The way I see it, not all media is political and, in fact, it is not by default, but it so just happens to be a product of its time, which could be part of a bigger political context.
For example, there is nothing political about classic Sonic games, but you could argue that the game coexists with some political ideas of its time, such as "videogames are violent and/or satanic" (which is not necessarily a left/right wing thing, but could still be a socio-political idea, which counts), which could have led developers to be more careful with that stuff while making the game, such as avoiding religious imagery and keep the violence cartoony. Then, times changed, and they no longer needed to be careful of that, so they could tone up the violence a little more with games like Shadow the Hedgehog and religious references with games like Sonic '06 and a Sonic R easter egg. Yes, that happened. In fact, the whole topic of religion in old gaming is quite extensive:
So yes, the amount of "freedom" shown in any given piece of media is inherently tied to politics in a way. However, that alone does not make the media political. That is like saying that because you can buy bread in the US and you cannot in Venezuela, then buying bread is political, which is simply absurd.
While I do understand what you're getting at, the Sonic series isn't what I'd consider a good example of apolitical media given that it always had a strong undercurrent of environmentalism, seeing as how the whole theme of the series from the very first release on the Genesis is "industrial encroachment on the environment will eventually lead to a polluted and over-mechanized dystopia."
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Nedhitis
Feb 22, 2020 at 05:41PM EST
VinchVolt
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