Political Preaching In "Entertainment" TV Shows

Great Debates
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[Mods: I didn’t know whether to put this thread in cafe Society or in GD, so please move it if you see fit]

Well, I watched “Boston Legal” again last night. I have been a David E. Kelly fan for a while now…“Picket Fences”, “The Practice” and “Boston Legal” are some of his work so far.

For the most part, “Boston Legal” stays within the bounds of what it should be…a fairly well written legal drama/comedy. However, it seems that lately, Kelly and his writers cannot resist the temptation to inject their personal politics into what is intended to be fictional entertainment. It atually started as “The Practice” was winding down and lately it has just gotten worse.

Last night it was the death penalty. One of the main characters flew down to Texas to lecture the uncaring minions of death on the high court. After giving a speech on the shockingly efficient “death system” in the state, he was rebuffed and his innocent, likeable mentally deficent client was executed. As the show wound down the character, “Allen Shore” played by James Spader, encouraged the inmate to “show his bravery by fighting”. The show went to black with three guards forcibly strapping the victim of an uncaring and evil state to a gurney to meet his unfair and tragic fate.

If this were an isolated case, I would roll my eyes and move on. However, there is something pretty much every week of similarly transparent ideological promotion.

So here is the crux of my problem. I come to be entertained, no preached to. If I want indoctrination into Kellys ideology, I can find it. But Kelly and others like him seem to see their access to the public as a bully pulpit which they are almost duty-bound to use.

And before you ask, I would be similarly annoyed if the attempted indoctrination came from the right. Again, I want to be entertained, not “educated”.

The easy response to this is to say “If you don’t like it, change the channel”. True. But I would like to move beyond that and see what everyone thinks about the question at hand.

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EO: * And before you ask, I would be similarly annoyed if the attempted indoctrination came from the right.*

Then you should probably not watch the recent premiere of 24, about which a conservative blogger fan remarked:

EO: The easy response to this is to say “If you don’t like it, change the channel”. True. But I would like to move beyond that and see what everyone thinks about the question at hand.

I think that ideological viewpoints are ubiquitous in television drama, at least in dramas with political/law enforcement themes, and in fact I don’t see how you could write a script for such a drama without allowing the characters to express some kind of ideological preferences. This has been going on at least since Dragnet and Perry Mason, and if you don’t like it, um, I guess all I can recommend is changing the channel. Sorry.

(I would also suggest that people are more likely to consider something “ideologically neutral entertainment” when it’s projecting viewpoints they agree with, and only become disturbed by “political preaching” when it involves opinions they disagree with. IME this is equally true for liberals and conservatives.)

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If you don’t want to have a liberal viewpoint shoved down your throat, then I would suggest turning of the TV and never going to the movies. Hollywood is filled with liberals, and one can count the number of conservative stars on one hand.

However, don’t fret. In an odd way this tends to actually help the right, IMO. The lack of a balanced viewpoint ends up creating a backlash. Looking at the last election, I think all the hollywood liberals and music stars campaigning for Kerry actually caused resentment for him in the crucial battleground states like Ohio.

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Perhaps you are correct to a degree…I actually laughed out loud when the “sixth grade Michael Moore logic” remark was made. However, it didn’t occur to me to think of it as “preaching”…it was a line used during a conflict between two characters of obvious opposing political viewpoints.

I will also concede that you are correct about conflict being necessary in a legal drama, where point of view is central as the issue at hand.

The situations I reference in Kelly’s work are long running diatribes that are thinly disguised as being relevant to the plot. The patriot act is evil, the death penalty is bad, etc. They even piled on with the Abu Grahib issue. It just gets old after a while.

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True. I tried watching “The West Wing” for a while, but it just got to be too much. Aaron Sorkin was worse than Kelly.

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Strange. I watched Boston Legal for the first time last night and was thinking pretty much the same thing as the OP during the final scenes. And I was wondering if someone was going to open a GD thread about it…

But in the end it’s entertainment and you either choose to watch it or you don’t. I dislike preachy shows in general, so I’ll probably not continue to watch this one-- it smacked a little too much of east/west coasters making fun of “backward” Texans. Even leaving the preachiness aside, I didn’t think it was very a very good show.

I do agree with Kimstu, though, that one tends to notice alleged bias more readily when that bias disagrees with one’s own political beliefs. Would that those on this board who constantly harp about liberal or conservative bias in the news media took that into account.

