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

Acording to some youtube coments:

"yeah while the animation was worse Caillou was rarely a brat in season 4 and onward "

"Until Caillou went back to becoming a brat in Caillou’s New Adventures because he became a Gary Stu in season 4-5. "

So.....meh......

I have no horse in this race, but imagine being the kind of person who calls a toddler in a series aimed at toddlers a Gary Stu.

I remember when I was a little kid, some classmates and I were looking at a poster of The Phantom Menace, which I had yet to see. My classmates insisted that Darth Maul was the hero and Qui-Gonn and Obi-Wan were villains. For a while I actually believed them until I saw the movie.

To this day I have no idea if they were just pulling my leg or genuinely believed Darth Maul was a hero.

Sounds like a kid logic thing. Like, no one in the group has seen the movie, but they want to sound cool so one person makes something up and then the whole group suddenly "knows" it's the truth. Most people do this to some degree, it's just really funny how fast it works with kids and how quickly the instigator can forget that they made it up.

Anti-War Novelist, Tokyo University Professor Discuss Conflicting Morals In Gundam

Yeah. You can only be aware of the fact that some people will take what you've made differently from how you intended.

You can counter it a little, but not much beyond that. People will do what they want to do.

Zeon, whose leader literally admired Hitler, had cool robots. This led to fans totally ignoring their genocidal actions and painting them as tragic and sympathetic, with a noble cause. This even extends to official materials like unicorn. The Federation was nowhere near their level no matter which way you slice it.

You know, I have never actually learned what the war in the original Gundam was about. The two series I watched on TV a long time ago, 08th MS Team and War in the Pocket, didn't dwell on it.

I think it was an independence war, and then Zeon dropped a fucking colony on Earth, so...

It started with them gassing a colony and dropping it on Earth.

That was the very first thing they did in the war.

Oh, yeah. Couldn't remember if it was an early move or the opening one. So, in the end, whatever they wanted became irrelevant given the mounting pile of atrocities.

Or the Zabis wanted to take over and the rest of Zeon followed them, leading to more wars later on.

The independence thing was bullshit. They were already independent.

Okay, so from what I'm reading, Zeon was a group of space colonies that declared their independence from the Earth Federation, which is comprised of Earth and the remaining majority of the space colonies. This led to tension but no actual conflict. Then some time later Zeon abruptly attacks the Federation, using poison gas and nuclear weapons indiscriminately to wipe out the other colonies, then takes one of these dead colonies and uses it as a giant missile to destroy the Federation military headquarters on Earth. It misses and destroys Sydney instead. At this point billions of innocents are dead.

Am I right so far?

Yeah, and the previous leader of Zeon, Zeon Zum Deikum died and was replaced by Degwin Zabi.

I don't know much about Zeon Zum's own politics aside from the Newtype thing and going into space, but I wonder if they wanted him to be kind of "even if he was in charge, it probably wouldn't be that great anyway" leader.

And apparently the destruction was so bad the Earth Federation almost surrendered after that first week of hell.

Another thing I've noticed is that the Zeon elites tend to like, well, elites. Very glamorous and ballroom dress with a glass of wine not far from hand. The Federation folks just look like modern military.

So between almost succeeding and dressing to succeed, I can see how Zeon would attract people who admire them for being "brilliant" and "cultured."

Zeon is pretty openly monarchistic, aristocratic, and classist compared to the Federation, who are admittedly very illiberal but a republic nonetheless. It's a magnet for people prone to the Original Position Fallacy.

One of the interesting things about Gundam from a media analysis perspective is that it's commonly seen as an illustration of people missing the point and enjoying it as an action show while ignoring the anti-war themes (see: the "wow cool robot" meme◊ with the "war is bad" message literally going over the audience's head). The thing about that is that Gundam on the whole largely does not condemn war itself — its protagonists regularly grapple with the morality of their situation and come to the conclusion that it's their moral duty to continue prosecuting the war until the people responsible are defeated.

In short: Gundam doesn't think war is bad, Gundam thinks fascists are bad, and it is a moral imperative to go to war if that's what's necessary to stop them.

