there is a tendency among people of all political persuasions to assert that each piece of media has exactly one correct reading of its politics. this often further breaks down into "if I like a piece of media then it must have politics which are agreeable to me, and if I do not like a piece of media then it must have politics which are disagreeable to me." from here this is often rolled into discourse regarding the supposed decline of "media literacy", with the implication that anyone who reads a piece of media in a way opposed to my reading is simply an illiterate fool. this attitude may leave one with a satisfying feeling of intellectual superiority, but ultimately it simply makes you not only a bad critic but a bad reader, the very thing you accuse your enemies of being
the reality is that nearly every work, even those explicitly written to be propaganda, are full of contradictions. this is because works are made by people and people are full of contradictions. it is the task of a reader to sit with those contradictions and struggle with those parts of a work that we find disagreeable
as an example: I am a communist and I love the lord of the rings. I read the lord of the rings as an anti-industrialist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist text whose central conflict is a struggle between liberty and slavery. there are other people, both reactionaries and left/liberal critics, who focus on the implicit racism and read it as a revanchist ethno-nationalist text. as much as I would like to, I cannot simply assert that their reading is nonsense. they are reading things that are in the text. I can assert that those things are contradicted and undermined by other parts of the work, parts that I believe are more essential (essential in the sense of "having to do with the essence of the thing" not in the sense of "necessary"). at the same time I must acknowledge the things that contradict and undermine my own reading: for example, the fact that what I identify as "liberty" is represented by idealized feudal monarchy, a power structure which I oppose and believe is inherently unjust. I have to struggle with the fact that tolkien describes beautiful people with words like "fair" and "white", and describes orcs as physically resembling racist caricatures of east asian people, things which I think are Bad
(as an aside, tolkien was very much aware of the contradictions in both his work and himself. he described himself as being "a non-constitutional monarchist, or an anarchist." it does not get much more contradictory than that)
that's an example from a novel, a single work by a single author. if we're talking about a video game? a work which probably had dozens, if not hundreds of people involved in its creation? the idea that there could be One True Reading of its politics is simply farcical
my point here is not say "all readings are equally valid, works have no inherent meaning". my point is that responding to your enemies saying "this work agrees with my politics" by saying "no, you're an idiot, that work agrees with my politics", is doing yourself a disservice, doing the work a disservice, and underestimating your enemies. "I am wise and all who oppose me are fools" is a dangerous thing to believe
