here are five música Mexicana records you should check out.

Chino Pacas, “Cristian”

Chino Pacas has staked his claim to the spotlight following the release of his sophomore album, “Cristian,” which came out earlier this month. At just 18 years old, he’s amassed over 17 million monthly Spotify listeners, largely due to his uniquely gritty vocals that pair well with the genre’s thunderous instrumentation.

Now with “Cristian,” Chino Pacas looks to stand out among other corridos tumbados stars by exploring a range of sounds, including traditional banda rhythms in “No Es Un Juego” (ft. Banda Otro Pedo) and the hip hop-infused “GTO” (ft. Santa Fe Klan). (The latter’s music video is filmed in some iconic Boyle Heights locations, including Mexican deli Los Cinco Puntos and El Mercado’s Virgin Mary shrine.) Pacas also picks up the pace with his rendition of Tropicalísimo Apache’s 1993 song “Ojitos Mentirosos,” a song currently trending on TikTok; Pacas’ version has risen considerably on Mexico’s Top 50 chart on Spotify.

Armenta, “Portate Bien”

After producing some of Fuerza Regida’s most iconic hits, Armenta seized the opportunity to release his own debut album, “Portate Bien,” in early August. At its core, the project captures the depths of love and heartache across 15 melancholic tracks, carried by the Mexican singer’s crisp and bold vocals.

Sonically, the LP is a blend of corridos tumbados with the occasional touch of reggaeton and harmonious pop, which shines brightest in tracks like “Ansiedad” and “AbrilSinTi” (ft. Alex Garcia). The crooner also plays with traditional bolero rhythms for his last track “Bolerito” (ft. Manuel Medrano). Already a growing hit for the singer-songwriter is the love-struck ballad “Pensando y Pensando,” which deals with ruminating thoughts of love and loss.

Kane Rodriguez, “La Batuta”

Like many before him in the genre, newcomer Kane Rodriguez first debuted his signature raspy vocals on TikTok, where he would upload acoustic covers of popular corridos. Now the Houston native is using the same platform to promote “La Batuta,” his first album of all-original songs, which was released in April.

In a genre obsessed with flashy gimmicks, Rodriguez sticks to the traditional corrido sound across 13 tracks, setting himself apart from the crowd with his raw vocals and prickly guitar style. Like most of his contemporaries, the 22-year-old explores themes of illicit activity, touting a risqué lifestyle in popular numbers like “La Batuta” and “Morro Mañoso.” In the fierce standout track “Se Volvieron Locos,” he lambastes haters for not believing in him.

Clave Especial, “Mija No Te Asustes”

Clave Especial released their highly-anticipated debut studio album, “Mija No Te Asustes,” this past February — and the 16 hard-hitting tracks were well worth the wait. Since forming in 2021, the trio has transformed their tempered banda sound into a more boisterous affair, likely drawing inspiration from other acts on their label, Street Mob Records, led by Fuerza Regida frontman, Jesús Ortiz Paz. The LP remained on the Billboard 200 chart for 11 weeks, peaking at No. 91.

Clave Especial and Fuerza Regida join forces in their brassy mobster-core singles “Como Capo” and “No Pasa Nada.” The possessive love song “Tu Tu Tu,” which features vocalist Edgardo Nuñez, reached the top of the Regional Mexican Airplay chart just this week — marking a first for the band from Salinas, Calif. Clave Especial is set to kick off their first U.S. headlining tour this fall.

Chuy Montana, “No Fue Suerte”

In 2024, the rising corridos bélicos singer Chuy Montana was murdered in Tijuana after singing songs that authorities said “displeased his aggressor.” It’s a tragic fate that has met other legendary Mexican singers, including the narcocorrido trailblazer Chalino Sanchez in 1992. In June, Street Mob Records released Montana’s posthumous debut album, “No Fue Suerte,” after finishing his songs in close collaboration with his family.

Using his rugged vocal delivery, Montana peppers his lyrics with amusing vulgarities. His most popular song, “Qué Bendición,” tells tales of his trials and tribulations, and his mother’s blessing that follows him wherever he goes — although some songs sound haunting now, in light of Montana’s passing. Among those songs is the accordion-riddled track “Perdón Mamá” featuring Juanpa Salazar, in which Montana foreshadows his tragic death and delivers a heartbreaking, preemptive apology to his grieving mother.

Last week, Warner Bros Pictures released a new reboot of the Superman film series. The movie soared to the top of the box office and grossed an estimated $122m in the United States in its opening weekend. Though the industry is celebrating the film’s early box office totals, they are well below the earnings of comparable blockbusters from a decade ago. For example, in its opening weekend in 2016, Warner Bros’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice reaped a healthy $166m ($224m when adjusted for inflation).

Indeed, over the past few years, revenues from such films have steadily fallen, and the new Superman film is not an exception. In the 2010s, superhero movies regularly reaped more than $500m worldwide in box office totals. In recent years, far fewer have reached that high watermark – a fact that is causing unease in the industry. Last year, Hollywood trade magazine Variety warned that the genre was experiencing an “unprecedented box office drought”.

What made superhero movies fall off? According to Hollywood bigwigs, the reason is “superhero fatigue”, as Superman director James Gunn put it. Disney CEO Bob Iger opined that the prolific output of superhero movies “diluted [the audience’s] focus and attention”.

But their narrative — that consumers are simply getting “fatigued” with the genre — is reductive. As with all artistic genres, there are reasons why some rise or fall in popularity. Those reasons are intimately tied to politics.

