You Can't Keep Politics Out of Your Stories
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SPOILERS AHEAD FOR: -Top Gun: Maverik (2022 Film) -Joker (2019 Film) -The Twilight series as a whole (2005-2008 Novels) -Project Hail Mary (2026 Film & 2021 Novel).
Whenever a creator is accused of putting politics into their work, there is one defense that appears almost immediately: It’s not a political statement, it’s just entertainment. That is such a beautiful, wonderful line. I’ve wanted to use it myself more than once. But it just isn’t true, even if the creator really does believe it is.
My original title for this was going to be, “Art is Inherently Political,” but that title just felt a little absolutist. I mean, it’s not like writers and filmmakers are secretly constructing manifestos between the explosions, first kisses, and dramatic confrontations. They probably just wanna tell a story, or have some fun with an audience, or explore a personal problem without endorsing a political party or commenting on the latest election.
But while you may not put politics into your story on purpose, that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. So let’s talk about it for a minute.
Politics is ultimately about how people live together: who possesses power, who makes decisions, and how to manage resources. Stories cannot depict social conflict, authority, justice, punishment, freedom, or social relationships without making choices about those subjects. Their endings also decide which actions succeeded, which consequences mattered, and what kind of outcome the audience is invited to find. And once a story is released, its creator is no longer the only person involved in determining what it means. Your audience will most certainly bring their politics with them. They may find implications the creator never intended, and sometimes those interpretations will be supported by the story whether the creator agrees with them or not.
Now, to be clear, this does not mean every story is propaganda or that writers must deliberately insert political messages into their work. There’s whole arguments about the term “Death of the Author” and it has been discussed extensively. But since these articles are tips for beginning writers, let’s water it down a little. What I mean is: a story isn’t apolitical simply because its creator wanted it to be.
Your story becomes political through three major points: the power its conflicts depict, the values its resolution expresses, and the meaning created when an audience encounters it.
“Every social conflict involves power.”
Politics does not begin and end with elections, political parties, or arguments between liberals and conservatives. It also concerns who possesses power, who is authorized to use it, and whose interests that power serves.
Director Joseph Kosinski denied that 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick was intended as political commentary. In an interview with The Guardian he said, “We’re not making a political statement. We’re just trying to tell this very honest story about a guy struggling with some things in his life set against the backdrop of this incredibly demanding, exciting job.”
That may accurately describe his intentions, but the “job” in the background is flying weapons for the United States military. The film’s central mission requires American pilots to enter another country’s airspace, destroy a uranium-enrichment facility, and shoot down the enemy pilots sent to stop them. The enemy nation is never identified—in that same interview Kosinski said, “I actually enjoyed the creative challenge of saying: how can I make this enemy so unidentifiable that no matter how hard someone tries, they’ll never be able to pick them out?”—and the political circumstances surrounding the conflict are almost completely omitted. But this does not remove the politics from the film.
Instead, the movie asks viewers to accept several political assumptions as the foundation for its story. First, that the mission is necessary. Second, that American military leaders have legitimate authority to order it. And third, that the pilots carrying it out are heroic. The faceless, unnamed enemy exists mainly as an obstacle, while the people authorizing the attack are completely, perfectly trusted without the film ever bothering to seriously examine their motives or discuss accountability.
Now, that does not make Maverick a deliberate piece of political propaganda. But it does mean that the film cannot tell a story about military power without implying something about when that power is legitimate and whose use of violence deserves the audience’s support.
Kosinski may have wanted to tell a personal story about age, regret, courage, and responsibility, but he placed that story inside an institution empowered to cross borders and use lethal force. Once the film asks the audience to celebrate how that power is being used, it has entered political territory . . . even if no one involved intended to make a political statement.
“Every resolution expresses values.”
In your story—by deciding who succeeds, who suffers, what changes, and what the audience is meant to feel about it—the ending expresses certain values. I’ve tried to pick only examples of stories whose creators claimed they weren’t political, so it might be a little bit of a surprise that the example I used for this point is the movie 2019 film Joker.