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I don’t like the character played by ex Sen. Fred Thompson on Law And Order because it seems to me that the script is written to incorporate Tompson’s own legal and political slant.

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But every show about politics, law, law enforcement, business, or family life is going to have an ideology about politics, law, law enforcement, business, or family life. To take the example of a legal show, how are the lawyer characters going to be portrayed? Are they heroic defenders of Truth, Justice, and the American Way? Are they adorably quirky cuties looking for love and affirmation? Are they working stiffs just trying to make a living in a confusing and ambigiuous world? Are they money-grubbing amoral shysters? Are they psychopathic killers who blackmail and murder in order to make more money, as in Tom Cruise’s movie “The Firm”? Are criminal cases solved by clever forensic work, by courtroom psychodramas and confessions on the witness stand, by going heavy on the skells, or by backroom deals?

Every show about the law and lawyers has to have viewpoint about the law and lawyers and what function they serve, even if that viewpoint isn’t always consistent given that a TV series might use dozens of writers, directors or producers. Even a show that strives for a non-ideological neutral viewpoint has an ideology…and that ideology would be that the law is or should be a value-neutral non-ideological technocratic exercise, or that the law is simply inimportant window dressing for a standard soap opera. But if the lawyer characters don’t care about their jobs as lawyers, why should the viewers?

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His predecessor in the job, played by Diane Wiest, was a liberal Democrat, and frequently this figured into the story line. Thompson’s character is presumably a conservative Republican, and this figures into the stories. This is a realistic portrayal of working in an office where the management philosophy changes based on who has been elected.

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Yes, I can’t keep count of how many times I’ve exasperatedly exclaimed, “Stop shoving your liberal agenda at me!” while watching 7th Heaven, Touched By An Angel, or Joan of Arcadia. And that Sunday-morning block of wall-to-wall atheists preaching their godless agenda really drives me nuts…

:rolleyes:

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I’ve never seen Seventh Heaven, so I can’t comment on it, but, even though Touched by an Angel and Joan of Arcadia take for granted that God and/or angels are real, neither of those shows seem to have explicitly political messages, beyond the general “People should be nice to each other and you should love and respect everyone. God loves you.”.

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And more than that “God loves everyone”.

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While “Joan” has a religious theme, I’d call the religious aspects of the show very liberal indeed. I think Polycarp would find it comfortable. Fred Phelps? Not so much.

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Glurge knows no party affiliation.

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The fact is, any point of view that I don’t agree with 100% is clearly an attempt by someone to shove some agenda down my throat.

News, entertainment, sports, Shakespeare’s dramas, it doesn’t matter. If I don’t like what it says every second, it’s clearly unworthy of my time.

By my reckoning, nothing deserves to be broadcast.

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Yeah, I remember one of those liberal Democrat movie stars campaigning for Harry Truman in 1948. And do you know, he was the essence of the stereotype you’re decrying in real life – he actually ran for Governor and won, and then challenged Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976. Didn’t beat him, though, which just goes to show that the American people cannot stand a movie star getting into politics!

Wonder what ever happened to old Dutch? :confused:

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I’m guessing he faded into obscurity, just like that body-building Austrian who played ‘Conan’.

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I think one of the differences between a show like “Boston Legal” and something like “Touched by an Angel” is that with “Angel” you know what you are getting. You are even looking for it. But with “Legal” and other shows, it is kind of a stealth attack.

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I seem to recall ranting about the attitude that Evil One, and many people I have met in real life, appears to demonstrate, in a past thread and being called crazy. (It probably helped the topic was called “Am I horribly, horribly insane re: South Parks writer’s attitude?” :smiley: )

Let me summarize. People I meet in RL seem to feel that TV is for entertainment and should not offend. It seems that way, given how bland and tasteless most TV is these days, but despite their best attempts, writer will have opinions. Evil One, deal with it. You might feel like it is a sneak attack, but as long as you hold your political opinions, you are likely to be offended.

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Are you seriously claiming that because Regan because president in 1980 that that disproves Debaser’s general assertion that Hollywood liberals campagning for Kerry were a net negative for him (Kerry) in the last election? I wouldn’t know how to prove what **Debaser **is claiming, but I think it is likely to be correct.