Superhero boom and decline

Superhero fiction is a uniquely US genre, arguably invented in 1938 with the publication of the first Superman comic book. The first superhero comic adaptation was released in 1941 under the title Adventures of Captain Marvel. The genre was popular among Americans for decades, but it really took off following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Those attacks punctured the relative tranquillity (in the US, at least) of the post-Cold War era and put the US propaganda machine into overdrive. Americans were fed a cartoonish portrait of what a “supervillain” looked like, which fit easily into superhero movie narratives. These supervillains were — like America’s purported enemies — bent on global domination and opposed to liberalism and US hegemony.

The Pentagon played a prominent role in shaping propagandistic narratives in popular culture. As a longtime partner of Hollywood, the Department of Defense has long had the practice of loaning out military equipment to filmmakers in exchange for script approval rights. In the post-9/11 era, it had a say in the scripts of a number of superhero blockbusters, including Iron Man and Captain America. Captain Marvel was even used as a recruitment tool for pilots by the US air force.

As a result, many superhero movies depict the US military and superheroes working hand-in-hand to defeat supervillainy, jointly pushing a vision of Pax Americana: a world where the dominant global power is the US.

The protagonists are often portrayed as defenders of “American ideals” like democracy, inclusivity, and justice. Take someone like Captain America, who originated as a literal embodiment of the US cultural victory over fascism. Other popular superheroes of the past 20 years, like Black Panther, embodied liberal America’s multicultural, pluralistic ideals.

But in recent years, the political reality those heroes are meant to uphold has begun to fracture. A September 2024 poll asked Americans whether they agreed with the statement “my country’s leader should have total, unchecked authority”. An astonishing 57.4 percent of US respondents agreed.

Another poll conducted a year earlier found that 45 percent of Americans “point to people seeing racial discrimination where it really doesn’t exist as the larger issue”.

It increasingly seems that America as a liberal, pluralistic society — the way it is depicted in superhero films — is no longer a universal aspiration for many Americans.

There is also growing scepticism towards America’s moral authority and superpower standing in the world.

A 2024 poll from Fox News found that 62 percent of American voters described the US as “on the decline”. Only 26 percent thought it was rising. A 2023 poll from Pew Research — a year before Donald Trump was re-elected — reported that 58 percent of those polled said that “life in America is worse today than it was 50 years ago”.

Social cohesion collapsing

While public perceptions gradually changed in the post-9/11 period, there were events that accelerated this shift.

The precipitous drop in superhero movie box office totals began in 2020. Why that year? This was when the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated already growing societal divisions.

The sense of a cohesive national identity fully shattered with the onset of this unprecedented public health emergency. Widespread mistrust of the government’s ability to manage the crisis — coupled with a deeply individualistic streak in Americans that precluded any understanding of social obligations that would prevent mass death, such as social distancing or lockdown measures — fostered a furious and splintered American body politic.

The singular vision of liberal American righteousness suggested by superhero films could not resonate amid this factional political landscape.

A year later came the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The decision to pull out upset the notion of the US as a “heroic” intervener — a sort of global superman – heavily projected after 9/11. In contrast to Iraq, Afghanistan was long presented as a potential “success story”, or as The New York Times put it in 2005: the “American-led intervention that could wind up actually making people’s lives better”.

Of course, we all know how that turned out: the US entered Afghanistan in 2001 and exited in 2021, having killed more than 100,000 people and spent $2.3 trillion to pause Taliban rule for 20 years.

With its military power failing abroad and tensions rising at home, the US did not seem like a place that anyone — superhero or mortal — believed in any more. Inevitably, the domestic ills ignored by the political elites came to the fore. Real wages had been in decline for 30 years, while income inequality had been increasing, and infrastructure – decaying.

Americans on both left and right began to question the fitness of the US political system, long portrayed as the best in the world.

Many on the left now believe that corporate interests have so thoroughly captured the Democratic Party that they have ceased fighting for real wealth redistribution or social programmes, and conspire against progressive candidates who do believe in these things. Meanwhile, the American right has grown more venal, racist and authoritarian — the result of failing to understand the true reasons behind the country’s socioeconomic crises.

In depicting America as, ultimately, a force for good, the superhero movie genre does not speak to either of these political lines. Hollywood elites do not seem to understand this, however.

Gunn, who directed the new Superman movie, described the feature as a metaphor for American values. “Superman is the story of America,” Gunn said in an interview with The Times of London. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

His words spurred a furious reaction from the American right. “We don’t go to the movie theatre to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us,” Kellyanne Conway, former senior counsellor to President Trump, said on Fox News.

The recent American tendency to hyper-politicise film and slot all movies into either “woke” or “anti-woke” categories does not bode well for these kinds of tentpole blockbusters that, in days of yore, would attract audiences of all political stripes.

Superhero movies are an optimistic as well as a nationalistic genre — their primary message is that America, and the liberal order in general, are worth defending. But Americans no longer seem optimistic about the future, nor particularly attached to these ideological values. Fewer Americans seem to even believe in liberal pillars like democracy and multiculturalism — the kinds of things that superheroes typically fight for.

If we cannot seem to agree on what American values even are, it is understandable that we cannot agree on what kind of hero would embody the national spirit. Given these dispiriting political conditions, perhaps it is not super-surprising that Americans are not flocking to the superhero genre like they once did.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.