Does society focus too much on media having meaning it doesn't have?

[sasazuka]

The Critical Drinker made a recent video essay on this very subject.

 

[Lemmingwise]

snip

I agree, it's obnoxious when people obnoxiously insist.

On a more serious note; It's all artifacts of the culture of critique. In order to dismantle western culture (broadly speaking), everything had to be critiqued and deconstructed. But then as people sink into culturelessness and things like true detective and rick and morty nihilistic messages most deeply resonate with how people think, it doesn't mean that the culture critics don't try to keep their jobs.

You also see this in an even lower form of parasite. The culture critic critics (people like sargon). They try to feed on something that barely offers blood anymore.

 

[adorable bitch]

I agree, it's obnoxious when people obnoxiously insist.

On a more serious note; It's all artifacts of the culture of critique. In order to dismantle western culture (broadly speaking), everything had to be critiqued and deconstructed. But then as people sink into culturelessness and things like true detective and rick and morty nihilistic messages most deeply resonate with how people think, it doesn't mean that the culture critics don't try to keep their jobs.

You also see this in an even lower form of parasite. The culture critic critics (people like sargon). They try to feed on something that barely offers blood anymore.

Oh shit thanks for catching that.

(even though it's been saved forever by the quote.)

 

[Lemmingwise]

(even though it's been saved forever by the quote.)

what quote?

 

[Idiotron]

I understand trying to find hidden messages in things like Terry Gilliam's Brazil but these days, people are desperately trying to find them in dumb big budget trash.
For example, there's a video by our favorite MovieBob about the meta narrative of The Last Jedi. In it, he's desperately trying to insert his own views into the movie, it would be hilarious if he wasn't so repulsive.

 

[Foolish Samurai Warrior]

I hate it to the point that people make it their head canon and try to force it on others.

Sometimes, things are just simple as they seem. Things don't have to be deep or anything!

 

[Rancid Flid]

The Smurfs represent the KKK, white supremacy & anti-Semitism :

They all wear pointy white hats.
Their leader wears a pointy red hat, like a KKK Grand Dragon.
The female Smurf was a blue eyed, blonde haired Aryan goddess.
The bad guy has a (((big nose))), wants to catch the Smurfs & turn them into gold. He is called Gargamel.
Gargamel has a cat called (((Azrael))).

 

[I Love Beef]

As most of everything has been spoken from minds like my own (mostly), I'm sure it's said in a quote by someone much more proverbial and wiser, but for things to have meaning, there must be meaningful thought behind it.

Granted, I get assmad and harbor immense disdain for "cultural purity" losers who claim that nothing has meaning if it's in the now and is in popular and mainstream culture, and then you have people like the SJWs, the people down at That Guy With The Glasses/Channel Awesome, Anime News Network, Video Game journalist outlets, and Moviebob who have spent no time in their mean time to make any cultural or knowledgeable connection to properly back up their "critique" and at the same time suck up to anything that's pushed out that is at slathered with the cheap artificial sauce known as favoritism catering sensationalist bullshit. And then, sometimes, as ingeniously said before, a bukakke is just a bukakke.

And then, sometimes, you have to make an effort to make a connection to something and understand it. A lot of people these days aren't just raised with no imagination or to ever think, but they're also convinced that good entertainment is something you just easily digest. I personally think that is one of the most bullshit ways of thinking regarding entertainment. Granted again you can't do that for everything, but again, I'd rather be the person who finds fun out of a B grade movie or anime series that had a shitton of development materials or had an inexplicable tie to me on an emotional level than worship endlessly whatever the current mainstream presents if it doesn't suit me. That's why people like Spoony are in the fucking loony bin and why SJWs exist.

 

[Lemmingwise]

The Smurfs represent the KKK, white supremacy & anti-Semitism :

They all wear pointy white hats.
Their leader wears a pointy red hat, like a KKK Grand Dragon.
The female Smurf was a blue eyed, blonde haired Aryan goddess.
The bad guy has a (((big nose))), wants to catch the Smurfs & turn them into gold. He is called Gargamel.
Gargamel has a cat called (((Azrael))).

View attachment 918009

Nah, smurfs were happy greek buttbuddies until ultrajew (gargamel) created a smurfjew (woman) to infiltrate and get them killed. But she was such a jew that she backstabbed the other jew (gargamel) and started the long doctrinal jew-war. In the meantime, smurfjew (smurfette) exploits the other smurfs out of their goods and plays them of each other according to her own whims.

I also think there is an episode where the smurfs turn black after being bitten by a fly and they all turn into speechless savages. Hmm... I wonder what the author was trying to say.

...nevermind I looked it up. They turned purple and people tried to turn it into a black/white race thing.

 

[I should be working]

The average person in society enjoys media for the sake of entertainment rather than art.
The people who fixate on the artistic, poetic side of entertainment are a smaller part of overall society and appear to be nothing more than a bunch of wannabe smart asses who learned about the hidden meanings and themes placed into entertainment by expert artists, and now try to apply that idea to all media.
Either because they don't realise that media is meant to be entertainment first or because they want to appear smart by "digging deep" into something that would otherwise be inconsequential.
That or they just enjoy picking things appart and for them it's a fun activity.

Basically it's not society who look for deeper meening it's just a subset of society.

On a side note, having been a That Guy With the Glasses fan during University I noticed in my self and a lot of other viewers that there were a lot of people who took the critisism way too seriously.
Anf then when asked to explain why something is bad/good would usually just parrot what someone on the site said until you argue against their "point" at which point, the more defensive people would either attack you for not going with their arguement or make a "but there's also this and this and that issue" arguement, trying to reflect the critisism of their dumbassery.

 

[AF 802]

The Critical Drinker made a recent video essay on this very subject.

Midsommar is an allegory for the War on Afghanistan.

 

[Billy "the Bot" Bobson]

I get more enjoyment from breaking apart media than "taking it at face value". That can be anything from continuity errors, plot holes, to the more enjoyable thematic and philosophical issues. The best example of the latter is John Carpenter's "They Live". Often times people use the concept of the author's death to justify their own little fantastical thematic explanation. I find (and if I had to guess, most Kiwis) that including the authors insights, beliefs, and background in an analysis provides a far more well rounded and clear message or meaning. In "They Live", Carpenter intended the whole story to be about the class divide between rich and poor, yet the movie works way better as an anti-semitic allegory. In fact, this latter interpretation was so popular it prompted Carpenter to speak out against it and clarify his intent.

Interpretation is way more entertaining and interesting than just tuning out. The people who argue over the absolute, objective meaning of a fictional are just autistic and should be mocked relentlessly for taking it too seriously.

 

[DK 699]

What do you mean I can't derive my entire political ideology from a children's book about a magical boarding school?