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[S]poiler alert: fans of modern TV dramas may be getting more of their political views from those sources than they think.
Shows like “Game of Thrones” and “Battlestar Galactica” are densely plotted serials that immerse audiences in fantasy worlds. But according to one local scholar, watching these shows to avoid the political messaging of the news media may not have the intended effect.
Entertainment media can act “as a political Trojan horse,” argues Anthony “Jack” Gierzynski, the chair of the political science department at the University of Vermont. Gierzynski’s new book, The Political Effects of Entertainment Media: How Fictional Worlds Affect Real World Political Perspectives, uses research on shows like “Game of Thrones” and “House of Cards” to determine how watchers shift their worldviews.
Gierzynski says these immersive dramas can lead to a psychological effect called narrative transportation. “It’s not rational, and that’s the whole point,” Gierzynski says. “When we’re transported, we’re not thinking, ‘yeah, we’re not there.’ We’re actually thinking we are there, we’re part of that story.”
When audiences are “transported,” they’re more likely to adjust their views to the fictional world. Gierzynski’s research showed that immersion in the amoral universe of “Game of Thrones” led viewers to believe that the real world was less just — and influenced their views on public policy.
“If someone wants to know if you support government programs to help the poor,” he says, “odds are you’re going to be less likely to do that if you believe the world is just.”
Traditional storytelling tropes — happy endings, or strong, masculine heroes — reinforce conservative ideas of justice and leadership, Gierzynski argues. But on this week’s podcast, he explores how the new vanguard of antiheroes and morally complex worlds may be nudging viewers towards a different set of values.
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If you’re listening to this show, chances are you spend time every day following the news and thinking about politics. And if you’re like me, sometimes you want to turn off that part of your brain by watching some TV or a movie. But according to one local scholar, you may be getting more of your politics from those sources than you think.
Jack Gierzynski: We just have this focus on the news. We just seem to be missing all these political messages, and this whole territory of media that people are exposed to, that contain political messages that might have an influence on people’s views.
Jack Gierzynski is the chair of the political science department at the University of Vermont. And he just released a book called The Political Effects of Entertainment Media: How Fictional Worlds Affect Real World Political Perspectives.
Jack Gierzynski: If you think about the shows, movies, books, video games that you do, just for fun, and that don’t have any representation of US government and politics or politicians, those are the ones that are pure entertainment. They’re not about politics, they’re about something else. But the content that they have inevitably touches on the political in some way.
What you’re arguing at the outset in this book is that those things that we might consider more “pure entertainment,” that we’re not looking for any political messages from, might actually be more effective at delivering political messages. Because we kind of have our guard down. Can you explain that a little bit?
Jack Gierzynski: Definitely. And it just to make sure I attribute it right, I’m not the first one to make this argument. There are other people who have written about this, who argue that when you are following a story, a fictional narrative, the way your mind operates is very different than when you are processing information. And that is, when you are immersed in a fictional story, you’re transported to that story. And the theory is called narrative transportation theory.
You know, if you react in a movie certain ways, or shout out something, or those kind of reactions that you want to do while you’re watching — for me, it’s fear of heights. Anytime there’s a scene, I grip my chair and I lean back. It’s not rational, and that’s the whole point.
When we’re transported, we’re not thinking, “yeah, we’re not there.” We’re actually thinking we are there, we’re part of that story. When you’re in that state, you leave the real world behind you, including all your perceptual screens, and you’re just accepting the reality of that world you’re in. You have to do that in order to enjoy it.
So we’re transported completely into that. You’re not counter arguing. You don’t really even have the resources in your mind to counter argue the messages that are in the story, let alone you’re probably not aware of most of the political messages or lessons that I’m talking about in this book. These aren’t overt political messages. These aren’t about Republicans or Democrats or ideology or anything along those lines. These are a lot more subtle than that.
One of the shows Jack studied is “Game of Thrones.” If you’re not familiar, “Game of Thrones” is an HBO series based on a set of fantasy novels. It takes place in a fictional, sort of magical world called Westeros. It’s also a brutally violent show where the good guys tend to lose and the bad guys tend to win.
Jack Gierzynski: “Game of Thrones” stood out as something that was really qualitatively different than most shows. And it was falling in a trend of HBO shows, such as “The Wire,” that seem to contradict, to go against the norms of storytelling and entertainment media. There was something that was really different about them.
What is that something?
Jack Gierzynski: Well, the process was, first we identified, wow, there’s something different going on here. And then how do we get to that.
