From an article about Sean Penn's Oscar acceptance speech, and people who would criticize the fact that he went political:
For all Hollywood knows, it might be a fad, and next year, Space Monster Love Affair will win Best Picture, but increasingly, the movie industry is feeling comfortable putting politics front and center in its films, reflecting and – perhaps – prodding a society in the midst of great social change.
And so, last night's speeches didn't ring as vainglorious or pompous, but necessary. Could you imagine an Oscar acceptance speech for Milk that didn't include politics? The film, for all its flaws, calls on anyone who sees it to speak up and use their voice to express their beliefs and both Penn and Black did so eloquently.
If you lost your Oscar betting pool, see if you can find someone who will wager with you that Bill O'Reilly and Fox News won't use the speeches as an opportunity to lambaste Hollywood actors for having opinions when they should just "shut up and act." Heck, even the gay Republicans are bemoaning Penn's win, saying:
"Sean Penn gave the worst speech, unnecessarily politicizing the event. If he wanted to make the case for gay marriage, he would have done better not to attack its opponents and make a positive argument instead. When Penn reads someone else’s lines, he does a remarkable job. He’s not so good with his own. While I grant he delivered an Oscar-worthy performance in Milk, he did little to endear himself to most Americans who go to the movies."
What the "entertainers are meant to entertain" crowd fail to understand is that all art is political, whether it be the environmental message of Wall-E or the deeply-coded racial critiques of Douglas Sirk's melodramas.
Heck, even Transformers is a reflection of post 9/11 anxieties and it's as far from an Oscar nomination as any mainstream film could get. Shakespeare told us that "the purpose of playing" is to "hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image…" Some films do it well, some are preachy, some of them betray a politics their filmmakers may not even be aware of, but the politics of the time are woven into each frame of celluloid.
In Hollywood, everyone fears the message movie. Michael Eisner, when he was running Paramount, sent out a memo to the studio saying, "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective." While the days of Eisner are long gone in Hollywood, his maxim is still standard operating procedure, but it's short-sighted.
Why do people make movies? Why do people write them and act in them? Fame seekers can be found in every industry, be it sports or actuarial science. It's easy to be cynical about the Oscars, festooned with borrowed diamonds and Joan Rivers, but underneath it all, the desire to create movies is the desire to reach out and share your view of the world with others.
In Lance's case, it was born out of being a Mormon kid living in Texas who first heard Harvey Milk's words and had hope—and a desire to share that same feeling with the world. In him, and in Milk, art and politics are indistinguishable from each other. Why do we go to the movies? Well, to be entertained, of course, but the entertainers behind them are people with hopes, dreams and beliefs—and it's those very qualities that they bring to their work that make the films we watch so entertaining.
For years, Hollywood has tried to separate the performer or the artist from their politics. This year, not only in Milk, but also in Slumdog Millionaire, we saw the uncommon power of film that combines what Tony Kushner calls the three keys to great drama: poetry, politics and popcorn—and if you've got a problem with it, why don't you go win your own damn Oscar?
Source (Note: possible explicit content on that site, be warned.)
Michael Grant made this comment in an interview about GONE:
Anything I write will have an element of politics. ANIMORPHS (which I wrote with my wife, the great and powerful K.A. Applegate,) was very political. But not political from the point of view of partisanship, I'm not even slightly interested in grinding some ideological axe.
...
I'd love it if readers used GONE as a taking-off point for political or philosophical discussion. But that's all secondary to my primary goal which is to keep readers snapping through those pages. I want to keep people up all night. I want to give readers nightmares. I want them to come away at the end feeling kind of shaky and giddy and sort of goofy, the way you feel when you get off a good roller coaster.
Source.So, what are your thoughts on the above argument, that great drama should be poetry, politics, and popcorn, and how that relates to Animorphs? Is Michael Eisner right about the role of entertainment?
Additionally, what political themes resonated for you in Animorphs, and have they shaped your thinking at all?
Here's some of the political commentary I've noticed:
- Jake comments about Cassie being black, pointing out that this doesn't matter at all to him.
- Megamorphs 3 opens showing an alternate world that's overflowing with bigotry and genocide.
- Hitler appears in Megamorphs 3, but his life is completely different. Did he deserve death?
- Jake kills the 17,000 Yeerks because they're different, they're parasites, they're evil, they started the war, it's their fault, not his.
