What works of art/literature best address the following polical/policy questions?

I’m wondering what works of art/literature illustrate well the following

  • How fear can be used manipulate the population
  • The loss of social capital/trust in communities in the US
  • Empathy
  • How people in a certain system do things (good or bad) that they never thought themselves capable of
  • transparency vs. secrecy
  • limits/strengths of government
  • the limits of economic theory

I’m interested in books, paintings, music, poems plays, etc.

There are some answers that seem obvious (e.g. 1984), but I’m just going to let people post and see what comes up.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Since I presume such a question will raise eyebrows. This is not for any sort of assignment. I’m a grad student in a public-policy related field, and I want to incorporate humanities into my work, but it is not in any way a part of that which I have been assigned to do. I was an English major, and I’m trying desperately to make space for my love of fiction and art.

For starters, 1984

How about movies?Metropolis

For art, I would look at the post-WWI artwork of Otto Dix; images like this and this were definitely painted to invoke fear and empathy for those who were not there to experience the horrors that he did in the trenches.

“Good Night and Good Luck” which is about the Joseph McCarthy era. Fear was used both to make the public afraid of Commies AND to keep others in line lest they be accused of being Commies.

I have a feeling that an awful lot of literature is more or less about this, but on the good side there is The Lord Of The Rings, and especially The Return Of The King–it is pretty much about ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things.

On the bad side, not fiction but I strongly recommend They Thought They Were Free. It is by a journalist who interviewed low-level Nazis after WWII and basically asked how they could have done these horrible things. It is very good.

Spider Robinson.

Certainly! Thanks!

Two movies that come to mind for me (re: empathy) are Crash and Gran Turino.

A Clockwork Orange.

I rather liked King Rat.

How about a 3d exploration of Guernica?

Well, considering that communism ultimately killed 100,000,000 people, I’d say that this fear was a little… justified ?

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Even if that’s true, it would be a rather scanty post-hoc justification for McCarthy’s smear tactics. Socialism never progressed beyond limited inroads in the U.S. and public interrogation of actors isn’t a very effective way to fight espionage against the U.S. government. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a good allegorical treatment of this issue, although it also stands on its own as a drama about the Salem Witch Trials.

Arguably, WATCHMEN.

I was going to mention The Crucible. A bit too melodramatic to be great art, but definitely about using fear to manipulate. Since that was taken, I’ll go with The Music Man (I didn’t say it was a serious exploration, but one musical scene is all about using fear to manipulate people into buying things).

And if those were too light and wussy, I’ll give you “Let’s Have a War” from punk band Fear.
… BTW that’s kind of a long list of topics. You might want to narrow it down a bit.

Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery touches on a few of these. So do Curse of the Starving Class (Sam Shepard) and Shadows and Fog (Woody Allen, one of his best).

Re: the fear/manipulation in fiction: High Noon

And thank you, Marley23!

That “utopia/dystopia” thread was essentially a graduate course in this.

Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED

  • How fear can be used manipulate the population

The Statists/Looters use fear of economic doom to justify greater economic repression of the Creators/Traders.

  • The loss of social capital/trust in communities in the US

Businesspeople cease to rely on the quality of their goods & services and the mutual benefit of free trade and instead learn to rely of political pull & graft to keep afloat.

  • How people in a certain system do things (good or bad) that they never thought themselves capable of

Gov’t Stooge “The Wet Blanket”/Tony learns integrity & the value of freedom & independent individual thought from working with Hank Rearden to the point of risking all for him.

On the other hand, physicist & rationalist Dr. Robert Stadler sells out to the Statists & betrays his prize students in the name of pragmatism.

  • limits/strengths of government

Government force cannot compel productivity as productivity flourishes in an atmosphere of liberty & rights.

Already mentioned in the thread on utopian/dystopian literature: We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin. In fact, a number of the books recommended in that thread contain thematic treatments of government manipulation, limitation, secrecy, and so forth.