History Main / IssueDrift

* During their time together in Music/TheBeatles, Music/PaulMcCartney was viewed as largely apolitical in contrast with Music/JohnLennon, who was much more outspoken about political and social issues, especially later on. But in 1972, [=McCartney=], now with Music/{{Wings|Band}}, wrote the ProtestSong "Give Ireland Back To The Irish" in response to [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles the Bloody Sunday massacre]], which stirred up scandal, especially in the UK, where it was banned by the BBC. As he would recall years later, [=McCartney=] said "I wasn't really into protest songs – John had done that – but this time I felt that I had to write something, to use my art to protest.".

* ''ComicBook/CivilWar'' was centered on government invasions of privacy and extreme rendition policies, had [[ReedRichardsIsUseless Mr. Fantastic]] construct Super Gitmo, and turned ComicBook/IronMan into a StrawmanPolitical (one who hired Nazi scientists to assassinate and clone his former teammates). This culminated with an {{Anvilicious}} bullet through ComicBook/CaptainAmerica's skull. However, this is a special case of almost issue tug-of-war as it had [[WriterOnBoard about a dozen writers on board]] who were all trying to express different, conflicting views and making different characters evil/incompetent accordingly.

* ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill'' became far less even handed toward the end of its run; what started as a nuanced comedy of manners about an unassuming small Texas town with multiple character arcs slowly wound down into repetitive {{Author Tract}}s on Household mold problems, Shoddy [=McMansion=] construction, {{Frivolous Lawsuit}}s and ''Trans-Facism''. {{Flanderization}} set in, CharacterDevelopment slowed considerably, and Hank, who had been more of a dogged HonorBeforeReason type, gradually turned into the OnlySaneMan bordering on a conservative small town version of the SoapBoxSadie.

* ''Series/{{MASH}}'':
** The show became increasingly openly political as Alan Alda became more and more directly involved in writing and producing. By the end of it the show was hailed as an "anti-war drama", which greatly irked fans of the [[Literature/{{MASH}} original novel]] and [[Film/{{MASH}} film]], which the earlier seasons hewed more closely to. The original was written by Richard Hooker, a real Army doctor who based the story on his own experiences in Korea, and who leaned politically right and overall was positive about American foreign intervention. His original concept was simply one of people in hellish circumstances making the best of things, whereas the later seasons of ''Series/{{MASH}}'' focused less and less on the "making the best of things" and more and more on the "hellish circumstances", with increasingly pointed barbs directed at the politicians the show blamed for creating those circumstances. It really didn't help matters any, when it came to Hooker's opinion of the show, that Hooker had originally based Hawkeye on himself, and Hawkeye was originally a very masculine, athletic football player type. Alan Alda was very much ''not'' this type, and over time Hawkeye's character came to resemble Alda in RealLife more and more, especially as Alda -- and, by extension, Hawkeye -- became the iconic '70s Sensitive New Man.
** Hawkeye's deep, visceral anger at the idea of being ordered to carry a weapon or directly involve himself in combat in a later ''Series/{{MASH}}'' episode, for instance -- the implication, in fact, being that Hawkeye was assigned to the M*A*S*H unit because he was a conscientious objector -- runs 100% counter to the original portrayal of Hawkeye and his opinions (such as they were) in the original ''Literature/{{MASH}}''.
* Played with in an episode of ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' where a wounded soldier serving in Iraq is brought into the hospital. Almost everybody gets involved in the political debate about the War on Terror (except for JD who spends the entire episode reading "The Iraq War for Dummies" and the spineless Ted who takes a neutral stance). It ends with Dr. Kelso cutting off the employee discount at the hospital coffee shop to [[GenghisGambit stop everybody's constant arguing about politics and get angry at him instead]], mainly because they're getting so distracted by their debate and the tensions it's creating between people on different sides that they're beginning to let it affect their work. The episode is very deliberate to not take any side and to treat the subject with some humour.