At the Venice Film Festival, director Todd Phillips was directly quoted saying, “It’s not a political film” (although I admit Deadline’s report said the remark was met with laughter in the press room). And Phillips did suggest that the film’s meaning depended upon the lens through which each person viewed it.
So he may not have intended to promote a political party or specific policy, but the film resolves its story through unmistakably political consequences. Arthur begins as an impoverished and mentally ill man who is mocked, assaulted, abandoned by public services, and is mostly invisible to the society around him (except when he’s unintentionally disrupting it). By the end of the movie, he murders a famous television personality on live TV and is eventually embraced by violent rioters as a symbol. He finally receives the public recognition he wanted, but only after transforming his suffering into spectacle and lawless violence.
Obviously, that resolution does not directly declare Arthur a hero or argue that murder is justified—narrative attention shouldn’t be confused with moral approval—but the ending still frames his transformation as the consequence of a society defined by neglect, humiliation, inequality, and a lack of empathy. It suggests that when institutions abandon vulnerable people and powerful figures dismiss their suffering, resentment putrefies into political violence.
The ending also makes choices about whose anger becomes historically important. Arthur’s ignored when he asks for help, but celebrated when he kills someone on television. Gotham only notices him after he becomes a murderer. Whether the film condemns that transformation, sympathizes with it, or even deliberately leaves the answer unsettled, it still presents violence as the catalyst that turns a powerless man into a public symbol.
That is a political statement, despite the director claiming it’s not a political film. Now, to be fair, Joker doesn’t tell viewers which party to support or anything like that, but its resolution is the line in a constellation of economic inequality, collapsing social support, elite indifference, media spectacle, and public unrest.
Phillips may not have meant to make a political film, but once he chose how Arthur’s story would end, he also chose what actions would finally give Arthur power and recognition. Beyond that, he chose what conditions would make Gotham revolt and what consequences would follow society’s refusal to care. That ending still expresses certain values. And while we should be careful not to mistake the creator’s values for the values of their stories, every resolution decides what the story believes those events mean.
“Meaning is created between the story and its audience.”
A simpler way to put this is: Your audience is going to bring their politics with them.
A writer can control their story, but the writer cannot fully control its meaning to those who read it. Readers interpret what happens through their own experiences, values, and assumptions. Then, even if you didn’t want to make a political statement, they might apply one to it anyway. And that’s their right as a reader. You get to tell people what you intended the story to mean, but as unfair as it may seem, you don’t get to tell people that they’re only allowed to interpret it your way.
So let’s pick an example that shouldn’t contain any political statements, something like a romance story involving a sexy vampire. What about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series? After all, in an interview with The Guardian, Stephenie Meyer even said, “You know, it’s so funny. I never decide to put a message in anything. I decide on a story that I think is exciting, and I entertain myself.”
But the story’s political interpretations didn’t require Meyer to sit down and consciously write a political argument. She wrote the romance she found compelling. But the choices that made that romance compelling to her, as personal as they may have been, still gave readers material to interpret. As the series became a cultural phenomenon, discussion definitely expanded beyond its entertainment value (If you were a teenager in the 2000’s era, you don’t need me to tell you this, you probably remember it). Parents wanted it banned over age-inappropriate content, religious groups wanted it banned for perceived demonic content, etc etc. But even just one point—how readers debated whether Bella and Edward’s romance celebrated female choice or romanticized control, dependency, and traditional gender roles—demonstrates how a writer’s intended love story can become a political argument once different audiences begin interpreting it.
One reader may view Edward’s protectiveness, restraint, and intense devotion as romantic. Another may see his surveillance, possessiveness, and control over Bella’s decisions as warning signs of an abusive relationship. The same actions produce different meanings because readers approach them with their own predetermined beliefs about consent, autonomy, masculinity, and acceptable behavior within relationships.
Bella could also be interpreted as a young woman stubbornly exercising her freedom despite everyone trying to control her, or as a heroine whose identity and future become almost entirely dependent on a powerful male partner. Her choices involving abstinence, marriage, pregnancy, and motherhood can be read as personal agency, conservative sexual morality, or even both at once! Stephenie Meyer was asked by her editor to include premarital sex scenes, but Meyer declined. When asked whether she had intended to promote abstinence, her response is actually where I got her earlier quote: “You know, it’s so funny. I never decide to put a message in anything. I decide on a story that I think is exciting, and I entertain myself.”
Meyer may have intended only to write an exciting supernatural romance, but her readers encountered that romance with their own ideas about feminism, gender roles, religion, consent, and abuse. So the statement of the Twilight series no longer belongs only to Meyer’s intentions, it’s now inextricably tied to the interaction between what she wrote and what her readers brought with them.
“Alright, alright. Let’s talk about Andy Weir.”
So let’s wrap this up by talking about the elephant in the room: Andy Weir and Project Hail Mary.
Weir has been extremely clear about what he wants his fiction to be. In a 2026 interview with Rolling Stone, he said, “There’s never any deeper message or meaning in any of my stories. It’s always just there to entertain.” And I believe that he believes this! I mean, it’s not like he just sat down to write Project Hail Mary as a manifesto about government, science, or society. He wanted to write a fun space adventure with none of that yucky, messy, political crap.
But, well . . . [Insert gif of Zuko saying, “That’s Rough Buddy”].
Like Top Gun: Maverick, Project Hail Mary’s conflict involves power. Humanity responds to an extinction-level crisis by placing extraordinary authority in the hands of Eva Stratt and organizing a massive international scientific effort under her leadership. That raises political questions about emergency power, individual consent, international cooperation, and whether experts should be allowed to override ordinary rules when billions of lives are threatened.
Like Joker, Project Hail Mary’s resolution expresses certain values. Grace ultimately abandons his chance to return to Earth so he can rescue Rocky and save an entirely different species. The story rewards cooperation over isolation, it rewards friendship over self-preservation, and it rewards compassion that extends beyond species. One might even say the story is painfully naïve in its execution (though I firmly believe our society could use a couple more stories with endings like this one).
And finally, like Twilight, Project Hail Mary’s audience have brought their politics with them. Some readers see an optimistic defense of international cooperation and trust in scientific expertise. Others see a warning about concentrating enormous power in one unelected authority during an emergency. A lot of people have focused on the morality of forcing an individual to serve the greater good. Weir does not have to intend any one of those interpretations in his story for readers to find evidence for them.
Now, there was something else Weir said in that same interview. That Project Hail Mary has an optimistic message about hope and friendship. As he put it, “I sell positivity. That’s my product.” I can dig it—I like that. I’ll admit, after reading the first Game of Thrones book and seeing how it ended, I was too bummed out to bother reading the rest of them or to ever watch the show (although, judging by the reaction to the show’s ending, I guess I dodged a bullet on that one).
Anyway—what Weir said is the point of my argument. He didn’t deliberately write a story with a political message, but it’s still a story about who should wield power during a crisis, what one person owes to everyone else, and how intelligent beings should respond when their survival depends upon cooperation. Those are political questions. Because politics is about far more than parties and elections.
So you, fledgling writer: your story is political even if you don’t want it to be. You can’t keep politics out of your stories. Your story becomes political when conflicts distribute power, its ending is going to show readers what your story thinks matters, and the people you’ve invited to read it have not forgotten to pack beliefs you cannot control (right next to a spare pair of socks).
Now, don’t get me wrong! I’m not telling you to force politics into your story. But I am telling you that you should understand something very important. Once you write about people making consequential choices around one another, politics is already there.
If you wanna write creative fiction or tell a story, this is something you’re just gonna have to get comfortable with.
SOURCES:
(Joseph Kosinski Quotes)
The belated sequel to Top Gun is easily the highest-grossing film of 2022 – as well as Tom Cruise’s most successful movie ever. Its director
(Todd Phillips Quotes)
After unveiling footage at industry events and dropping the latest trailer just this week, Warner Bros world premieres Joker at the Venice F
(Stephenie Meyer Quotes)
The author of the wildly popular vampire romance franchise talks exclusively to Kira Cochrane about traditional romance novels being too 'sm
(Andy Weir Quotes)
Some writers focus on moral subtext in their works.
