The dread of the abyss.

How does a popular art engage an audience without offending  their political points of view and so becoming divisive and so hurting the box office? High art doesn’t care. Mark Twain and George Eliot just said what was on their minds, Twain anti-slavery and Eliot in favor of parliamentary reform-- but then again “The West Wing'' clearly showed its Liberal biases. One way popular art can neutralize itself is to deal with politics by developing the characters of the public figures. That happens in movies like “Primary Colors'', which is about a fictionalized Clinton, a very nuanced George W. Bush in “W.”, and in “Hyde Park on the Hudson'', where emphasis is given to FDR’s sexual liaisons though getting in that FDR was scheming to prepare for FDR to get American support in an expected war between Enghland and Germany.  Another alternative for popular art is to abstract out the opposing set of beliefs so as t6o divorce the movie context from actual events and controversies that viewers might find disputatious. Spencer Tracy in “Keeper of the Flame” presented as an imaginary group what was meant to convey the America Firsters or maybe a Lindberg like figure who gave into the view whereby a leader becomes autocratic and fascistic a few years before in the 1942 movie had opposed involvement in the European war between Britain and Germany. And “A Face in the Crowd” generalized populism when what it really had as its object McCarthyism, which was ginning up hatred for only selfish desires for power.