Dumbing Down
My friend Tara linked to an article about the political spin that has been applied by both parties to the new Star Wars movie. In her entry, Tara was scoffing about this recent trend in politics to read too much into our fictional characters.
Reading the article, the thing I found chilling is the ending.
…a Universal Pictures marketing executive had given a lecture to his marketing class about “King Kong,” which is coming out later this year. “Is there a political overtone to it?” Mr. Sealey said. “I suspect he’s got to think that through today. The political sensitivities are so great that you have to take that calculus into consideration. Is somebody going to read into ‘King Kong’ that it’s pro-Iraq, or it’s going to get PETA upset?”
What value is any form of storytelling if it refuses to address the most interesting and challenging issues of its time? If we can’t explore our divisions even in fiction, how will we ever resolve them?
I am really frightened by the corporate dumbing down of our music, movies, news, and literature.
