Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Is V an anti-Obama allegory?

The original 1983 V miniseries was clear in the situation it was trying to portray. It showed a Nazi takeover of the United States that evidence all over the place. The Visitors had uniforms, Swastika-like symbols, persecuted certain groups, and V actually stood for victory.

Online, many people seem glued to the idea that everything V related must have a real world message, and that the Visitors must be a representation of Obama. While I think connecting a television show to a politician is tenuous a best, in the case of V, there is certainly evidence to suggest it is in sorts an attack on Obama. What most people missed was the simultaneous attack on Bush which was perhaps more veiled than the attacks on Obama. Of course, this is assuming the V producers intended to have a political message, and they have so far denied that.

The public's reaction to the Visitors is similar to the reaction to Obama. Here is a group of aliens that descend from the sky with bold promises, and the people of New York clap without hesitation. Obama came out of nowhere to become president, running on a platform of change like the V's, offering solutions to the world's maladies.

When the reporter Chad Decker is interviewing the Visitor's spokesperson Anna, there are several instances in which I noticed specific attacks on Obama, assuming that everything the Visitors do is bad. Anna states "Unlike you, we don't divide ourselves into countries. We're one united people." That fits in nicely with the idea that Obama is a globalist. Later she says "embracing change is never easy, but the reward for doing so can be greater than anything you can imagine." I think we've heard Obama say something similar in the past.  Anna talks about providing complete medical services for everyone, and Chad says "You're talking about universal health care," and Anna responds "I believe that what you call it."

The fawning media is another parallel that can to drawn to Obama. The reaction by the media is extremely positive and while Decker seems wary, he realizes that doing what Anna asks him will elevate his career. I know the pilot was filmed much before the White House war with Fox, but there was a great line by Anna when she tells Chad "Just be sure not to ask anything that would paint us in a negative light." The Obama administration seems fixated on the media that had initially loved Obama up to the election and several months after, and Fox has always been a thorn in their side.

There are several references to Bush that many people looked over for convenience. At the resistance meeting, the leader tells the group "They set out to cause worldwide instability. Unnecessary wars, economic meltdown, faith twisted into extremism." I assume the unnecessary wars is probably Iraq, so the neocons are reptiles and part of the grand scheme to destroy humanity. The economic meltdown can be traced to previous administrations, so they are all culpable in it, though it happened under Bush's watch, so he is the main perpetrator. Faith twisted into extremism sounds like the religious right and the current Republican party which is pretty much out of control.

I guess the message could be that if anything bad happens under Obama, it is because Bush greased the skids to allow Obama to do whatever he wanted. The Visitors infiltrated Earth years earlier, making everything bad happen, and allowing the newly arrived Visitors in the spaceships to cause undue harm.

The only reason I wrote this post or even noticed some of these things is because I saw so many people saying it was anti-Obama. Without these suggestions, I probably would not have seen the numerous connections. Whether you think there's validity to the claim, I always think it's best to take any political message in television with a grain of salt.

0 comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails