americans are sooo desensitized to guns and sometimes it manifests in ways that affect your media literacy. like remember in the first episode of sherlock when john watson opens up his drawer and you see a gun in there and youre supposed to understand that this is narratively significant and conveys his suicidality as well as his willingness to skirt rules and laws but the first time i watched it i was like oh well theres his desk gun. lots of people have those
This is like that Star Wars prequel meta about Anakin being coded as a Messiah archteype with virgin conception because "There was no father", but I - child of a single parent home - totally glossed over that as "oh, one night stand, or deadbeat dad (or Ugly Slavery Implication), cool whatever" and didn't see the intended reference until it was spelled out like... 20 years later.
Cross-cultural coding and foreshadowing is SO interesting in terms of what the consumer is supposed to understand versus what they actually do.
