Works Are Political, But Not How You Think

Many believe that political polarization is at an all-time high and some believe that it's time for entertainment to stop being so darn political.

Both the critics and the defenders of political themes in books, movies, music and TV shows fail to understand some key points. The critics fail to understand that much of what has passed off for entertainment has been political in nature, but the defenders of entertainment fail to understand how political themes were handled.

For those who think entertainment shouldn't be political, it's been happening longer than you think. In books, you have 1984, Huckleberry Finn and The Hunger Games. In movies, you have Planet of the Apes and a few recent films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In music, Creedence Clearwater Revival slipped plenty of political themes into their songs, ditto for John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen. Comic books have explored them, too, as evidenced by The Watchmen and the Civil War storyline in Marvel Comics.

But for those who point out that entertainment has been political, one needs to examine how political themes were inserted into the works. Movies used allegories to make a point. Songs were subtle with their political themes, in which you would have to pay close attention to the lyrics to notice them. Books that explored such themes used alternative realities and speculated about the future to illustrate points. Most of all, those who explored political themes in such works, while some were more obvious than others, didn't beat people over the head with them.

Sticking with books, what really makes a political theme work is when you have complexity, where your protagonist may not always be in the right but is kept relatable, where the antagonist has a valid point but his or her methods are questionable, and where you don't provide the reader an easy answer to the problems faced.

Those who do the best job at exploring political themes in their works don't make it easy for people who read or watch the products to determine who is right or wrong -- though they may find themselves sympathizing more with a particular character. And they are the type of works in which you go back and read or view them again, you might find yourself asking if the person you sided with the first time is really the person you should have sided with.

I think the real problem is that those who don't want forms of entertainment becoming political is because they are exposed to politics so much through 24-7 news media and social media, so they want to escape that. Of course, for those people, they are probably better off cutting down 24-7 news media and social media consumption instead of insisting that nobody producing a book, song or movie can ever touch upon a political theme.

And the problem with those who defend political themes in entertainment is they forget that the best way to make a political theme work is to not engage in absolutes, where one side is declared right in every way and the other side is wrong in every way. Instead, it requires making both sides people that one can empathize with, but might not necessarily sympathize with -- and though readers or viewers might sympathize with the protagonist, there can be times in which readers or viewers question whether the protagonist is doing the right thing. For those who think otherwise, they are the types that are more interested in being told what they want to hear, rather than engaging in introspection.

In the coming weeks, I'll touch upon a few works that explored political themes, how the creators pulled them off and why that's the way one should explore such a theme that way -- and why, if you examine them closely, you are forced to ask yourself difficult questions rather than get easy answers.