Hidden Agendas?

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When you read a book or watch a movie, how easy is it for you to pick up on if the author/director has an agenda they're trying to push? I ask because I've been seeing quite a few books and movies lately that seem a little too interested in beating a certain idea into our heads than in just entertaining the audience, but everyone else says they didn't notice it at all.

One of those was the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie. I've been following JK Rowling's tweets and blog posts for a little while, and I've noticed how she's becoming more and more... liberal, for lack of a better word, and how she's becoming less tolerant and more outspoken about anything that doesn't line up with her ideals. Then I watched Fantastic Beasts, and it's a movie that throws it in you face pretty blatantly that the church is bad, tolerant people are better than judgmental people, bad people don't will try to make you who you're not, etc. It was more than a little distracting, and all the preaching (or anti-preaching, maybe, since the bad guys were ones proving all of Rowling's points) lowered the entertainment value of the whole movie. But when I brought it up, seemed like it went right over everyone else's heads.

What about you? Are you able to pick up on these things too? Or am I just imagining things? lol

I haven't seen or read Fantastic Beasts but I do see this in media. For me it's mostly the views of sexuality being thrown in my face to the point that I can't ignore it so I just turn it off. It's like subliminal messaging because that's not the focus of the show or movie but before you know it, it's in every ep or a large part of the movie is dedicated to it. For no reason, as in it's not at all related to the plot.

I haven't encountered this problem in a book, or at least not that I can remember. I feel like Disney movies have hidden agendas too. I'm paranoid though.

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Last edited by ThisAdamGuy on 20 Apr 2017, 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Here lately, I would have to agree with you. Maleficent was very anti-male masquerading as being pro-woman. Zootopia, as much as I enjoyed it, has a ton of double standards about what some species (ie, races) are allowed to do and other aren't. Not to mention blatant hypocrisy, where some animal stereotypes are portrayed as racism (dumb bunny, lying fox), but others are laughed at (slow sloths, smelly yaks, lemmings following each other)

its appaling, how all's agendized exponentially since uhmm "friends"?
i don't know it seems like it always was, at some point it becomes too blatent to be able to support that

Everything ever created can be considered a type of propaganda, but people may not see it that way because they are accustomed to and comfortable with the status quo. Nearly every movie ever made presents heterosexual relationships: do you see movies as promoting heterosexuality? Until recently, most novels had male protagonists and focused on men's perspectives: do you see these novels as anti-female?

You can't read the minds of authors and scriptwriters. You are projecting your own perspectives onto their works.

thats so looking through todays-narrative glasses
fairy tales are quite equally for m/f representation
how about the magic cooking pots?


re-creation, or as my father used to say; men are (generally) raised by women
(and yeah that creates a biological bias- (against women by women))
even in the herd, a female-genetically based group, before and after birth there's somewhat preference for male offspring

I think you are right, books and movies are susceptible to this. Although I can spot it fairly easy, I don't like to have to be alert for this kind of thing, because it decreases my absorption (I have to remain a critical distance) into the story. Also, I don't like to have waisted time and experience anoyance after I realize it.

A solution to this problem is to ask friends for book or movie recommendations. Your friends know your tastes and your likes&dislikes well, and often they have similar tastes and interests. This way chances are very high that you will be saved from disapointments and enjoy the story fully.

You see that a few friends can be very important for someone with autism, as they can function as a buffer-zone/filter between the person with autism and the (human) world.

I don't know what half of this means. Fairy tales are not novels. What pots? What is this book supposed to illustrate?

Starkid ma'am, I'm not projecting my perspective. I'm stating how I feel. I said sexuality, not heterosexuality, homosexuality, asexuality, or anything else. Sexuality as a whole is portrayed more in media than it was 20 years ago, and more then than it was 20 years before that. It's even in commercials for food and toothpaste.

People have opinions and they interpret things differently. It's not always the same. To quote, 'The good news is everybody gets to have an outlet. The bad news is everybody gets to have an outlet.'

Usually, the idea of making art is to push an agenda or to make a point. It does not have to be political, it is often about the human condition. Most often the agenda is hidden behind entertaining because entertainment is big business. As far as the ability to pick up the authors agenda it is a matter of how up front the creator is and have knowledgeable you are about the topic of the agenda.

No, because you can read/watch those stories without feeling like you're being beaten over the head with a message the author/director wants to preach at you. The same is true for books with homosexual relationships and female protagonists. The problem comes when delivering the MESSAGE, and thereby pushing the AGENDA, becomes more important than telling the STORY. You can see this when something feels out of place, and yet the story gives it more focus than is warranted. For example, in a lot of stories I've read that featured gay characters, once the gay character was introduced his sexuality suddenly became just as important as the main plot. I always find myself thinking, why do you people care so much that he's gay when YOU'RE TRYING TO SAVE THE FREAKING WORLD?!



So which is it? You just said that everybody has a message and an agenda, but now you're saying there is no agenda and I'm just projecting what I want to see onto other people's work.

I don't believe in neutrality, so I think there is some kind of agenda everywhere. I think we tend to be less aware of it when it advocates for the norm, or for values we agree with.

nobody will consider a movie portraying an heterossexual couple a heterossexual movie, it's just a movie. it doesn't happens the same with gay couples, it never can be just romance, it will be always labeled as a gay romance and it will receive a lot of attention (positive or negative) for it.

but both movies have political values and positions. and I don't think by any means that this is problematic, but the hidden aspect of it can be, everyone should be aware of the ideology in what they consume.

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when this political bias become forced and opportunistic – and I think this is the case of fantastic beasts – it's when we have a big problem, that decreases the artistic and entrainment values (and also it doesn't do much for the political values). it was really pathetic in fantastic beat that they put a black woman as a president of MACUSA but everything else in the movie is very white-centric, the main characters, the background people, the culture shown etc, but then there is this powerful black woman in a secondary character so them can feel good about how inclusive they are, when actually they aren't being inclusive at all, they are just reproducing a diversity aesthetics, without really being diverse.

That kind of hacked me off too, but for a different reason. In the beginning of the movie they laid it on pretty thick that discrimination in America's magical society is just as strong as the "no-maj" (wow, I feel stupid just typing that) community, what with Newt's comments about segregation and not having relationshipts with muggles. But Rowling still expects us to believe they'd elect a black woman president in an era that even I, a firm believer that most racism and sexism these days are imagined, will admit without hesitation was extremely racist and sexist? Is this because people were too smart to believe her "Hermione was always black" nonsense, so she's going "HEY, LOOK! THIS ONE'S BLACK! THIS ONE'S BLACK FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!"?

I was trying to say more or less this

the aim is to please the SJW, so doesn't matter if it fits or not in the plot, just put a black character in a position it will make them happy

Am I the only person that thinks that race doesn't matter? I'd wouldn't care if a movie had all white characters or all black characters as long as the movie itself is good. People should really ease up on this whole race thing, and when movie directors just choose people of different skin color for no other reason then their skin color it just strikes me as really ingenuous. Anyways, agreed, its just more or less to appease the growing SJW movement that is utterly concerned with identity politics.