When many people think of the political climate in the Western World, many think of the cult classic satire film Idiocracy, where the decisions by the severely incompetent president were only matched by the decisions of the severely incompetent people that elected him. Many feel that decisions by recent political leadership mirror that movie, and not just in the United States. The movie was made as a commentary on disturbing trends in such things as anti-intellectualism, commercialism, consumerism, corporatocracy, and overpopulation. But as the years went by and the trends continued, many felt that real life events were starting to mirror what was happening in the movie. On a less comedic note, many classic novels from Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 to even Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man all made scathing statements about the sociopolitical climates of their times, that all still sadly ring true to this day.
As a creator, you have a built-in platform to voice your opinions and concerns about the state of the world around you. At any time you can use your artistic voice to point out the flaws you see in society. But if you choose to go that route, there are some methods and techniques you should be aware of in order to most clearly get your message across. Here are a few of them.
Find your message
So here is first and the most crucial part. What statement about the world are you trying to make? Your story is your platform, your soapbox and your megaphone. You have the freedom (and hopefully the audience) to say exactly what is on your mind about whatever is on your mind. What do you want to say? And more importantly, what does it have to do with the story you are telling?
Take some time to think through the issue that is bothering you so much that you want to address it in your story. Look at the issue from all angles, including (especially!) from viewpoints that don't align with yours. Do plenty of research, and not just from sources that agree with your way of seeing things. Collect hard data from verifiable sources if you can. Become an expert on the issue. The better, more complete an understanding you have of the issue, the more concise and impactful you can make your commentary on it. And yes, knowing and understanding the opposing viewpoint and the data they use to support their side can help you better frame your message, because it will account for and maybe even answer their arguments. Who knows? Maybe learning more about it might even alter your opinion on it. Stranger things have happened.
Commentary as your main story
In two of his most politically charged novels (Jingo and Monstrous Regimen), Terry Pratchett uses his Discworld setting and characters to skewer nationalism, propaganda, sexism and gender inequality, racism and the politics of war. The stories were as overt a commentary on the zeitgeist at the time as you could get from a book featuring werewolves, dwarves and trolls. A similar tactic was used in the purposefully offensive Mel Brooks classic movie Blazing Saddles, when he took the vulgar and racist attitudes of many people in real-life and placed them front and center in the wild west. A more recent example is the movie Don't Look Up, which uses an oncoming meteor as a vehicle to fully and blatantly examine and lambaste negative attitudes about the COVID crisis and climate change. When you take this approach, keep in mind that a story directly confronting an issue runs a risk of alienating the chunk of your potential audience that either doesn't agree with your stance, or want to actively avoid addressing the issue altogether. If telling your story and sending your message is worth that risk (and it should be), then go for it.
Commentary as an aside.
Conversely, in his book Snuff Pratchett's social commentary is much less in your face. In that story, he shows the prejudices the inhabitants of his world have against goblins, before having those goblins shatter stereotypes and win people over. It makes a statement without being the central focus of the overall plot. If you don't want to focus your entire story on your message, you can use a subplot or even just a scene or two to illustrate your point before moving on. That way, if your story is mainly about something else, you are showing enough to start the conversation without taking away from your core narrative.
Direct vs. indirect commentary
There's something to be said about boldly stating your gripe within your story. When you take that approach like Idiocracy or Don't Look Up did, you can state your message clearly and directly, leaving no doubt as to where you stand. But you also have the option of taking a subtler approach, using more metaphor, allegory and other literary tricks to sneak your message across, like in the classic children's tale Ms. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH, which tackled such issues as animal experimentation and the destruction of animal habitats through situations and discoveries by the central characters. Likewise in Tarantino 's masterpiece Django Unchained, he painted the slavemasters as uncivilized buffoons that tried to present themselves as greater than what they were, in contrast to the more intelligent and well-spoken slaves. He even made reference to the 3 Musketeers book being written by a black man. In a similar fashion, the original Planet of the Apes addressed the issue with having the lighter apes being cruel to the subserviant darker apes.
Indirectly addressing your issue could resonate more with certain readers because it is something introduced to them at almost a subconscious level. Ideally, they will start caring about your topic, but they won't necessarily know that it was your story that prompted that.
Make it seamless.
When incorporating your soapbox moments into your story, the one thing you don't want is for the momentum and flow of your story to halt just so you can write a soliloquy about the ills of society. The story must always come first. Whether your statement is a speech by one of your characters, or some paragraphs by your narrator, or be backstory and lore, or a situation your characters find themselves in, you want to make sure your statement propels the story forward.
Avoid being preachy.
Nobody likes being talked down to. When you make your statement, be very careful of your tone and wording. You could put off and turn away the very people you want to reach if your message comes across like you are condemning them or taking a holier-than-thou stance. Many readers will take the messages you present in your story as a reflection of the author, so you need to be cognizant of how you present that message.
Conclusion
It's easy to jump on a blog or social media and rant and rave about what you think is wrong with the world. It takes much more talent and skill to incorporate those views into a story or to build a cohesive story around those views. But I believe that is talent and skill that you possess. Give it a try and see how many lives you can change with your story.
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