Is ABC's new sci-fi series an unwitting metaphor for the Obama administration?For anyone who has seen the trailers playing on the network, it's kinda' hard to miss the parallels. The visitors seemingly come out of nowhere with unearthly powers and grandiose promises to bring hope, peace and universal health care to the whole world. But don't look too close. Don't question them. Don't resist. Just give them full control over your lives.
This "soft tyranny" leads to mass protests as people decide that freedom itself is worth more than any of the gifts the benevolent masters dole out.
Now I doubt that the originators of the series designed it this way. It was, after all, produced last year and is but a remake of an older series that starred alien lizards taking over the world.
But the show debuting as it does during the administration's full court press for health care reform and after its paranoid attack on Fox News and conservative talk radio makes the similarities of V to O all too eerie.
Watching a teaser on the ABC web site (with a musical background featuring singers repeating "They will not control us. We will be victorious.") certainly implies that the theme of the show will be a principled revolution against the V. And the good guys in V (all too clearly reminiscent of last summer's tea-parties) are the protesters.
For Team Obama which has also promised hope and universal harmony but requires as a trade-off that citizens relinquish to the government more and more of their personal freedoms, the arrival of the V on ABC can't be a good thing. It strikes too close to home and will inevitably provide a whole lot of material for conservative pundits, late night comedians, and witty techno-geeks who come up with clips like this one:
