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Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

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This thread's purpose is to discuss politics in works of fiction/media. Please do not use this thread to talk about politics or media in isolation from each other.

REMINDER: US politics is a banned topic. Mentioning or alluding to it will get you thumped or suspended

     Original OP 
I felt we needed a place to discuss this because a lot of us love discussing the politics behind stories both intended or unintended. We all love discussing it and its nice to have a place to discuss it in these charged times.

I was thinking of asking what people thought were the most interesting post-election Trump related media.

The Good Fight on CBS Access devoted their entire second season to dealing with the subject.

Edited by kory on Feb 26th 2025 at 5:46:51 AM

Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#28951: Sep 27th 2021 at 3:35:41 PM

[up] If 300 were more historically accurate we'd probably be rooting for the Persians.

HeyMikey Since: Jul, 2015
#28952: Sep 27th 2021 at 4:07:40 PM

Whatever the historical context may be for the Spartans (and the Spartans were incredible bastards from a historical sense, beyond the Eugenics, the child abuse, possible pederasty, the use of slavery and the rampant abuse and murder of said slaves), from the framing of the movie, it was meant to appeal to certain parts of American audiences, so even if freedom in historical times means sovereignty, they used freedom for it's emotional appeal to Americans and what we mean it to be. The fact that they used boy lovers as an insult to Athenians, despite historical evidence that they also engaged in the practice definitely frames that the story was trying to appeal to modern audience sense of machismo, playing up the horrid training practices as a fantastical ideal of bringing about true men, when they're kind of okay in warfare compared to other major Greek city-states and their priorities on military might seem vastly overstated in actual history. A good deal of alt-righters hold up this fantasy of Sparta as something worth emulating, rather than the barbarism it should be.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#28953: Sep 27th 2021 at 4:20:21 PM

Alt-righters also conveniently fail to acknowledge that Sparta was actually rather progressive for the day when it came to women's rights. Athens by contrast was shit on this front even for its time.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Gaiazun Since: Jul, 2020
#28954: Sep 27th 2021 at 5:41:35 PM

[up] note that this was only true for the minority of Spartite women, if you were one of the 90% of women in Sparta who were part of the slave class you had no rights and were under constant risk of abuse.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#28955: Sep 27th 2021 at 5:43:14 PM

And that's still more progressive compared to Athens on this front, relatively speaking. In Athens, even the non-slave women didn't get jack shit. Yes, Athens had slavery too. It had the largest slave population in fact.

Edited by M84 on Sep 27th 2021 at 8:44:07 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#28956: Sep 27th 2021 at 5:55:11 PM

[up] Largest in terms of shear numbers, I think a higher percentage of Sparta's population was made up of slaves when compared to Athens.

Did the Persian empire still have slavery then or did they outlaw it?

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#28957: Sep 27th 2021 at 5:59:11 PM

Slavery in Iran didn't get abolished until 1929.

Disgusted, but not surprised
KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#28958: Sep 27th 2021 at 6:06:56 PM

Yeah, 300 is a adaptation of a comicbook written for Frank Miller himself, its very obviously idealizing a lot of horrid behaviours.

Watch me destroying my country
Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#28959: Sep 27th 2021 at 6:20:56 PM

The Persian Empire actually did outlaw slavery at one point, don't recall all the details about that.

Leviticus 19:34
eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#28960: Sep 27th 2021 at 6:38:03 PM

The Achaemenid Empire did have slavery, but it was a rather different institution from its Greek equivalent. Remember that it wasn't a single country ruled by fiat so much as a cluster of countries that the imperial throne had to constantly bargain with. They didn't write down their history, so for most parts we're forced to rely on administrative texts (like trade receipts) and Greek sources like Herodotos to figure out the extent of slavery in the empire.

Some of its constituent nations, like Babylon, definitely had slave trading going on. Others might have had different laws regulating it. Overall, it seems that the number of slaves never came close to supplanting free labour, let alone turning it into a slave-majority society like Sparta; some practices that were formerly legal in these regions, like debt slavery, were actually outlawed when Kourosh conquered them and founded the empire.

But. Slavery is still slavery and still provably there. On a more centralised basis, the Achaemenid throne would often deport prisoners of war (like the Egyptians who rebelled against Darayavaush, a few years before his invasion of Greece) to far-flung corners of the empire for forced labour. This is something that does tend to get whitewashed in some revisionist readings, especially after the Mohammad Reza Shah regime tried to promote the Kourosh Charter as "the world's first declaration of human rights" back in the '60s.

