How To Alienate Your Audience

this video is sponsored by nordvpn click the link in the description for 75 off a three-year plan and take back your security online today when it comes to handling controversial topics in fiction there is a fascinating disparity take for example the recent season of doctor who which has been why they criticized for being too political so if an alien were to see just the reaction to that one season of the show then they might think that well controversial political topics have no place in fiction people just don't seem to like them however when you take a step back and look around the idea really begins to fall apart because there's a ton of fiction out there that covers the most sensitive the most controversial topics yet is received with near universal acclaim films like look who's back or american history x for example i mean american history x is all about racism in modern day america you'd be hard-pressed to find a more sensitive topic than that yet the vast majority of those who have watched the film seem to very much enjoy it doesn't that strike you as odd how one word can cover politics and be torn down for allegations of being too political but another can get drenched in the most sensitive topics exploring every nook and cranny yet receive critical acclaim and become beloved by the public this topic on how to cover political ideas and fiction it's an enigma it feels like nobody ever talks about it and thusly it fascinates me and i hope after watching this video it fascinates you too now a quick disclaimer before we begin i will cover some rather sensitive themes and topics depicted in various fiction and it will trigger some people out there so preemptively i apologize but this video essay is not about any political idea rather it's all about how we as storytellers can cover highly sensitive topics out there and do it right and i think for this essay these two elements are verse propaganda i think if we explore and elaborate exactly what they mean and what role they play in our fiction then we'll uncover exactly what we're looking for now first off to clear the air the word propaganda has a number of connotations i'm sure when you hear the word you think of world war ii or stalin's russia but today please try to put those connotations to one side because for this video we are going to be working with this definition of propaganda a piece of fiction designed to make the viewer adopt a certain point of view so please bear in mind under this definition something doesn't have to be political in order to be propaganda so if the core message of a story is that runner beans are good for your health because it's presented in a one-sided way the story about that vegetable is technically propaganda so in order to realize where doctor who fits in with all of this we really could talk about any episode in the recent season but there is one example that stands out for all the wrong reasons and it's the episode arachnids in the uk so here's the plot for this episode there are a number of giant spiders roaming around and have been eating people in this episode the main villain has been illegally dumping toxic landfill in a coal mine beneath a hotel and that toxic landfill has been causing these mutations in the spiders and has been causing all these deaths of innocent people now inherently just from hearing that concept alone you might think how could there be anything political about that maybe it's to do with pollution how humans aren't taking care of our environment and we should all be doing our part to clean up the planet well you'd think that that would be the main theme that lends itself to such a concept but no and honestly when i tell you the political message this episode has you are going to laugh uh bearing in mind that concept i just told you this episode's main theme it's donald trump but how do we know that this is all about donald trump well the main villain who dumped all the illegal waste in the mine he is symbolic of a said figure the character is american he's a billionaire running a massive corporation they make a big deal about how he's going to run for president in the next u.s election he's running for president in 2020 aren't you i haven't declared my intentions yet now i want to stress this whether or not trump is good or bad is not what we're discussing here that's not the point of this video the only thing we're analyzing is how this episode of doctor who handles having a controversial political topic as its core theme so the bbc are making commentary on donald trump in this episode so naturally that opens up a whole wealth of angles in which this could have been executed maybe chibnall could have made commentary on the nuances of politics how when people are desperate for a change in these status quo then they will often chew something at the extreme end of things just to get that change without a regard for whether or not that thing is actually good i mean that's actually a very relevant topic for many countries right now and covering that all without telling the audience whether that's good or bad could have made for genuinely interesting fiction so let's look at this trump-esque character let's start with the cons the episode starts with him forgetting that his personal assistant is in fact a member of his family and he has to ask her how he's related to her so that's poor social skills and negligence on his repertoire shortly after that the manager of the hotel comes in asking some benign questions about operations as managers do and then he fires her for no other reason than the fact she walked into the room and that in itself mildly annoyed him so he fired the manager of his hotel so that makes him both a narcissist and a total [ __ ] about five minutes later the woman he fired is in the reception about to leave the building when unprompted he gets his bodyguard to take out his gun i'm not even joking this really happens and he holds the ex-manager at gunpoint threatening to murder her because she's taking too long to leave the building which by the way is a hotel she's in the hotel lobby this is the uk might i remind you where you know handguns aren't exactly legal and neither is threatening to murder ex-employees with an illegal