Creepy Propaganda Hidden In Your Favorite Modern Pop Culture
If you look back at old Westerns, you might see "Indians" portrayed like senseless alien villains. If you go back through O.G. 'Twilight Zone' episodes, you'll find a lot more Christianity than today's pop culture fans are used to. And if you watch ANYTHING from the 1940s that involves marijuana, get ready for hilariously over-the-top scaremongering about the lethal horrors of jazz cigarettes. Now consider this: all that past pop culture seems strange now because it drew on the most forceful beliefs of its time. So what the heck is going to happen when OUR grandkids watch, stream, and play through the biggest hit pop culture of 2018?
On this week's episode of The Cracked Podcast, we're predicting that exact thing. Alex Schmidt is joined by Jason Pargin (better known as David Wong) for a future's-eye view of the movies, TV, video games and other fun we all love today. Discover the blind spots that lead modern America to root for secret police, demand the sloppiest possible leadership, live in eternal terror of somebody breeding plants better, and hold even more baffling beliefs beyond those.
Footnotes:
25 years later, how 'Top Gun' made America love war (The Washington Post)
A Brief, Paranoid History of Anti-Weed PSAs (VICE)
John Boehner's Marijuana Reversal: 'My Thinking on Cannabis Has Evolved' (The New York Times)
America's Creepy, Surveillance-Endorsing Love of NCIS (The Atlantic)
scenes from Air Force One (1997): General Radek's release and last-minute death
the "Green Poison" in Tom Clancy's The Division
Far Cry 5 promises to be controversial, but not for the usual reasons (The Verge)
4 People With Good Intentions It's Impossible Not to Hate (Cracked)
Ronald Reagan's shameful legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness (Salon)
Khan Noonien Singh (Memory Alpha)
How The Defense Industry Lit A Trillion Dollars On Fire - Cracked Explains
How 2 Scientists You've Never Heard Of Redesigned Our Planet (The Cracked Podcast)
