Why Are Conservatives So Media Illiterate?
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#startrek #thelastofus #mediaanalysis #allinthefamily #benshapiro #politics
"Start Trek is only political 15% of the time" is an interesting way to say, "I only understood 15% of the themes of Star Trek"
Every time the camera paned to the black communications officer played by nichelle nichols, the show was being political and awesome on my opinion.
Part of it is a lack of understanding of identity and culture, so they miss when shows like Star Trek are challenging political and social norms without overtly highlighting policy or injustice.
Egalitarianism, in itself, is a challenge to the status quo, and they don't realize that.
@@inafridge8573 It's disappointing that so many of "the right" are progressives and just don't realize it. They hate progressives so much, and would die before they got to know themselves enough to understand that they are one.
Sorry, I couldn't stop laughing....But yes, that seems a reasonable assessment.
@@inafridge8573 Star Trek also takes place in a post-scarcity society which is inherently communist
My favorite part of the Trump era was watching Conservatives realize their favorite bands hate them.
His "era" is still ongoing.
What rock have you been living under?
That bag of sht will never go away until he's dead....and even then the psychos won't let us forget him.
Are you sure they’re realizing it?
@@SlusserGuitarsthey went from boycotting Bud Light, to supporting Modelo… yet another progressive beer company.. so.. I don’t think they realize ANYTHING..
@@SlusserGuitarsthey didn't but they still are confused of why Rage Against The Machine dosen't support the same politicinas they do...
Hi, Ian. Upon reflection, your comment is both correct and damn depressing.
I once heard someone say “All media is political, and if you don’t see a piece of media as political then it either completely agrees with your world view or you’re too fucking stupid to realize out that it’s political.” and honestly it seems more and more accurate every day I’m on this earth
"Everything is political." --Thomas Mann
All media? Even Andy Griffin show?
I think there is a difference between a story taking place in a setting that has a particular assumed political environment and the message being political in intent.
@@KaleighCeeI think you are conflating “politics” with civilization itself. Politics is just a structure. In any story that takes place in civilization will have to show political structures, but that doesn’t have to be what the story is about.
The following is a piece of media:
Water is wet. Grass is green. The sky is blue.
Feel feed to discuss how this statement is political in the comments below. Thank you.
The most ironic one of all is the New Testament. I mean, how a conservative can look at the teachings of Jesus and somehow think that Jesus would be a conservative is mind boggling to me.
Fancy finding you here. Big fan.
The hypocrisy boggles the mind. Actually I read that Christianity used to be a more liberal thing, with concern for the poor and a propensity for charity being a primary factor. The term "Bleeding heart liberal" came from that, with "bleeding heart" referring to the bleeding heart of Christ. It's only during the Evangelical movement of the 1980s that it shifted, and conservatives used the single-issues of abortion and gay marriage to drive many Christians towards being more conservative, while many others left the church entirely.
Good to know one of my favorite nerds is based as hell. Keep up the good work, my friend
Holy shit, did not expect the 8BitGuy to be here! Yeah, Christianity was hijacked by the far-right in the early 1900s with the rise of the Red Scare and televangelism. Anyways, I love your review on the Tandy 1000, I just recently upgraded my 1000 EX and got it to run Wolfenstein 3D!
I know someone who hates liberals told me two weeks ago that, “Conservatives are the ones who actually know what god wants.” Yikes.
I mean, now we're starting to see conservatives refer to the Sermon on the Mount as "woke liberal propaganda"... soooooo...
I will never not laugh at conservatives who think rage against the machine is supporting them
Makes you wonder what machine they think they are raging against, doesn't it?
Or to a lesser extent System of a Down, but they aren't quite as political as RATM. To me all metal heads that are actually conservative don't seem to get what the music is really about. We walk the left hand path, the path away from religion or religious values and our music is meant to express anger about mostly right wing ideals. It surprises me the amount of us who just don't get it. Trump might run on anti-establishment narratives but he's the furthest thing from it and is actually more establishment than even politicians are. Corporations are the problem and they somehow don't see that he has been the poster boy for corporate greed and avarice since the 80s. I guess there are more posers among us than I originally thought. I never forgot that it has its own Nazi subculture but that was always the minority, now I don't know if it is a minority anymore.
That being said there are those who take a stand against the idiots out there. Check out a song called A Pig With Cocks in its Eyes by Anaal Nathrakh, it's an anti Trump anti Boris Johnson song. They have been doing openly antifacist themes since their first album. They get it!
How in the world can they think the lyrics 'some of them who work forces are the same that burn crosses' is anything other than a condemnation of cops?
My only conclusion is that conservatives don't even realise the comparison between cops and klansmen is meant as an insult.
Who do they think the machine is? Fecking Skynet? LOL
Haha I left my comment before I read this one, or him getting to this very example.
My Conservative parents saw Barbie. When I asked them about their thoughts on women's role in society today... they couldn't even figure out why I asked. When I explained, my Mom said, "oh...we didn't get THAT from the movie."
When I first watched the movie, the messages in it were so obvious I was a bit annoyed the movie was spoon feeding the audience. Then I thought more about it and realized most viewers need that slap in the face. Reminds me of when my conservative mom and I were watching Everything Everywhere All at Once and she couldn’t finish the movie because it ‘had no plot’
@@emmabloodworth5759 My mom thought Daisies was "a movie about two girls who do something?" Completely missing the point of one of the greatest feminist films of all time.
@@brophwyd Hey at least she watched it. :) My mom only watches hallmark movies lol
I knew the Barbie movie was going to reference feminism and the patriarchy, I didn't know the plot was going to explicitly revolve around feminism and the patriarchy. I would be gobsmacked if someone told me they completely missed it.
As someone who grew up conservative and who learned about those concepts in later life, I can relate. If you don't know what to look for, if you lack the knowledge base, you don't get it. Watching and "paying attention" will not work if you don't know about the concepts in the first place, because you can't relate it to anything.
Every time Ben Shapiro criticizes a movie or TV show, I can feel the undercurrent of "Why wouldn't anyone in Hollywood hire ME to write anything?"
If you ever meet Ben, tell him it's because he is a shyte writer.
I know right? Who wouldn't salivate over having a writter like Ben Shapiro, of "best selling" novel True Allegiance writing a movie, amirite?
And simultaneously demonstrating why no one would hire him to write anything.
I often think that Ben Shapiro is an undercover flaming queer infiltrating the right. When you read what he writes he is absolutly homosexual.
@@reidflemingworldstoughestm1394 Why because man in his writing is muscular and have a great body and is very very manly and is filled with arousing testosterone and is very very hard and long? That's not bad writing, it is gay fandom!
So fun fact, I liked the sound of rage against the machine when I was a young conservative, but I was media savvy enough to recognize the progressive themes, and maybe that level of intellectual curiosity was sufficient to explain why I'm not a conservative anymore 😂
curiosity killed the cat
both cat and conservative start with the letter C
coincidence? or providence?
@@knuckles543If only curiosity were so deadly.
I went through a "young conservative nerd" phase myself. I think most of the culture I consumed contradicted my worldview, and I was aware of it. I simply accepted that not everything I read, or watch, or listen to is going to agree with my beliefs. Frankly, I am a little baffled by the video and the comment section being like "WDYM they watch stuff that doesn't confirm their worldview?!" - but... that is not a bad thing? You can engage with a work critically. What real-life or hypothetical problems are being tackled its creators? What is their solution? Are they correct? How would I apply my values to the problem? Did the authors, perhaps unintentionally, stumble upon something that contradicts their own views?
An honest work of fiction will often explore a difficult question thoroughly, presenting and exploring the problem before suggesting the author's solution to it. So even if your conclusions are different, the work may be of value to you as well. Besides, while "it is not political" is generally a facile take, there is an argument to be made that "it is not just political". Some of the themes in, say, Star Trek, which are associated with progressive politics, are also applicable to personal virtues, science, or problem solving.
@@TapOnXthe thing with conservatives is they often distort the themes of media they engage with to MAKE it support their views, rather than simply acknowledging that the media disagrees with them
@@TapOnX mate i don’t think you get it lmao
The flip side of this, sadly, is that conservative media is able to succeed wildly with its target audience because it doesn't need to offer nuance, fact or acknowledgment of the existence of other possible perspectives.
Nailed it…..unfortunately
But this is also kind of the reason why conservative media tends to not do well with wider audiences. I've noticed that movies that feature religious themes that do well either focus on ancillary religious figures like angels or the Devil or are just straight adaptions of Bible stories like Prince of Egypt. Meanwhile religious movies that do poorly are ones that cater to right-wing evangelical conspiracy theories or are more interested in evangelizing than entertaining.
What's really funny in the conservative media sphere is that Gina Carano burned her bridges with Star Wars and Disney to make right-wing propaganda media with Ben Shapiro and her debut Western show is despised by said conservative audiences because it's about a strong woman defending her plot of land from mostly male aggressors. In other words, it's too woke and feminist.
Or that the stupid evil views they’re spouting today contradict the stupid evil views they were pushing yesterday.
And why explicitly conservative media is so bizarrely bad
so the audience have the IQ of a sponge?
One thing that's really hilarious about the "actually only 15% of Star Trek is political" argument is that it shows how ever-changing and self-serving their idea of "being political" is. If a piece of media so much as depicts people with marginalized identities in a favorable way, they'll deride it as "political" with no hesitation. But when they want to claim that media for themselves, suddenly it only counts as "political" if the message is so blatantly obvious that their unsophisticated baby brains can't pretend it isn't there.
Exactly, it's pathetic.
More than that, even. Some of the examples listed in the screenshot as "vapid bipartisan truisms" like "war is bad" and "slavery is evil" ignore the fact that those are only bipartisan *now*. At the time those TOS episodes aired, "war is bad" was very pointedly the territory of the political left. And a hundred years earlier, the same was true of slavery. Those things are now truisms only because of decades of progress.
the whole political thing reminds me of that clip of that fat bald man screaming about pronouns in starfield. he claimed it was political. apparently the english language is political now?
