The tyranny of agitslop

Art is being replaced with middle-class moralism

What great art has ever flowered under the control of a regime?

The answer is none; the latter precludes the former, by necessity. Of the great totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, the only artistic movement of any genuine value was Italian futurism, likely because — beginning in 1909 with Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurism, a full decade before Mussolini became Duce del Fascismo — it was a political progenitor rather than product.

In the USSR, the state-mandated Socialist Realism embalmed its subjects behind glossy smiles and granite muscles. Even those two artistic spheres in which Russia could claim some success — music and cinema — seemed to survive despite the regime’s best efforts; Shostakovitch was denounced twice, Prokofiev was forced to return to the USSR as the result of a death threat, whilst Eisenstein was forced into constant self-revisionism. Meanwhile Nazi Germany’s veneer of soulless refinement covered an artistic wasteland, the entire cultural output of Maoist China was flattened into praise for Mao, and the most notable artistic achievement of Francoist Spain was Benidorm.

The moment creativity and aesthetics are subordinated to a moral or political orthodoxy, the genius of the artist and his capacity for innovation is fettered and sterilised at the altar of conformity; his talent leeched, his vision gelded, and his work reduced to decorative obedience. The principle holds, whatever the orthodoxy; yet the creaking regime of identity-driven progressivism that dominates the arts still yokes it to moulding a new public character. But they are armed with a more potent medium than any of the 20th century totalitarian ideologies were armed with; the soft, on-demand murmur of television, smuggling ideology directly into living rooms under the guise of entertainment. Welcome to the world of agitslop.

Adolescence has suddenly roused people to the power of agitslop, but it is far from a novel idea. Over 5 years ago, the drama Years and Years offered a barely veiled warning against populist conservatism while championing progressive social reform. Doctor Who, once a quirky sci-fi series for families, has in recent years morphed into a delivery mechanism for liberal orthodoxy — championing identity politics, climate alarmism, and gender fluidity through allegory and casting choices.

Nor is drama the only medium. Both Channel 4 and the BBC have produced a documentary on Ellie Williams, who falsely accused a group of Asian men of trafficking and rape in Barrow-in-Furness (several of the men she accused were later found guilty of child abuse and sexual assault). The Channel 4 programme Go Back To Where You Came From had immigration sceptical participants recreate the journeys undertaken by asylum seekers to Britain from Lebanon, Syria and Somalia. Even The Guardian thought it a little on the nose, arguing that ‘“GBTWYCF feels at times like a futile attempt to force Nathan [one of the most vocal anti-immigration participants] in particular, and maybe other Nathans watching at home, to see the world not through the eyes of Chloe but through those of Mathilda – a podcaster who has worked in refugee camps”. Another Channel 4 effort, The School That Tried to End Racism, presented a highly controversial experiment in teaching unconscious bias to children, reflecting a broader push to embed critical race theory into the heart of the education system.

Agitslop is easily defined — it is art made by social workers, not artists; content produced neither to inform, educate or entertain the viewer, but to gently marinade them in moral instruction. Sentimentality and didactic messaging are its hallmarks, along with high production values that allow it to reasonably pass for entertainment.

But the brilliance of agitslop lies in its emotionally manipulative scripts. By focusing on personal narratives — real or imagined — agitslop appeals to the emotional rather than rational part of the viewer’s brain and appeals directly to their sentimentality. Agitslop bypasses inconvenient truths like facts by reframing complex issues as a series of tear-jerking vignettes, each carefully directed to promote a specific emotional response in the viewer.

This strategy is not accidental. As behavioural psychologist Robert Cialdini notes, “people don’t counter-argue stories… if you want to be successful in a post-fact world, you do it by presenting accounts, narratives, stories and images and metaphors.” Narrative trumps argument; by shifting the framing of contentious topics from data to drama and from costs to characters, agitslop seeks to influence politics through empathy rather than deliberation.

Agitslop also harnesses a phenomenon known as the identifiable victim effect. Simply put, as you scale a problem, our altruistic impulses diminish; people feel more inclined to provide more assistance when faced with a specific, identifiable person in distress, than they do when faced with a large, indistinct group facing the same hardship. “Humanising” stories, by presenting them via a small cast of relatable characters, means viewers are far more likely to feel compassion; and the most sympathetic characters naturally hold the political attitudes the creators are directing their viewers towards.

By endlessly spotlighting the exceptional, the sympathetic, or the oppressed, agitslop alters what audiences perceive as typical or morally correct. It doesn’t matter that these portrayals are statistically unrepresentative; what matters is their potency as an agent for change. Agitslop’s role is not to reflect society, but to reshape it.

But there is hope for us who remain baffled that policy is being made by television. It is the last forlorn hope of all dissidents yearning for liberation from the crushing weight of the iron heel; regime change by ridicule. Those who believe Adolescence should have any influence on public policy should be laughed at as bovine, slopfed cattle-centrists. It may just work, too; in every one of the dictatorships we have already discussed, jokes about the system were either outright illegal or incredibly dangerous. Regimes may not fear argument, but they have always feared being laughed at.