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Re:Children of Men: The Future Is a Mirror for the Present by preg_match on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:12PM (#50431260)
Every show or movie is a platform for the social commentary of the time. That's what a narrative is. This reminds me of the people who will say that Star Wars is not political.

No... it is. It all is. You can ask the creators, they'll tell you. Sometimes in the context of the modern day it might not seem like social commentary or political commentary because we take a lot for granted but, I assure you, at the time it certainly was, and it certainly still is.

Re:Children of Men: The Future Is a Mirror for the Present by rglullis on Monday November 09, 2026 @04:33PM (#50432519)
This is not what I'm arguing.

Of course authors will inject their worldview into what they create. Of course stories will reflect fundamental aspects of humanity, and with that how people (and groups of people) relate to one another. This is all valid.

> Sometimes in the context of the modern day

The problem is that writers nowadays write *only* for the "modern day". Everything becomes "social commentary" for $CURRENT_THING, which means that the story becomes stale the moment that the powers-that-be move on and $CURRENT_THING stops being a thing.

Good stories are perenial and worthy of be retold, no matter who is in power at any given moment. "Malcolm in the Middle" is a TV show that has things that working class families can relate, no matter if they are living in 2006, 2026 or 2056. "The Wire" is a show with very clear social commentary, but the same story would be told whether you had a Democrat or a Republican in the White House. "The Boys" was a show that started with a perenial premise (what if gods were just as broken as humans) and by the third season it turned itself into a caricature of Trump's America. Guess which ones from these will be talked about 25 years from now, and which one is pretty much forgotten already?