3 Ways Political Allegory Movies Need to Change

Whether it is a historical drama, a dystopian science fiction, or an outrageous comedy, film has been, and is, a great way to influence audiences, and offer criticism of our society, and how it functions.

Although these films that perpetrate a social message can be engaging and impactful, their role in film entertainment is changing. With an audience largely familiar with the pulpit of cinema, often political allegories can be disregarded.

Their message can be too on the nose, or their world too exaggerated for viewers to be affected.

Whatever the recipe for success, these movies must adapt.

What do I mean by 'Political Allegory'?

Any film that uses symbolic representation of political types, figures, issues, or stigmas in its conceptual world building: I consider Political allegory.

For instance, the Hunger Games I consider a political allegory.

The world itself is a fictional, symbolic representation of our world. And through the juxtaposition of its fictional world to our world we can understand its political themes.

What is NOT a 'Political Allegory'?

A movie I would not consider a political allegory would be a film like The Bird Cage, with Robin Williams.

In case you haven't seen it, The Bird Cage is about a gay nightclub owner who has to hide his homosexual identity from his son's soon-to-be father-in-law (a politcally conservative figure). Therefore, though political themes are present, and social issues are brought up, the world itself is still confined to what we understand.

There are no new rules to learn to understand the character’s struggles. There is no alternate world, future, or dimension to compare to our current society.

1. Believability: The World as it could be...

Most political allegory films take place in the dystopian future.

This provides ample amount of time for the degradation of society, and time for people themselves to adjust how they respond to that degradation.

In the film Divergent teenagers are sorted into factions based on their personality traits. Now, today this strict adherence to government mandated sorting, would not be tolerated. However, in the film (taking place in a dystopian future), this sorting is seen as a universal rite of passage and is welcomed with celebration.

Something Familiar, taken to an extreme

In our society, the idea of longing for identification within a group is not foreign. People religiously adhere to personality tests, zodiac signs, and even which Friends character they are.

Social media offers the promise of interconnectedness at the price of privacy. What films like Divergent do is take a facet of current society and distortedly progress it. And that is one of the ingredients of an effective political allegory: believability.

2. Catastrophe: What Happened to the World We know...

When we view these films and their outlandish premises, we want to understand how the world descended into something so abnormal. Often a disaster, war, or some other wide spread happening is the catalyst for the distorted world we are viewing:

For instance, in the film V for Vendetta, we are shown a totalitarian regime ruling Britain with an iron fist. As a viewer we immediately question: how did it get here?

Throughout the film we find out that London was hit with a plague. This plague caused anarchy all over the world.

However, we find out that the government provided the cure for its citizens, and with that a new regime. Through the agent of fear, people willingly sacrificed their freedom for security.

This is the effectiveness of cataclysmic events. They force people to reevaluate and entertain new ideas.

Human Nature at work...

When something goes wrong, we instinctively want to pursue new avenues of prevention. We want a scape goat. So, for major changes to occur in a film’s backstory, a catastrophe is an easy explanation for why people would so willingly accept a distorted version of the world in which we live.

3. Agent of Change: Who sees the world the way we do and wants to change it?

While catastrophe serves as a catalyst to societal apathy in these films, there is usually at least one character who sees what’s wrong. As a viewer this seems only logical.

The character, or characters, that offer clarity, are the agents of change, seeking to correct their distorted reality to resemble our current sense of right and wrong.

For instance, in the Hunger Games franchise, the main character Katniss sees the Capitol forcing children to fight to the death as wrong. We the audience also view it as wrong. However, the stakes in Katniss world are higher than ours.

For her, to defy the hunger games is rebellion, and, eventually that’s exactly what she sparks. She, the character of clarity, becomes the agent of societal change.

Exceptions to the "Agent of Change" Rule...

Now, there are some films that defy these rules. For example, in the film Never Let Me Go cloned children are raised to be organ donors. After the third donation, the children die. And that is just the way it is.

The film doesn’t explore a plot of overthrowing the system. There is no character of clarity. There is an attempt by the main characters to avoid their imminent death, but this attempt is done within the system, not against it.

It’s movies like these that can truly be powerful in examining what things in our current society are wrong that we choose to ignore. But rarely do these films inspire, as much as they deject.

Why it doesn't work...

Today’s cinema goers are wise to the overt themes of political allegories, and the creation of them require far more subtlety and creativity.

At times, these films can be bogged down with exposition and world building, so much so, that the viewer feels disillusioned with the story altogether.

A great example of this is the film The Maze Runner. Released during the era of other dystopian young adult adaptations such as Divergent and The Hunger Games, the Maze Runner came off as a knock off. It’s post-apocalyptic setting and strong-willed main character were tired motifs, that failed to relay the film’s message (if it had any at all).

A Genre Wasted on the Young...

Noticeably, these young adult adaptations present the character of clarity/agent of change as a young, open minded person, which is not at all by accident.

The waves of change in our society are often bore on the shoulders of the new generation. Ironically, this has become a tired trope in cinema, and in fact a caricature in real life, as young people all around the world often become defiant for defiance's sake; speaking out on issues of seemingly paramount importance, thought to be born of good will, rather than from the bully pulpit of party politics.

We've seen this all before....

It is not that these films lack prowess in storytelling or richness of characters. It is merely a dilution of influence, as modern viewers have not only been overexposed to politically charged films, but also overexposed to stagnant political change in the real world.

Simply put, we’ve seen it before. And like children who have seen the magician’s secret, we are harder to fool. We are harder to convince by such conventional tropes.