I wish I could compose a wittier response, but that's all I can really reply. All 140 characters of this tweet are wrong. It doesn't conflict with an opinion or belief - it's just wrong.
Not all fiction is political...oh wait, yes it is.
Take
Harry Potter. One of the most popular things since water. The series' primary
conflict is the conflict between muggles and wizards. You don’t have to be an existentialist
playwright to realise this conflict is allegorical of xenophobia,
discrimination, racism, homophobia, among many others. It is a surprisingly
charged series, with the fourth book strongly evoking fascism. The final book
even has ethnic cleansing, which shocked me as a thirteen year old since I hadn’t
learnt about the Holocaust yet.
The Hunger Games
is currently one of Hollywood’s most popular franchises, and it’s spawned from another
hugely successful book series. What took me aback when reading the books was
how deliciously bleak they are. Society is under an iron grip, and it
remains under an iron grip throughout. Children are pawns for both sides, and Mockingjay is by far my favourite of the
series because of how there are no real good guys. Panem is a world where you
have to be horrid to survive. Honour and pacifism will just get you killed. If
that’s not political then I don’t know what is.
But
maybe two of the most popular works of fiction in the world right now are too
obscure for Mr TotalBiscuit. OK then: Star
Wars.
Again:
Nazis. The whole thing is an allegory for World War 2 with a group of American-accented underdogs fighting against an immaculately uniformed authority. The bad guys are even called ‘Stormtroopers’ for gods sakes. You can’t
get more blatantly political than that. The Empire are Nazis in everything but name and language. You can
say that Nazis are just Hollywood shorthand for ‘irredeemable murderous
antagonists’ but they are still Nazis. Star Wars might say nothing more about the world other than "the Nazis were evil" - yet that's still a political message.
The Avengers
is political, as it’s ultimately about America being threatened by an outside force and everyone banding together to intervene for truth, justice, and the American way. It’s basically an
allegory of the Vietnam war, with the CGI skeleton army being the Viet Cong and
the superheroes being the US army coming in to save the day. Except of course,
this is a bizarre universe where the US army actually won. Maybe it’ll be
better to say it’s once again an allegory for World War 2.
Even
if you choose to ignore the politics – it’s still there. Even if you ignore the
Christian overtones of The Chronicles of
Narnia, the Marxist philosophy of Metropolis,
the conspiracies in Deus Ex – they
are all still present. If they weren’t present you wouldn’t need to ignore
them.
This
isn’t hard: every piece of art is created by an artist. Each artist will have
their own political viewpoint which will inevitably find itself in the work –
even if the artist didn’t intend it. Again, you can ignore the author’s
intentions and focus on the text as an isolated piece (see 'The Death of the Author') but the authors presence will still be there regardless. There
are essays claiming that The Very Hungry
Caterpillar is everything from a metaphor of capitalism to symbolically
portraying a homosexual coming out of the closet.
In
short: not only is all fiction political, but all art is political. You can ignore the politics, but the
politics will always be there. So shut up.
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