V: Science Fiction as an Allegory for Obamamania
The new TV series, V, a remake of a 1983 miniseries, has debuted on ABC and the media is abuzz with assertions that the show is an allegory for the Obama administration, although the executive director claims to be surprised about this alleged controversy. (For those of you not familiar with the plot, “V” stands for the Visitors, who are actually reptiles from outer space, masked to appear as model perfect humans, who arrive in humongous flying saucers ala Independence Day over various metropolises such as New York City.) I noticed this similarity before hearing anything about the so-called controversy, when the alien leader promised Americans “hope” and “change” and “universal health care,” and especially when she told the news reporter who was granted an exclusive interview to agree to “be sure not to ask any questions that might portray [them] in a negative light.” With these rather obvious allusions, I googled the subject, and in addition to a Wikipedia entry, I found several other posts on the topic. For example, Troy Patterson from Slate wrote:
More than a few journalists and bloggers have remarked that it’s possible to read V as an allegory hostile to President Obama and sympathetic with the birthers and other nutcases who believe him to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. . . . . Indeed, if the show is to have the symbolic import that we expect from a science-fiction story, this is the only possible way to read V as a coherent text.
Lisa de Moraes wrote in the Washington Post:
Almost as if Lou Dobbs had taken over the network, ABC plans to debut a series in the fall about aliens who come to Earth promising “hope,” “change” and universal health care, but who actually want to infiltrate our government and our businesses and, to that end, have rallied the country’s youth behind their nefarious campaign.
What’s Lou Dobbs got to do with it? So much for the objectivity of our MSM, or perhaps, as Glenn Beck has opined, the “fringe media” is a more accurate designation for a group so out of touch with American life. A more impartial opinion by Chicago Tribune reviewer and alleged “libertarian,” Glenn Garvin, has called the show “a barbed commentary on Obamania that will infuriate the president’s supporters and delight his detractors.” I think the parallels to Obamamania hit the nail on the head, especially the similarities with the zombie-like enthrallment of our nation’s youth. The aliens, in the fictional case, want our water and our bodies for food, whereas Obama merely wants to devour our economy and political institutions. The latter’s self-portrayal as a moderate, abetted by the national media, while hiding a radical Marxist beneath the mask, has led many of us to characterize him as a “stealth” candidate, who like the aliens in V, needs to be unmasked.
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Comments
I have always loved science fiction, and “V” certainly is that. I love science fiction that explores culture (Voyage of the Space Beagle) but to be honest, I’m not sure that I’m ready for mass market science fiction that skewers a given real life individual…even if it is Teh Won because that speaks of propaganda. And propaganda is always a tool used to “fool” or “incite” the masses. It just seems odious to me in the long run.
Yes, I don’t much like propaganda myself, but I think the story here is: how did this slip through the MSM with its incessant Obama worship? I’d wager on how long it would last if it wasn’t for the fact that it is only a miniseries.
By the way, I think Garvin was right: it isn’t so much a skewering of Obama as it is a skewering of Obamamania, and to my way of thinking, that is the more interesting question. I just read Canetti’s Crowds and Power and I’m currently reading MacKay’s 1841 classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. One can only conclude that most crowd phenomena are in fact delusional.
Original V series broadcast during the Reagan years…. Just sayin’
And then the target was apparently fascism. What’s amazing to me about the new V is that it is so transparently an allegory for Obamamania. How did that ever get through the MSM filters?
By the way, for all the political establishment and MSM’s hatred of Reagan, all the name calling and smearing of Reagan, and despite the fact that they thought his “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachav!” speech was so offensive, the world is a freer place, on balance, since the fall of the Soviet Union. That’s the way I see it anyway.