Actually, most stuff isn’t political; you are just insane
Yes, ideology permeates culture. But that doesn't mean everything fits into a partisan binary.
Over the last several years, what was once a niche academic observation has become something of a mantra in left-liberal spaces: everything is political. (Everything is ideological doesn’t quite mean the same thing, but in effect the two assertions are interchangable).
There’s a grain of truth here, as anyone who smoked pot in high school and just, like, had some really deep thoughts will confirm. In order to understand any statement or work of art–in order to communicate–there must exist some shared understandings and beliefs between senders and receivers. Okay, great. Whoopdee doo. That’s some real philosophy major-level shit. You should write a fucking book about.
Aside from being unbearably tedious, this observation has become an all-consuming basal assumption underlying every left-liberal analysis of social issues and criticism of cultural artifacts. No longer are artists and commentators allowed to insist that some things simply fall outside the lens of our manichean partisan binary. No sir. Anyone who tries claiming their work isn’t explicitly progressive is actually a secret reactionary, and so every work–from sitcoms to video games to journalistic descriptions of city hall meetings–must either soak itself in the treacle of cultural liberalism or proudly embrace Chud-ness.
If you’re writing a scene in which a black guy and a white guy are friends, you better fucking include a soliloquy in which privilege is reflected upon. If you’re making a breakfast cereal commercial that doesn’t feature at least one person of every conceivable racial marking, you might as well sign up for a job with the Daily Caller. Anyone who tries suggesting that, hey, I’m sorry I didn’t think it was a big deal that we didn’t make the Honey Nut Cheerio’s Bee gender non-conforming, I swear to god I didn’t think this was political is an idiot liar who deserves something far worse than prison. Why? Because everything is political, and fascism happens the second our vigilance falters in the slightest.
You all see how stupid this is, right? How much it’s ruining people’s brains? At the very least, you can grasp how this hampers one’s ability to just enjoy stuff, let alone to understand its artistic and cultural importance outside the very narrow and stupid and 99% inapplicable lens of contemporary American politics?
I’m sorry, but I’m tried of lying about this shit. There’s nothing political about Kramer storming into Jerry’s apartment. There’s nothing political about Charlie Kelly blowing cigarette smoke into a hornet’s nest. There’s nothing political about the Pink Panther appearance in Owens Corning Insulation commercial.
Yes, you can get a byline or a humanities degree suggesting otherwise, so long as you’re craven enough to ignore context and authorial intent and also you think comprehensibility is bad. Again, good for you. But the rest of us, we are not professional lying shitheads, we have lost patience with the bullshit and are begging you to please shut the fuck up.