I wonder if he marked down literally every TOS episode for having a Russian man, a Japanese man, and a black woman as officers on the bridge of a war ship in the 1960s.
@@toddjh slavery is evil is not a bipartisan take. Republicans imposed and enforce the war on drugs. they defend the heavy overpolicing of black communities, etc etc..... 33% of adult black men hold felon status.
Incarcerated individuals can be forced into slavery, and they support for profit prisons.
Felons cannot vote either. So conservatives support and defend a system that disproportionately enslaves and removes the right to vote from black individuals. They fundamentally do not believe slavery is bad.
I'm starting to think that conservatives are completely unaware that subtext is a thing, which helps explain why the screenwriting career of Ben Shapiro was so short.
Conservatives are completely unaware*
fixed it for ya
@@Khalkara NAW /s.
Conservatives are the ones screaming "the curtains are just blue damn it!"
They are also remarkably resistant to any notions of context and nuance (especially when recognizing such things might contradict their preferred narrative).
Do you think the writers that pumped out an episode of Trek in under a week were that concerned about subtext?
My brother became a staunch conservative mostly because of the influence of the wife he chose, but also religion. While we both experience the same religion, for him something different happened and it concerned "truth".
He once told me he had heard so many falsehoods he needed to find truth. My takeaway was that the conservative soul needs a stable truth. It cannot be a truth which evolves over time as it learns like the scientific method. They not only fear change like many humans, but if they experience something they believed to not be "true" then it shatters the emotional core they have built for themselves. For a conservative to become more introspective, they must conquer their fear of truth evolving.
Greetings, stranger. Thank you for posting. You have given me a bit of possible insight into my brother's behavior. It's been absolutely baffling for me for decades. I wish you health and peace. 🙏💙☮️
Your post is profound and thought provoking.
A person's 'truth' should be based on the best information available to the person. If you find out that the information you were using to form your opinion/belief was wrong, but you cling to the same opinion/belief, obviously you're not really interested in 'truth'.
The "Truth" is whatever they want it to be. For instance, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but the GW Bush administration conflated Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein to invade Iraq and steal its oil. If you pointed out this "Truth" you were called unamerican or a terrorist sympathizer. They will do mental gymnastics to make America always right and anyone who disagrees in the slightest, evil.
"Strong aversion to intellectual curiosity and self-reflection are hallmarks of conservative thinking" is the sentence of the day. Thanks for the sentence of the day, Sir.
Yes, to me this is possibly the root of the whole problem, they don't have much curiosity of any sort. And as far as I can see, they're much more black-and-white in their thinking than liberals.
I mean, I’ve met many democrats that are the same way
@@andrewbedwell8186Well, there is a term called morally lucky.
@@andrewbedwell8186Dude, come on now. It's not an overwhelming problem with democrats. Like conservatives still think that seeing lgbtq will make you lgbtq. Never bothering to maybe look that up on a medical journal on Google
Or still think transgenderism is a new thing and many civilizations pre-colonialism had no problem with it.
Because recommendation engines have destroyed the need to exist beyond the ecosystem of one’s personal confirmation bias?
This is very on point.
They did this before the internet too. "One of the GOOD ones" is an evergreen conservative exception tool.
@@emperorkalanyes, hardline conservatives have loved bruce springsteen, see CCR's Fortunate Son as some nationalist, pro america, masterpiece, and many other things, since long before the internet.
You used to have to listen to friends who would recommend only the good stuff ...
Tayzonday being spot on as always.
I will always remember when one of my die hard conservative friends in 2012 asked me how I could like watching Colbert Report as a liberal because Stephen Colbert was a conservative and the show obviously was written for conservatives. He was a smart person too
Watching conservatives be baffled that Colbert wasnt conservative…
😂 c'mon for real? Did people really think Colbert Report was actually conservative? That blows my mind.
I don't believe this story.
@hiding_my_name Yes. Seriously. They are that deluded. My dad is a conservative and growing up he would only let us watch the Colbert Report but not the Daily Show. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized why.
And then he wondered why I grew up to be a socialist when Colbert was like my idol back then. He also really isn't a dumb dude. Conservatism just warps the mind.
This is the difference between intelligence and wisdom. You can "know" many things without any clue what they mean.
I remember me and my homophobic aunt watched a movie that was an allegory for accepting queer relationships. I laughed when she came out of the movie saying, "People need to be more accepting of different kinds of relationships." 😂😂😂
That actually made me laugh a bit. 😆
which movie?
Laugh if you will, but maybe she had an epiphany... sometimes being Capt Obvious gets you to the party late, but it gets you there.
which movie was this I wanna show this to my family members now 👀
Alright!❤️🩹
Years ago my conservative father and I had some awkward exchanges where I had to explain to him that Colbert was not a real conservative, he was mocking conservatives. He just couldn't see it.
so he watched the show and why did he think people were laughing?
I remember my government class was talking about political satire. My teacher asked us “who do you think Stephen Colbert is satirizing?”
And the smuggest, edgy conservative kid raised his hand and proudly said “liberals.”
I, who had watched Colbert as I was growing up, was shocked by how confident he was.
My teacher corrected him and the look on that kids face. It was a mix of shock and embarrassment. I thought he just assumed all satire is right-wing automatically and hasn’t actually watched the show.
But now I realize he probably DID see it, but couldn’t handle the fact that HE was being laughed at, HE’S the “facts and logic” boy, so they must be laughing at the stupid, wrong liberals after all.
@@shinerstheseagullthe kid still believed Colbert was satirizing liberals AND the liberals had infiltrated the teacher. They have no reason to care about reality, and they'll keep being wrong until we die or they do. Ideological cancer.
Conservatives miss the point often with anti-heroes. Tyler Durden, the Punisher, Homelander are not meant to be idolized.
Homelander's a anti-hero, is he? Lmao
Rorschach is the ultimate example of this. Do they not find the irony of loving a guy who couldn't accept the truth, so he demanded to he killed?
"It's a shame really. She was hunting the wrong animal. If she had been hunting rapists I would have helped her... given her a better hand gun and some advice."
@@randomnerd3402 He didn't want to go along with the lie, a false threat.
@@mykediemarthe couldn't bear to do the best thing rather than the right thing, he would rather die. This shows the limits of deontology. And no, there was no "other way", looking at real history the only reason we didn't destroy ourselves was pure luck.
Ten bucks says Ben’s real problem had nothing to do with lack of zombies.
100%. He's a miserable, hateful shitheel.
I can't imagine what his real problem might have been...
I'm confused how being mad that a movie about zombies has no zombies in it is political? I didn't see it in theaters but I would assume those who did would want zombies. Ben Shapiro has a lot of bad takes why are we dragging him being mad that a zombie film has no zombies
@@thing_under_the_stairsCheck out this cool flag I randomly found: 🏳️🌈
Amazing how God's creation, the rainbow, is reflected in this flag. 😏
Ben is still pissed he coudn't make it in Hollywood. His mother was a studio exec, and he figured there would be always be a place for a no talent-twerp.
I think my favorite example of conservative media illiteracy is their love and admiration for Homelander from The Boys. The show goes out of its way to not only show how bad Homelander is, but to also make his in-universe fans as close to his real life ones as possible. It’s pretty funny how the show runners can hold up a mirror and point out the fans’ flaws, only for fans to completely ignore it.
My favorite is South Park. They really think they only make fun of liberals 😭 they always be missing the point.
@lulu_TheWitchBoy conservatives not watching South Park but going out of their way to basically say "Cartman is literally me" is the funniest fucking thing
@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish In-universe, Cartman is the character everyone hates except his mom sometimes. His real life fans imitate his behavior and mannerisms, then wonder why they're unpopular.
@@lulu_TheWitchBoy to be fair trey Parker and Matt stone have said they lean conservative.... but really south park trashes everyone, and does a great job. They might be the only creators that have identified a conservative that i actually respect..... please no one link shit that makes me hate them lol
@benjaminseverinsen8713 i think they lean economic conservative but are mostly centrist. They'll make fun of some lib takes, but will also make fun of social conservative takes and the conspiracy types.
If conservatives couldn't ignore complex or troubling ideas and concepts (beginning with those that involve themselves) they wouldn't be conservatives.
true, they have a story for everything that doesnt conform to their limited, selfish and egotistical views of humanity
Yup
It's not so easy, being conservative is more a risk vs reward mental state. The the risk of new things is not worth the unknowable reward. They feel unsafe during change, we all do, but conservatives have learned to fear change.
These are quite possibly some of the least imaginative people on the planet. In fact, being socially unimaginative is a requirement to being an authoritarian bigot!
this.
As someone who was raised in a conservative household, I've spent the last 25 years of my life educating myself about things I thought I knew about, replacing bad ideas and behaviors with better ones, and generally purging my brain of all order of idiocy. Conservatives don't think-- they BELIEVE. They have firmly held beliefs _about_ what they _feel_ is true. For them, truth is not based on the gathering of facts or even just basic observation skills. They are conditioned to _feel_ a certain way about something. So, it's no wonder that the context is lost on them. Because context isn't something they have a lens for.
Well said.
Glad you were able to de-program yourself.
The most ironic part is that they preach “facts are not feelings”
@@elokin300 Ironic isn't it.
This, this right here. They have beliefs, not knowledge.
Id like to say something like that not all conservatives are like that, but from my own experience and the interactions I had with conservatives, I can't help but agree with you.
I met a conservative who said he appreciated that Comedy Central followed The Daily Show with it's conservative answer in The Colbert Report. Thought I was being ridiculous when I told him it was satire. He was an intelligence analyst.
Those same geniuses complain about how much Colbert changed when he got his late night show 😂
That's incredibly genius. Hire someone without critical thinking skills, have them make reports, and do the exact opposite.
why did he think people were laughing?
