Done Right

This is sort of a compare an contrast followup to my last blog post... usually I think dissenting is easy and assenting is hard but it seems this week is the opposite, because Buhle and Wagner do exactly what they are supposed to do: make an argument, then back it up convincingly, and on top of that they actually made it interesting to read.

Somewhat ironically I think they used up their best example for the Critque From the Margin chapter in the introduction, which was the analysis of Planet of the Apes as a commentary on McCarthyism and the blacklist. I'd seen Planet of the Apes before but I'd never thought to put it in a social/political context, but when Buhle and Wagner put it all together it became pretty clear, both within the text and behind it: the ties of Wilson and Serling to blacklistees, as well as the thematic component of the story, such as the power of speaking among those who are otherwise silent, and the threat that speech has to those who would like to hold on to power.

This next part goes on kind of a tangent, but Chapter 4 actually led me to make something of a modern connection to blacklistees and the critique from the margin idea. The connection comes from Joseph L Breen, the hollywood censor, and it was the name Breen which reminded me of another Breen: Wallace Breen from the video game Half-Life 2. I'll try to give a brief synopsis of the plot of the game to put things in context: Aliens from another dimension have invaded and taken over Earth, and have installed an ostensibly human-run puppet government, headed by said Wallace Breen, who appears throughout the game on TV sets making speeches about how much better off humanity is under the new alien domination, and condoning the aliens main method of oppression: some sci-fi system to suppress the ability to procreate. The part that brings me back to the Planet of the Apes comparison is one of the subtle facets of the game: while everyone in the world is very strongly characterized (for which the game won many awards) the character you play as never says anything, is silent.

Now maybe I'm making a big stretch here and there really is no connection, but after reading these sections I can't help but think that the censorship/Breen theme had an influence.