Message movies.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I've rarely had something political I wanted to share here that also lined up with the monthly theme, but here's a good opportunity to do just that, as I am someone who participates in the visual arts and the mingling between politics and fiction often hits one of my creative pet-peeves.

My own general opinion of politics and fiction is that it's a tricky mixture at best. There are some rather significant traps and temptations that are difficult to avoid, especially if a director or author or screenwriter is passionately wedded to a specific political message. First of all, it takes attention away from the traditional elements of good storytelling that makes you care about what's going on in the first place. Things like character development, for example. Then there's always the distinct dumbing down that occurs not intentionally, but because so much attention is being focused on the message, that one inadvertently gets the impression that the director must think very little of the audience if he has to underline, capitalize, bold, and italicize HIS THOUGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS. If it's to be even attempted, it takes a great deal of subtlety not often demonstrated in practice.

But it is interesting how people can react on the audience end of the equation too. Some will excuse a lot of poor film-making because the message is one they agree with, and others will pan a legitimately well-done work that may involve politics as a background element, but manages to put the story and the characters first (I recall one critic lambasting "The Incredibles" for including a scene where a plane explodes, thereby exploiting 9/11 for the purposes of a pro-war agenda, in his view. Seriously.) Then there was a conservative reaction to another Pixar film: Wall-E as being too preachy on the environment issue (for the record, I thought on that score it was fairly well-balanced with the idea that technology and development isn't the enemy of the former, with the exception of a brief, on-the-nose moment later in the film. It's a balance that a movie like Cameron's "Avatar" glosses over entirely, but I digress).

Then there are people who genuinely appreciate good storytelling and loathe the bad regardless of perceived or explicit political content. Enders_shadow and I enjoyed a bit of Serenity quote banter yesterday and the two of us are miles apart politically, despite the fact that Serenity is often hailed by libertarians for its overarching ideas on politics. Personally, I really dig movies like Serenity because they have great stories to tell with great characters. The fact that I perceive a political backdrop I agree with is a nice bonus, but not necessary for the primary purpose of fiction: to transport the audience while entertaining them.

I like to think of the gang here at T_P as being in that latter group, but I'll put the question out there to everyone anyway. Has anyone here caught themselves having their opinion of a particular work of fiction, be it a movie, book, or television show, swayed for or against it by the author's insistence on having the message be the theme?

Also, what films have you walked out of thinking less about how well you were entertained, and more about how you got politically lectured? How did you react?

Comments

[superhyattbeam.livejournal.com]

I notice this a lot with gay romance movies, where the focus seems to be less on creating interesting characters and narratives and more on pushing the "It's okay to be gay and homophobia is bad!" message. Which is, speaking as a queer person, a valid point in itself, but sometimes just comes off as preaching to the choir.

I generally do enjoy those movies nonetheless. I just wish we were at a point in our society where that particular anvil doesn't need to be dropped anymore.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I thought that "As Good As It Gets" did an excellent job of just focusing on the humanity of three disparate main characters, one of whom just happened to be gay, and that's coming from a straight, practicing Roman Catholic.

I think in general, the more a storyteller focuses on broad human traits, it makes everyone in the film more approachable as actual, believable people, and getting that down is half the battle.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I think it reaches a point where the "it's OK to be gay!" message may start causing damage. It's great that gay characters are finally appearing in mainstream film and television, and I can see that there will continue to need to be conscious decisions to focus on positive homosexuality, having a character scream out "I'm gay and that's great!" when they've been asked how they like their steak done does more to perpetuate the notion of gay as other.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Given the level of homophobia out there, I'd say there is a real need for the okay to be gay theme, sadly. The choir needs to sign louder and in unison.

That said, I agree with your comment.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

It can be done poorly and it can be done well. Avatar is an example of a movie so wrapped up in its message that it forgets that it should be telling a story (oh, and all of the LOOK AT THIS 3D SHIT! through it destroyed a lot of it too). On the flipside, however, think of something like Born On The Fourth Of July, an overtly political film that sells its message through it's story, through it's character development, although that's possibly why it worked.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do leave open the possibility that it can be worked out, it's just one extra (and often significant) hurdle to overcome when writing believably.

Avatar was cotton candy. As the flavor of that treat fades, there is no substance one can recall later. I have a hard time remembering anything that really stood out, but I must admit I saw it on the small screen first, during a free month of premium cable channels.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

It was the first movie I ever saw in 3D, and it had the same effect :P Mind you, so did 3D. I only watch movies 2D and then complain about how they've destroyed the framing/colouration/lighting/etc to make it look good in 3D. So many movies are just 3D gimmicks, and those that aren't have entire scenes thrown in that are a 3D gimmick that look horrible in 3D (the final Harry Potter is a big villain here).

What about Terminator? Did the "don't trust the robots" message get through there? I guess probably not, because I always watch that and think "robots are cool!" :P

(I actually think it's a film about the hubris of humanity and that message gets through awesomely without ruining the narrative)

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

I for one am getting tired of speculative fiction where nonhumans such as elves and aliens are used as metaphors for some facet of humanity. You know, Na'Vi are just blue Native americans in disguise. Orcs are actually a smellier form of Nazi. Et cetera.