Jordan Klepper
Hope he’s able to analyze some intelligence for himself soon
Honestly, it all comes down to the fact despite slogans of "think for yourself" and "facts over feelings", conservatives are trained to NOT think deeply about things. They are just told something, something that often supports their preconceived worldview, and leave it at that. If they thought about it seriously, if they seriously questioned the beliefs they have and wonder "where am I getting this from", they'd find out they were just blatantly wrong about everything, honestly. So they are told not to do that and follow suit.
conservative are gonna lose their shit when they learn that appeal to emotion is one of the core pillars of debate.
It's kinda like how conspiracy theory nutjobs like flat earthers and anti-vaxxers will tell you to "do your own research," expecting you to find the same highly biased and unscientific sources they found and come to the same conclusions that they did.
Bingo 🎯
the irony of them calling the left snowflakes, but then getting their panties in a wad over the simplest things.
Their preconceived worldview is them thinking for themselves - ironically they’re the lazy ones 😂
I love how with starship troopers and fight club being satire, conservatives love both of those so much not realizing they theyre being made fun of by the very thing they love.
The movie version of Starship Troopers was satirical. The book it's based on is an Old Man Yells At Cloud thing originally aimed at children from someone with zero live-fire combat experience bemoaning what was going on in the 1950s and simping hard for enlisted infantrymen. Verhoeven saw too many parallels between Heinlein's ideal society and the Nazi occupation he'd lived under and took it all to task. The whole only-veterans-can-vote thing was born out of how some veterans went full vigilante after society mysteriously collapsed in the late 20th century, imposed order upon chaos, and only trusted their own kind, and they kept the system in place simply because it was working.
Or the Constitution , it’s simply beyond their single brain cell
@@blackjac5000 I'd agree with you if the majority of Heinlein's novels weren't basically Libertarian self-made manly-man's man self inserts doing things in the space wild west. That being said, Starship Troopers is definitely "what are the merits of fascism?", but I wouldn't call it old man yells at clouds and bemoans society since its themes don't really match the rest of his works.
@@blackjac5000 Meanwhile, everyone I know who's a big fan of Starship Troopers bemoans the fact that the movie was too subtle in it's satire and criticism of fascist dog-whistles, the military-industrial complex, and otherism, suggesting people should read the book instead, because the movie comes off as pro-military propaganda, at times.
@@illadiel6049Go look at what was happening in 1950s America and say all of that again.
Once had a conservative ask why I "had to make everything political" when I pointed out the literal lyrics to a System of a Down song to them.
As near as I can figure, conservatism is mostly reactionary. Ergo, if something doesn't trigger the knee-jerk it's "not political". Saying a thing that they have to consciously acknowledge as _a thing_ challenges them and is "making something political". It's like politics is an entirely separate mental mode of thinking from the every day mental mode.
Its not just fear, it's also willing ignorance (or just ignorance) along with. Trump saying how he loves the poorly educated since that's a huge portion of his base.
System of a Down? No politics there, just listen to "Prison", "Boom", "BYOB" etc.
Yeah, you kinda hit it on the head with this one. The way of thinking that prescribes politics to another mode of thinking which only exists in a vacuum, unbothered from reality of the common folk, is exactly how neoliberalism loves to operate. Because people who not only don't think about politics, but outright HATE and REFUSE to, is very helpful to the capitalist class. Less of a spot light on them, if you will.
No kidding. Like when a reporter tried asking some questions of Ted Cruz after the Uvalde shooting, and he just accused the reporter "making it political." What a ghoul.
It’s interesting how he took you pointing out the meaning of the song as “you” making it political rather than it just being and existing as a political statement on its own. He was basically blaming you for bursting his bubble rather than recognizing his own ignorance. Conservatives can’t help but externalize their own angst and blame others for it rather than have insight into their own thought processes.
It would have been interesting to point out to him that you weren’t making it political and you were just explaining the intent of the authors and see what happens.
I view conservative utterances through the lens of fear. Fear is what drives 100% of their hate. 100% of their fear comes from ignorance and laziness. If only there were some complexity there.
Not ignorance and laziness, also fear. Yes, their fear comes from fear. Their entire existence is a locked, eternal loop of fear. And they fear because they are raised in fear. Fear of physical violence-I’ve yet to meet a Conservative who doesn’t beat their child. Fear of being ostracized-you will be cut off even from family, in some cases, for being different or holding different views. Their lives are filled with nothing but fear from the earliest age. It is the fear that forces them to keep themselves ignorant. For them, ignorance is truly bliss. It’s sad, but I no longer feel sorry for them. If they haven’t been able look at what’s happening right now and be shocked out of their complacency, overcome their fear and do the right thing, then they are too far gone to change now.
They even start their idiotic rants with "Well what I'm afraid of..."
I didn't believe this when I was growing up. but now that I've moved to a red state for a job? it has been proven to me time and again
That's actually been proven in real studies, that people who are politically conservative all over the world tend to have outsized fear responses. My armchair speculation is that inconsistent and overly-harsh or unpredictable authoritarian parenting robbed a lot of people of their ability to deal with fear constructively so they tend to lash out and look to authority figures to correct the situation, but that part is just my completely unscientific hunch. The fear response thing is real and proven.
Take a look at that study that found that in people with conservative political views they found that the amygdala, the section of the brain that governs flight/fight responses and releases adrenaline, is larger and more active than in people who don't lean politically to the right.
My mother is... centrist at best. When reading and watching Hunger Games, she only really noticed the "love triangle" part of the story. Not the dystopia, not the fact Katniss and her sister and their community have to run a black market to have food while producing an essential product for the rich of the Capitol... no, she wants to know which boy Katniss would make babies with. When it wasn't about that, she was ASKING ME about what was happening as if she'd never noticed there was more.
I've given up trying to share media I enjoy with her.
Its a shame, but also very telling of who you are, that you let your personal political bias drive a wedge between you and the person who gave birth to you. You should move out of moms basement in protest until she learns to see everything your way.
@@memyself3275 Are you the mom? No? Weird that you care so much but anyway, is there any particular reason why you read that comment and instead of "my mom was unable to understand the stuff I shared with her and was basically uninterested in all but the most shallow interpretation therefore I won't bother since she's not getting anything out of it" you got "I hate my mom and thing she's a poo-poo head?"
Because in a discourse about shallow interpretations of text... do I need to continue or are you seeing how your comment makes you look yet?
What the heck? Hunger Games is a dystopia. It seems that political commentary is almost baked into the genre. Hunger Games can't get much more overt in its themes without preaching them outright. What's next? Some dumb dumb reads 1984. Then they think it is all about the scandalous affair between Winston and Julia. Such a thing makes for a spicy romance with star-crossed lovers. That would be a stupid take. People don't read 1984 for the romantic subplot. Unless someone is a huge fan of dystopia or Orwell, they will most likely forget about that particular part.
@@memyself3275how yould you feel if you tried to show your mother a piece of media, but she is either incapable of, or refusing to, engage with the central theme? I doubt you like sharing things you enjoy with people who fundamentally missunderstand them.
@@memyself3275 You tried, and failed along the way.
I've been wondering this for 40 years. My family is conservative and religious and tried to indoctrinate me. But they also made mistakes like taking me to museums and watching science/cooking shows on PBS... It boggles my mind the 💩 they believe. Part of its a total lack of self awareness.
@@Eet_Mia Even though my parents sent me to a Christian school for my whole life I naturally reasoned at a very young (like younger than 7) that God couldn’t have a gender since every person was made in his image and not every person was male, and that he just used he/him because that’s what he was comfortable with.
There is a comment above this from someone who grew up Conservative who stated that it’s mostly that they see the world thru lens of belief and emotions/how something makes you feel, and not about what they “think” about it.
If something feels scary…it is, and no amount of facts and evidence can dissuade them. If something feels right…it is, and the same.
And because it’s more a view about slogans, beliefs and emotions, they aren’t looking for second-level things like the context, or is this satire, or what the author was trying to say. That is an odd concept to them.
I had a colleague, who was my manager at one point, and he listed Rage Against The Machine as a band he liked. Dan was a pretty ardent conservative. He grew up in a wealthy neighborhood, his family owned several businesses which tended to be the type that employed a lot of low cost immigrant labor for maximum profit. His father also had a seat in local government and big supporter of the local police chief (which had some rumors of various issues). He pretty much followed in his father’s shoes helping run the business and everything.
I attempted to explain the irony of his like of Rage Against the Machine, and he had a hard time getting it. I read him lyrics and walked him through them. He basically dismissed them as just one way you could interpret the songs, as things are all in the eye of the beholder.
I then showed interviews and information from the band explaining their views and messages. His counter was that bands are for entertainment and nobody looks at music for meaning and other messaging. Just like how you can enjoy an actors work without agreeing with the personal views of the actor. Those elements are completely disjointed and need not overlap.
And I suspect this is how he goes through all his life. He sees things in encapsulated categories and your opinions and values are only valid for that particular situation. Many debates and conversations kind of lead down this same path. For example he held himself to be a staunch Christian, but didn’t really deal with giving/welfare/volunteering. He was a big supporter of deporting immigrants but his business depended on low cost high physical demands labor. He was a big fan of owning guns, admonished shootings, but didn’t think investing in screenings or mental health was worthwhile for our society. Each of these things when viewed in its own encapsulated bubble made sense. The controversy of ideas and morals never came to mind.
Your friend was able to compartmentalize everything into separate categories. I bet he hated it if any of his food touched other food. Conservatives lack self-awareness so severely that a conservative can rant about deporting Latins "back to Mexico" and then celebrate Cinco De Mayo without even the slightest sense of irony.
it seems like a lot of (American) conservatism boils down to maintaining cognitive dissonance through things like insularity, willful ignorance, and scapegoats in order to maintain its audience/supporters.
