10 TV Shows That Mock You For Paying Attention
5. "Homeland Is Racist" - Homeland
A very different kind of gag now, because it wasn't actually one authorised by anyone creatively involved with the TV show itself.
In Homeland's early season five episode "The Tradition of Hospitality," Carrie (Claire Danes) arrives at a refugee camp near the Lebanese/Syrian border, where Arabic graffiti is spray-painted on the walls.
But the three artists hired to spray-paint the set ultimately decided to voice their true opinion on the show's politics, as the writing on the left-hand side of the wall actually translates to, "Homeland is racist."
Other areas of the set were painted with phrases such as "Homeland is a joke, and it didn’t make us laugh," and "#BlackLivesMatter." In a statement, one of the artists said:
"We think the show perpetuates dangerous stereotypes by diminishing an entire region into a farce through the gross misrepresentations that feed into a narrative of political propaganda."
Though you'd obviously need an understanding of Arabic to discover the messages for yourself, it's nothing if not a defiant flipping of the bird at both the series as a whole and viewers complicit in it spreading "propaganda."