(PHOTO: 'A mindless, propagandistic storytelling medium'...The film "300," left, and its writer Frank Miller.

(November 24, 2011) A sturdy corollary emerges in the wake of the graphic artist Frank Miller's recent diatribe against the Occupy Wall Street movement ("A pack of louts, thieves, and rapists -- Wake up, pond scum, America is at war against a ruthless enemy"), available for perusal at frankmillerink.com).

That corollary, of which we should be reminded from time to time, is this: popular entertainment from Hollywood is - to greater or lesser extent - propaganda. And Miller has his part in that, thanks to films such as 300 and Sin City.

Perhaps you have had this thought before. Perhaps you have had it often. I can remember politics dawning on me while watching a Steven Seagal vehicle, Under Siege, in 1992. I was in my early 30s.

The film was without redeeming merit - there's no other way to put it - and it was about a "ruthless enemy" and the reimposition of the American social order through violence and rugged individualism.