The willful denial is an integral part of any extremist movement in that regard. Nobody wants to consider themself a villain, so... most people just refuse to acknowledge when they are supporting some out of ignorance. I'm not American, but I remember a few of years ago just before a parliamentary election I had a discussion online with a girl whose boyfriend convinced her to vote for a far-right extremist party that poses as just a right-wing party "concerned" about immigration, you know the drill. So me and another user went and linked her their campaign program on their very own website and analyzed it point for point, going through the climate change denial, the social welfare cuts for the poor and tax cuts for the rich, the self-defeating isolationism, the hero-worshiping of Russia... and in the end her own arguments boiled down to "That's not what I've been told what they stand for, this must be a mistake... no, their website must have been hacked and someone uploaded a fake campaign program! I don't believe any of this!" There was absolutely no hope going through to someone who has made up their mind already, completely bought into the tribalism and refuses to accept any other reality than the one in their mind.
Conservatives don't have any moral principles at all. They respond to every situation by saying what is best for them in that moment.
If you like music with explicit political messages without even giving it a baseline level of personal reflection whether this is music you want to say you like and therefore also socially represent in various contexts such as at a party or whenever someone asks you about what music you like, it does say *a lot* about you. It says that either you don't care that you listen to music that may send political messages about different things despite indirectly supporting these messages by listening to this music both in private and possibly in public, which makes you at best willfully ignorant as a person, or depending on the message, may even make you a hypocrite and an asshole. I don't think these are positive qualities to possess.
Yeah, my parents, old school right leaning libertarians, brought me up on Trek. They used it to "teach" me how people could get along with a minimum of government influence and how government officials are people to be fought/struggled against. They used it to teach me how guns were tools not toys or replacement dicks, and in an ideal world everyone could carry them to make everyone safer. Also other talking points. Unfortunately for them I got the actual point of the show from an early age and it 'corrupted' me into one of those libs.
how do they see star trek as anti govt when starfleet is a govt organization?
@@Bongwater33 you know at one point, I was reading a webcomic that at first seemed only slightly right leaning. it made fun of star trek a bit, which I usually like (the orville etc.) but the jokes always seemed too one dimentional and silly. sort of a taking things too literally and as black and white. same with his understanding of technology, really.
anyways, at one point the main character is on the stand testifying against an underpaid poorly trained worker of a cost cutting corporation that had so badly cut the resources in their shuttle that a single stowaway would have gotten both of the occupants killed by asphyxiation of the limited oxygen supply. which nearly happened yadda yadda.
he starts tearing into the poor worker about the things he would have done to make it instead. things the worker had neither the knowledge or training to know. things that the main character, a highly trained well educated government agent, only knows because he is a Highly Trained Well Educated government agent.
Then he starts ranting about how this is all the governments fault. not for lack of regulation, but because this situation proves there is too much regulation. again this is a PRIVATE COMPANY that skimped and cost cut so badly it nearly killed someone.
conservatives are so blinded and willfully ignorant. his deeply flawed beliefs couldn't even make sense in his own completely made up world.
@@Bongwater33playing devil’s advocate here. like most media, star trek technically espouses ‘ubermensch’ ideas since it focuses on a single cast that resolves a ton of huge crises. kirk often shirks the official rulings of starfleet and makes monumental decisions with just his crew in the ready room because they aren’t accessible. also the federation is a weak central government in terms of its influence on the planets it “rules.” pretty much every starfleet higher-up is an antagonist, just like internal affairs in a cop show. the crew usually convinces people that something is wrong instead of arresting anyone or conquering any planets, which reflects the idea of ‘consent of the governed,’ without significant pressure from the central government
the rest of ‘star trek’ is pretty leftist though
I would think in an ideal world, no one would need to carry because safety wouldn’t be a concern?
This - my dad is super conservative (moreso now than previously, but definitely so in his base views) and has always been racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigration and anti-LBTQ+.
He loved shows like Star Trek and we grew up watching them religiously in our household. My brother and I "got it" and he just - can't seem to?
To the point that he accused me of being brainwashed by higher education once (also probably due to that being a big conservative talking point).
My comeback was "Do you honestly not remember me arguing with you about this stuff when I was 7? 10? 13? 18?" because I grew up with Star Trek and Ferngully and the Dragonlance novels, Ursula LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, etc. Not to mention that my degree is in Economics, not really known to be the most liberal major out there.
And he asked what "radicalized" me then. And I told him, and added, "and also, I can tell right from wrong". Which addition he was extremely irate about.
Seeing conservative Trekkies is like seeing conservative furries: it just feels blindsiding to see someone so out of touch with what they are interacting with.
True but you can still appreciate art without agreeing with it. I'm a social democrat and I love RATM but I disagree with communism.
@@theobell2002communism is objectively a good thing for humanity though.
@@AshMoscan't believe this is a real comment
@@theobell2002American “liberals” are conservatives
Conservative furries are just weirdos like the racists that like watching interracial porn. They get mad and jerk off to relieve themselves.
Asking conservatives what the meaning behind ‘Fortunate Son’ a song they seemingly love but, completely miss the meaning of is hilarious. You can almost see the song going over their heads.
Same with the song Killing In the Name. And tons of other examples.
It takes either a sociopath to knowingly adopt conservative ideology, or an ignorant and dumb person.
whaat! so much for hyper-masculinity ahhah
As a classic and punk rock fan, it drives me up the wall when conservatives claim to enjoy this music (ex. Born in the USA; RATM) because they very obviously have never listened to the lyrics and more so just want to to primal at the loud music.
My favorite example has to be when conservatives try to point out that Punk Rock is inherently conservative because they've done the bare minimum reading about The Ramones (even though political differences were a huge contributor to their break up), yet one of their best songs is about how Reagan was a clown.
The sound of basic concepts ricocheting off some conservatives heads is audible.
I just commented about GWB saying that song was on his playlist. lmao Cognitive dissonance like a mfer.
Seeing conservatives singing along to American Idiot by Green Day, always brings a smile to my face 😂
Especially because Billie Joe is a VERY staunch liberal. Lol
@@roxycauldwell544 We liberals prefer being called "wild eyed." 😅
To be fair there's probably a non zero percentage of conservative green day fans who mainly like that song because it lets them say the f slur without getting called out for it
@@RedSkyYT64 100% why for some people lol
@@RedSkyYT64 That's why they love songs with the n-word in it too
Not long ago I watched a video of Ben Shapiro and Neil deGrasse Tyson discussing gender. After every lame point Ben tried to make in order to rationalize segregating gender into binary roles, Neil would challenge him with "why does it matter?" Ben was entirely confused by the question and could never answer it throughout the entire debate. You could almost hear his brain screaming like a child, "because it DOES!" I remember Ben at the very end acting like Neil just agreed with him on everything despite Neil challenging Ben's stance at every turn. It was astounding how everything in the interview went right over Ben's head and he somehow concluded they were on the same page.
Ask the trans bathroom people if they would ever have attempted to ban unisex bathrooms before the advent of this issue and watch their heads explode.
@@futurestoryteller you just gave me new ammo, such a simple point that cant be refuted
@@futurestoryteller
Wym?
@@futurestoryteller I don't understand why people still use this argument. There's no magical ward around the entrance to the women's bathroom. If you go to a shady area that's where men who want to assault women would hang out since it's so isolated.
Exactly. And kind of like when Peterson «debated» Zizeck. A reactionary psudo-intellectual demagouge meeting a philosophical giant. Peterson got CRUSHED in every way imaginable, but because Zizeck is an agreeable person and seemingly didn’t want to humiliate Peterson, Petersons fans left with the impression that Zizeck actually agreed on most of Petersons grievancea about the «postmodern neo-marxists». It was insane. They didn’t even realize Zizeck exposed him as a fearmongering idiot.
The theme from every zombie movie, show or game I've ever seen: zombies are bad, but humans are worse.
Expecting conservatives to understand the meaning of the songs they love is like expecting conservatives to understand the meaning of Christianity.
Which meaning? The one the Church practices, or the one it preaches?
@@mitchbandes2245Likely both
@@mitchbandes2245both
The gospel of GOP Jesus.
@@shilohhighland6716 agree, both. they practice it badly because it is preached poorly.
One of the constant things I've seen with conservative acquaintances or parents of friends is this phenomenon where as soon as they see a character in a show or film that they identify with ideologically, all further examination or thought about that character's role or place in the story or overall work ceases. This was especially prevalent with Homelander in The Boys. So many conservative dads who realized they super agreed with Homelander's worldview and never even considered how the show was depicting him or where he fits in the story. This is, I'm convinced, why the recent season making it extremely explicit that Homelander is a bad person who enjoys the company of literal Nazis caused an uproar with that crowd, because they'd never been forced to confront the reality of that aspect of the character before. This is why they're so shocked and appalled when something they like turns out to be "political," in a way they don't agree with. They've never thought about it before. Their engagement with the work through the character they like is literally "Hey that's me!" and nothing further.
i can't even comprehend that conservatives don't see the message in goddamn The Boys, this show is so goddamn explicit how tf can you not get it ?
So that's why they like 'Literally Me" characters such as Tyler Durden, Travis Bickle, and Patrick Bateman!
That reminds me of the Punisher. Taken from tvtropes:
As of 2023, the iconic Punisher skull logo has been adopted by various far-right extremist groups, as well as by some law enforcement and even military personnel. This has not gone unnoticed at Marvel, and is definitely not appreciated. Co-creator Gerry Conway has said he's disturbed that far right extremists, as well as various military and police forces have co-opted the logo of a character that is both explicitly anti-authority and is a disturbed man whose crusade against crime isn't something anybody should want to emulate. Garth Ennis has similarly voiced his disgust, calling right wing rioters that were seen with the symbol "halfwits" who don't understand the character.
