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

Thank you! That was a strong piece of analysis.

I guess I’m used to thinking about the political themes of books and movies, but not so much those of video games because the plots and characters can be (compared the literature) a tad lacking.

And even where the plots and characters are pretty complex, the political themes seem...thin? Like in Starcraft, the main political themes I can see are 1) Rebels aren’t necessarily better than the tyrants they try to overthrow (Mengsk) and 2) Xenophobia is bad, working with other people is good (Protoss). Warcraft 3 has a similar “xenophobia is bad, cross-cultural alliances are good” theme.

Another example from the limited list of video games I’ve played much of is Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. It’s hard for me to find any major meaningful political theme in that one. (Pro-Jedi, anti-Sith doesn’t count, as neither exist in real life.) Anyone have any suggestions?

Edited by Galadriel on Nov 11th 2019 at 3:29:38 PM

Could music be considered Apolitical at times? I mean, dont get me wrong, there are LOTS and LOTS of Political songs, but then you have general stuff like songs about love and relationships, odes to a specific type of music (ie, those Heavy Metal Rules/I Love Rock/Country is cool/Hip Hop Forever type songs), not to mention (mostly in metal), fantasy songs about Dragons, Monsters, Magic, and Battles.

What, exactly, is supposed to be "political" and what isn't? And why is it being "political" a problem?

There’s a lot of underlying political messages in love songs (and love poetry). Looking at love poetry and love songs from any era can be very informative in understanding that era’s views of men, women, and their roles in relationships.

Songs about loving a musical genre are often odes to the culture that the genre flows out of.

EDIT: No one is saying that it’s a problem.

Edited by Galadriel on Nov 11th 2019 at 3:39:12 PM

Eh, that part of the question came up when I remember it being used that way.

Edited by fredhot16 on Nov 11th 2019 at 12:31:00 PM

Simple messages aren't necessarily bad ones.

Racism=bad is a lesson that beating the drum of is certainly welcome.

Mind you, sometimes it can be done horribly like Greenbook.

With messages, I tend to be of the opinion that you (by definition) can't have an unintentional message per se. A work can influence a person's thoughts and ideas in a way that the writer didn't intend, but it's still not the "message" of the work. When it's unintentional, it's just applicability or accidental implications.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Nov 11th 2019 at 12:51:46 PM

Don't "accidental implications" still count as an "unintended message"?

Accidental implications are still a message, though. This is just semantics.

Yep, that's I was thinking too. A story can say things that were not the intent of the writer, is the point here.

Edited by fredhot16 on Nov 11th 2019 at 1:20:26 AM

I am, admittedly, making a purely semantic argument.

Oh, shit yes. At its base, nearly every love song carries the message, "This is how I choose to represent my romantic and/or sexual desires towards you, the hypothetical person being sung about." Which, depending on how the singer presents themselves and their affections, can either be sweet and heartwarming or really skeevy.

That's why songs like Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines inspire so much controversy.

And it's why there's so much criticism of "Stalker Songs", music from the perspective of a lonely admirer lamenting (either to themselves or, in creepier cases, directly to the target of their affections) their unrequited attraction. Often these songs present their singer as a Dogged Nice Guy (or girl), and you can usually expect a portion of the song to be dedicated to how much the singer hates the actual boyfriend or girlfriend of their secret crush.

Stalker Songs are meant to inspire the image of passionate longing and tragic hope for a love that may never be. You're meant to sympathize with the singer. But for a lot of people, they inspire the imagery of "friends" who unexpectedly turned into complete assholes one day because they'd decided years ago (without ever consulting you) that your friendship was a "slow burn" budding romance.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 11th 2019 at 2:25:52 AM

And I’m certain there are conclusions to be drawn about our culture from the new genre of what I call “self-love songs”. There’s one that’s on the radio all the freaking time with the refrain “I’m just too good for you”, and it’s not the only recent one where the gist of the song is “I’m breaking up with you because you’re just not good enough and don’t appreciate how awesome I am”. Songs about what the singer wants in a partner (like Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine”) are a related genre. Depending on the song, they walk a line between self-empowerment and self-absorption.

We Broke Up (But I’m Totally Cool With It and I Hope Your Life Is Good Too, Really) is another recent theme that’s taken off.

Edited by Galadriel on Nov 11th 2019 at 4:41:07 AM

Honey, I'm Good is a gem. The message is, "You're coming onto me and that's neat, but I am in a committed relationship, so I must politely decline."

That's a cool message. There's not enough of that in pop music.

It Kinda makes me wonder how popular Stalker Songs are in incel circles.

Most stalker songs lack the full-on misogyny necessary for the appeal to the incel. Mind you, I imagine "Cooler than Me" has an appeal because it's a song that is angry that the girl doesn't like him.

The issue with "everything is political" is that it sound good but it feel meanless, because by that token, is easy to acused a show for not seen a thing it should, like conservative saying J.k Rowling is promoting witchcraft by having is chararters being wizard, is silly and few could take it seriously.

