I was watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip last night and it occurred to me that writing a TV show is better than writing a blog. Sure, I could write tedious posts explaining why gay marriage should be legal, but that’s really nothing compared to being able to write dialogue. You can dream up two people who are on opposite sides of the issue, write their arguments for them, and make your point in a way that’s totally entertaining. Plus millions of people will watch because the other shows you wrote were actually good.
Maybe next week Aaron Sorkin will use the Socratic method to examine the morality of torturing detainees in the context of a one hour drama about sketch comedy. We can hope!
November 14, 2006 at 7:36 pm
I thought I detected a little Socrates in his interrogation, but he slipped it in subtly enough that it wasn’t until the end (“–because there’s no way to end that sentence without…”) that it hit me.
And yeah, I agree that was a great example of how entertainment can be used to slip not just propaganda but an actual reasoning process in with the rest of your content to get a point or idea across.
In this case, I hope he’s at least helping people understand where the other side is coming from, even if it all does seem to heavily lean on being more vocal with one side.
I also appreciate how explicit he is about where the characters are coming from and why they think the way they do.