NOT La La Land

NOT La La Land By Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="NOT La La Land" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] I had planned this week to talk about La La Land. But with the new executive order barring refugees, immigrants and green card holders from our country, I want to use this podcast for something much more important. As filmmakers, writers, actors, directors, producers, executives, we have a sacred responsibility to our audience. Our films and TV shows shape the narrative of this country, and the belief systems of the hundreds of millions of people who see them. Our movies and TV Shows can shape the world for the better. Shows like Will and Grace and Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, for example, completely changed the landscape for gay rights in America. By breaking the taboos of putting openly gay characters into leading roles, these shows introduced a mainstream audience to a kind of person they might otherwise have judged or feared, and allowing them to get to know them as human beings. They brought gay characters into mainstream living rooms, and allowed people to get to know them and love them. And by doing so, they changed the world. And what’s interesting is that these characters that changed the world were far from perfectly depicted. Far from the complex portraits that we’d see in later in the shows that followed like Transparent. In fact, these shows were rife with cliches and stereotypes, presenting the kinds of gay characters that mainstream audiences expected, embracing and normalizing and humanizing the cliches, rather than fighting them. In many ways, the flaws of these shows were part of their power. They allowed the shows to meet their audiences where they were, rather than where their writers wished their audiences would be. Although at that time, putting a gay character in the lead was obviously a political act, these were not written as political shows. They didn’t get up on a soap box and tell people what to think, or demonize their audiences for their view of the world. They simply invited their audiences into the lives of their characters, and by doing so, they allowed millions of people to actually change their views, without even realizing they were changing. In many ways, the most powerful political movies and TV shows are often the ones that are not overtly political. Because it’s these shows that shape our worldview from the inside, sneaking past our defenses of what we think we believe, and slowly changing the way we view the world. Which is why I want to implore you, as writers, as directors, as producers, as actors, as artists, as filmmakers, to recognize the power of mainstream Hollywood movies and TV shows. These movies are not just popcorn movies. These TV shows are not just mind numbing entertainment. These movies and shows are the mythologies that shape our world. Working on us, through subtle repetition, to shape our view of the world. Powerful because they don’t appear political, because they don’t trigger our intellectual defenses. For years, we’ve dismissed crappy reality programming like The Apprentice as mindless entertainment, not as the storytelling that shapes the worldview of America. But in the wake of this election, we can now see the political power of even the silliest reality show, to shape the worldview of millions of people. To take an erratic businessman, and shape him into such a powerful symbol of success, that even in the face of countless contradictory facts, for many people that belief cannot be shaken. People don’t attach to facts. People attach to characters. They learn from characters how to understand their world, how to make sense of their own questions and emotions, what it is to be a woman or be a man,