And granted, even if everything is political, rarely critic forget their on stuff, resulting in stuff of the whole "Pandering to SJW is bad but when is done to me is just the artist expresing themselves", that we see in games over and over again, or how the "we count fine more talent" in movie only apply when racelifting POC into white people, for some people is only natural expression of creativity

But this also run in the other way around, I have seen a lot of of people prasing raganrok for taking about colonialism and how it was bad....ignoring that a) Thor is the less connected to all this crap, not even seen is sister until the end, b) Odin managed to have a soft and nice death, going quiet into the night and later appear as sort of vision to Thor....even when it was reveled that he was a imperalistic warmonger that bury is problem and is son have to deal with that shit c) it dosent seen to remenber that Loki try to genocide a species and he try to invade and conquer the earth under the gaze our or resident mathusalean proponent thanos and for last and worst d) Valkire, an awsome asgardian who kick ass and...is an slaver, who before that was part of special squad of woman who was in service of Odin...the already establish imperialistic warmonger who get away with his shit and the first thing she does is slave the while male, something you only see in cheap pulp stories.

And yet....very few of this get adress because the movie can give less of a damn about it and from most part, netier progresive or regresive have said anything about this, is hard to said something in favor of "everything is political" when stuff like this get miss.

Eh, to be fair, with Odin, he's given a "good" death because, while he was an imperialistic warmonger, he isn't any longer. Hela is evil because she's still an imperialistic warmonger.

I will say that there's some truth to that. The big issue is that a sufficiently determined viewer can essentially find any meaning in a work that they want.

Sometimes, a critic finding political or ideological messages in a work can say more about the critic than it does the work. Often times, what it says is that the critic is a stick in the mud.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Nov 11th 2019 at 4:27:07 AM

I dont think being a warmonger, colonizer and imperalistic is something you can just stop being.

Specially because he managed to lie everyone into it, make harder to see if he repent or just put all that into the rug until he die.

Odin hasn't been an imperialist warmonger for thousands of years and was actively trying to make up for it. I think that runs into the belief of whether or not that sort of thing is a Moral Event Horizon and there's no such thing as redemption.

And I'm pretty sure Taka Waititi is referring to the USA, UK, and Australia dealing with papering over their past.

He doesn't want them to paper over his past but he doesn't think vengeance is a good idea either from what the movies mood is.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 11th 2019 at 4:30:03 AM

I mean the reason that's hard to take seriously has nothing to do with "everything is political", you can easily make an interpretation of something that isn't supported by the actual text, something conservatives do quite a bit. HP has a lot of political messages that can be read into, some pretty blatant ones especially in Deathly Hallows. I don't really get why you're bringing this up.

Also, in regards to Thor Ragnarok: something having political undertones/themes doesn't automatically mean it's well-explored. That's a totally separate discussion from whether it has those themes or not. I also thought that the colonialism themes in Ragnarok weren't as fully explored as they should have been, and I can appreciate the complaints about Odin and Valkyrie, but those are questions of audience perception and execution, not whether Ragnarok talks about colonialism or not.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 11th 2019 at 8:49:27 AM

@unknowing I was going to mention that, but: Yeah, yeah you can. There are indeed people who started wars and then became pacifists (there was a king of India once, I recall, who fits that description).

Mind you, there is a difference between spiritual repentance and practical reparations. The former is just accepting that your current path is evil, and then rejecting it in favor of a more moral path. This is technically "all it takes" for an evil person to become good.

Physical reparations would be actually trying to undo or make up for the evil the person has committed. These are not actually required for a person to turn from evil to good, though attempting to make reparations are a nigh-universal symptom of turning good.

Interestingly, Odin represents something of an unusual case in that he's actually a person capable of making reparations for things like being a conqueror. Due to his immortality and power, he actually can live long enough to slowly pay back for his crimes, resulting in the possibility of a life that is "overall good, despite going through that one phase of imperialism and warmongering".

Call it Values Dissonance, but here making reparations is obligatory for a character to believably turn from evil to good. It’s not enough to stop doing bad things or going through an epiphany, but you require to atone for your misdeeds in a meaningful manner and in proportion to your actions.

Edited by raziel365 on Nov 11th 2019 at 5:01:26 AM

I think everything is political is actually a fairly decent statement because if something is to be considered art then it has to have some sort of message in it and shouldn't be ashamed of that message. Literary criticism is based around the idea that you can read messages into work be they Pride and Prejudice for socio-economic ideas as well as feminist leanings of the period to G.I. Joe for 80s jingoism.

I think fearing political analysis and subtext for anything is basically an anti-intellectual stance.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 11th 2019 at 5:00:02 AM

@raziel365 To be fair, I would say that making reparations, while not actually the cause of turning good, it is a universal symptom. IE, a person does not necessarily turn good by doing good things, however, good people (by definition) want to do good things.