It’s so interesting and frustrating at the same time to watch people talk about media and media literacy now. Like people aren’t actually discussing media so much as discussing the way other people discuss media, and how it’s wrong and dumb. And now I’m doing it to so I guess I’m just as bad. But good lord it’s impossible to talk about anything anymore online without people complaining you’re “not media literate” just because you don’t like their favorite character or something.
I think what’s been interesting for me to see is this idea that “good media literacy” means we can only speak about characters as if they are tools for the narrative, we can only watch a show like it’s a show, getting too invested or emotional about the things the characters actually do and say means we’re watching it “wrong”. We have to only talk about their actions from the perspective of the writers, as if the goal isn’t for people to get lost in the characters and story AS IF they are real.
People say “you don’t like [unpleasant character] just because they’re unpleasant, but they aren’t real! A writer wrote them that way on purpose!” As if people aren’t allowed to dislike a fictional character just because they’re fictional, as if a character is never written to elicit that reaction, as if people don’t sometimes have their own reasons for disliking characters that has nothing to do with how they’re “supposed” to feel. To get a little personal… For me it was this divisive character who shall not be named who people defended so much it became a bit extreme, and I literally just didn’t like them because they acted like people who used to bully me and get away with it because they were “going through a hard time”, which was also the defense fans of the character used lol. And like it’s fine, I think they are a well written and interesting character in the show, there’s nothing wrong with a character having an unlikable personality, I just didn’t personally enjoy watching them even in the moments where I thought they were being treated unfairly by the other characters. If I don’t like a character, it’s because I don’t find them enjoyable to watch, not because I HATE them and don’t think they should exist and I don’t understand why they were ever written. I mean sometimes I feel that way but usually not lol, not with a well written character.
People also might point to a rude unlikable character and say “you just don’t like them because you don’t understand their purpose in the story or why they act that way!” I might understand that a character is acting like an asshole because they are experiencing a mental health crisis. It doesn’t mean they’re not acting like an asshole. It doesn’t mean we’re not supposed to notice and comment on the fact that they’re acting like an asshole. It doesn’t mean everything they do is morally correct or that their reasons for acting like that “make sense” just because they’re experiencing a mental health crisis. If I’m watching the show with my friend and I point at the screen and say “wow, that’s guys being an asshole, and he’s mean to my favorite character” it doesn’t mean I’ve misunderstood anything, or that I’m a cruel unempathetic person who would treat someone who was experiencing a mental health crisis that way in real life.
And that’s what a lot of people are doing when they post that way about certain characters, they’re just making a comment, they’re not posting some hot take about how all people with depression suck and should die just because they don’t approve of the way a character acted on a tv show once… when you’re even “supposed” to take issue with how the character is acting. Like yes I think the writers wanted the audience to have a reaction to that and not just sit watching like robots who are collecting data so they can understand what the writers were trying to tell them and nothing else.
I think it’s becoming more and more obvious what show I’m talking about as I’m going but whateva lol. I think there was this well-intentioned push from some people in fandomy and media analysis-focused spaces online to “treat characters like characters and not real people”, the Alex Hirsch quote, you get it. But you are supposed to treat characters like real people, kind of. Like not literally but ideally they should be “real” to the audience, at least with the majority of creative projects I don’t think the writers want the audience looking at the screen and saying “that’s a tool and nothing more” to these characters who people have put so much time and effort into making seem like real people.
Like yeah characters are tools, technically, I guess, but just because some guy on Twitter said he doesn’t like your favorite character that doesn’t mean he’s some idiot who literally thinks they’re a real person(for the most part lol). I’ve really felt like I’ve been going actually crazy these past few years watching media discussion online devolve into this weird put-down contest where people are made fun of and told they’re stupid and not media literate for expressing any emotion or thought or opinion about literally anything a fictional character does because it means they “don’t understand” what they’re talking about somehow, that all reactions to media have to only be about what the writers want people to think and nothing else.
As if I can’t understand the writers intentions, think about my own biases, take into account that fiction is heightened to a degree that reality is not, etc etc etc and still have a laugh or make comments about how I think some tv doctor is obnoxious… because he is… sorry! As if people can’t have a human reaction to a story, even if they’re not planning to do some deep media analysis later. I love ~media analysis~ but it’s like everybody got so obsessed with trying to seem smarter than everybody else they forgot that engaging with media as of it’s real is half the fun. People forgot you are supposed to do that too. God, it’s stupid!
