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Notes -
I used to wonder why books sometimes had a little disclaimer on the copyright page about "the views expressed are not necessarily those of the author" because duh, of course someone can write about a thing without thinking it is a good thing (e.g. crime writers writing about serial killers).
And then this sort of literalism and inability to separate out viewpoints expressed by characters from what the author thinks came along. If it is not 21st century liberal to progressive all the way through, then clearly you are saying bad things, and clearly you only say bad things because you believe bad things, and clearly that means you are a bad person.
Though I can't blame "kids these days" for that, even if it is the most egregious examples; it happened back in the day as well. Arthur Conan Doyle had to make it clear to a review that yes, thank you very much, he was aware that he was working in the same field as Poe and Gaboriau of detective fiction, and that just because in early Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes had a poor opinion of Dupin, it did not mean that Doyle himself had a poor view:
To An Undiscerning Critic by Arthur Conan Doyle, in London Opinion (28 December 1912)
Sure there are times when one cries with acidity,
'Where are the limits of human stupidity?'
Here is a critic who says as a platitude
That I am guilty because 'in gratitude
Sherlock, the sleuth-hound, with motives ulterior,
Sneers at Poe's Dupin as "very inferior".'
Have you not learned, my esteemed communicator,
That the created is not the creator?
As the creator I've praised to satiety
Poe's Monsieur Dupin, his skill and variety,
And have admitted that in my detective work
I owe to my model a deal of selective work.
But is it not on the verge of inanity
To put down to me my creation's crude vanity?
He, the created, would scoff and would sneer,
Where I, the creator, would bow and revere.
So please grip this fact with your cerebral tentacle:
The doll and its maker are never identical.
There's also the opposite situation where the author launders his beliefs through his characters. If the characters never have any flaws in their beliefs shown by the story progress (or if the only flaw is "he's too extreme, but it isn't otherwise a bad idea"), there's a good chance the author does believe them. If the author mentions fine details that would refer to some real life incident that is not actually supposed to be in the story, there's a good chance the author is trying to lecture about the real life incident. If the character makes a 3 hour speech and the story quotes 2 hours of it, the character's probably an author mouthpiece.
Don't overcorrect on this.
But I was assured that "the knife-ears took er jerbs!" scene was not at all meant to be a comment on Trump and immigration! 😁
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I have always enjoyed the critique of Red Dead Redemption 2 along the lines of 'bunch of outlaws and brigands happen to hold perfectly progressive 21st century views on gender, race, consent etcetera'
My favorite was the show Vikings when one of the lead female characters stops a fellow viking raider (and the fact thst there was a woman on the raid already tells you a lot) from raping a woman in the town they're murdering and pillaging in.
IIRC that scene was in the (admittedly heavily embellished)source material- the Vikings(or their Christianized great-grandchildren, whatever) themselves were the ones who lied about it.
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