@@howareyoumoreofaclownthanme After reading all of Crossed it's really hard to take Garth Ennis seriously when he says shit like that because holy shit he revels in drawing the most fucked up shit you can possibly think of
@@SefirothPHenjoying dark material doesn't make you a conservative or mean you'd be pro right wing. He's been very open about his anti right wing stances for decades. Stephen King has written awful shit worse then Ennis still not right wing
Conservatism is about preserving old beliefs and not challenging them. It's cool to call that out.
It's more about venerating fictional idealization of old beliefs and attempting to (re)establish said beliefs ultimately regressing civilization.
Progressives dont challenge their own assumptions and beliefs either.
All statist lean on defaulting to the illegitimate authority of men with guns who make threats of violence if you dont conform to their edicts that have no basis of consent.
Conservatism was nobility's method of maintaining the position they held within the monarchy, which was being pushed out by the new democratic society.
"Conservatism is about preserving old beliefs"
Sometimes the old beliefs aren't even real old beliefs. Like...Jesus was extremely clear about being pro-immigrant, welcoming foreign strangers into your land, it's impossible to read the Bible and not notice that. But they seem to have no problem quickly rejecting that one while claiming to be serious about their Christianity.
The conservate values are everyone's values they've just managed to hijack them as their own,like the flag and anything patriotic. The problem is from those that say they're conservative are the ones that don't follow their beliefs
I know someone who is a full MAGA told me Encanto… yes the Disney movie, was a warning about how socialism is evil and how capitalism is great…. I still can’t figure out how.
The beginning of the movie depicted the Colombian Thousand Days War in 1898-1901 between the liberals and conservatives in which Miabel's grandfather Pedro was murdered after fleeing from their home with his triplets and wife. Your friend is wrong in that neither side were socialist or fighting for socialism, but the liberals were fighting for Colombia to become a federation and the conservatives wanting to keep Colombia as a unitary state.
Reaching hard and far for a benefit of the doubt….maybe that Mirabel should have just accepted that not everyone gets a gift???
But nah, I really don’t see it either.
@@TheItalianTrash and I was over here assuming that they were meant to represent Spanish colonizers, but I learned some things about Colombian history today
@@sarah.s.flanagan Since the movie took place 50 years after the 1000 Days War technically Colombia was already in the beginning stages of La Violencia which was another civil war between Liberals and Conservatives in 1948-1958. This one did involve a couple communist militias aligned with the Liberal Party which was not socialist, nor were they fighting to become a socialist state. Of course, the original poster's "friend" was referring to this war. In the movie there were no scenes and no mention of a war when it took place except the flashback with Pedro from 50 years earlier.
The fact that they didn't know that the Boys was lampooning them until season 3 is pure hilarity.
They didn't know the Colbert Report was a comedy show. They don't know that Fight Club is Juvanalian Satire.
_"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative."_ -John Stuart Mill
because there are a few who are clever but evil!
@@Bongwater33 or dont claim to be conservative. I have right leaning things mainly in just business end. but social topics I tend to take a more libreal point. I truly smart person will not box themselves into one ideology and keep their mind open.
@@ScaashHello, I’m a student of political philosophy and this isn’t true. You are a neo-liberal, probably, the most common political ideology. It’s also a weak ideology. If you know anything about politics, you know that the left and right generally are so because of some fundamental difference in core values. Leftists are overall egalitarian - they believe EVERYONE deserves the best life they can have, and that we should enact policies that make it possible for as many people as possible to live good lives. The right generally wants to protect priviliges of «stronger» groups from «weaker» groups pressure to gain similar priviliges, based on fear and appeals to nature/religion. If you fall in the middle of these two positions, you either have an incoherent value-system (which most people do) or are just ignorant of objective facts about what would bring a better world.
The facts are on the side of the left. The left does science, logic, democracy, evidence. The right is inherently anti-intellectual and conspiratorial. Capitalism is -objectively- destroying the environment and our conditions for life. It privatizes gains, and lays its massive costs on everyone else. A pro-social democratic government DOES make a better society. Representation of minorities in media DOES make for less violent, racist cultures. Trans affirming care DOES save lives and create healthier, better societies. Women and men ARE fundamentally happier in non-restrictive gender roles. Higher taxes DOES produce happier, fairer, safer societies.
@@ScaashNo offence, I mean. You obviously meant well, and you are right we shouldn’t be too attatched to our ideologies. We must examine them, also our own, to find out what is rationally and morally justifiable or not.
I regret that I only have one thumbs up button to click............ 🤣
For the more public conservative figures, there’s also the grift element, be it money or votes. Some of them absolutely do understand the messages and themes in media, but they can’t acknowledge it at all otherwise they grant those messages a sliver of legitimacy and that risks irking their own audience who may turn on them.
Yeeep. We saw this happen with Fox, even.
One can make themselves very wealthy selling what conservatives want to buy. They are easily the most predictable and reliable consumers of society. This is particularly true when you challenge their privilege, traditions or manhood.
+
They also do it to make friends and find community. They're happy to hate others n whoever so long as they're included
I also think some of them are trying to "claim" it, like with tiki torches and Pepe the Frog. They know it's "liberal" but they make it "Right-Wing". I think that is the likely case with the "Red & Blue Pills".
They are conservative because they are media illiterate, not media illiterate because they are conservative.
So true. I can't count how many times right-wingers have taken a story from The Onion as true.
When I first found out people took THE ONION as truth I was dumbfounded. It's so obviously political satire and it's funny, yet somehow people actually think it's not.
To be fair, their older pieces do sound very similar to what's happening right now.
@@imperatoriacustodum4667 What tends to happen is that they react to the op-eds in the Onion, which are usually designed to be ridiculous, as real opinions. I remember watching a pro-life woman on Facebook go into a screaming meltdown over an Onion op-ed called "I'm Excited for my Abortion." I think in this instance why the satire flew over her head is because this particular op-ed mocks pro-life talking points on abortion by presenting a fake person who talks about abortion the way pro-lifers think pro-choicers view abortion. In reality no one is excited for abortion, no one gets pregnant intentionally just to get abortions, but that's what pro-lifers tell themselves. So the article just basically confirmed all of her biases about the pro-choice side.
@@ttt5205How about Fox "everybody knows we're just entertainment and can't be taken serious" News?
@@ttt5205Kind of scary actually.
The query to be asked is this, if the conservatives were media literate, would they remain conservative for long? It is doubtful.
I came here to type this.
I think it’s the other way around really. They’re media illiterate because they’re conservative. Reactionary politics necessitates neutering your critical thinking skills.
The answer, at least in my personal experience, is no. I was raised in a conservative Christian home where I was fed blatant propaganda that I was told to never question (like that Hillary Clinton sacrifices babies to Satan) but I have always been naturally curious, like most kids are, and started asking questions anyways. I mean, it really doesn’t take much reasoning to see that it doesn’t make any sense that someone who supposedly sacrifices babies has never been charged with murder. And it seems fairly obvious that someone like Jesus wouldn’t be racist or homophobic (and he’d probably befriend them before any conservative anyways) but it seems the message just flies over their heads.
Gamers: _"I don't want forced politics in my videogames!"_
Also Gamers: *Lists off their favorite **-totally apolitical-** gaming franchises* Metal Gear Solid, Fallout, Final Fantasy, Bioshock, StarWars, etc...
Edit: adding more franchises to the list for any good example responses.
They always mean "women and minorities being more than eye candy or tokens" when they say "political". 100% of the time.
I haven't been played Final Fantasy since the original on NES. Isn't it just a video game about magic?
"politics" to conservatives literally means theres a non-white straight male character in the media. All would be well to them if there were no minorities apparently.
The entire BioShock series...
@@erikfinkel2717usually by the end of any ff game, some form of rejection of the behavioral norms of the society has occurred, at least one kingdom/nation has crumbled due to war or political machinations and some form of god is fought and killed, but yeah their is magic too.
Comics fans are the worst about this. "Stop making my comics political! I love X-men, a series created about bigotry in the middle of the Civil rights movement!"
Whenever I see something like that, I always hope some fake news satire site will make the headline "Lifelong fan complains about property turning into thing it always was"
Haha. It's been like this ever since the announcement of X-Men '97 "they gonna make it political!"... it's not like THE VERY FIRST EPISODE of X-Men is about them sabotaging a government facility to destroy the registry of mutants to be hunted down by Sentinels or anything.
Gamers™️ are about as bad to be honest. There’s a popular conservative meme going around that classifies Metal Gear Solid as a “non political” game.
@@Eidlones The funniest thing is that is wouldnt even be fake news
Its always those guys too who will then turn around and say "Wolverine is my favorite X-Man!"
Ah yes, Wolverine, a character famous for representing the status quo and not a miserable outcast shunted to the sidelines of society merely because of who he was at birth, something he had no control over, and consequently must sell his soul to the very governments that abandoned him just to find some sort of acceptance and belonging just to be immediatly cast to the side again. He's definitly written with you in mind, definitly not supposed to be a representation of poor and marginalized communities being chewed up and spat out by the military industrial complex.
The actor who played Archie Bunker, Carroll O'Conner, was actually a very liberal in his personal politics. The writer and actor portrayed him as a dated caricature dealing with a world that was leaving his beliefs behind to send a message via his over the top antics, but it was clear even then that it was too subtle for conservative viewers.
It was inspired by the UK TV show Till Death Us Do Part, with a similar setup, and the Actor (Warren Mitchell) who played the equivalent character (Alf Garnett) was very much different than the one he played ... but many had the same reaction and thought the was a right winger .... which he most certainly was not ...
Yes, watch “In The Heat Of The Night”. I loved that show.
There's a Norman Lear interview on the site where he says that Archie was "a man afraid of tomorrow" due to his upbringing but wasn't the type of person who'd participate in a cross-burning.
Conservatives also missed the part where at the end of most episodes, Archie was always the butt of a joke.
Got into a confusing argument with a dude at a convention who was baffled when I said Tolkein was anti-war in his themes and writing.
