I was reading an in-depth analysis of a book last night and ran across phrasing that I know I've seen before but which struck me differently now. I'm gonna try to get across the gist of it without directly quoting the essay because I'm not trying to criticize the writer or the piece. It goes something like:
"The traditional vampire is a romantic male lead who serves as the heroine's love interest. This vampire tells the audience that they must be heterosexual and white. It also shows them that men are active, and women must be passive and accept male attention."
The bolded parts are verbatim. It stood out because this was a scholarly essay, and where I recognize nearly this exact phrasing from is ~2015-2017ish discussions about representation in media on Tumblr. Posters would feel betrayed if they couldn't relate to characters they thought were meant to represent them, and they would spin out lengthy, hostile interpretations that amounted to, "The creator thinks I need to be like this character to be valid as a person," presented as an objective reading.
The essay writer did not seem to be implying that the authors of traditional vampire stories had deliberately intended this message, which is where the variant on Tumblr eventually drifted. In its malignant form this is more or less, "I like pancakes."/"Oh, so you hate waffles?" and weaves into the approach where stories are either trying to teach you Good Things or Bad Things and the goal is to sus the imposter.
So my question (finally) is: does anyone happen to recognize this didactic angle of media analysis as having a specific origin? I'm basically curious whether this was one of those games of telephone where online communities learn simplifications of complex theory from social media posts written by their peers and never get the original context.