The Politics of Pop-Culture

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while, and I think it’s long past time.

I first started thinking about this topic around the release of Avengers: Endgame. It definitely wasn’t a perfect movie, but it was a pretty solid one. Somewhere in some comment chain, some genius was complaining about Brie Larsen’s depiction of Carol Danvers. Now, I definitely think they could have done more with Danvers in Endgame, but I think she’s a far cry from being a ‘stale,’ ‘flat’ character. Anyways, this commenter was ranting about how much he disliked her solo film, and how it was about “how horrible men are and how they oppress women and how we all need to be compassionate to illegal immigrants,” accusing the movie of being “purely political propaganda.” Ignoring how skewed the perspective of this critique is (and it is very, very skewed), I was mostly just surprised by the central principle. So surprised, in fact, that I screenshotted the comment and saved it until now. Because I fundamentally don’t understand the core argument of this comment, which is that a movie with a political agenda is inherently bad. What’s wrong with making a statement? What’s wrong with making a movie that talks about female oppression? What’s wrong with making a movie that encourages men to reflect on themselves? What on earth is wrong with telling people we should be compassionate to other human beings? What exactly is so wrong with a movie being political?

I’ve been mulling over this question with increased frequency. The frequency has increased because it’s an opinion that’s been growing. Captain Marvel was slammed for having feminist messages. The latest Star Wars entries have been critiqued for their supposed ‘Social Justice Warrior’ ideals. I’ve even seen people criticize Into the Spider-Verse for its core ‘anyone can be a hero’ theme. And, I don’t understand any of it. I mean, part of it is just bad criticism. It seems clear that there’s a level where many of these people have decided ‘I disagree with this, therefore, it’s bad.’ But setting that aside, the argument is, essentially, ‘people need to stop putting political themes in our pop-fiction.’ Pop-fiction is for us to enjoy, and these political messages are hindering the enjoyment in some fashion. The implication is that pop-fiction and politics should strictly be separate subjects, just like in the good ol’ days. Except, that’s never been the case, and it likely never will be. The fact is, pop-fiction and ‘political’ discussions are intrinsically tied together, and always will be. In this article, I want to go over a few recent movies that have been victim to this criticism one way or another, and then talk about how these political themes aren’t going to go away any time soon – and why it’s important that they don’t.

Let’s leap back to December 2017. The infamous release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. I go into the theatre either opening night or the night after, already hearing whispers that this is a weird Star Wars movie and that opinions on it are scattered. Yet, as I leave the theatre, I was left wondering what on earth people were so up in arms about. The movie felt almost mythic, with grand, sweeping shifts and huge stakes. All of the performances were fantastic – with Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, and Daisy Ridley, in particular, putting so much life into their characters. Specifically, I remember thinking that night about how much I enjoyed Laura Dern’s performance. Not only was it simply fun to see Laura Dern in Star Wars, but I liked the character of Admiral Holdo and thought she was a cool new addition, with a lot of depth and a great arc. In any case, I was excited to get out and see what everyone had to say, and why there was such chaos around this movie.

And then the internet happened.

There are plenty of fair criticisms of The Last Jedi, but many of them were overblown on release, and they’ve only become more overblown since. In particular, there is this narrative that has grown that this movie is ‘SJW propaganda,’ and the entire character of Holdo is about how ‘women are good and men are bad.’ To quickly sum up for those who have somehow avoided the franchise, or this movie in particular, the underdog heroes are caught in what is effectively a siege situation (no, it’s not a chase, it’s a siege in space. Everything in this movie follows siege tropes, so I will continue to be referring to it as a siege). Our heroes are desperate, and after a dramatic shift in leadership, the unorthodox legend Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo has been put in charge. She gives some basic orders to the confused protagonists but keeps her plans close to the chest. After all, she’s a Vice Admiral, and our ranking protagonist, Poe Dameron, was just recently demoted after an arrogant display on the battlefield. This frustrates Dameron, however, and when tensions are already high, he decides to take action. Feeling Holdo was indecisive, Dameron takes matters into his own hands; he sends a few other lead characters off to infiltrate the bad guys while he stages a mutiny on the ship. While he acts with the best intentions, Dameron inevitably just proves Holdo right – he is hot-headed and far too quick to act, and just digs the grew into deeper danger. It is at this point that Holdo reveals her plan to escape, but the failures of our protagonists have caught up to them, and Holdo winds up having to sacrifice herself to ensure everyone else’s survival.