So I had conversations with my students and my seminar, and we talked about it quite a bit. And then, in the process of doing that, I remembered actually some research I did back as a grad student in attribution theory, and how we explain what happens in the world. And one of the attribution biases was this belief in a just world: that if you believe the world is just, you tend to attribute outcomes in society to the individuals who are involved in whatever it is you’re trying to witness or trying to explain. And so I grabbed on to that, had the students read about that, and we took it from there.
You would kind of, through surveys, look at how people fell on on the spectrum of belief in a just world after watching a lot of “Game of Thrones.”
Jack Gierzynski: The class and I designed a survey first, then we followed it up with an experiment the next semester I taught the course. We did an experiment so we could actually establish some sort of causal relationship. If you randomly assign people to experimental control groups, they should be equal before the exposure, and if they’re different afterwards, that should be attributable to the experimental manipulation. In this case, watching “Game of Thrones.”
You talk about these findings being somewhat separate from political ideology or party affiliation, or that sort of thing. But you’re studying this because belief in a just world does have some set of indicators about where somebody might land on certain public policies. Can you explain what the outcomes are there?
Jack Gierzynski: In a way, it’s kind of a precursor to ideology a little bit. The researchers found connections — not my research, other researchers — have found connections between this just world belief and attitudes on support for government programs to address problems in society. So if you think good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, you know, you just follow the logic of that. If someone asked you or if wants to know if you support government programs to help the poor, odds are you going to be less likely to do that if you believe the world is just. And that applies to a number of other policy areas as well, like affirmative action and criminal justice areas.
Jack and his students also looked at the Netflix series “House of Cards.” In this show, Kevin Spacey plays Frank Underwood, this ruthless US politician who — spoiler alert? — misbehaves and manipulates his way to the presidency.
Jack Gierzynski: We found some evidence that “House of Cards” viewers also had a reduced belief in a just world. But on that show too, the interesting thing, when you deal with politics directly — it’s not, as I said, you know, partisanship or ideology. In fact, Frank Underwood scoffs at ideology. But this notion that he can do whatever he wants to do, and get away with it. And that people like that are rewarded, that he he can push a reporter in front of a train, and kill off a congressman and rise all the way to the presidency, that challenges your sense that the good people are rewarded and bad people are punished in our society.
Your findings there were that it had a similar pattern, but to somewhat of a lesser degree than with “Game of Thrones.” So that kind of bears out your theory that the show with the less overt political content is actually subjecting people to more serious effects on their beliefs.
Jack Gierzynski: It definitely could be interpreted that way. It also could be the difference between the shows: “Game of Thrones” is a lot more brutal in terms of the the graphic nature of what happens to the people who try to do the right thing.
Certainly a higher body count across the board. But there are a lot of similarities. One of the similarities to that I find interesting is that these are both shows that are kind of these vanguards of this new era of these densely plotted shows that people often binge. They just sit and really immerse themselves in it. Do you find that that also kind of leads into that transportation theory that you were talking about?
Jack Gierzynski: Certainly — it’s almost like reading a book, which, when you read a good book, and you’re transported, and that if you just think about the fact you sometimes are not even aware of what’s going on in the room around you. And in fact, I think House of Cards labels its episodes as chapters in that way. So it does enhance the transportation effect of those shows.
Jack said another reason people stick with “House of Cards” is because they identify with its main character. Throughout the show, Spacey actually turns to the camera and talks directly to the viewer.
Kevin Spacey [as Frank Underwood speaking to the camera in “House of Cards”]: The road to power is paved with hypocrisy. And casualties.
Jack Gierzynski: If you identify with the character you start to see the world through their eyes. And in doing so, you inadvertently pick up perspectives of the characters as they go through the plot lines. The narrative researchers have shown you walk away with those perspectives as well. And that can alter your perspectives, or add new perspectives, to how you see the world.
That’s interesting, because in a lot of these modern cable dramas, like the ones that you’ve talked about here, we’ve heard a lot about the rise of the antihero: this person who you you kind of identify with, but also, you know, they’re sort of a bad guy with certain moral failings.
Jack Gierzynski: Like Frank Underwood!
Does that affect people’s level of identification with those people?
Jack Gierzynski: I think it leads to certain amount of conflict. But there still may be aspects you pick up from it. Early on, when he was a member of congress, and he was involved in the campaign finance scandals and then ended up being VP, and they were investigating the campaign finance scandals, I remember feeling anxiety for Frank Underwood, that he’d get caught. Until it’s like, wait, what am I doing? You know, I studied this! I wrote a book called Money Rules on campaign finance, and no, he should get caught. But we’re so transferred over, and we’re identifying with this horrible guy.