* Addressed on ''Series/Studio60OnTheSunsetStrip'', where Matt wonders when comedians and audiences became so political, and gets the response "when the plane made a sharp left at the second tower".
** It should also be noted that the series was also used as a platform for creator and primary writer Aaron Sorkin to put his views on display.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' was initially little more than an adult animated sitcom with lots of VulgarHumor and a dash of SurrealHumor. Nowadays, it is one of the leading voices of political satire.
** The writers' stance on climate change is a noteworthy example. For the first 10 seasons environmentalism was mocked outright, with some episodes even going as far as calling climate change a hoax that the Democrats use so they can roleplay as the good guys[[note]]Although the "Spontaneous Combustion" episode acknowledged that methane emissions do in fact cause rising temperatures[[/note]]. The topic wasn't acknowledged again for the next decade, until season 22 outright admitted that climate change actually is a serious issue and that everyone is partially responsible (though the show still managed to get some biting humour in regardless).

* ''Literature/TheSwordOfTruth'' starts off as a fairly typical epic fantasy series with a plot mainly concerning the the hero Richard defeating various standard fantasy villains. Around book five, however, the author Terry Goodkind apparently embraced Objectivism in a big way, so the conflict suddenly shifts into an epic struggle between libertarian principles and the evils of collectivism. Richard changes positions he'd held in previous books so that they fall closer in line with Objectivist ideals and becomes prone to [[Literature/AtlasShrugged John Galt]]-style {{Author Filibuster}}s espousing Objectivist ideology.

* ''Literature/TheSwordOfTruth'' starts off as a fairly typical epic fantasy series with a plot mainly concerning the the hero Richard defeating various standard fantasy villains. Around book five, however, the author Terry Goodkind apparently embraced Objectivism in a big way, so the conflict suddenly shifts into an epic struggle between libertarian principles and the evils of collectivism. Richard changes positions he'd held in previous books so that they fall closer in line with Objectivist ideals and becomes prone to [[Literature/AtlasShrugged John Galt]]-style {{Author Filibutser}}s espousing Objectivist ideology.

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Think of it as a political {{Flanderization}}. See also WereStillRelevantDammit, CerebusSyndrome, and WhatDoYouMeanItsNotDidactic See FilibusterFreefall for when it happens to a writer's overall body of work instead of just a single series. See NetworkDecay and MagazineDecay, for when this happens to TV channels, radio stations, and print media.

* Comic-Strip Club was a website of several simultaneous webcomics, all of which were written by the same person. The main feature was Electronic Tigers, a full-page comedy series about college-age video-game fans; the secondary feature was Right-Left-Center, a 4-panel political strip about a talking Donkey & Elephant, representing the Democratic and Republican parties. When the 2008 American Presidential election began, RLC started taking on a bigger role, and as the election drew nearer and nearer, its role grew to a point where it became the main focus of the site. Many fans of the site (most of whom came for Electronic Tigers, the other title) were disappointed by their title being put on hiatus, and many others were also turned off by the extremely biased right-wing politics of RLC, which frequently compared Obama to a Nazi, and briefly, pointed out that the theory of evolution is "absurd". This derailment was so thoroughly unsatisfactory to readers that the web-traffic and readership tanked and the entire website went down for MONTHS. After the website was brought back up, ET was put on indefinite hiatus, while more anti-Obama RLC strips were posted, as well as several pages of a new comic project- a comic biography of Christ, as written by the website's usual writer, a born-again Christian. It should be noted that the artist was an ex-[[Creator/DCComics DC]] staffer who got fired because he tried to insert right-wing politics into everything he drew, and wasted company time arguing about the "homosexual agenda" against other people on their forums. Electronic Tigers last batch of comics was mostly arguments between a calm-minded Republican and a [[StrawmanPolitical crazy, shouting Democrat.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'' went fully political during in the run-up to the 2008 United States presidential election, which a good number of fans saw as being to its detriment. It would then largely return back to its usual gag-a-day BlackComedy operations for the next three years, before making a ''hard'' pivot into storylines about gender politics, societal misogyny and radical feminism, with the current comic effectively being a completely different entity (much to the distaste of long-time fans). Then in 2019 it lost another chunk of its fanbase when it went overtly TERF.

