MovieChat Forums > The Orville (2017) Discussion > Why keep putting political messages in T...

Why keep putting political messages in TV shows?


Don't they know it is called propaganda, the tool used by totalitarian dictators?

I know Seth MacFarlane is a liberal and like to impose his ideas on everyone else, but I just want to be entertained and his politics are clearly affecting the quality of the show.

I mean this is just one step away from a low budget Disney show.

The first officer sits next to the captain? Where is the second officer? What kind of hierarchy is that? If they want to show gender equality they should have her as co-captain.

And the episode 3, what is the universal code of ethics? Other than imposing your values on others? And the others must be educated and persuaded and eventually they will see light and wisdom of liberal ideas and do things the right way, the liberal way, right?

I fast forward the episode 3 and believe I had enough this shamelessness.

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this is what is happening in our world. this is what liberals have become.

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[deleted]

Gimme a break, it pokes fun at itself too, there's no lecturing in this show. It's all in your mind, perhaps because the social commentary is making you nervous, or you feel guilty about something.

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Like I said before I was always impressed by social justice warrior's self-righteousness and shamelessness, the ability to say black is white with a straight face.

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Art and literature is supposed to be about politicals, or a critique of reality. So, either that is the natural thing for TV shows to touch on subversively, OR these shows are trying to take on the trappings of literature without really being literate.

I am encouraged by this show and how it has changed in character from the first episode. It might ( or might not ) develop into a pretty good show.

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Yep, this one sided propanda is really stupid and damages the show (at the first 5 eps men were only shown as complete idiots). You could bring up society questions to a SciFi show. Star Trek TOS did that so often. But then you have to be neutral at that topic (like for exampe Star Trek Continues - by far the best SciFi show of the since the 90s - did perfectly). Otherwise you are part of propaganda and insult the inteligence of the tv viewers.

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"Don't they know it is called propaganda, the tool used by totalitarian dictators?"

First of all, why blame the tool? Do you blame the car when a drunk driver kills someone? Do you blame the gun, when a soldier murders someone? Do you blame the hammer, when someone hits you in the head with it?

Tool is neutral. It can be used for good and evil and even neutral things. A hammer can be used for construction or destruction. A knife can be used for making food or carving a stick from a tree to throw at people.

Second of all, propaganda is not used only by 'totalitarian dictators' (are there any other kind anyway?). It is and can be used by a lot of things, entities, people, organizations, corporations, governments, and even individuals.

Propaganda is just 'selling an idea to an audience thought to be receptive to it'.

It has a slight bent towards dishonesty, as it's not really neutrally offering all sides of complex information and let the audience decide for themselves, but it's a pre-chewed, usually one-sided viewpoint that's being more 'pushed' than actually freely distributed, but it's not inherently evil by itself. What makes it a bit morally questionable, is that it usually has an AGENDA behind it - even if it aims to be good. You can have vegetarian or vegan propaganda, for example, and of course if people adhere to it, the world will be better and less painful and murderous place for innocent animals. But forced good, in the long run, is not really good, as if the choice between good and evil is taken away, your choice also loses all meaning.

Only if you can freely choose evil, but yet choose good anyway, has the goodness any value.

For an interesting example of possible propaganda, people send balloons to North Korea, that contain (the balloons, not the Korea) information and propaganda about North Korea an its various issues, leaders and the outside world, that the people trapped inside might not otherwise know about.

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I wouldn't want to use propaganda, however, because I want people to search, research, figure out and find the truth by themselves, without any pressure or pushing towards it. Only then it will be permanent.

As they say, a well will not hold carried water.

(Hm, this saying is hard to translate, but it means that you can't just carry water into well, and expect it to stay in the well - only if the water arrives into the well naturally and organically, will the well be useful)

So one could even say that what the original poster says about propaganda, is a form of propaganda. Real propaganda is a bit more neutral, but as it is effective, and a useful tool, of course all kind of despots, dictators, oligarchs and corporations use it frequently.

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My views changed significantly since when I first posted. The youtube video "Debunking A Century of War Lies" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw0-ASR4sr8 showed majority of western media are propaganda machines, but I did not notice before.

So this show is nothing new. To be honest it is not even that shameless.

But still I would not enjoy watching propaganda.

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About 'why put politics in TV shows' - well, anything you do and say has implications, whether you want them to, or not.

The original Star Trek had a very obvious political agenda as well, and the whole show was an excuse to make a horror TV show that has infused 'political messages' that wouldn't be allowed otherwise (at the time).

It's very difficult to avoid, your values will show through if you do something creative. It's just a fact of life. Kirk's values were very different from Picard's - Gene Roddenberry's values were very different from the authors of the modern Star Trek shows (although similarities exist).

Values depicted in TOS are very different from the values depicted in other Star Trek shows. So politics has a way of entering this type of show 'automatically', because it can't really be avoided if you have any values whatsoever.

The Federation HAS to make some kind of 'political decision' about pretty much every situation, so they have created policies (or the writers have created policies based on the policies they think would be right (or left! Heh, heh.)) for the Starfleet to follow and obey.

Politics is, after all, about policy. That's how we get the word 'police' as well!

They used to be Peace Officers, now they seem to be Policy Enforcers.

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I'm getting tired of them showing religion in a bad light ALL THE FRICKING TIME on this show, or claiming that spacefaring societies turn away from religion by the time they've reached the stars. While it's true that Seth MacFarlane is an atheist, I find it insulting that he generalizes advanced societies' views on religion the way Gene Roddenberry did in that horrible episode "Apollo" in TOS, or how the entire series of "The Expanse" mocks it or belittles it.

I mean, first you've got the Krill, who are the chief villains of the show and follow a violent religion that claims no other races in the universe have souls, and gives them a convenient excuse to conquer or kill non-Krill races.

Then, you've got a high-level Union officer (in the same episode that talks about the Krill religion) claiming that when a society reaches an advanced, spacefaring stage, they rely less and less on religion or give it up entirely (which annoyed me a lot).

Then there was that "Brigadoon" planet (as my friend on Discord calls it), that erroneously worshiped Kelly for several millennia (in their time frame) and turned violent because of it, until they advanced (at super-speed) and gave up religion across the planet.

Not to mention that one gigantic ship that had an entire biosphere inside of it, and the society in there had degraded to a brutal theocracy that refused to believe in anything outside of their world.

Finally you got that recent episode where the people were extremely zealous about their local astrology and actually ASSUMED that Giliacs were born violent and dangerous, whereas the authorities seemed more dangerous by comparison than the inmates at the Giliac camps.

As I recall, there was at least one society in the "Star Trek" universe that worshiped energy beings inside a stable wormhole, and they weren't violent or xenophobic. Just ask any Bajoran. Why can't they have an alien society join or be part of the Union that's like that?

Seth MacFarlane is delusional if he thinks most societies dump religion the moment they get technology advanced enough to travel in space. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few astronauts that practice something, even if it's not Christianity.

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