I write a lot about how TV shows and movies try to influence our political views, but there’s also the flip side: our political views influence which programs and films we seek out. One of my professors talked about this the other day, and he showed us some extremely interesting graphs that detail TV show preferences according to party affiliation. As soon as I find those charts again, I will share them on this blog, but in the meantime here are two lists by Entertainment Weekly about Democrats’ and Republicans’ favorite and least favorite shows.
Liberal
Liberal vs. Conservative TV Shows
To continue the topic of my previous blog post, when I Google-searched “liberal TV shows,” my results looked different from my “conservative TV shows” Google search. Obviously the content was different, but what surprised me (it wouldn’t have if I had thought about it for half a second) was that instead of getting a list of “Top [number] liberal TV shows,” like I did when I was looking for conservative ones, I got several “liberal vs. conservative shows” lists and one about the worst liberal TV shows. The fifth result was an article entitled, “The 19 Most Conservative TV Shows of All Time,” which was also on the list I got when I did my conservative show search. One of the top results of the “liberal TV shows” search was an article entitled “Nine TV Shows the Skewer the Right.”
What I took away from this is that most TV shows are assumed to be liberal-leaning by the general public (or at least by the people writing the articles that show up on Google), and it is the conservative-leaning shows that are considered an anomaly, therefore deserving of lists that point them out. In my own experience, this observation holds pretty true.
Source: Pinterest.com
“Freddy Spaghetti” Provides Ample Fodder for Political Statements on the Role of Government
In episode 24 of season 2 of Parks and Rec, whimsically titled “Freddy Spaghetti” after a guest musician on the show, Leslie and Ron really outdo themselves in showing their true political colors, and the contrast is pretty humorous. On the episode, the staff of the Pawnee Parks Department is in the midst of dealing with the latest crisis – a budget shortage that threatens to shut down their whole department. Two auditors from the state are present, and while they get down to business figuring out what to cut, Leslie and Ron are left to explain to the irate townspeople why the annual “Freddy Spaghetti” concert has been cancelled (due to a lack of funds). Throughout the ordeal, libertarian Ron Swanson is absolutely beside himself with joy that a government department, albeit his own, is being slashed. As he states more than once throughout the show, he views government services as a waste of taxpayer money. Leslie, on the other hand, is heartbroken over this new development. She loves the services the Parks Department provides, and she does everything she can to preserve them. The episode ends before the crisis is resolved, but not before both Leslie and Ron emphatically (though, to their credit, civilly) disagree over the role of government in daily life.
As Ron states in the pilot episode of Parks and Rec, he hates bureaucracy, and he believes that government should only consist of one man:
Leslie repeatedly displays her enthusiasm for what she views as the positive role of government in the city of Pawnee. See her and Ron’s opposite reactions to the government shutdown below:
And there you have it. Libertarian meets Liberal. Small Government meets Big Government. The one thing NBC tells us for sure is that it is possible for even people with diametrically opposed viewpoints on a big matter to disagree in an amiable manner.
Hollywood, D.C. 