“The void between public rhetoric and objective truth has become a chasm. Perhaps the greatest casualty of our time is the surrender of a shared reality.” — Mon Mothma, Andor Season 2
From the critically acclaimed oratory against systemic deception in Andor to Elphaba’s desperate stand against a populist despot in Wicked: For Good, 2025 has emerged as a landmark year for cinema and television centered on insurrection and institutional collapse. Yet, the year’s storytelling went beyond simple tales of rebellion; it delved into the terrifying efficacy of propaganda and the ease with which a population can be seduced by a manufactured narrative.
Propaganda is most insidious in its ubiquity. Whether it is the subtle push toward a consumer product or the radicalization of a political belief, external forces are constantly sculpting our perceptions for their own gain. Modern media in 2025 masterfully illustrated this phenomenon, using heightened fictional landscapes to mirror the erosion of truth in our own world.
Paradoxically, art itself is the primary engine of this manipulation. In Dan Erickson’s Severance, the corporate monolith Lumon Industries utilizes a process called “severance” to bifurcate the consciousness of its employees. Within the sterile, labyrinthine halls of the office, art serves as a tool for religious devotion. Portraits of the founder, Kier Eagan, are displayed with hagiographic reverence, positioning the CEO as a secular deity to ensure unwavering employee compliance.
By the second season, Severance demonstrated how art can also be weaponized to sow internecine conflict. By circulating divergent paintings of historical departmental violence—such as The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design—Lumon ensures its workers remain divided by mutual suspicion. This “divide and conquer” strategy prevents the workforce from recognizing their shared exploitation, keeping their anger directed at one another rather than at the corporation pulling the strings.
Similarly, Wicked: For Good explores how visual media can fuel mass hysteria. When Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) rebels against the systemic dehumanization of Animals, the Wizard and Madame Morrible launch a scorched-earth PR campaign. Oz is flooded with caricatures of Elphaba as a monstrous “Green Menace,” effectively rebranding her righteous fury as demonic instability. The film highlights how a ruling elite can consolidate power by manufacturing a common enemy, turning the public’s fear into a weapon against the very person trying to save them.
The tragedy of Wicked lies in the total success of this campaign. Every attempt Elphaba makes to expose the Wizard’s lies is instantly co-opted or inverted. Even when she takes to the sky to write the truth, her message is magically transformed into a threat. This illustrates the suffocating power of a state-controlled narrative: when the medium is owned by the oppressor, the message of the oppressed becomes irrelevant.
Even the Man of Steel found himself vulnerable to character assassination in James Gunn’s 2025 Superman. This iteration of the hero serves as a poignant allegory for the immigrant experience. Gunn has described the film as a testament to human kindness—a virtue that feels increasingly scarce in a world of political polarization. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) orchestrates a digital smear campaign, utilizing social media trends to “other” the Man of Steel, reframing a selfless protector as an uninvited alien threat.
Luthor’s tactics—using hashtags and viral misinformation to undermine Superman’s legitimacy—reflect the real-world dangers of algorithmic radicalization. By focusing on Superman’s extraterrestrial origins, Luthor justifies violence against him as a form of “patriotism,” showing how easily empathy can be stripped away when a target is successfully dehumanized.
This theme of narrative control reaches its zenith in Andor Season 2 with the Ghorman Massacre. The Empire doesn’t just commit genocide; it pre-authorizes it through a campaign that depicts the Ghorman people as parasitic and subversive. When peaceful protesters are slaughtered, the state-run media labels them as “rioters,” ensuring that the rest of the galaxy views their deaths with apathy or approval.
The series emphasizes that the Empire’s greatest weapon is not the Death Star, but its control over the flow of information. While Mon Mothma risks everything to speak the truth in the Senate, the average citizen is fed a diet of lies that makes resistance seem irrational. It is a stark reminder that when the state writes the history books in real-time, the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
Finally, Edgar Wright’s The Running Man explores the intersection of entertainment and fascism. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is forced into a televised death match where AI and deepfakes are used to rewrite his past. The Network broadcasts a version of Richards that is a bloodthirsty psychopath, ensuring the audience cheers for his execution. It is a chilling look at a future where technology is used to erase the humanity of the marginalized for the amusement of the elite.
As we look toward 2026, the fascination with these themes shows no signs of waning. With The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping on the horizon, we are reminded that critical thinking is the only defense against the allure of the crowd. These stories suggest that while propaganda is powerful, it is also fragile; it requires our silence to survive. Breaking that silence is where the real revolution begins.
Source: Polygon
