Read on Twitter
One thing that often seems absent from Twitter discussions of culture is the idea that adults, in general, are possessed of critical faculties and filters, and are capable of benefitting from the valuable parts of a text and discarding the rest.
That doesn't mean "don't discuss problematic elements in texts," but more: discuss them without the underlying assumption that those elements render the whole text valueless, or worse, that they will in some way taint the consumer of the text.
"Brooklyn-99 is copaganda!"
Okay, well, perhaps, but I'm a grown-ass man, and I can laugh at Captain Holt bemoaning his squash club's degeneration into racquetball without changing any of my views on policing. Or to put it more simply: if it is copaganda, it doesn't work on me.
Okay, well, perhaps, but I'm a grown-ass man, and I can laugh at Captain Holt bemoaning his squash club's degeneration into racquetball without changing any of my views on policing. Or to put it more simply: if it is copaganda, it doesn't work on me.
I've had a few responses to this thread on and off Twitter that it's not ridiculous to think that media affects how we think and act - indeed, that it would be bizarre for an artist not to think so. And that's a good point, and a limitation to the above. My response is...
... that's why we should absolutely critically engage with texts and call things out, because writing and reading those kinds of analyses is part of what *teaches* us our critical filters. I certainly don't mean to suggest these things aren't worth discussing. But...
...when I was a kid there were these Mr. Yuck stickers, an evil green face that you would put on the containers of household products that children shouldn't consume. Me and my siblings were briefly obsessed with Mr. Yuck stickers...
...so once we'd put them on all the actually poisonous stuff, we couldn't stop, and we ended up putting them on stuff like orange juice and chairs. A lot of Twitter culture convos feel like slapping Mr. Yuck stickers on things that are in my view complex rather than toxic.
I would even argue that leaning how to consume problematic art (which is probably most of it) and thinking about why we reject the parts we reject is a pretty key part of the never-ending process of becoming who we are.
Final note regarding the original tweet in this thread: sadly, not everyone will agree with me on which parts of a given text are valuable and which parts to discard. That sucks, since I'm right about everything, but I don't think that merits warning people off from these texts.
