I’ve been saying for a while that it really feels like media literacy has gone down significantly. I read some opinions or takeaways on a movie and the responses I see can be so confusing, like how someone could possibly come to their conclusion. It could be a movie about fire engulfing everything and they’d be like, “wow, wind sure does destroy a lot of stuff!”, for some reason.

To some extent I get it, I make pretty distant connections myself pretty often, though I generally acknowledge that it wasn’t the intended read of the work but an interpretation of it. Using the fire example above, wind blows fire around, so the wind is destructive too. Sure, that’s great.

So I don’t mind people having these opinions, even if I would have disagreed with them. What bugs me is just how goddamn certain and adamant people get about it, without being facetious about it. If after viewing you genuinely believe that wind is the root cause of the issues, and not all the examples from the source material showing that it’s fire… I just don’t know what to tell you.

Of course, this isn’t for things like meme, or like I said interpretations of the work. If a bunch of people all independently see it and come to similar conclusions, that’s a byproduct of the work. Also similarly, if one person says a theory and everybody likes it, that’s also a bit different to me, though it can be a little annoying if it’s ran without any other thoughts. Not many things have just a single read to it, so it seems limiting to permanently categorize it. There’s also plenty of cases where the work itself does a very poor job getting its point across, probably like this comment right here (sorry, I have a headache).

All in all, in general I’m fine with the whacky opinions that might not be based in the work or even in reality. It gets frustrating when the person is so adamant that their interpretation is the one definitive read and any alternative is dismissed, because it stifles discussion.