Sometimes Hollywood fare, like movies and television shows, carefully weave their political messages into the story lines in play.
Take the science fiction film “District 9,” which addressed apartheid while telling a ripping good yarn about aliens living in South Africa.
And then you have the recent episode of TNT’s “Rizzoli & Isles,” a program which lashed out against the process of fracking repeatedly throughout the course of the show.
The plot featured an ex-Blackwater agent, masquerading as a yoga guru, who kills a vegan student and a professor in order to hide his drilling for natural gas from shale. This episode was a triple decker for left-wing stereotypes.
The professor that was murdered had condemned hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, in a video saying, “fracking is an invasive way to extract natural gas. Proponents say it will liberate the U.S. from dependence on foreign oil. But, my research indicates it will destroy the environment.”
One of the two main characters, medical examiner Dr. Isles reinforces that idea later in the episode saying, “they pump hundreds of chemicals thousands of feet underground. It pollutes groundwater.” Even the villain ominously tells Detective Rizzoli and Dr. Isles (after tying them in their car, which is parked on a spillway) saying, “a few million gallons of water’s gonna come pouring through here. It’s pretty toxic, from all the fracking.”
The only thing missing was the main characters holding up signs saying “Just Say No … to Fracking.”
Hollywood lavished praise on “Gasland,” an anti-fracking documentary the team of Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney are currently debunking via their “FrackNation” feature. So it’s hardly a surprise to see a cable TV show use its characters to resend Hollywood’s message about a vital energy process.
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