He claimed the books were simply escapist and I shouldn't bring so-called "woke" politics into LotR. Despite the fact that the Hobbit basically ends with one of the main characters dies bemoaning that their society places too much emphasis on glory and greed.
Don't even get me started on all the anti-war messages in the more widely acclaimed trilogy. Every character from Gandalf and Treebeard to even some of the orcs bemoan the role of war in their lives.
It's not as if these creators don't often have a large body of outside work we can go to and ask, either.
Like the conservatives who say "The Founding Fathers™®© meant THIS" when we have all of their other writings.
"It doesn't actually SAY 'separation of church and state'" they'll say, ignoring - well - everything else they wrote.
I think even Tolkien himself denied [I think I read, I haven't checked deeper] the influence of his experience with war, but it's still blantently there.
Oh and don't forget the "no man can kill me." -> removes her helmet -> "I am no man." -> kills him. For when it was written that was brilliant and VERY progressive. Nowadays, if that happened in a movie, the internet would shut down from all the traffic from right wingers complaining about that lazy woke pandering.
I wonder what he'd think of the anti-industrialist and environmentalist themes.
Did he use Tolkein's comments about disliking allegory as a shield? ("I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.") - Something along the lines of "You shouldn't interpret it politically because Tolkein hated allegory," maybe? I know I've seen that response to political interpretations of his works.
In case he did, or you wind up in another conversation with someone who does, that quote ends with "I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author." - Explicitly giving permission to readers to interpret his works politically, even if it is not allegorical.
But his views on allegory aren't as steadfast as that quote, even with its full context, suggests: "The only perfectly consistent allegory is a real life; and the only fully intelligible story is an allegory. And one finds, even in imperfect human 'literature', that the better and more consistent an allegory is the more easily it can be read 'just as a story'; and the better and more closely woven a story is the more easily can those so minded find allegory in it."
Additionally, about LotR specifically, Tolkein himself called it an allegory: "Of course my story is not an allegory of Atomic power, but of Power."
On conservatives and media literacy, what can I say except:
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Data getting his gift from Q!
I loved that episode - “Darmok” really explores how we communicate through the language of mythology and way too many people dismiss this as “just another story about weird aliens.”
I remember that "Star Trek TNG" episode. Those aliens that talked in metaphor and literary references. Great episode.
They don't even know that their religious savior was progressive. Apparently they are now complaining to ministers that the sermons from the new testament are liberal talking points.
I just love the idea that Robocop isn't political.
It's set in a future where a corperation that does everything(omni meaning all or in every way, so Omnico is literally all companies or represents companies in every way) has started to replace public services due to corrupt government officials.
Omnico is litterally selling drugs to criminals then selling the police to the city to solve the problem they're causing, all for the love of money.
And somewhere in that a guy gets turned into a robot because he works for the police force so Omnico owns his body post death and can do what they want.
Honestly the politican messages are shoved down your throat as core parts of the story, how can anyone claim it's not political?
But robot Jesus! /s
yeah its funny how even some of the most ham fisted works like Robocop that people still somehow completely misinterpret them
@@artirony410 literally. I just saw a guy recently get upset that ppl were making Dune political. He then claimed that Herbert didn’t want ppl comparing the political themes in Dune to real life 🤦♂️
@@Nick-ql2qj That takes some serious wildul blindness. I mean, it's a dry and sandy place that houses a resource that the rich elite of society urgently need because it makes easy and widespread travel possible. To hang onto a steady supply of it, they colonise and war against the natives, and collectively panic when the natives unite under a new leader who threatens to take control of the supply of that resource. Yeah, THAT totally wasn't an allegory for anything that was happening in the 1970's. 😀
And that's before you get into the actually subtle stuff, like the dismantling of the Great Man theory (not even Leto is a good ruler), feminism and the bodily autonomy of women (the Bene Gesserit pimp out their members and demanded that Jessica bear a daughter who would have been married to frickin' Feyd-Rautha), propaganda (Irulan is frantically trying to whitewash her father's dirty dealings in her biography of him) and the dismantling of Mighty Whitey (Paul is only the Chosen One because of a eugenics program and propaganda aimed at making the Fremen believe in a Chosen One).
Second part of the thing is that he still has to go to work after he dies
😂
"Wait... Homelander is a villain?"
Sheesh.
Conservatives literally did think Homelander was a good guy until some started to suspect last season that he might actually be a supervillain.
Probably the same people who read or watched Watchmen and identified with Rorschach. Alan Moore said that whenever a fan told him that, he'd think "Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me, never come anywhere near me again as long as I live?"
I feel like the show writers bend over backwards to tell you that he's evil every chance they get, I genuinely do not know how someone could still see him as a good guy past season 1.
LOL. Homelander is Rump.
@@goober324it's quite awkward when the goals of early childhood education (3-5 years old) has goals of development that religious infantilsation keeps from adults
And let's not forget the piece of literature Conservatives most commonly misunderstand: the Bible. Although that's probably it's own 20 minute video. Maybe actually an hour or two.
The Bible is a great example of another phenomenon. People consuming a work second hand. Most Christians haven't read the book, they know it through commentary. This allows the problematic parts to simply be ignored.. when they are addressed, it's through a very skewed view that already has come to their conclusions. Most people saying Star Trek isn't political very likely only saw it when young, and have since only consumed it through TH-camrs reacting to the new series.
It's worth noting most religious people don't actually believe in their God. They think they are god and use religion as a way to give divine authority to their positions.
honestly with enough work you can interpet that book as anything you want
honestly, there's enough content out there, that we could reasonably assume the resulting video would have been at least a few days of run-time if we wanted to be thorough. We'd have to cut a lot though. 😆
Jesus only turned the other cheek because AR-15s hadn’t been invented yet, would be a whole different dude in 2023.
That's a whole old school documentary miniseries with at least eight two hour parts for the old testament alone. The concept of context becomes alien the further you get into conservatism.
The Gundam franchise deals with this a lot. It was famously the first big mecha series where the robots were treated like tanks or fighter jets, and not capped super heroes, so you get a lot of military sf fans, but it was also very explicitly a show about how new age movements interact with, and become co-opted by politics, how honor through military service is a lie used to get children to kill each other, and how the wealthy elite sit back and grow rich as they play chicken with their own lives for higher and higher stakes.
Now for 50 years the series has gone on tackling themes of post war fascist movements, the complex economic incentives for terrorism, and the way force and apathy make them worse, how governments spin the narrative of war to maintain the status quo.
Now a show comes out, Gundam the Witch From Mercury, that looks at the military industrial complex, and how young people are pushed by their schooling, their parents, and their peers to adhere to norms that promote violence and class division, and conservative fans are mad that the show is also a lesbian romance. I personally think it's ingenious to have a lesbian relationship be the thing that shatters our lead characters' restrictive world views, and allows them to better push the world forward. I think that it's also great that the show can use that meta textual tool, while being set in a world that is progressive enough to have the relationship not be a problem for anyone, since it shows just how made up these social constructs are, and lets the romance just be a romance.
You can't have Gundam without space psychics, and hippie politics. You can't have star trek without diversity, and a liberal utopia. You can't rage against a machine, if you don't know what that machine is.
Anytime I hear someone say they don't like 0079 or Zeta because the main character is a cry baby, I know there's a good chance they are an idiot or 12.
"You can't rage against a machine, if you don't know what that machine is."
The machine is... Gundams?
And to see the people frothing their mouths over Witch of Mercury because Gundam suddenly became "woke" for the lesbian main couple going on... like, dude, have you been paying attention or you seriously think it's all about men in giant robots beating the shit out of each other and laser beams?
@@sterilustra
In addition to that, they're not noticing that the Gundam franchise has huge female fans. Those chicks have been there since the inception (way before Gundam Wing, Gundam SEED, Gundam OO which has bishonen characters that girls and women like). They tend to forget Gundam has Shojo elements which are awesome thanks to the introduction of that Newtype, Lalah Sune.
It really pisses me off when people reduce Gundam to cool robots and space war when shows like War In The Pocket brought me to complete tears, and is one of the most effective pieces of anti-war media I've ever seen
I'll admit that I tend to be a very literal person when it comes to what I watch, and I rarely catch subtext or foreshadowing.
The thing is, when it does get pointed out to me by others, my reaction isn't "nuh uh, you're lying", it's "ooh, that's clever".
I *love* the fact that so many works of art contain all these layers to dig into, especially when you spot them on a rewatch.
Same. And I'm autistic. And I was raised conservative and left it.
What's their excuse?
@@klavczarkalafan4191 Pride, probably. The idea that the beliefs they’ve held their entire lives are wrong hurts their egos and makes them double down into “I can’t be wrong” territory
Ah, yes, the “subtext is all in your head and cinematography is meaningless; nothing that isn’t explicitly spelled out is you reaching” crowd
And then when something is explicitly spelled out that they don't agree with, they pretend they "just wished there was more subtlety" and "why is this being shoved in my face"
This also applies to Star Wars to a degree, and it is funny when I see conservatives associating with the Rebellion, while their ideals are much more in line with the Empire.
No.. they couldn't possibly make that mist-- No...
Yeah, what's with that!? Do they use the term 'Rebel' as a dogwhistle for 'Confederate'?
The empire was always space Nazis. The stormtroopers - the unspoken goal of the empire is to maintain human supremacy - that's why all stormtroopers and the Moffs are human and the poor people relegated to shady bars, and many of the members of the alliance, are other races isn't it?
It's great to show those conservatives the video of George Lucas and James Cameron discussing Star Wars, and George Lucas *explicitly* saying that he modeled the Rebel Alliance after the Viet Cong.
I remember when Episode 3 came out, and it getting a lot of flack for the plot (a tyrant pretending to be democratic but using an engineered crisis to rise to power, kill his ideological opponents and make himself supreme ruler) being political and a critique of the Bush administration.
%100 includes star wars look at all the criticism of the acolyte from people who didn't even watch it but assumed it must hardcore feminist and CRT because a black woman was the protagonist.