Here's a good Twitter thread on the subject. It takes a look at the subject by considering two characters from the original Mobile Suit Gundam series, during the portion of the plot where the protagonists dock in the neutral Side 6 group of space colonies. One of them is the son of a distinguished family who deliberately fled to Side 6 to avoid the war and is shown to be cowardly and rather pathetic. The other is a greedy industrialist who hopes to profit by selling to both sides of the war, but is proven short-sighted when when Zeon ruins his business by destroying his orbital dockyard.

The upshot is twofold. One, only the wealthy and privileged even have the choice of whether they want to go to war; regular people are forced into it when the war shows up at their doorstep, whether they like it or not. Two, refraining from using violence in not a virtue when it means that others will suffer in your place.

I really like the way the last tweet in the thread puts it, so I'm just going to quote it directly: "So yes. Gundam says war is awful... But there battles that must be fought. There are kinds of peace that are worse than war."

Edited by NativeJovian on Aug 18th 2022 at 11:13:04 AM

Boy, does THAT message feel relevant right now.

Granted, I will said that often just let to "when it come to facist, war against them is moral, good and yeah kinda sexy" It remind something I saw about how WWII have become the only good war for the US to talk about because it have everything people "Liked": clear good guys shooting clear bad guys and the.....well, let said it "perfect victim"(the jew and other in the holocaust).

I wouldn't say it's the "only good war" for the US. Though to be fair:

• A lot of sci-fi and fantasy is WWII Recycled In Space. In fact, it's too a point where I get the feeling there's a tendency to WWII as an epic fantasy story recycled on Earth.

• The other most common war for Americans to talk about positively is The American Revolution, naturally. Though that one doesn't lend itself as easily to a Black-and-White Morality narrative.
  • Indeed, Star Wars is kind of a combination of World War II and The American Revolution.

• The two other wars that come to mind are The Korean War and The Civil War. The former everyone forgets about, the latter everyone likes to pretend is more morally ambiguous than it really is.

I remember bringing this up a while ago, but I have noticed that portrayals of the ACW have been swinging in the opposite direction over the past couple of decades. The Union probably isn't portrayed as a bastion of goodness, but the Confederacy is unambiguously the bad guys.

It's correct that portraying the Confederacy as evil is more common nowadays. But that's only because we're starting to get a clue.

The issue with the civil war is not the war per se but that union also have slavery and after the war they try to patch thing up with the formed confederate with less thant stellar resuts.

But with I will said WWII is best for US because nobody cant argue the axis needed a good and proper beating specially as two of his member(japan and germany) where so damn evil you can shoot them with easy and nobody will blink.

I will said the issue of a just war in fiction is it can become a "good and glorious war" with ease.

About the biggest mainstream depiction of the Korean War is MASH, which nowadays is kind of seen as one of those things that was big 50 years ago but the younger generation doesn't really remember. And it wasn't a particularly positive depiction of the war either.

Of course, I'd find it insulting to depict a war where American forces practically flattened North Korea, destroyed much of its infrastructure, and killed untold amounts of civilian lives in a horrific bombing campaign (not to mention the *other* war crimes) as a "good" war. It'd be like something portraying the Vietnam War or the Iraq War in a positive light.

See, while on the one hand that's true, on the other hand there's still the matter of how some media in the past had pervaded the myth of the "Clean Wehrmacht" (which, do keep in mind, had been promoted by many ex-Nazis in many high places after WWII) or valorized people like Erwin Rommel and the organizers of Operation Valkyrie. Which is an entirely huge kettle of fish in itself. It's the WWII equivalent to the Lost Cause myth.

Edited by Diana1969 on Aug 19th 2022 at 3:27:38 AM

Granted that is probably because....well is north korea, who have become so evil that they cross the line to become actually hilarious in their very petty pretentious of being anything else that the king of a sandcastle.

In the case of rommel and werhmach I will said is also a need to find someone in the good damn nazi goverment who wasnt a fucking piece of shit some way of another, I call this the "narrative need" of sorts. Granted there is also a racist element here, we have easier time trying to find the secret good guys of germany, we hardly do the same for...I dont know, jihadist, soviets or what-have-you.