[[folder:Literature]]

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* ''Literature/TheFinalWarning'' was essentially a 272-page AuthorFilibuster about global warming.

* Mocked in one particularly political episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Duckman}}'':
-->'''Cornfed:''' Something funny is going on...\\
'''Duckman:''' Good, I'm getting tired of all the social commentary.

* Inverted on ''WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks''. While the first season had most of its episodes dedicated to social issues, either implicitly (like the episode where a bank robbery is an allegory for the Iraq War) or overtly (the episode where Martin Luther King Jr. comes out of a coma and gives the African-American population a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech), the second season had more general stories, like Riley joining the basketball team or Robert going on a date with a crazy lady he met online. That isn't to say they ceased going after social issues, but they didn't do it as frequently or as overtly. Perhaps, if the Bush Administration can be said to have hijacked the original comic strip, the end of same ''un''-hijacked the animated series.

If we're lucky, the distraction is brief, or even [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools refreshes the work if the topic resonates with the audience]]. In a worst-case scenario, our beloved entertainment has been sent spinning off into the dark recesses of punditry towards a DorkAge, never to return.

* Played with in an episode of ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' where a wounded soldier serving in Iraq is brought into the hospital. Almost everybody gets involved in the political debate about the War on Terror (except for JD who spends the entire episode reading "The Iraq War for Dummies" and the spineless Ted who takes a neutral stance). It ends with Dr. Kelso cutting off the employee discount at the hospital coffee shop to stop everybody's constant arguing about politics and get angry at him instead, mainly because they're getting so distracted by their debate and the tensions it's creating between people on different sides that they're beginning to let it affect their work. The episode is very deliberate to not take any side and to treat the subject with some humour.

* Not counting OldShame album ''With Sympathy'', {{Music/Ministry}} usually had a song or two with general political themes on each album - other frequent song topics would include drugs, [[ReligionRantSong organized religion]], and [[WordSaladLyrics pure word salad]]. 1992 single "N.W.O" was sort of their first ProtestSong about specific current events, criticizing (and {{sampling}}) President George H.W. Bush's rhetoric about the Gulf War. After the election of George W. Bush, they released three albums in four years (''Houses Of The Mole''', ''Rio Grande Blood'', and ''The Last Sucker'') that were almost entirely {{Protest Song}}s about Bush, 9/11, and the war on terror. Even after Bush had his last term, most of their songs continued to center around Al Jourgensen's political beliefs.

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
* [[https://archiveofourown.org/works/2129478 This]] MegaCrossover began as a work of StylisticSuck that mocked the author's OldShame fanfiction, but gradually becomes more and more about bitterly criticizing the YaoiGenre, [[YaoiFangirl its fans]], and Creator/JKRowling.

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/TheFinalWarning'' was essentially a 272-page AuthorFilibuster about global warming.
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[[folder:Sports]]
* The Super Bowl. While the central attraction is still just a football game, everything surrounding it has become increasingly politicized. The pre-game and halftime shows, the commercials, the commentary, the opinions and actions (or non-actions) of the players... you name it, and somewhere in there is some kind of political statement. Among folks who follow such things, there is much lamentation that we can't just sit back and engage in some good old-fashioned escapism without being lectured left and right.
[[/folder]]

* Inverted on WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks. While the first season had most of its episodes dedicated to social issues, either implicitly (like the episode where a bank robbery is an allegory for the Iraq War) or overtly (the episode where Martin Luther King Jr. comes out of a coma and gives the African-American population a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech), the second season had more general stories, like Riley joining the basketball team or Robert going on a date with a crazy lady he met online. That isn't to say they ceased going after social issues, but they didn't do it as frequently or as overtly. Perhaps, if the Bush Administration can be said to have hijacked the original comic strip, the end of same ''un''-hijacked the animated series.