They also get upset Jedi aren't always depicted as perfect and think jedi are Christians. They're dumb
It boils down to conservatives take everything literally. There’s a video of Ben Shapiro criticizing the song Imagine by breaking it down line by line taking each of them literally with no imagination whatsoever. It’s hard to pick up on political undertones if you don’t have the imagination it takes to understand someone might be saying more than they are literally saying
Ahhh yes, Ben Shaprio's infamous analysis of Imagine's 'pretentious' chord progression
Oh man, I remember that 'analysis' of his. What stood out to me was how much Ben seened to mock Lennon being dead and pretty stating, gladly, how he's suffering in hell.
Ben's a horrible person, shocking I know.
@@Tayvin4042 If they're treating pacifists, and likely all opponents of corporate profit motivated missile manufacturing firms, like John Evander Couey, I have to wonder how rich Shapiro struck it off of Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, et al.
Kurt really hit the nail on the head, didn't he?
"He's the one
Who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along
And he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
Knows not what it means"
Those kids are never going to get famous with the mumbling and long hair and noise. They don't even have a piano player.
No shit, I've watched a gun-loving, Trump-supporting, anti-woke redneck sing this at karaoke. Had a good laugh with my friend. Dude totally killed the song, too, so I have to believe he was a big fan of Kurt Cobain. Wild stuff.
He was talking about his popular jock classmates
To quote the late great Malcolm X, "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent.”
Malcolm X had a lot of good quotes
@@mykediemart It would have been based if X led a seperatist movement to create an independent African American nation in the south
This also explains why they hate modern and expressionist art:
They don't get it so it must be bad, it doesn't show a picture so how can it be a painting?
Yup. A right-winger's idea of "good art" is generally "Will this look good in my den?". They don't see it as a vehicle to express ideas, it's solely aesthetics for them.
I'll never forget when Ian posted an out of context clip on a South Park episode that was already several years old saying "South Park NAILS the transgender bathroom issue!" presenting it as being on his side when the episode in question ends with the town declaring that anyone should be able to use any bathroom they feel most comfortable in and designates a separate "cissy" bathroom to anyone who has a problem with that. Of course conservatives can NEVER figure out when South Park is making fun of them.
Thank you for pointing this out. I can't watch South Park so I've only actually seen that and other clips out of context. I will add South Park to my 'clipped out of context, probably BS' meme 0pile.
Just because 'I' don't have much tolerance for crass humour doesn't make it bad in other ways, it just makes it unwatchable for yours truly. Thank you, much appreciated..
Hasn't Fox argued in court that their shows like Carlson and Hannity are satire and no reasonable person would believe what they say?
I mean only unreasonable people believe what they say.
I feel like people need to go through that and publicly site it, and encourage as many people to read through that as possible.
@AlexandarHullRichter the problem is that the people that really need to read it will never read it. Same way that fact-checking people like Donald Trump has resulted in exactly zero changed minds and hearts.
Yes, that was real. It would be hilarious if people didn't actually believe it,
They argued entertainment rather than specifically satire, but yeah.
This reminds me being at a Roger Waters concert during the Trump presidency and watching the conservatives filing out about 20 minutes in as Waters and the show in general became very anti-authoritarian and anti-Trump. Who did they think they were coming to see when they bought their tickets?
Clearly they thought they might like to go to the show, feel a warm thrill of confusion, that 'space cadet glow'. Then they realised something was eluding them, that it was not what they expected to see.
The worst thing was that there was actually no surrogate band, it really was Waters, and nobody actually was putting the queers and Jews and people smoking joints up against the wall...
Don’t you know that Dark Side of the Moon was about tax cuts and family values, and The Wall was about keeping out immigrants?😂
@@travisgatlin536Any good conservative knows that's where Trump got his wall idea!
Same. I saw Roger Waters when he did the Us and Them tour too and after the show there was a woman behind me loudly exclaiming how she didn’t like how political the show got and how he used local kids to dance to Another Brick in the Wall.
The complete lack of awareness is astounding
Liking satire of right-wing views is one thing, but Pink Floyd is damn near impossible to listen to without at least comprehending that they're a political band. I guess the same is true of Rage Against the Machine or System of a Down, who are even more overt, but some conservatives go beyond being bad at media literacy and are straight media illiterate.
Ah, _The Last of Us._ The show that gave us the line, "This is a commune. We're communists." And, yet, somehow half the people watching said, "Yeah, but no, not like that."
😂
Did the seize the means of production?
@@marseldagistani1989What means of production are there to seize in an apocalypse? And from who? Abandoned farms?
@@TheRenegade...You prop up a few scarecrows of landlords and then lead a mock red army to "liberate" those fields from the clutches of the elite. That's how we seize the means of production in an apocalypse and keep ourselves entertained as well.
I love that this was an explicit conversation in the show as well
"This is communism"
"No, we're just all working together and there's no money"
"Yeah, that's communism"
That time when conservatives thought George Carlin was on their side was such a fever dream
That one is probably the clearest example of why conservatives are this way
The entire shtick of conservatives is that they care about facts, not feelings, and that if your feelings are hurt by what they say, you are wrong.
Carlin was offensive, too. Ergo, he must be a conservative. Its as simple as 'this person has traits I have'
And yet conservatives have the most hurt feelings, and more grievances than anyone else.
"The entire shtick of conservatives is that they care about facts, not feelings, and that if your feelings are hurt by what they say, you are wrong."@@cyber_rachel7427
No Conservative person care about facts, they are all on feelings, what are you smoking? Are you so unaware.
He was explicitly a libertarian, something that all conservatives call themselves, and many of them use common elements like "all facts and no feelings" as aesthetic doublespeak and meaningless buzzwords. Small/limited government is another favorite doublespeak. I'm an orthodox libertarian myself in the way that George was.
@@cyber_rachel7427bro, I literally saw a short of George Carlin on a rightwing channel, the one about soft-language, and the commenters and the creator legit thought that Carlin was talking about liberals and leftists 😂.
"X-Men went woke, ugh."
Bro. My dude. X-Men always was.
I’m a left leaning guy who missed the point in media. I couldn’t understand why conservatives were so riled up about the possibility of Kamala Harris being VP, one step away from the presidency. I’d voted for her in the primaries. She was a “lock ‘em up” sort of Attorney General. I asked a friend what is right wingers’ problem with her? Answer: She’s black. I’d naively forgotten how much prejudice drives politics here in the USA.
A lot of “conservative” thought is based squarely in “christian” white supremacy.
Intolerance is a virtue with them. And it’s not possible to argue them out of their bigotry: they only double down, and start spouting idiotic talking points again
Yeah it was wild seeing ‘law and order’ conservatives losing their shit over KH being a ‘liberal’ justice when she basically aligns with their views in her decisions. Then you look and realize oh, black woman. Yeah there’s the ‘liberal’ part of her they’re getting mad about.
I honestly think that an element of this that conservatives, in general, are not as self-aware or self-honest compared to liberals. Liberals seem to question themselves more...which leads to a measure of indecisiveness on the negative side.
Being less self-aware, I think, leads to being goal oriented (the end justifies the means) and to actions which either directly or indirectly hurt minorities.
Wait, you're left-leaning, but you chose Harris during the primaries? Wouldn't her record as a 'lock 'em up' sort of AG turn you away? o.o
Umm. Yeah. She is mixed. That is all it takes. I will fall over dead if the GQP ever puts a black candidate for President or VP. I don't believe that will happen in my lifetime. Period.
The GI Joe reference at around the 4 minute mark made me laugh -- I still remember when a conservative friend of mine was bemoaning all the "woke" cartoons and their "female leads" today, and I quipped, "You mean like GI Joe in the 80's, where half the senior officers and most capable fighters were women?" The look on his face as he tried to think of a rebuttal and failed, suddenly realizing that the cartoons he grew up with were almost identical to the new generation of cartoons today, was hilarious ^_^
Yeah but Roadblock is in their comfort zone.
I mean really, when it comes to the shows that actually have good writing and aren't just the ramblings of someone that probably did drugs with Hunter S Thompson, the only thing that has really changed is the animation and it is generally better. Cleaner, smoother, etc.
yeah there was a huge push in the 80s to have strong female leads because they realized that they could sell toys to girls and boys liked pretty ladies so they put more female characters in everything because either the boys wanted the pretty lady figure or the girls wanted to be able to play too. I remember a bunch of girls in school also being into TMNT and they all owned April Oneil figures.
@@Zectifin On the flip side, there's a supplementary video to the Snake Eyes movie where GI Joe's creator Larry Hama himself said that Scarlett was inspired by his own wife.
Also worth noting that Cobra in GI Joe wasn't just a bunch of generic "international terrorists" or proxies for the USSR, they were an explicitly home-grown paramilitary movement run by a confidence trickster.
This was brought to a hilarious new height as The Boys aired and some conservatives realized "wait they're making fun of us!?" only after it was being blasted by a loudspeaker.
It's baffling to me, but maybe it shouldn't be.
I think a large factor is that conservativism encourages conformity and discourages deeper analysis.
Progressives are as guilty of failing to look deeper at times as conservatives, but the collective still values indivuality.
Also, higher education encourages critical thinking, and conservatives consider asking too many questions taboo.
discourages deeper analysis...until it affects them!!, ie: Black republican don't like their parties stance on Blacks, or , Gay republican don't like their parties stance on Gays, or, Women republican don't like their parties stance on Health care. ... until it affects them!!
Well said. I respond to conservative comments on you tube and facebook, and I ask simple, common sense questions to try to get them to explain their logic. 99% of the time they can't stay on point, or go deeper down some wild conspiracy theory, and get really flustered/start hurling insults when I follow up with more common sense and deductive logic. Critical thinking isn't their thing - it's all based on emotion and rhetoric.
