I started this post as a thread on twitter before I realized I wanted to get a little bit more longform with it (honestly probably within the scope of a twitter thread, but still) so I'm moving it over here instead.
one of my favorite things in media criticism (both in reviews by non-experts, like readers on goodreads or viewers on letterboxd, AND in published criticism by professional media analysts) is when someone complains about something being too heavyhanded, lacking in subtlety, etc. but they've also CLEARLY missed the actual point of the work they're criticizing.
I think this comes from people mistaking a story's ASSUMPTIONS with a story's THEME. as an example, I'll go back to my absolute favorite (read: most infuriating) example of a ludicrous number of ostensibly intelligent, educated, literate people missing the actual point of a movie: The Last Duel.
a lot of people complained that The Last Duel was a heavyhanded rape morality tale, that the "point" or "message" of the movie was "rape is bad". but that was not the message of the movie. that was an assumption the movie made that sensible viewers would know. the movie assumes a baseline shared understanding of "rape is bad" in order to get to its actual theme, about how people can be rapists while deluding themselves into sincerely believing that they are heroes and romantics, how people maintain ideals even while their behavior doesn't live up to them.
but people got so hung up on "why is this movie trying so hard to tell me that rape is bad? I already know that!" that they COMPLETELY missed that that wasn't what the movie was trying to say at all, and the ACTUAL theme of hypocrisy and pride went over their heads completely.
and I WISH I knew where this came from, where people are so certain that only the most surface information presented by a story is "the theme" or "what it's really saying". it feels related but distinct from the phenomenon of "[movie name] ending explained" youtube videos where people need even actual children's movies explained to them like a puzzle box rather than as a narrative (seeing "Encanto ending explained" presented with all earnestness is my Joker origin story)
I feel like such a snob when I complain about this, too, like this ridiculous infantilization of media for adults, and adults still failing to meet even that bar of interpretation, and this awful cycle of everything getting DUMBER, but fuck it! everyone is a snob about something, so I guess this is mine!