This whole arc is about Poe Dameron. It’s about learning to be humble, to accept the chain of command and have hope, to slow down and examine your surroundings, to not jump to a reckless solution to every problem. Although he doesn’t know it, Dameron is being groomed for leadership, and this becomes apparent as the movie draws to a close and he winds up having to apply his lessons. But for some reason, rather than see this is a broad lesson taught through a specific pair of characters, people have decided to gender this theme. Rather than a lesson about leadership and haste, people turn it into a lesson of how ‘women know best, and men need to shut up and listen.’ This, of course, ignores how Dameron is effectively in charge by the time the movie ends. But it’s also a huge leap of logic. Perhaps it’s because we’re used to our protagonists being ‘right’ and having ‘plot armour’ – an idea that The Last Jedi consistently deconstructs. Perhaps it’s because of Holdo’s decidedly feminine character design, which may be surprising to someone expecting an admiral to be a more militant character (this, too, ignoring that this would situate the audience directly with Dameron’s reaction and his character, and is probably supposed to show that people are more than they appear…). Perhaps people just aren’t used to a system where the authority figure may not want to share all the details with everyone at every time – especially recently disgraced hot-heads. But, for whatever reason, people have claimed this to be a ‘plot hole,’ and they gender it, turning it into ‘SJW propaganda.’

People of this opinion will double-down on their reading of the movie by pointing out the lead female protagonist in Daisy Ridley’s Rey, who is a ‘Mary Sue.’ Ignoring the severe mislabeling of the term ‘Mary Sue’ in recent years (which has been covered better by other people???), Rey is constantly characterized as someone who is flawed, consistently looking for other people to define her, and running from her destiny. She often jumps to conclusions and makes mistakes. Well, people will also point out that a major theme of this movie is ‘what do we do with our past?’ Kylo Ren, our antagonist, and Luke Skywalker, our haunted mentor, both think we should destroy it, to move on. Many have accepted this as the theme of the movie, and possibly as code for a destruction of the patriarchal system. But… that’s not the conclusion the movie makes. Rather, Rey decides that we should learn from the past rather than leave it ashes. Though I suppose in the patriarchy metaphor we could read that as a desire for equality, and I guess that’s SJW propaganda, too. If treating immigrants with respect is bad, desiring equality is probably bad as well. Most of our lead actors aren’t traditionally white – Oscar Isaac is Guatemalan, John Boyega has Nigerian heritage, Kelly Marie Tran’s parents were from Vietnam. So, because it has a diverse cast, it’s 'propaganda.'

As you sift through the arguments and reach the core of what they’re saying, I don’t understand what the problem is. As near as I can, being ‘SJW propaganda’ simply means you are featuring a diverse cast, including women in leading roles. At no point does this movie suggest that anyone is greater or lesser than anyone else – Skywalker, Dameron, and Finn play just as vital of roles as Rey, Holdo, and Rose Tico. If anything, the cast is pretty evenly balanced. Nothing in The Last Jedi seeks to demonize people. Rather, at its core, the movie is about slowing down and examining where you are and how you got there, reflecting on your successes and failures, and genuinely learning and growing from them. It’s not a movie about how bad this sort of person is, but rather about how much better we can all be with some patience. But because it has implicit themes celebrating the diversity of life, it’s SJW propaganda, and it’s way too political for a Star Wars movie. Which, once again, I’m not seeing the problem. I don’t see why we’re making such an issue out of movies taking a stand. With Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame, Marvel has started taking clear steps to emphasize their female cast. And yes, not every step is perfect. Endgame featured a quick scene celebrating the female crew that has assembled over the years, and interestingly, it received some criticism on both sides, accusing it of being pandering. And to an extent, sure, I can see that. But it’s also a super cool moment emphasizing how far we’ve come, and perhaps acknowledging that there’s a long way yet to go. Some people feel the scene wasn’t earned, and that’s a fair discussion, but it’s certainly a far cry from ‘political pandering to SJWs.’ If you want blatant pandering, watch Dark Phoenix, which includes a shoe-horned ‘X-Women’ line and then spends the rest of its runtime utterly disrespecting its female characters. The scene in Endgame feels less to me like their ‘solution’ and more an indication that Marvel is beginning to re-align its focus. Which brings us back to Captain Marvel, which I’ve already talked about exhaustively. Yes, this movie is unashamedly a feminist piece. But why is the knee-jerk reaction to such a message to say, ‘no, politics don’t belong in pop-culture! This is bad’?

