Covert versus overt propaganda

Don Quixote is reading Ben Shapiro’s Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, which led us into an interesting lunch time conversation about covert versus overt propaganda.  The overt propaganda shows we discussed were All In The Family and Family Ties.

In both, week after week, year after year, a caricature of a conservative was taught a lesson by the liberals around him.  In AITF, the tone was hostile — Archie was a boor and Meathead was a buffoon.  In FT, the tone was saccharine — Alex was perky and his family relentlessly loving.  In both cases, probably to chagrin of the show’s creators, the conservative characters attained iconic popularity.  Audiences knew what lessons they were supposed to learn, but they couldn’t help liking Archie and Alex, both of whom were the honest Id.

The covert propaganda show we discussed was Sex In The City.  You may be wondering why I say a show about women, shopping, shoes and sex was propaganda.  Here’s my thinking:  years ago, when I still listened to NPR, I heard a Fresh Air interview with the show’s creator, an extremely gay man.  I don’t remember whether the creator said this explicitly, or whether I drew the conclusion, but it was pretty clear to me by the end of that interview that SITC is a show about gay men and, more particularly, about gay men’s promiscuity. A show about gay men’s promiscuity, however, wouldn’t sell.  What’s titillating when presented in the guise of sexy women would be, for a larger part of the viewing audience, off-putting and alien if it were about gay men.

The fact that SITC is a metaphor for gay sex somewhat begs the question of why I say the show is covert propaganda, not just Shakespearean gender play.  The reason is because it changes the sexual debate.  If over-the-top promiscuity is normalized for heterosexual women, than one cannot criticize the same conduct in gay men.

The question DQ and I ended up bandying about at lunch was this:  assuming you’re opposed to what Hollywood is selling, which is more dangerous, the covert or the overt propaganda?  I think the former is.  It’s like the difference between being attacked from the front in an open field, and being stabbed in the back in a dark alley.  In the former case, one can theoretically mount a defense; in the latter, however, the wounding might be fatal before one even realizes there’s been an attack.

What’s your take, and do you have other examples of shows that covertly push a liberal world view?