DO POLITICAL OR PERSONAL AGENDAS HAVE A PLACE IN ART AND ENTERTAINMENT?

With the announcement from Disney in which they have admitted some parts of their company have lost the purpose of being a company and have decided to pursue political agendas at the cost of profitability. The way more, politically active projects such as Captain Marvel and the new Star Wars Trilogy have indeed been a wake-up call for the upper management and the investors. This month, I would like to recap the events that have led to the point where the most successful science-fiction franchise has been deemed “disappointing” in terms of both box office and audience. Ultimately leads to the question: Do political or personal agendas have a place in art and entertainment?

As academia had been infiltrated by Marxist thought, it was only a matter of time before we would eventually see graduates who would apply that thought to achieve its ideals at any cost to themselves or the company they work for. As such graduates grew in number and started occupying more and more important positions in the entertainment industry such as critics, moviemakers, bloggers, etc. We see a common culture of promoting what we now call “Social Justice” at all costs. This had first come to the light during the summer of 2015 during the “Gamergate” incident where the people at the side of the game journalists and the perpetrator of the incident started calling themselves “Social Justice Warriors.” In time within some sections of the entertainment industry pushing the social agenda became the norm and movies, shows, and games that promoted these ideals began to receive large critical praise. This has of course caught the attention of some of the executives in high places.

 Social Justice Warriors of course had also led to a counterculture that media could never really pin down and had taken to calling everyone in that group, no matter the reason or political standing “Alt-right.” In hindsight, this certainly did not help the political division in the country we still see today. Partly due to the fact that people who occupied influential spots in the media, those who did not fully agree with the social justice ideas, had to remain silent to keep their jobs after all we had seen that, in the path to social justice, every method was fair. Including calls for violence, harassment, doxing, and worse. In case you are wondering this is where the #cancel culture got its roots. People who did not have a large enough following did lose their jobs and their livelihoods because of these attacks and had to silence themselves. Another side, of course, was not much better with the same harassment, calls for violence, etc. There was a moderate side to both groups that wanted this to stop but as the “us vs them” mentality grew, that became impossible.

The projects with the fundamental thought that they are “Politics first” ideas began to make their debut. From the controversial Gillette commercial to Star Wars switching directors for mostly no other reason than a  political stance, we have seen the result of this great experiment in the media. We then saw that of course in the review websites. Where critics praise the product with perfect 10/10 scores and public scores… not so much. As the gap between those two groups grew further and further. The audience began posting a slogan whenever they had seen a project of this type. First coined by Jeremy Habley, “Get Woke, Go Broke” they himself had been assaulted and had to leave some of the communities he was deeply passionate about which he leveraged to make a living. This slogan very much encapsulated this counterculture.

At the same time, it is naturally a noble goal to try to make the world a better place in any way we can and throughout history, we have seen agendas and politics driving art and society, for good or ill, towards the future. A person’s politics, personality,y, and ideas are inseparable from who they are. If those are gone, then we do not see the real naked art created by the person but a hollow shell of creation. That is the natural state of things hence why the burden of proof lies with the people who wish to take certain pieces of the creator out of the product.  Just looking at the most recent news articles and people on the streets shows there are indeed people asking for the things that were considered unthinkable such as police defunding are being discussed and are being implemented with very rational reasoning behind it as well. Can this perhaps mean the social justice warriors did have a point, perhaps a point not so extreme as they had but a point, nonetheless?

Now that we have covered both sides of this question that has been floating around for the past 20 years in the digital entertainment sector (and longer in philosophy). Where should we draw the line? The is, as usual, is blurred. If the artist wants to make a political piece, that is fine. We had good and bad examples in so many formats but looking at all the failed pieces of media we can see a common pattern and lessons of what not to do.

Do not put your message above the core quality of your product. If the race of your actors is the most exciting thing about your product. Strongly reconsider.

Do not try to preach or change people’s minds, all you will do is push the audience away.

Do not try to add your agenda world views into an established piece of media focus on the original message of it and then go from there (Doctor Who comes to mind).

Do not insult your fans. They are the reason you still can create something.

Learn to separate the criticism of the media and criticism of your politics and take them both.

Harassment is never okay. This goes for both fans and creators.

I think if we learn how to properly create and experience works and realize that our beliefs are inseparable from what we see and create, we, as a species, can explore topics we could not before and no longer have one aspect of our lives be hijacked by another.