firearm because they take longer than three minutes to clear out their desk so i have no idea how to add that to this list because it's so mustache twirlingly evil so let's just summarize by saying criminal and adding a times two to the [ __ ] so then a giant spider attacks him while he's in the bathroom and his bodyguard goes in to help he then closes the door abandons his bodyguard using him as a human happy meal so the spider won't eat him so this makes him both a coward and also an [ __ ] three times over he then gets legitimately furious at the doctor because she doesn't know who he is and he then proceeds to brag about his accomplishments and his highly successful hotel chain because you know trump has a hotel chain as well just to make the parallel just that little bit more excruciatingly obvious than it already was so let's add massive ego and vanity to that list and all of that is just in the first half of the episode there's a point later on where the main villain spider is dying because it can't breathe and everyone feels pity for it and sad violins play and chibnall tries his absolute best to build sympathy for the monster and then the trump-like character barges into the room wielding a pistol shoots the thing in the back of the head while it tries to run away and proceeds to say this is what the world needs right now this is what's going to get me into the white house he says that after shooting a scared injured dying insect in the back as it tries to run away jesus christ if that moment alone doesn't make it desperately transparent as to what chris chipnall is trying to achieve here so now we've assembled this massive list of negative traits by barely scratching the episode's runtime let's look at his positive ones what does this character do that makes him a good person yeah he doesn't actually have any positive character traits chris chibnall uses every scene this character is in every line every syllable he utters in an attempt to make the audience hate him as much as is humanly possible not to mention he's the main villain of the episode now whether or not you think trump is a good or bad president that is not what we're discussing here what we are discussing is how this method of delivering political themes in fiction is objectively speaking the most lazy the most biased and frankly the most boring way of handling political topics in fiction and that's the thing about propaganda as it is by its very nature the pinnacle of anti-intellectual it does all the thinking for you it tells you what the right opinions are it tells you what the wrong opinions are the thing is is we as consumers of fiction secretly yearn to have our minds tested we want our fiction to start a conversation and not end it we want that question to exist and for us to have the ability to find our own answers through it not to be told what the writer thinks the correct answer is in the episode arachnids in the uk this trump-like character fits the definition for what i like to call the punching bag whenever you see a piece of fiction that is firmly rooted in the propaganda end of the spectrum you almost always have a punching bag now this isn't some widely accepted thing this is just my own terminology so except if you like but a punching bag is a character who embodies a theme idea group or person the writer is trying to demonize so as a result said character will have exclusively negative traits to make said thing being demonized appear bad by association the point being great art is nuanced it is unbiased and even the most sensitive of topics it presents a thing as it is in life not controlling it to try and make it look bad not contorting it to try and make it look good great art is above all else honest these episodes of doctor who share more in common with the propaganda posters you see from world war ii than they do with the works of tarantino nolan and spielberg a real artist is not someone who's trying to say anything rather they are someone who explores a topic provides an insightful discussion about the thing but doesn't explicitly tell the consumer what the correct conclusion is but what's an example of that so far we've been focusing entirely on what makes for low quality art but what makes for great art what is an example where a polarizing topic is explored and done so in a way that makes for genuinely fantastic fiction now normally on this channel i have a film and occasionally tv but today i want to break that format because this next example affected me so tremendously is of such quality and is of such a perfect fit for what we're looking for that i feel compelled to make an exception and focus on something entirely different and this example is of course the witcher 3 wild hunt now i know most of you watching this don't play video games but you're going to find this next example really quite useful anyway because what makes for a great story is universal those core principles of character and plot and great storytelling apply to games as much as they apply to film novels and every other form of fiction so in this game there's a quest around this character nicknamed the bloody baron and it unravels like a mystery he's the ruler of a large chunk of land and both his wife and daughter have gone missing he tasks the protagonist with finding them initially it seems they were kidnapped but then it's revealed that they ran away of their own accord which comes across as rather strange so you dig a little deeper and you find out that he was abusing his wife this bringing up the whole topic of domestic violence and later on you find his daughter and she tells you this father would drink disappear for days then come home in a rage and send furniture flying thank the gods for war i was glad every time they sent him off i remember him screaming at mum the thuds as he beat her then her sobbing everything points to him being this evil cruel person but later on in the story he tells you what happened from his perspective i went from front to front battle to battle collecting soldier's coin while anna sat along with the babe for months later i learned she'd not been so alone after all for nearly three years she'd found comfort in the arms of one evan a childhood friend understand damn it one tussle in