People cannot engage critically with the media that they consume. That’s it. That’s what it is. So many people cannot look past their nose at the art they spend so much time just shoveling into their brain and will often ignore the obvious message, themes, or ideas presented in the work to either support their confirmation bias around the work or to just reinforce their own world view.
To be clear, this is not pointed at any one direction on the political or social spectrum because people on both sides (one side more than the other, but I digress) so this will be addressing everyone. To start, I know that English teachers are trying their best but the education system is not working at its maximum (subject for another time) and this is one of the many discussions that show it off in its full glory.
When people write books, every word tends to have a meaning and is building on the next one to both engage the reader and subtly hide the meaning of the work just under the surface, especially if the author is good at their job. Just because a person actively ignores or mocks the idea that the curtain being blue meant something doesn’t mean it didn’t.
That’s where it starts. And it just builds out from there into seeing things and just giving them their own entirely original interpretation, regardless of the context going into the conversation. Then after doing more than just interpreting what is being given to them in the work, they become insulted and belligerent about what isn’t in it, looking for it to pat them on the back for skewing the ideas that were originally being presented in the first place.
Even more surprising, people will take out their frustrations on the people who do understand the purpose of the work or are able to get enjoyment out of what the work is presenting them with.
Different interpretations of work is fine because people are different, but there is a massive difference between logically coming to a conclusion in order for them to engage in intellectual debate or conversation and just emotionally fumbling into an idea that the work never had a trace of and then insisting on its existence as well as the deciding the moral standing of everyone that does not agree with it.
This becoming the default for discussion of art in many spaces, especially on the internet is what makes the culture war as a concept incredibly idiotic.
Even more so since calling something that is essentially fighting over what people find culturally acceptable a ‘war’ galvanizes people to argue like their life depends on it. Leading to an argument that shouldn’t be had because opinions are so varying that the baseline that society should be moving forward from is tolerance and everyone should just mind their own business if they can’t go past it.
More and more people do not actually understand the art that they are consuming and it leaves every discussion about the art worse for it.
So, everyone is wrong and just taking the oxygen in their lungs for granted by ceaselessy arguing in echochambers tht provide them nothing but incorrect opinions and fuel for their irrational rage.
This is even more baffling because art through the lens that they are looking at it from is highly outdated and not fully taking into account the actual reality of the situation. Expression in almost every instance is not conservative as most artistic expression is about being stuck in places they wish to move forward from or just moving forward, especially socially.
Even categorically conservative work (whether it means to be or not because some people do it as satire to illustrate their point) is so badly handled that the message comes across as progressive society is the way to go, unless that happens to be the point.
On the other hand, all art that is being pushed out from a capitalistic source in a capitalist society built on white supremacy and patriarchy (like ours) is being compounded by that lens and is therefore more conservative by nature than it was meant to be because, even by accident, it is reaffirming white supremacy somehow since the corporation or company pushing it out has greed above all else as a goal and having truly subversive and progressive art interrupts that.
Accidents happen and they sneak past every once in a while, and art that is produced independently without interference is mostly unaffected by this point, but the point remains.
However, while this has been discussing at length the incredibly mindless concepts that people are pulling from art since they can barely read two sentences in five minutes without getting a headache, many people are engaging with art incredibly well and even better than society ever had with some of the finest comb I have ever seen.
This is not about them. Nor is it about the people who have actual concerns or rage about the ideas that they are logically coming to conclusions about (myself included obviously).