I emphasize this question because this is fundamentally not how pop-culture or pop-fiction work. To ask for a pop-fiction devoid of political messages is to ask for a pop-fiction devoid of meaning. Since the dawn of populism, popular fiction has been intrinsically political. Jonathon Swift and John Dryden wrote biting satire about the monarchy, religion, and current events. Samuel Johnson and Alexander Pope wrote criticisms of famous works and discussed recent philosophy. These were all, once again, popular works. Books like Gulliver’s Travels simply was the pop-fiction of the time, and it was all super political. Pop-fiction has always been political, and for that matter, it always will be. Because while in our modern culture there are certain political messages that may stand out, every work will have a political message of some kind. To say a piece of work has a ‘political message’ is just a messy way of saying… ‘it has a theme.’ A New Hope has a lot of obvious themes of ‘centralized, oppressive power = bad, diverse, unified, misfits = good.’ Like, why do we have problems with diversity in The Last Jedi when that’s been the message since day one? On the whole feminism topic, let’s not forget that Return of the Jedi literally had it’s female lead choke her oppressive owner to death. Cornerstone classic The Ten Commandments has a whole slew of ‘slavery and tyranny = bad, capitalism and structured law = good’ themes that definitely aren’t in the original text. Jumping back to Marvel, the first Iron Man movie is all about the problem that the American war industry has had in the War on Terror. Comic book movies hava always had latent political themes. Not to mention their consistent depictions of the ‘Ubermensch,’ of what it means to be a ‘super man.’ To say that these movies don’t have political themes is absurd. Whenever you depict a ‘super man’ on screen, whether it’s Kal-El or Jesus, you are making a statement on what the ideal man is. John Wick is making a statement about masculinity just as much as The Princess Bride makes a statement on masculinity. Black Panther’s predominately African-American cast makes a statement just as much as A New Home’s predominately Caucasian cast. What I’m saying is that every decision has latent views and messages behind them, even the unintentional ones. Perhaps especially the unintentional ones. And that’s super important to understand.

Could you imagine if stories didn’t say anything? I don’t know if you actually could. To return to John Wick, I’ve had a few different people try to suggest it to me as a movie without any messages. 'It’s just a simple action movie.' And to an extent that could be true. But it does also talk about grief and the grieving process. Its protagonist is a man who is primarily motivated by a very genuine, emotional love; as much as people like to say Keanu Reaves doesn’t have any emotional range, the fact that John Wick is this super crazy action man who is also confident in displaying his emotions is really cool. It talks a lot about the devouring nature of revenge. About returning to old temptations. And this is all only scratching the surface. For a movie that isn’t ‘about’ anything, John Wick is about a lot if you look for it. A story that didn’t say anything, a story without any themes or messages, would cease to be a story. Removing the politics, the biases, the opinions, the variety of perspectives from stories doesn’t make them better, it just makes them all worse. Especially when it comes down to ‘SJW propaganda.’ What made the works of Swift and Dryden so good is that they challenged the established order. They criticized the social norm and poked holes in the logic of the higher-ups. And this sort of thing brought about social change. It’s why we still read Gulliver’s Travels in school today. For that matter, it’s why we still read works like 1984 and Of Mice and Men. These were all political works, of one kind or another. All pop-fiction is a product of its political environment, something made in the 18th century will have a different flavor than something made in the 21st century. Certain themes and beliefs will rise in a piece of writing in response to the current events of the time. There are messages that were ‘okay’ in older movies that aren’t okay now. There are certain words and behaviours that make us cringe in retrospect. But if we whitewash all of that and pretend that our views haven’t changed, then we risk not learning from our past. Today, our political discussions are of representation. We have movies like The Last Jedi and Captain Marvel that say ‘hold on, we haven’t been fair.’ Our world is one that is increasingly diverse and complicated. I don’t see why we are so resistant to depicting that on screen. What’s wrong with depicting women in leadership, or in empowering roles? What’s wrong with having a diverse cast? What’s wrong with messages of unity within diversity? If popular works have had political messages since their inception, why are people worried about it now? Is it because people disagree with these messages as opposed to the old ones? Is it because we’re in a society that is increasingly willing to challenge the status quo? Are some of these messages simply too uncomfortable for audiences?

If you’ve made it through this article and don’t have a clear, personal answer to any of the questions I’ve raised, I’d encourage you to reflect on them. Are we really just mad at The Last Jed because it’s ‘SJW propaganda,’ or is there more going on? My suggestion and my suspicion is that the statement ‘it’s too political,’ is mostly an oversimplification of much deeper issues. And those might not all be objective problems with the movie, per se. This is a developing issue, and a complicated one. And no, it’s not strictly speaking a comfortable one. But I think that’s okay. While there’s definitely room for comfortability, I strongly believe there should be a level where our fiction encourages us to stretch out of our comfort zone. I mean, Pixar and Disney have certainly angled for this with recent releases like Zootopia and Inside Out, which bring complicated discussions to young audiences. If you don’t understand the push for representation, the push for diversity, or any of these other ‘politicized’ discussions, rather then shut down with an argument of ‘thing bad,’ I would encourage you to step out and ask why these discussions exist. Why do people want something like representation of diversity? I think the answer is slightly more in-depth than ‘propaganda.’ Pop-fiction is intrinsically political, and it always will be. Rather than try to fight it, we should be trying to understand it.