Right now, it can feel like the walls are closing in. The coronavirus persists and keeps mutating. Incomes haven’t kept pace with soaring expenses. Rights and protections are being rolled back, with the promise of more to come. Another Black person killed by police. Another gun massacre. I could go on.
I wonder if the stories Hollywood has been telling us these past few years foster a defeatist sentiment, as well. There’s a preponderance of copaganda and superheroes saving the day and a category of narrative best described as wealth-aganda — stories focused on the interior lives of the rich, from the aspirational to the ridiculous to the unscrupulous.
Rarer, though, are stories of regular people working together to solve problems and balance the scales.