I want to start seeing more creativity in nonhumans, i.e. I want the nonhumans I'm reading about or watching on a screen to actually be nonhuman instead of just some human ideology/culture/political party in disguise. I want to see intelligent species who view things in a way no human could. Like the Yautja in Predator, for example.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I never thought of Orcs (the ones in Lord of the Rings) as being any particular kind of evil army. The Na'vi were definitely a direct lift.

I've been giving this some thought lately. If I were tackling my own fantasy series, how would I distinguish it? I found myself having to check my thought process every time I started using a cliche', and it happened often.

Otherwise, I thought at least visually the aliens from District 9 were new. On that note, that movie was able to be a fairly obvious parallel with apartheid without losing entertainment value.

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

It's easier than you think. Got a nonhuman sentient species? Start with its biology and environment. A race of underearth cave dwellers who rely on echolocation instead of sight is going to see things completely different than us humans, for example. Then go with what they want and why do they want it. Us humans seem to crave sex, comfort, and protection of offspring. A nonhuman might not have all of these priorities to the same degree. what about a race that doesn't want comfort as much as we do? How would they view us after they learned of our ways?

If you can create a species that logically says "What? These humans actually want me to skip lunch! with the same intensity that a human would say, "These knorfs actually want me to abandon a my children!" then you're on to something inhuman.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I never thought of Orcs (the ones in Lord of the Rings) as being any particular kind of evil army.

And neither did Tolkien. Orcs represented modern machinery and technology for weapons of war, and Orcs go pretty far back into Tolkien's writings anyway, long before the Nazis.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They weren't. Orcs were the WWI mass conscript armies. Tolkien's writings have an odd sympathy for them and his Orcs aren't quite say, Warhammer 40K Orks.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

That's actually really hard to pull of.

I've been trying like helll to make the AIs in my story not-human-like and I'm still not sure if I've been succesful.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I thought the Orcs were the Huns invading the presumably civilized Europe or something like that.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Agreed, this is one reason why my own stories have based the civilization-concept on Imperial China and Austria-Hungary as opposed to the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany, which is what due to Asimov and Lucas most sci-fi Empires wind up. The alienness of different species to each other, let alone to humans and what humans turn into after a long and protracted occupation by an alien society that's never going to leave form plot points. Too, the whole conceit that "the Empire is 40,000 years old" winds up massively deconstructed in the backstory as the Empire means all things and nothing due to having been completely different societies at different points in time.

The basis on China and Osterreich-Ungarn permits some similarities that'd make it publishable but enable at the same time the development, gradually but effectively, of a broader alienness at the heart of the unfolding narrative. While the initial viewpoint aliens are bipedal tetrapods walking on two legs and having two arms is the beginning and end of their resemblance to humans...

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

I think that science fiction series are particularly bad for this. For example, Battlestar Galactica had a few episodes that were supposed to draw parallels to the conflict in Iraq. It made a dog's breakfast of story arc, plot, characters, plausible storytelling and coherence, and it wasn't very entertaining. It was, however, hailed as a bold move to ... blah blah blah, truth to power, etc.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

I recall one critic lambasting "The Incredibles" for including a scene where a plane explodes, thereby exploiting 9/11 for the purposes of a pro-war agenda, in his view.

I remember someone trying to equate the last Star Wars episode "The Revenge of the Sith" to G.W. Bush's military and foreign policy even though it was written years before Bush every ran for the presidency.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

My only quibble with this is that I refuse to believe George Lucas didn't write those movies two days before shooting after a self-induced, mescaline fueled fever dream.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Honestly, Star Wars is a cheap knockoff of Dune and Flash Gordon so expecting high-quality stories or plots there is not necessarily a good thing.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

Seems like the best politically-charged movies are those that everyone can reasonably interpret as supporting their own political ideas. Those are the works of fiction that stick around for the long-haul (you might actually argue this about Serenity / Firefly too).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Film in the right hands can be perhaps the most powerful medium to be spun into political power. I personally, however, have extremely high and stringent standards for certain types of movie, and propaganda movies are one of those types. To use Avatar for an example that particular ham-handed analogy with Amazonian Aborigines had me wanting the colonel to go Phil Sheridan on the asses of the smurfcat aborigines.

Good fiction is timeless and so it will have relevance on a number of different fronts and in different fashions. A lot of attempts to merge politics and fiction wind up ham-handed and to me the kind of movie where Joel and the Bots can barely make it tolerable.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

I get the preached to feeling in most movies about religion.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Ever seen Jesus De Montreal?

i'm an atheist, and i like the movie. but i can promise you, it's not religion bashing, and it's not heavy-handed religion promoting either.

there's a message, but not all messages are preaching.

The Passion of the Christ

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

After seeing The Passion of the Christ I was convinced by the movie maker's convictions that Christianity is full of sick fucks. This message was enhanced by the way that Christians in the audience responded to the film in glowing terms. By omitting the Gospel scenes where Jesus claims to be provoking the authorities into persecuting him, the film convinced me that Mel Gibson is anti-Semitic as he only shows the side of Jewish reaction. It was an extraordinarily convincing film.

Re: The Passion of the Christ

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

It's the movie that stopped me claiming Mel as an Australian :P