Post your searing hot takes

[Local Dog]

It's funny that you should cite people misunderstanding Rage Against the Machine as an example because there was a whole thing in 2012 about Paul Ryan, a Republican politician, being a big Rage fan. More recently, there was a big hubbub about Donald Trump, who dodged the Vietnam draft, playing "Fortunate Son" at his campaign rallies in 2020. Willful misunderstanding has always been a thing, though it's definitely possible that recent shifts in the digital landscape have exacerbated things.

I didn't know that about Paul Ryan. That said, again, I haven't seen the amount of misinterpretation and inability to understand both surface and subtext in media to the degree it's been for the last 5-10 years. There were always media illiterate people, but in this day and age, it has become the norm. When people came out of Avatar, people saw it as a simple action movie with a somewhat naturalist message that parallels the colonialization of the Americas. Nowadays, I can asure you that there'll be people defending the humans and/or thinking it's some movie about anti-wokeness or that it shows white supremacy or some bullshit political take. Or they'll just deny that the movie had any message, which I mean fine, it's some action movie, but again, completely denying the text of the movie also shows media illiteracy

What if the whole thing is people thinking that it's that deep, when in reality, it's not that deep?

nah

Most art has meaning. Not all, and it doesn't have to, like Doom doesn't need to be a commentary on the 2008 housing crisis, but most of art has some meaning at least. For people to be told into their faces the exact message a piece of art wants to tell without any ambiguity and to still (un)willfully misunderstanding it, that's just dumb, gives breeding ground to grifters and, despite seeming not that big of a thing, is damaging to society

 

[Cancel cult]

I heard that someone, after being told by their English teacher that It had some deep meaning, asked Steven King himself why he wrote it, and he basically said "clown scary"

 

[Heavyweapons Mann]

Terastallize means everything has a different defensive type and everything also has a Steelworker clone.

 

[Local Dog]

I heard that someone, after being told by their English teacher that It had some deep meaning, asked Steven King himself why he wrote it, and he basically said "clown scary"

I am not to familiar with It but King admitted that he has no memory of writing It as he was coked out to the gills. He read it himself, admitted it was a good book and felt it was unfortunate that he had no memory of writing it. Apparently it was also written in a couple of nights?

I also wrote my bachelor's thesis in the span of a few days. I wasn't on any substance, just sleep deprivation and hunger, and I also have no memory of having ever written my thesis

 

[Heavyweapons Mann]

The virgin sleep depravation vs the chad coked out to the gills

 

[War Incarnate]

The virgin sleep depravation vs the chad coked out to the gills

both seem bad though?

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

I heard that someone, after being told by their English teacher that It had some deep meaning, asked Steven King himself why he wrote it, and he basically said "clown scary"

google death of the author

 

[Heavyweapons Mann]

both seem bad though?

Who said this was a "Virgin bad, Chad good" meme?

 

[Ironmage]

So if death of the authour means that I can put whatever I think is right in the "meaning" box, and "none" is a possible meaning, exactly what is wrong with me choosing to put "none" in that box?

 

[Cancel cult]

google death of the author

ah, so like how the angry birds movie perfectly explains how birds on islands often lose the ability to fly and do not experience predators, and as such are extremely vulnerable to invasive species, like pigs

 

[Just A Shroom God]

So if death of the authour means that I can put whatever I think is right in the "meaning" box, and "none" is a possible meaning, exactly what is wrong with me choosing to put "none" in that box?

because 99.99% of good works DO have at least 1 fairly obvious meaning or moral- to the extent that no logical human being would reasonably put that the work has no meaning. Even in the rare cases that you genuinely believe a work has no meaning/was written for enjoyment only though, you can still explain the thought process that led you to that point. Putting "none" in these instances is a sign that you were probably just being lazy or contrary.

 

[Ironmage]

because 99.99% of good works DO have at least 1 fairly obvious meaning or moral- to the extent that no logical human being would reasonably put that the work has no meaning. Even in the rare cases that you genuinely believe a work has no meaning/was written for enjoyment only though, you can still explain the thought process that led you to that point. Putting "none" in these instances is a sign that you were probably just being lazy or contrary.

Gonna be honest, I found this to be pretty offensive. As someone with Autsim, I have a lot of problems with "obvious" cues, and I take issue with the fact that different thinking patterns means I'm no longer a logical human being. I'll admit I get contrarian about this, because it was the only way I felt I could express my own thoughts during English class when everything else was about conformity.

 

[Cancel cult]

Gonna be honest, I found this to be pretty offensive. As someone with Autsim, I have a lot of problems with "obvious" cues, and I take issue with the fact that different thinking patterns means I'm no longer a logical human being. I'll admit I get contrarian about this, because it was the only way I felt I could express my own thoughts during English class when everything else was about conformity.

as someone else with autism, who also is frequently contrarian during English class for the same reason, i feel like you need to calm down a bit. I can understand being frustrated by this, but how are you offended by it? they obviously meant nothing by it.

 

[Heavyweapons Mann]

Make that three autistic people here, though I feel like conformity is a necessary evil at times.

 

[Cancel cult]

 

[War Incarnate]

the most eventful day in the hot takes thread:

 

[RainWaiv]

average day in hot takes thread:
some guy complains that writing essays is hard
someone else calls them stupid for being bad at writing essays
15 autistic people are magically summoned to the thread

 

[Local Dog]

So if death of the authour means that I can put whatever I think is right in the "meaning" box, and "none" is a possible meaning, exactly what is wrong with me choosing to put "none" in that box?

that is a very good question that has me wondering for quite some time

I overall think that death of the author is a wonderful concept. One of the examples of it is Kubrick's The Shining. There are as many interpretations of the Shining as there are viewers of it. I have heard of many, many interpretations of this movie and said mostly "yeah, from this viewpoint, this makes sense", even with some absolute insane interpretations. Like there's a guy on YouTube who made a Formula 1 documentary that released a few years before The Shining as a pillar of his arguments for his interpretation, and honestly, he had some very legitimate points

However, there are limitations to it. There's this documentary on Shining theories from 12 years ago, where there were a lot of interpretations that needed massive amounts of mental gymnastics to make sense. Like one lady on the doc based her interpretation on her son coming into her room when she watched it or something, idk, it was really weird. This is a video that covers a certain, very questionable theory very well that made some good arguments on limitations of the death of the author:

 

[Heavyweapons Mann]

average day in hot takes thread:
some guy complains that writing essays is hard
someone else calls them stupid for being bad at writing essays
15 autistic people are magically summoned to the thread

To be fair, I usually hang around Smogoff nowadays and the searing hot takes thread.

 

[fiish]

average day in hot takes thread:
some guy complains that writing essays is hard
someone else calls them stupid for being bad at writing essays
15 autistic people are magically summoned to the thread

dialectics

 

[adjectivenoun]

So if death of the authour means that I can put whatever I think is right in the "meaning" box, and "none" is a possible meaning, exactly what is wrong with me choosing to put "none" in that box?

It's just really lame. Regardless of author intention, it's possible to extract meaning from any text with some effort, and doing so almost always leads to more fulfilling and enriching experiences. You're free to engage with media however you want, of course, but strolling into a discussion about the potential meaning of a work and insisting that it's actually not that deep is always going to irritate people.