Prop Culture
Someone asked me not too long ago if I watch Law and Order; I gave the polite response - no - as opposed to the response I wanted to give - No, and why the hell would anyone? I always wonder what Guy Paul Morin thinks when he sees Law and Order, or CSI, or one of the half million shows exactly like them- 'Wow! Good cops, honest prosecutors, careful forensics experts. It's like the producers saw what happened to me, then made the exact opposite!' It's interesting how the entertainment industry gets labeled liberal or left wing when there are so many shows on television - and films in the theatre - interested in propping up conventional ideas and power structures, maintaining the status quo, and promoting the idea that people in positions of power and authority can be guided to the correct decision based on a) their own moral compass and b) faith in the idea that scientific inquiry can lead to only one conclusion.
I don't think it was a coincidence that Tears of the Sun came out right before the invasion of Iraq; I don't think it's 'just entertainment' when one of the more recent Bond flicks had Cuba using its health care system to help terrorists change their identities (if I remember correctly, the North Korean bad guy had Cuban doctors surgically make him Swiss. I do have to admit, that's pretty damn... something?) And I don't think either of those movies qualify as art because I believe art is fundamentally subversive. There are certainly recent examples of subversive entertainment - V for Vendetta, Equilibrium, and one of my personal not-so-recent favourites, They Live - but I hardly think that subversiveness in the entertainment industry is the norm.
I feel that any industry at the top has no choice but to be conservative in nature, just as any politician promising 'Change' isn't promising anything at all; when you're already successful, fundamentally changing the system that allowed you to succeed in the first place can result in an environment in which you'll no longer succeed, and in a way is kind of like admitting you never should have been successul in the first place. After all, if a system needs to be changed, and you're at the top of it, what does that say about you?
Anyways, I think a new genre needs to be created. We should have Drama, Comedy, Action, Musicals, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Prop Culture - defined as any form of near art designed to prop up the system, to tell people the structures that we have exist because they're good, and we shouldn't think about messing with them.
So, a short catalog of Prop Culture works, besides the ones I talked about at the beginning: