Lizstar
@Lizstar

I'm starting to think that if we just teach media literacy to kids at a young age conservatism will disappear, because one of the things I've seen that's true of every single conservative in the United States is that they are all horrible at media literacy

"Silent Hill 3 is a conservative game, it aligns to my views". Oh, the game about a young woman trying to escape from fundamentalists who want to use her body against her will, and it ends in her literally aborting God? Yeah, that's probably a right wing game, sure. Weird hill to die on, but at least you're dead.


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in reply to @Lizstar's post:

Remember those conservative-type people on forums in the 00s with MGS and Bioshock avatars who said stuff like "keep politics out of video games."

It's so wild how some people do not ever learn how to think about or analyze media? Like do the private schools conservatives like to put their kids in not do book reports or movie reports? Is there no class discussion on what the author or director was going for? How do they get through 10-12 years of school without critical thinking?

I didn't go to a fancy private school but I did go to the best public school in my area and my experience was, societal level critiques were only looked at in works that happened far in the past (the Crucible) or far away (the Boy who Harnessed the Wind). In general, media is analysed in classical liberal terms of personal conflict and struggle.

One of the reasons I'm very vocal about telling folks that "Artists are just dudes who do stuff" is that my rural Idaho public education didn't put any emphasis on arts/artists.

There's this big myth that people who write or paint or do anything creative are just built different and it's absolutely not true. It leads to this current of "Well who are you to think anything about art you poor?" I can't speak for it universally, but my experience growing up in a right wing hellhole is that they teach you from a young age that you're going to tend fields, have kids, and you will never, ever make anything of value by pursuing the arts in any way.

The idea that media is something you can derive real meaning that affects your life or the way you think is reserved for the bible, and you better never question that if you value your neck.

This is a really good point actually. In our English classes, even reports where we were allowed to "choose" our book came from a list of classics. Suggestions for modern books were shut down without hesitation. We were basically taught that only classic literature could hold meaning, and only because the people who wrote those were "genuises" whose writing is flawless. Everything not a classic is deemed purely entertainment, because modern writers are simply not nuanced enough to provoke thoughtful discussion.

Ironically the best (worst) part about this: We were also taught that if we derived anything but the "correct" meaning from a book, it was wrong. We were never taught critical thinking; we were taught to accept what we're told and to produce the evidence for these lessons, ourselves.

My math teacher showed us the Horton Hears A Who movie and would pause to point out all the ways it's an anti-abortion story. Guy got fired a few years later, got caught looking at porn on his laptop while in class.

He's now a very unsuccessful anti-sex worker crusader because he blames them for "entrapping" him and ruining his life after his wife left him.

I went to a private evangelical school, completely non-accredited so I'm like legally considered to have maybe a 5'th grade education. The education was geared towards you going to bible college someday.

He was sorta allowed to use his class as a general podium. The notion is "you don't need to know THAT much math to be a pastor or a missionary, so we'll stick to the basics and figure out what to do with the rest of the class-time."

He was also a music, history, and physics teacher but that period was I think a Geometry class. Honestly the Horton Hears a Who story is not even close to the worst shit he'd just say in class.

He's lucky he got fired before every student ever had a smartphone. For me, fortunately, it's more funny in hindsight than anything else because he's such a fucking loser.

I mean they do teach this shit in middle and high school, but like you've been to school, you know how it is: half the kids just dont get it lol, they get a passing grade anyways cause you can just memorize the test answers, then they go say bioshock is a cool conservative game a decade later unironically. like shit I got away with not even reading books or getting all the in class questions wrong and then just writing all the correct answers down based on whatever everyone else said to the teacher and remembering that for tests and essays. a lot of people just don't give a shit about learning what stories are actually about past "whoa cool robot" or "whoa, cool penis monsters" in SH3 lol, especially when they're at the age they teach it at.

Or somehow making Star Wars a Conservative piece of media. My dad tried to explain to me once that Nute Gunray was an analogue for Bill Clinton. My mum, who thankfully is also a geek, told dad to get bent cause Lucas clearly named him after Newt Gingrich and Reagan.