More generally, though, every subject of the empire was technically a "slave" (bandaka) to the King of Kings and liable to be called up for labour and military service. Some of these subjects, surprise, were Greeks! There were Ionian Greeks on the west coast of Anatolia who lived under Persian rule; turned out that they were mostly happy enough to do that provided you leave them alone and have assemblies and stuff whenever you're not asking them for tributes. Said Ionians did end up rebelling against the Persians with financial support from the Athenians (which was Darayavaush's casus belli for the invasion of Greece), but even then there were more Greek states that stayed neutral or sided with the Persians during their invasion than sided with the anti-Persian coalition.

The key thing here, though, is that the relationship between the king and his subjects depended on bargaining, and was nowhere nearly as autocratic as the movie and comic made it out to be. This was something that got lost in translation with Greek sources, who interpreted the label bandaka as an equivalent of their own doulos (or the many, many other words the Greeks had for slaves), giving off the impression that the whole Achaemenid Empire was literally made up of slaves rather than people who had legal obligations to the state (that said state often struggled to enforce).

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 27th 2021 at 6:42:15 AM

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#28961: Sep 27th 2021 at 6:40:05 PM

NVM

Edited by M84 on Sep 27th 2021 at 9:40:28 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#28962: Sep 27th 2021 at 6:45:42 PM

Persian Empire practiced only identured servitude rather than outright slavery per see. Usually people would fall in debt (or be captured in battle), work for free for a varying period to their debtor and then "earn their freedom" through it (or the same process but with prisoners of war). It was quite different from Spartan slavery, which even had a literal secret police for slave-hunting.

The idea of the Persian Empire was this massive slave empire was more of a Greek perception with the idea that Persians were all slaves to their Emperor.

[nja]

Edited by Gaon on Sep 27th 2021 at 6:45:59 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#28963: Sep 27th 2021 at 6:47:50 PM

Spartan slavery was unusual in that it was state-based — the slaves all belonged to Sparta itself. Not many individual Spartans owned slaves of their own.

In Athens by contrast just about every free Athenian household had at least one slave.

Disgusted, but not surprised
eagleoftheninth Shop all day, greed is free from a dreamed portrait, imperfect Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Shop all day, greed is free
#28964: Sep 27th 2021 at 6:59:32 PM

Anyhow, we actually have a History Thread over at Yack Fest before this veers too far off media discussion. But I'd be careful about taking the slave-hunting krypteia as a fact: pretty much our only source on it is Plutarch, who lived much later in Roman times (when Sparta had been reduced to a minor curiosity for tourists, like an ancient equivalent of the Tiger King zoo) and had to insist that he got his facts straight from Aristotle (who only mentioned it in very vague terms IIRC).

If you want a Sparta-themed work whose author actually did the research, I can't recommend Kieron Gillen's Three enough.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 27th 2021 at 7:01:04 AM

One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.
DrunkenNordmann from Exile Since: May, 2015
#28965: Sep 27th 2021 at 9:20:37 PM

To understand 300 one must really only know one thing: Frank Miller really hates Middle Easterners.

Though it's not like he invented the whole badass myth surrounding the Spartans Thermopylae - that basically goes back all the way to ancient Greece - other city-states had their fair share of Spartaboos who'd bang on about how much cooler Sparta was compared to everyone else.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 27th 2021 at 6:20:59 PM

We learn from history that we do not learn from history
KazuyaProta Shin Megami Tensei IV from A Industrial Farm Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
Shin Megami Tensei IV
#28966: Sep 27th 2021 at 10:25:22 PM

Bad ideas meet bad ideas in a multiplicative effort

Watch me destroying my country
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#28967: Sep 28th 2021 at 1:37:19 AM

[up][up]And for what I get is probably because spartan have a permanent army unlike city state at the time and look more stable than many many polis in greece, granted that was mantain by sheer terror but perpective and all that.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
TaranUlas from Look within the Labyrinth within the Warp. There Since: Nov, 2018 Relationship Status: You cannot grasp the true form
#28968: Sep 28th 2021 at 2:41:31 AM

The main reason really has a lot more to do with the main writers that give us information about Sparta being primarily Athenians who were disgruntled with their city state's democracy allowing commoners to vote and thus would use Sparta as a means to critique Athens. It also doesn't help that these writers primarily get their information from the Spartiates (Basically the elites of Sparta. They made up barely 10% of the population of Sparta at their greatest) who went through the Agoge (Which is not a school, but really more of an indoctrination program) and did well. It would be like trying to get a picture of America from interviewing solely Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

