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Accidentally Conservative
Serenity was written by a flaming hippie. Yet the ultimate conflict is pitch perfect for tyrannical governments trying to remake human nature. Sure, the film is blemished by a preacher who doesn’t care about God, but there’s a nugget of good sense even in that scene.
“You don’t know what it’s like to work in the private sector. They expect results.” This was from a star of Saturday Night Live, for crying out loud! If you don’t recognize the quote, I will forgive you … eventually.
Monty Python, those poor souls! It’s jaw-dropping that a group of comedians could so perfectly and consistently satirize the Left’s nonsense without recognizing it in their own politics.
As for novelists, perhaps some gothic tales like Frankenstein qualify. What are some better examples?
What might we learn from this strange phenomenon? How is it possible for artists to unwittingly parody their own beliefs so keenly?
Published in Entertainment
It occurs to me that if we extend the “Jewish resistance as British left” analogy to its logical conclusion – that the Romans represent capitalism – then this scene becomes one of the most conservative moments in film history:
Babylon 5 had many conservative elements in it. In particular, it treated religion with respect. The creator and author of most of the episodes, J. Michael Straczynski, is a self-described atheist. He was asked about his inclusion of religion on the space station (there were a group of Catholic monks helping the poor), when Star Trek’s Federation was totally secular. He said, in essence, that since religion had been such an important part of human life for so long it was wrong to think it wouldn’t persist after we went into space.
A quote from him: “I think it behooves us to treat our characters’ beliefs with some measure of respect, whatever he believes in. I mean I’m an atheist myself, but I don’t have to believe in Minbari to write about Minbari. I think if that person is a religious character, then you have to treat them with integrity and deal with them properly. As a result, this show is very popular with a lot of religious folks.”