I think eventually you divorce from that. You break away from the identification from a certain certain respect — when he goes too far, pushing journalists in front of trains, whatever. But that show, the fact that you could binge watch it, the fact that Frank Underwood would turn and talk to you — I quoted that in the book, where after he pushes Zoe Barnes out in front of the train, he turns to the camera and says, “You think I forgot about you?”
Kevin Spacey [as Frank Underwood speaking to the camera in “House of Cards”]: Did you think I’d forgotten you? Perhaps you hoped I had. Don’t waste a breath mourning Miss Barnes. Every kitten grows up to be a cat.
Jack Gierzynski: It really draws you in! And up until that point, those conversations, you felt like you were part of this. And you were drawn in. So you find yourself identifying with characters. It can modify your behavior. I mean, there’s plenty of research that shows if the character you identify with smokes, that you might actually take up smoking — that smoking in entertainment affects the rate of smoking among the public. So we know those effects happen. Why not politics?
Watching Mad Men can be terrible for your health.
Jack Gierzynski: Exactly.
But then, you know, watching House of Cards isn’t going to make more people push more people in front of trains, right?
Jack Gierzynski: No, no, but it’s gonna make you cynical about the politicians. And in a way, Frank Underwood drawing you in and then showing what a monster he is, you know that that will feed your cynicism big time. You’ll pull away and go, wow, these are horrible people.
“The Daily Show” announcer: From Comedy Central’s world news headquarters in New York…
Speaking of cynicism, you also have this really fascinating chapter on shows like “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report.” Especially as it relates to “House of Cards,” this immersive drama that engenders this skepticism in government, you argue that these other shows that are very sarcastically making fun of the news, making fun of the people in power, are not engendering as much cynicism as people might expect.
Jack Gierzynski: This harkens back to some research by Jeffrey Baym, who looked at “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” What he argued was that those satire shows are doing something really different from, say, the late night talk shows, where they’re flippant jokes, more about making fun of the personalities. “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” were much more about trying to — not intentionally, but — the humor was an approach that was a more skeptical, as opposed to cynical, approach to politics.
How do you define the space between those two?
Jack Gierzynski: The difference between skepticism and cynicism? A skeptic will hear an argument and withhold judgment until they’ve heard the reasoning and seen the evidence, and then decide. A cynic will just dismiss something right offhand that they don’t believe in. So a cynic in politics is going to think everybody’s lying. Everybody’s corrupt. And so cynics tend to disenfranchise themselves based upon that and drop out of the system. A skeptic is more willing to way say, all right, let’s see if there’s some truth to that claim. Let me look at the evidence. Let me look at the reasoning.
And so you found that these shows actually left people with some information. They would come to them seeking actual information, and that they came away actually better informed than people might expect.
Jack Gierzynski: Yes. Jeffrey Baym actually argued that — the way he put it, they modeled a healthy skepticism in the way that they analyzed the news in the new segments, and also when they did the interviews, that it was a discourse that was not a cynical, flippant discourse, but it was one where it’s: alright, well, let’s take a look at this. And they broke it down. They looked at the evidence, the arguments. Whether the politicians had contradicted themselves, and so on down the line.
So we hypothesized that exposure to those shows would lead to greater skepticism, lower cynicism. And indeed through several different studies, those who watched a lot of “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” evinced a much higher level of skepticism and a lower level of cynicism. And it was in complete contrast to “House of Cards,” where the exposure to “House of Cards” led to higher levels of cynicism, not skepticism.
Do you think that that specifically has to do with the way “House of Cards” delivers its view of the world through sort of a fictionalized version of things?
Jack Gierzynski: I think the messages are much more cynical there. And it ties into that just world a little bit, in the sense that those people who are trying to do the right thing — and there are those out there in politics, believe it or not — that they’re portrayed as a naive, stupid, and they’re overrun by the more clever politicians who were much more cynical.
It’s interesting with House of Cards specifically, because it mimics reality, but it’s such an exaggerated version of it. It’s sort of a fictional world, but it’s sort of not. Compare that to something like “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report” — there could be an argument made that they’re actually pretty similar. Where those shows are just kind of giving us an exaggerated version of something that’s really true. Colbert’s kind of an exaggerated version of a Bill O’Reilly type. There’s a lot of parallels there.
Jack Gierzynski: Parody, right. And definitely, Colbert’s parody. But the result is different. And that, to me, says something about the causal effect of those different shows.
The best way to illustrate this the interviews that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had — same night — with Spacey and Willimon.
Stephen Colbert: My guest tonight created “House of Cards.” Please welcome Beau Willimon!
Jack Gierzynski: “Do you really think this is how Washington works?”
Stephen Colbert: Do you think this is a depiction of a Washington that people recognize?