- Ant colonies are one of the ultimate forms of evil in the Animorphs universe (on a thematic level) because they represent the "Us vs. Them" mode of thinking in its purest, most hostile form.
- Ant colonies are also portrayed as horrible because individuality is completely nonexistant, and the colony is all that matters. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
- One book writes, "If ants had nuclear weapons, they'd end the world in a week." Marco doesn't think it would take them that long.
- The Kelbrid are essentially an ant colony, and another war might begin because of their hostility to outsiders. The Yeerk Empire tries to promote certain characteristics of an ant colony.
- The United States elects a female president after the war ends.
- Tobias pointed out that he couldn't see the Boy Scouts accepting a Hork-Bajir when they can't even tolerate some gay kid.
- Voluntary Controllers are described in book 1 as scum.
- Edriss 562 designed The Sharing to exploit human weakness. Her goal was to use empty words to convince people to surrender their free will. She used high-flown rhetoric and symbols ("visual nonsense that moves the susceptible human mind"). She killed its founder, Lore David Altman, and had him leave behind a bunch of cryptic writings.
- The Sharing was about leading the weak to submit to a stronger will, but she glossed over that by saying it was about brotherhood and sisterhood and family and community and belonging.
- The Sharing slips a worm into the human mind. The worm wraps itself around the host's brain and controls the host completely. That person's identity is erased as he becomes part of the group, part of something greater than the self. Every three days that person must return to the Yeerk Pool, or the worm shrivels up and dies. This is a metaphor.
- There are real organizations that have many things in common with The Sharing.
- Terrorism becomes a greater threat after the war ends in book 54. There are violent religious groups that believe the aliens' presence is delaying Armageddon, and there are simple bigots who hate Hork-Bajir. 9/11 occurred a few months after book 54 was published.
- The slogan, "Live free or die" represents one of the greatest strengths of the human race in Animorphs.
- Helmacrons kill their leader so that she cannot make mistakes. Edriss notes that humans will revere a dead leader but tear apart a living one.
- Vissers One and Three are most effective when they understand their enemies. Visser One studied humans, Visser Three studied Andalites. After the war, Jake teaches his trainees to "Know your enemy." Iraq war?
- The Animorphs commonly vote on important decisions. As the leader, Jake makes sure that every member of the team has a voice.
- Jake tells Ax not to call him "Prince." In Megamorphs 3, Jake was "Supreme Leader."
- The Ellimist and Crayak take the place of God and Satan. There is no indication of an afterlife, though the possibility is not ruled out. The Ellimist frequently wonders whether there are higher powers he is unaware of.
- The Ellimist states that one of the great qualities of humans is that they are "CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING."
- The One is the ultimate embodiment of evil and corruption. John McCain ran ads last year calling Obama "The One." The Animorphs authors support Obama, but what point were they making about the term "The One"?
- Almost every book opens with "My name is..." The villains are referred to by numbers, not names, and these numbers sometimes change.
- Is biological warfare - through oatmeal, or a quantum virus - justified?
- Book 31 touched on the issue of torture.
- Animal rights were a big theme.
- Several books made arguments about how society treats the handicapped.
- The war began because of Seerow's Kindness and ended because of Cassie's Kindness.
- Ax questions which would be more dangerous - a race of Rachels or a race of Cassies?
- The Pemalites were complete pacifists. They were slaughtered. Erek and the Chee are also pacifists, by the way of their programming.
- Are the Howlers evil? Their minds are childish, and they don't understand killing - it's just a game.
- The Hork-Bajir are caught in the middle of the Andalite-Yeerk war. The Yeerks want to exploit them, the Andalites want to get rid of them so they can't be exploited. Besides, to the Andalites they all look alike.
- Tom said "Wars aren't won with clean hands." Cassie quietly begged Jake not to listen to him.
- Do the ends justify the means?
- From book 53:
<It's never completely clean, Cassie. Doesn't work that way. But you try your best to keep it clean. The fact that you know you'll be dragged into the gutter doesn't mean you don't try like hell to stay out of it. You don't get a lot of straight-up good or evil choices. You get shades of gray. I mean, we started this war thinking we'd hold on till the great and glorious Andalites came to rescue us. Now we're making deals with Taxxons and Yeerks to gain a victory fast enough to keep the great and glorious Andalites from making their own shades-of-gray decision.>