* ''Webcomic/{{Sinfest}}'' went fully political during in the run-up to the 2008 United States presidential election, which a good number of fans saw as being to its detriment. It would then largely return back to its usual gag-a-day BlackComedy operations for the next three years, before making a ''hard'' pivot into storylines about gender politics, societal misogyny and radical feminism, with the current comic effectively being a completely different entity (much to the distaste of long-time fans).
** Then in 2019 it lost another chunk of its fanbase when it went overtly TERF.

* Comic-Strip Club was a website of several simultaneous webcomics, all of which were written by the same person. The main feature was Electronic Tigers, a full-page comedy series about college-age video-game fans; the secondary feature was Right-Left-Center, a 4-panel political strip about a talking Donkey & Elephant, representing the Democratic and Republican parties. When the 2008 American Presidential election began, RLC started taking on a bigger role, and as the election drew nearer and nearer, its role grew to a point where it became the main focus of the site. Many fans of the site (most of whom came for Electronic Tigers, the other title) were disappointed by their title being put on hiatus, and many others were also turned off by the extremely biased right-wing politics of RLC, which frequently compared Obama to a Nazi, and briefly, pointed out that the theory of evolution is "absurd". This derailment was so thoroughly unsatisfactory to readers that the web-traffic and readership tanked and the entire website went down for MONTHS. After the website was brought back up, ET was put on indefinite hiatus, while more anti-Obama RLC strips were posted, as well as several pages of a new comic project- a comic biography of Christ, as written by the website's usual writer, a born-again Christian. It should be noted that the artist was an ex-[[Creator/DCComics DC]] staffer who got fired because he tried to insert right-wing politics into everything he drew, and wasted company time arguing about the "homosexual agenda" against other people on their forums. Electronic Tigers last batch of comics was mostly arguments between a calm-minded Republican and a [[StrawmanPolitical crazy, shouting Democrat.]] Those strips are so infamously biased that the [[http://butthug.com/post/21056500922/my-famous-dumb-and-so-goddamn-crazy-strip-now-in "dumb and so goddamn crazy" comic]] which was once the page image for StrawmanPolitical is supposedly a parody of Electronic Tigers.
* The webcomic ''Webcomic/TwistedKaijuTheater'' started out as a simple, goofy webcomic strip about lots of silly toliet humor. As the series progessed it not only got up a consistent cast and arcing plotlines, it also shifted into having more serious storylines and also providing social and political commentary. The comic began with jokes about poop and developed into a series that deals with mature themes like death, sacrifice, political ethics, family loss, and morality (although it's still pretty comedic).

* Inverted by ''Franchise/{{Superman}}''. Seigel and Shuster's original character fought everything two poor Jewish guys considered "injustice", which in his first story included a government lobbyist for a munitions company. Somewhere around UsefulNotes/WorldWarII he became an All-American hero who felt it would be inappropriate to have any strong political views beyond Nazism = Bad, and [[TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks by the Silver Age]] any relationship between his world and reality had disappeared.

* Inverted by ''Franchise/{{Superman}}''. Seigel and Shuster's original character fought everything two poor Jewish guys considered "injustice", which in his first story included a government lobbyist for a munitions company. Somewhere around UsefulNotes/WorldWarII he became an All-American hero who felt it would be inappropriate to have any strong political views beyond Nazism = Bad, and by the Silver Age any relationship between his world and reality had disappeared.

* Music/CollinRaye had a similar drift starting with his 1994 album ''Extremes'', most notably in the song "Little Rock" (about a brokenhearted recovering alcoholic). Later songs had him tackling the NotSoDifferent trope ("Not That Different"), general societal wrongs ("I Think About You", "What If Jesus Comes Back Like That"), etc. He kinda moved away from it after his 1997 GreatestHitsAlbum (except for the anti-child abuse anthem "The Eleventh Commandment", although unlike the other songs, it was never a single), but swung back toward it in the mid-2000s after he converted to Roman Catholicism, with songs such as the politically-charged "Never Gonna Stand for This".