You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.
Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.
Kill the censor in your head.
When we choose to avoid history because it's Problematic or Says Bad Things, we are choosing to divorce ourselves from understanding how we came from that time to this one, which makes it even more likely for the cycle to repeat, with no one but a few people with shelves of old books aware that it's happened before.
and this shit's important. Media from the past tells us how people from the past acted and thought and behaved.
Plus, a lot of these media pieces were socially acceptable and/or progressive for their time. For example, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, while it contains a lot of words and ideas that are offensive now, was very progressive for its time. The book is a statement piece for how a young man who's grown up in a racist environment, with no words to explain himself other than racist and bigoted ones, decides that the whole system is shit and he's not going to follow those rules any more. So not reading or engaging with it because it uses the n-word a lot really misses the point.
Choosing to ignore or avoid historical works isn't progress, it's a refusal to engage with the lessons of the past. Understanding history, literature, and media in proper context helps us recognize harmful patterns, challenge them, and avoid repeating them.
Please develop your media literacy. Learn to critically examine these works, understand not just that they were created but why they were created, how they reflect their time, and what they can teach you. If it makes you uncomfortable, it holds value. It's an opportunity to question, reflect, and learn.
In an age of constant information, strong media literacy is more important than ever. Actually engaging with historical works instead of dismissing them plays a crucial role in building that skill.
History gives us the opportunity to learn from the mistakes and successes of those who came before us. Choose to engage with it. Choose to learn from it. Choose to be better, and to do better.
