On "conservative" art and entertainment

Reading through the emails I’ve received regarding my NRO Battlestar Galactica piece, it seems like there may be some minor confusion about what I’m claiming about the show. The piece was not intended to suggest that the show is overtly conservative (although I do think some of its ideas might lean right), certainly not in the way, say, National Review or The American Spectator can be considered “conservative” or even in the way that The Constant Gardener might be considered liberal.

What I am saying, however, is that the series is accurate, in the non-literal way that science fiction can be accurate, about the labyrinthine interrelationships and unrelenting procession of power grabs that both connect and put at odds the major institutions of societal development. The show’s biggest strengths are twofold: it absolutely nails the way a society’s pillars of power quarrel and make truces and generally work as much toward gaining influence as toward societal good, and it also nails the human dynamic that drives those institutions—the way personal histories, peer pressure, individual duty and traditional belief combust and react to shape the people who make up those power centers.

And as for the argument that the show's producers see it as less than favorable to religion or other traditional societal structures, well, that’s fairly superfluous as far as I’m concerned. Ronald Moore can think whatever he wants about the show. His opinion about its meaning and message isn’t any more important than yours or Laura Miller’s or Dave Kehr’s. (If anything, Kehr’s means more—that man knows him some movies. Anyway.) Once a writer, director, producer, whatever, releases his show into the wild, it’s no longer his. It’s the same as with legislation: Congressional staffers and committee members can talk all they want about what a bill means or doesn’t, but in the end, it’s the actual text that matters and not much else.

And what this goes back to is the idea that I’ve talked about before, which is that good art and good entertainment don’t necessarily have to be overtly conservative—or even neutral—to be good. This is something that many conservatives and traditionalists have trouble dealing with, and it’s one of the reasons that the right has long dismissed (and been dismissed by) Hollywood and the mainstream entertainment establishment. The right desperately needs to get away from the idea that good art is an op-ed for our side (not that the left doesn't occassionally succomb to that faulty notion as well).

Still, I don’t even think there’s much evidence that Battlestar Galactica has it in for conservative ideals. Oh sure, it equivocates on prisoner treatment issues, and it doesn’t always present religion as positive, but those are contested issues even within conservative hotbeds. If anything, the show’s portrait of a decisive, strong military and a compassionate, but ultimately cunning and tough-minded president (“You have to kill her.”) comes awfully close to falling in line with some of conservatism's current rallying points, at least far more than most of what we see on TV.