the hay i'd have waved aside put it out of my mind but the woman cook holded me for years without a whisker of concern for me for my love so he then speaks about how he learned about all this he came home from war one day to find his wife and daughter missing the letter she left said she didn't love him anymore and not only that but she'd been betraying him for years all the while living under his roof and not only that but she was taking his child away from him so they could both live with this new guy she says that he'll never be able to see his daughter again i mean imagine how you'd react if you came home one day and found that out so what did he do next well his name's the bloody baron what do you think he did he murdered her secret lover took back his family and held his wife in the fort against her will like a prisoner then in grief because he murdered the one she loved she tried to murder him by coming at him with a knife so then he hit her in self-defense as she tried to kill him that was the star that was the first instance after that he'd hit her routinely that was the start of their abusive relationship anna tried to take her own life and mine several times she would prod me goad me taunt me in the hope i would hit her again perhaps she'd scream that i'd robbed her a life of love that i'd destroyed the idea for her and so much as well kill her how many times i apologized how many armfuls of blooms and gifts i brought she cared not a bit there's something so real about this story this story doesn't try to make you think anything it simply shows you an unbiased impartial depiction of what domestic violence can look like and there's something about this story that really resonated with me really affected me to my core it was the baron the reason why was because he was so human see in another part of the story there's a character siri who's wounded and tired so that very same baron takes her in gives her a bed gives her food while she recovers siri just happens to be a very attractive young woman the moment i saw this happen in game i was convinced absolutely convinced that the baron had a secretly evil motive i expected some extremely awkward scene where the baron gets drunk and forces himself upon her the reason why is well he's a domestic abuser therefore he is the devil incarnate his heart is black as coal because that's how such a character is usually depicted in fiction then the time comes when she has to leave his company he wishes her luck and then she leaves without incident i was thrown for such a loop when this happened because this game did something revolutionary it depicted this man as a human where even though he's done horribly immoral things such as murder and domestic abuse he still helps people in need for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do there's something so inherently powerful in that and going back to the story between the baron and his wife there comes a point much later on where due to the mistakes i made as the player his wife ends up dying in his arms because of a magical curse it being this total tragedy he looks at the dead wife's corpse goes quiet he mumbles that the protagonist can get their pay from his subordinate and then he just walks off without another word and later on when you come by his fort to collect the pay you see him hanging from a tree he committed suicide because his wife was dead and even though he was abusive towards her he loved her more than anything else in the world and loved her so much that he didn't know what the point in life was without her so he ended it when i saw his body swaying on that rope i cried so hard you don't even know this is art this is what great fiction is all about when you treat the audience like a patronizing teacher lectures a nine-year-old telling them what to think how to feel you bastardize what makes art so great when you cover controversial topics in fiction it is easy to take the easy path and be agreeable to lean towards the propaganda end of the spectrum and just say okay so he's a domestic abuser thusly he is a two-dimensional bad guy we will not explore his motivations or past because this man represents something we as a society view as morally abhorrent and god forbid we can't confess that people who embody negative things in fiction are human beings because in doing so we would be confessing that said evil people are so much more like us than we ever dared to think when covering controversial topics or any topic whatsoever even if it's not controversial never say that this is bad never say that this is good simply say this is and let the viewer figure out the rest something terrible has happened i'm sure by now you're all aware of this but article 13 has passed which for every one of you watching is terrible news but for my eu-based viewers this news is god awful simply put the internet inside the eu is likely to become radically censored because of these new laws and creators like me and most other creators on youtube that you watch will become banned from being seen inside the eu the amount of support i got from you guys on this has been humbling so many of you have emailed me giving a heartfelt goodbye because you'll never be able to see my content again but today i want to educate you on a way that you can overcome the effects of article 13 so you don't have 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Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 1,284,737

Rating: 4.7781286 out of 5

Keywords: doctor who, doctor, who, series 11, season 11, the closer, closer look, the closer look, witcher, witcher 3, wild hunt, video essay, writing, advice, tips, video, essay, jordan peterson, jordan, peterson, art, jodie whittaker, chris, chibnall, chris chibnall, theme, whittaker, american history, american history x

Id: AfSszhlZVoU

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Darkgo4t]

The closer look is a fantastic channel and is right to defend his use of Peterson here.

Lot of comments trying to say he's giving a misogynist and sexist exposure, just ridiculous.

[u/6ames]

off topic, but it's quite flattering how the creator showed a clip of present day Peterson (where he looks very healthy and at peace in a way) before showing the older relevant clip