Red State Blue State

I remember distinctly the evening during which a fellow student in my writing program was told that her premise "might be a little too blue state". It seemed absurd to worry about such a thing but the group of writers mused that there were some facts to consider: a whole lotta people live in so-called "red states" and while they complain about the "liberals" in Hollywood, vote for Dubya and hold conservative views, son of a gun if they don't see movies at their local multiplex in droves. Being that we are writers, we tend to have flights of fancy and roving imaginations that don't necessarily check in at the polls before we write. But should we?

More and more Christian production companies affiliated with various religious groups create direct-to-video entertainment for their core audience. Left Behind, the apocaplytic best-selling book and dvd series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins is an interesting example of the hunger that some audiences have for this type of material. Should we judge this and make assumptions or live and let live?

Having just seen THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED (which the Wave-inatrix highly recommends) I am struck by the dichotomy and hypocrisy when it comes to what is and is not acceptable at the movies. Audiences have no problem watching violent action movies but balk at movies which depict homosexuality, empowered women or alternative lifestyles and points of view. Between the MPAA and the belief that a wide swath of American audiences have a limited capacity for material that falls outside of the "norm", screenwriters can find themselves limiting their imagination in order to cater to the straight-up-the-middle normalcy that audiences can handle.

But is it really true that some audiences can't handle more sophisticated material or are we making unfair and uninformed assumptions? Where exactly are we getting this information, that red staters are somehow slightly less intelligent or otherwise in lockstep with conservative Republicans in Washington? Are we being manipulated to hold beliefs about each other in order to keep some kind of political status quo in place?

Material that pushes the envelope and makes audiences think is needed now more than ever. The nation is slowly emerging from a seven year slumber to find ourselves in a war that will never end, to find that the rights of women and immigrants are being eroded and to find that the Terminator is the governor of the great state of California.

Now is the time for writers, musicians and artists of every persuasion to register our discontent and agitate for a better tomorrow. We are the visionaries; let us not be constrained by imaginary borders, red states, blue states, political parties or the Department of Homeland Security. Let us chuck the Fear Pill out the window and write stories that resonate and inspire humanity to not only reflect on the past but to imagine a better, more inclusive tomorrow and a higher good for all. Let us collectively hold audiences in higher esteem, for it is the Wave-inatrix's suspicion that there are less differences between red states and blue states than there are between the People and the Corporations. One love. One world. Fight the power, Rouge Wavers.

In The Know: The U.S. Moat

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