Also my only comment on the Slavery talk is that anyone who says that Athens and Sparta are equal about Slavery really doesn't know a lot about Spartan slavery. It's so bad even other Greek Writers note that being a Spartan slave or Helot was extremely terrible even in comparison to other slaves. For starters, Helots made up 85% of the population in Sparta. By contrast, Athens had 1/3 of their population as Slaves. In addition, the Helots were worked far harder than the Athenian slaves because the Spartiates outright did not work. We have writings of Spartiate men and women making fun of the very idea of working a job or hobby so Helots had to do pretty much everything for them while also caring for themselves. Then there's the murder and rape of the Helots. 300 depicts Leonidas and his fellow Agoge members having to hunt down a wolf as part of their final test. The truth is that they actually hunted down Helot men as a means of indoctrination and terror. They would stalk them at night and murder them. In addition, The Ephors (the weird mutant guys. They were not actually mutants irl, but rather Spartiate men elected to the position every year or so. They also weren't priests and such, but rather more the equivalent of Magistrates) would declare war on the Helots every year. During this war, a Spartiate could murder a Helot and not be held liable for murder. Killing a slave in Athens at any time was still murder and would be legally charged as such. Helot women would get raped so often that an entire underclass of people had to be named and legally defined in the form of the Nothoi (Spartan men who were bastards born to Helot women.)

This is a picture comparing the population percentages of Sparta, Athens, and Rome. Take this information as you will.

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/population_breakdown_in_ancient_states1.jpg

Start of match* I did not come here to be Queen of the Ashes. Five minutes later* I AM FIRE I AM DEATH
jakobitis Doctor of Doctorates from Somewhere, somewhen Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Doctor of Doctorates
#28969: Sep 28th 2021 at 3:08:29 AM

To understand 300 one must really only know one thing: Frank Miller really hates Middle Easterners.

In fairness he has disavowed some of his comments and ideas since. It doesn't make it all okay and the views are still pretty awful but he does seem to acknowledge as much, for what it's worth.

"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."
Forenperser Foreign Troper from Germany Since: Mar, 2012
Foreign Troper
#28970: Sep 28th 2021 at 4:52:57 AM

Frank Miller has a lot of psychological issues, in my opinion.

Aside from being obviously a cancer patient.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#28971: Sep 28th 2021 at 4:55:30 AM

I always got the impression his politics were already iffy but being a witness to 9/11 was very traumatic for him and turned up all his awful views significantly.

raziel365 Anka Aquila from South of the Far West (Veteran) Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
Anka Aquila
#28972: Sep 28th 2021 at 8:38:35 AM

Yeah, if he was already on the edge of the fence with The Dark Knight Returns, 9/11 is what sent him spiraling down. Case in point, Holy Terror.

Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.
windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#28973: Sep 29th 2021 at 12:05:14 AM

I found this article on copaganda in manga and anime though it also looks at it in US media. One of the series it criticizes is My Hero Academia.

By far the most frustrating of the Shonen Jump titles is My Hero Academia, an international juggernaut that’s helped bring anime and manga into mainstream culture in the past few years. In this series, heroes are basically cops with fewer regulations and greater celebrity status. In its early chapters, MHA boldly questions the systems in its society and suggests that there might be better solutions to its problems than this hyper-capitalistic version of policing.

However, it has yet to give any kind of overt answer to these questions in its more than 300 chapter run. Instead, MHA focuses on young people entering into this policing system who fully believe in it and think that they can solve its problems by being more virtuous than other people. Their sense of right and wrong comes directly from the propaganda generated in this world, so essentially My Hero Academia’s leads believe they can solve any problem by being better cops than anyone else; even when many of those problems stem from that system.

My Hero Academia’s answer to the social and political questions it raises seems to be that “good” cops who believe in the institution that empowers them can fix any injustice. This overtly plays into the propaganda that bad cops are a rarity and that changing regulations to crack down on them will hurt the majority of supposedly virtuous cops. In the time the series saves by no longer casting a critical eye on policing systems, it finds the time to redeem a hero that physically and emotionally abused his spouse and children, which is particularly worrisome as cops are more likely to commit and face less repercussions for domestic abuse than the general population in the US.

Granted, I would site this as much more troubling than My Hero Academia:

Things aren’t much better outside of the shounen genre, thanks to titles like My Boy in Blue. In this shoujo manga, a sixteen-year-old high school girl falls in love with, starts dating, and marries an adult man who is also a police officer. The policeman lead is made out to be a paragon of moral virtue, which both acts as free PR for police and somehow justifies his intimate relationship with a child. This central conceit is especially gross since police sexual misconduct, including the sexual assault of minors, is a considerable and underreported issue.

For those more familiar with anime and manga as well as more versed in Japan's police system,

Kaiseror Since: Jul, 2016
#28974: Sep 29th 2021 at 4:39:27 AM

[up] I don't think they were paying that much attention to MHA since the recent chapters have been delving into societies flaws and the heroes part to play in it.

MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#28975: Sep 29th 2021 at 5:08:27 AM

Question, which type of hared do you think is "better" as showing how even a villain is "egalitarian" hatred or more focused bigotry?


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