Posted on 03/01/2002 12:59:49 PM PST by Darth Reagan
I ran across an old column on Salon about The West Wing. In that column, the writer muses that Conservatives can do comedy and Liberals can do drama:
There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, but, generally, when liberal politics intersects with dramatic entertainment, the results can be pretty good. TV drama in the '80s was dominated by "St. Elsewhere" and "L.A. Law," and today by "The Practice" and "The West Wing." When conservatives do drama it comes out as "The A-Team" or "Red Dawn" or "The Omega Strain" or, even worse, "Rambo."
.......... "Murphy Brown," "Ellen," and "Designing Women" verged at times on the unwatchable. "M*A*S*H," one of the best shows ever to appear on television, always sagged whenever Alan Alda began his sensitive political philosophizing.
And as antithetical as it may seem, conservatism makes for great sitcom characters. Archie Bunker was much funnier than Meathead and Gloria. George Jefferson grounded "The Jeffersons," and Alex P. Keaton, played to incorrigible Reaganite perfection by Michael J. Fox, created the humor that was in "Family Ties." Even "The Simpsons" fills its shows with endless tweaking of the liberal agenda. (In one famous instance, Sideshow Bob is sent back to prison screaming that one day he'll walk the streets again because you can't keep the Democrats out of office forever.) And the most conservative character on television is, unquestionably, Hank Hill from "King of the Hill."
So what's the truth? Are liberals better at writing quality drama (except maybe good action movies)? What are some examples of conservative dramatic movies and television programs?
How can you go wrong?
No show creatted by Gene Rodenberry is purposely conservative.
The Star Trek series (ST, TNG, Voyager) were some of the most liberal programing I've seen. (No money, multi-culturalism, benevolent government, entitre planets of hipiess...)
The newer series, Earth Final Conflict and Andromeda have more conservative themes, probably because Rodenberry isn't around anymore. In EFC, we have the world governments and police collaborating with the "benevolent aliens", who are really colonialists.
Andromeda is more complex. It is multi-culti, but the systems commonwealth seemede like a fairly loose federal system. The whole concept of Republics or Commonwealth's falling is important. (I would still prefer people read Plybius and Cicero....)
The New Star Wars movies seem pretty good on this theme of the fall of a Republic into anarchy, mob rule, and despotism.
Babylon 5 was a good show and fairly conservative for Sci-fi. On the other hand, the whole Alliance thing should make us take heed.
The smoke conservatives too.
The Church is a bad joke, and the gun issue is a recurring nightmare.
Besides, the least liberal kid is Eric Cartman for God's sake.
I suppose you missed all the episodes that went after:
Anti-abortion groups (4-5 times)
the gun industry
the militia movement
and Christian universities
Many of the DA's were anti-death-penalty and the jurisprudence is always left-of center.
Law and Order show written by Manhattan Liberals, who can't stand the radicals.
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Till the day they hit me over the head with a shovel, I will never comprehend the popularity of this show. |
And even though it was produced in the seventies during my much more liberal twenties, I always found the production values amateurish, the "acting" even more so, and God knows I couldn't stomach Alan Alda's oh-so-smarmy leftist mugging and preening.
If there are any FReepers out there who were (or are) fans of this so-called "classic" TV show, please tell me what I missed.
And thats just the Cartoons. And I miss Beavis & Butthead. I wish that was in syndication.
That is a Crossfire I would watch.
I preffer Daria to Beavis and Butthead.
Seventh Heaven is one the most left-wing shows on TV today. The preacher-husband is always proven wrong by his touchy-feely mantra-spouting lib wife, all the men are boobs, conservatives are always portrayed as extremists, whites are incapable of clear thought, minorities are always noble and beyond reproach, and every third episode is a lefty commercial for gun control, hate-crime legislation, affirmative action, racist whites, name it.
It used to try to disguise its politics as an undercurrent of the main focus of the episode. Over the last couple of seasons, it has given up all the illusions, prefering to put it all out in front.
What an interesting observation, and I agree completely. Comedy is all about premises and truths and absurdities, and there are a lot of logical elements that must align very precisely for it to be effective. Drama, on the other hand, just has to feel right.
Comedy is all about making new (il)logical connections between things. You have to make the connection yourself for the joke to be funny, that's why jokes are less funny when you don't understand them and then someone explains them to you.
PPPPIIIIINNNNNGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, that seems about right. I wonder why making such connections is funny?
Am in agreement re: ST series in general, excepting the first series (they were constrained by the network, as I recall, as to what they could get away with showing). That's probably just because lefty circa 65 is libertarian/conservative circa 2002.
Also agree that the only reason Adromeda gets away with being as conservative as it is, is because GR is dead. Otherwise, we'd have Dylan reasoning with the bad guys instead of dropping Nova Bombs.
And Tyr would be a Republican (somehow, he'd manage it).
Thought the 'no money' concept of ST's later incarnations idiotic. Even the Childe Cycle novels had something REPLACING currency (service contracts), not simply it's elimination. Perhaps if GR had tried to explain what exactly Federation trade was based upon, I might have paid more attention.
More series that are at least tolerable (IMHO) to libertarians/conservatives:
Special Unit 2
Enterprise
CSI
Who's Line Is It Anyway? (Carey is a self-proclaimed Libertarian)
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