I’ve always had mixed feelings about the modern spy series Homeland. I was never very convinced of the feasibility of the plot in the first season. But, I did think it got better after that. There were actually some pretty good seasons.
But of course, with Trump taking over the White House, all of the efforts of the cultural elite must be concentrated on resisting the evil. So guess what happens to a show that had tried to take a relatively realistic approach to the issue of Muslim terrorism. And yes, of course, not all Muslims are terrorists, but the world has had a pretty serious Muslin terrorism problem. This was a perfectly legitimate focus for an espionage show that wanted to the take its stories from the headlines.
Confronted though with the evidently far greater danger of Trump, now, the show has to be recalibrated to turn its protagonist into a relentless civil rights defender of persecuted Muslims. I don’t doubt Muslims may be persecuted, nor would I say they shouldn’t be defended when they are. The question is why did this overall, pretty good espionage show have to be converted into Norma Rae or Erin Brockovich, or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be, now?
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