Beau Willimon: Look, one thing they do recognize is that in our show, as in the real world, we have a Washington that is paralyzed by political gridlock.
Jack Gierzynski: You know, both Spacey and Willimon said, yeah, definitely. This is how Washington works.
Kevin Spacey: I don’t believe them. I don’t believe what they say. I don’t think they’re being absolutely sincere. I think it’s performance art. And most of them are bad actors.
Jack Gierzynski: Stewart and Colbert, it’s almost as if they threw their hands up: Really? It came across pretty clearly they thought that these guys were being far too cynical. Stewart and Colbert thought that Spacey and Willamon were being far too cynical in terms of their portrayal of what takes place in Washington. And that, to me, that struck me as very interesting. And a really good illustration of that difference between the shows.
It brings up something really interesting, though, which is that all these shows you talked about in here, we kind of treat them like these giant entertainment properties. But they’re made by people. Did you look into, in your work, the political leanings of the people who made these shows, and the degree to which the shows might have been influenced by real world politics?
Jack Gierzynski: No. I’m interested in the effects as opposed to what’s driving it. But in my mind, these are either telling a good story or getting people to laugh. That’s what, in my view, drives them. And, you know, to go back to that belief in a just world: the reason why most of our fiction before shows like Game of Thrones came along reinforced that belief in a just world is because we wanted stories with happy endings. We wanted the fairy tale endings. And that meant that’s how those shows were produced. And that has that sort of conservative effect on us.
But that’s not the intent. It would be really hard to argue that was the intent of those people who produce those stories. It’s just, they know that their audience wants this to turn out well for the heroes. In some of these cases, you’d have to be very clever to design these programs in a way to have the effects were talking about.
So like, if I’m running a political campaign, or I want to sway public opinion on something, the shortcut is not to pitch an HBO miniseries.
Jack Gierzynski: Definitely not. You think about the research we did on leadership and gender and other examples in there. We did two experiments on the way leaders are portrayed in fiction and what traits they exhibit. And what we showed in the experiments is that if the fictional leader models traits that are stereotypically associated with women, that they can actually increase the viewers perception of the importance of those traits, and make those traits something that they want to see in leaders. And then have an impact on support for female candidates in executive positions.
Nobody designs those shows that way. I mean, you once you become aware of that, that might be the case that they can then: “All right, well, you know, we’re going to change how we portray leaders in some ways.” But I don’t think there’s intent behind most of those: “Alright, the leader’s got to be tough and assertive,” and like Captain Kirk or whatever, as opposed to Doctor Who.
It’s another one of those kind of storytelling tropes that just comes out of trying to give people what they want to see.
Jack Gierzynski: Exactly. So that’s sort of that’s why I stay away from intention.
One thing I was left wondering with, and partly because we at Digger spend most of our time talking about state and local politics, is that all this entertainment media is happening at a national level. To what extent do you think those effects might influence somebody who is voting in the smaller elections we have here in the state?
Jack Gierzynski: Well, someone running for governor: if fiction shows us good models of readers that exhibit traits of compassion, and listening more to followers, and the traits that are more stereotypically associated with women, that might pave the for people to be more likely to vote for a female candidate for governor, for example. Or the tolerance message that might pop up: acceptance of people for diversity and the diversity basis, that applies at the local level big time. Including in elections at the local level.
I want to be clear that I’m not talking about entertainment media is the only source. It’s not the only source of your views. But it can help shift people and their views. It can help reinforce people’s views. And so if entertainment means creating a more tolerant climate, that can have an impact at the local level.
So you establish that these effects take place. Do you believe that those effects are positive or negative? Do you think that people should be coming at their media with more critical eye?
Jack Gierzynski: Yes on the last part: should be coming at the media with more critical eye. If you become aware of this sort of thing, it’s going to be less likely to affect you. But you have to have quite the awareness of all the different ways.
Positive or negative effect? I don’t think it can be boiled down to that. There are a lot of both out there. And it just depends on storytelling conventions, and propelling certain aspects of our culture that then spread that throughout the rest of the culture. Or reinforcing. And reinforcing effects are really important as well. Reinforcing certain biases we have as a culture.
Like, we’re a highly individualistic culture, we believe the way to solve problems is as an individual. Every election year, we look for an individual to come along and — you know, it’s Obama, or Sanders, or Trump or whatever. And that’s the way we see our politics on anything. That’s how things are modeled in our fiction as well. As part of our culture, they reinforce it. And they put blinders on us as to maybe other possible ways of selecting leaders.
Got it. Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.
Jack Gierzynski: Well, thank you very much.
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