@@Seattle-2017 Every time I see a conservative trying to argue with the most basic ideas of socialism. They think someone not having a simple answer to "what is a woman" means that they won but then cannot give any coherent answer to "what is socialism or communism". Oh and never ask them to cite a source then you get an answer that is based off emotions rarely anything tactile.
@@Seattle-2017 It's the kind of, "Boy Scouts should be just for boys because of the word boy in boy scouts" thinking
Yeah, you reached the surface level there. Let's dig a little deeper. Why, in [current year] should this kind of restriction be left in place? What reason, other than tradition, should keep the change from occurring? Really actually think about the issue at hand, don't just go with your gut reaction
@@Seattle-2017Oh my god this is so true. They'll go on a long diatribe just to avoid answering the question, and every single time I'll remind them that they didn't answer the question at all. They want to take cues from people like Ben Shapiro, but fail to realize they're in a text conversation and they can't simply bulldoze over points by talking fast and trying to distract.
I'll also go on the record to say 'fuck Ben Shapiro' because he's actively contributing to the Right's failure to analyze anything. They just hear a man talking fast and insulting people and they think he's right.
We were on a Star Trek cruise in 2019, and Kate Mulgrew was asked how to make the country a better place, or something equivalent… she said how important it was for everyone to vote, and how we need to get the orange clown out of the White House.
98% of us cheered at that.
There were a small group of people that got offended by that, and they were very vocal of how upset they were, as they stormed out of the theater.
The rest of the theater looked at each other because we ALL had the same question: “How can you be a Trekkie, and a Trump supporter???? They are diametrically opposed views!!!!!!”
I said it’s the equivalent of a slug building their house of salt cubes…
I’m surprised the Trumpies didn’t jump ship to escape the dreaded “woke”
@@andrewward5891
That was the joke for the remaining 1,500 people the rest of the trip.
Apparently, the Trumpers were seen in the piano bar on occasion, but they weren’t seen at the theater event after that.
@@andrewward5891conservatives: jumping ship to own the libs.
Someone actually managed to trick Kate Mulgrew into narrating a right-wing documentary.
I'm surprised they watched the first Trek show with a female lead.
I am a professor of Mass Media and Communication and I want to affirm everything you say here, Steve.
I think my favorite example of this will always be a conservative high school friend and her alt-right boyfriend recommending Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, a show about the overthrow of a fascist military state in which the central metaphor is about the evils of consolidating political power, a show which tells you directly to interpret its plot and themes on a deeper level. Still not entirely sure what they're getting out of this.
this reminds me of when my former teacher (who is a loyalist to a dictator) mentioned liking one piece.
The magic looks cool and they like the fascist uniforms I bet.
I mean in fma:b theres a lot of pedestalizing of aesthetic and military discipline and strength and other things. Even our heroes are mostly highly effective military personnel or orientalized monarchs or symbols of an entire nation's grief and rage completely devoted towards vengeance. They're special or chosen or worthy. As much as the show is about overthrow of fascism, it very much appeals to the fascist psyche.
I think the abridged beginning honestly hurts the show in this sense. It robs the story of some of it's theming. I like brotherhood a lot but it's actually pretty easy to see what conservative fans could like about it if you take a second and think. They can just latch onto all of this stuff and ignore the parts that cause them dissonance. It's like fight club in this way except maybe worse actually.
I could've sworn that show was about people who turn things into other things and fight evil cults
@@adriannethornheart8516 are you filipino or latin American?
I think conservatives see the world, as Steve says, in "flat, simple, clearly delineated terms," because ultimately I think most conservatives really have a problem dealing with anxiety--the everyday and existential anxieties that living in a changing, complex world create for any self-aware being. And to even acknowledge that they FEEL anxiety is anathema to them.
I have come to the exact same conclusion that you have, that conservatives are innately deeply insecure people who feel they actually lack a sense of competency for dealing with the complexities of the world, but instead of working on this problem, their ego defense is to moralize every source of their anxiety as impure and wrong so they can work on ways of getting rid of what they think is the source, rather than to work on their anxiety.
It's also interesting how conservatives often rate themselves as more happy and fulfilled with life than other groups.
What I've observed is that they would rather try to be the big fish in a small pond than accept that they are a part of the ocean.
aKamishi845
If they’re happier, it’s because they’re rich.
From first hand experience, I can also confidently say that there is a glaring lack of basic intellectualism in the mind and heart of many conservatives. That void is then filled by intense fear, selfishness, and the unwillingness to learn something new.
I was 15 when the Colbert Report aired and knew immediately that he was mocking the average American conservative. The show was laughing at them, not with them. At 15 I knew this.
Yeah and at age 9 I understood the political themes of the original Star Trek series. Righties are either dumb or dense. Or both.
It honestly took me years to catch on, simply because I entirely ignored colbert... they marketed him as a "conservative alternative" to Jon, so I wasn't interested.
I’m a liberal and I hate Star Trek. But then, I hate most science fiction.
Literally same. I think I may have been 12 and I remember immediately being like “oh this is a joke.” And it wasn’t even being subtle.
@@valerietaylor9615I think that's just a matter of taste by that point
I think it has more to do with empathy than being smart. The reason they miss so much is they go into art, any form of art, thinking they know better than the creator. To us, art is an expression. To them, art is an amusement.
I have often remarked that conservatism is born from a lack of empathy
they think the goal is to impress instead of express
@@hlf3769Exactly everything is a " competitive sport" with them. It sounds like a joyless way to live.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos100%. It’s a thing in common they all have. Just mean spirited people.
arrogance is ignorance on steroids. believing they know without ever learning.
"Why are you so leftist"
I actually listened to the lyrics of all the songs you showed me
I’m mean FFS having an Asian person and an African person on the bridge of the Enterprise in positions of authority was a political statement in 1966.
Not just that, but a Black *woman!*
In 1966 in America, most women couldn't even get a bank account without it being co-signed by their father or husband. And that was white women.
Yes. Exactly. This is why we also need to teach history. Also, barely 20 years after the end of WWII, that Asian guy was Japanese and in the almost exact middle of the Cold War, there was a Russian on the bridge. Talk about inclusion!
Firstcinter-racial kiss aired on television, too.
One thing I have found is that there is a tendency to be extremely literal with art.
To give an example, when I put out the video "The Rape Culture of Certain Old Westerns" where I talked specifically about how male writers and directors were CHOOSING to make these rape scenes in a certain way- displaying women as really wanting to be sexually assaulted and just lying about it, for instance- I got constant comments that actually those women really wanted to be sexually assaulted and just lying about it. If I had really watched the movies, I would know that.
At least once a week, for years.
Trying to tell people that actually my point was that this was true but those scenes didn't fall out of the sky, they were written by men who had certain attitudes- well, it was just impossible to get that message through.
The same idea that every episode of a "zombie show" must have zombies. 'What if we did an episode on how a couple might survive during a zombie apocalypse, one that reflected our themes and mirrored the struggle of our protagonists, but in a different way?"
No, there must always be zombies.
This media literalism is absolutely bizarre. I suspect Undoomed had some checklist of "political things" and if those political things weren't explicitly and directly talked about on the show it was as if they didn't exist. I'd say it would be interesting to know how he judged whether the episodes were political but that would imply that Undoomed had ever, at any point, done something interesting. And that's just not possible.
TV Tropes calls it Comedically Missing the Point. My favorite example from the Republicans that I quote all the time was Ted Cruz reading 'Green Eggs and Ham". For those who may not remember, the Republicans have obviously been against Obamacare from the very beginning and have repeatedly attempted to get it repealed. In one attempt to get it defunded, Ted Cruz filibustered in the Senate for 21 hours, including a reading of "Green Eggs and Ham".
"Green Eggs and Ham" is a story about a person who, when offered the titular green eggs and Ham, refused to eat them. Not because he doesn't like them - he's never even tried them - but because he does not like the person that is offering them. When he finally does try them, he likes them. And he thanks Sam-I-Am for offering them to him. With the implication that the two become friends because of this.
In other words, this Dr. Seuss story is about overcoming prejudice and being open to new ideas, and Ted Cruz used it as a warning that "If we give people free stuff, they might come to like it." Well, yeah, people usually like things that help them. Totally missed the point.
" _Well, yeah, people usually like things that help them._ " -- Here's a more cynical interpretation of Cruz's (and the Republicans' in general) opposition to the ACA: they know full well that people usually like things that help them, and so they do everything they can to prevent the voters from finding out firsthand that the thing in question (the ACA) actually benefits the vast majority... because that would shift the voting public's favor towards the Democrats who created that helpful thing in the first place.
Actually hilarious because I just saw a Twitter thread of conservatives posting a clip from South Park about Cartman hating trans people and inclusion and thinking that meant the majority of people agrees with them. Not a single one of them realized that cartman is the catalyst for bad and that sharing his views does in fact make you the bad guy.
It makes me remember that time he happily led a Nazi march down the street.
@@ruffethereal1904 You add so much to the OP's comment, thank you. I am no longer vague on Cartman.
"Minorities (minorities), take over my waterpark (my waterpark)" I bet they loved that song, too.
People don't realize Eric Cartman is a mockery of far right extremism.
Cart man is a parody of idiots so it’s confuses me why they want to normalize anti-lgbt.
As someone who grew up in a fundamental evangelical household, I think the answer is cognitive dissonance and, like you mentioned, the ability to see things through their own conservative-biased lens. You can see it in how they read and interpret the Bible. -yes, I am aware that not all conservatives have to be religious, but I think the majority are. Anyway, there are aspects of religion that would lend itself to having poor media literacy. A major contributor being that they are taught to never question “authority” and to take the Bible at face value, suspending belief and looking at it as infallible. It means they are less likely to develop critical thinking skills that are necessary for true media literacy; they do not question source materials, they don’t think about author bias unless it is something they totally disagree with.
It's more than reasonable to talk about conservatives as a religious group because that's the basis for many of their attempts at lawmaking. Why do conservatives dislike abortion? Because it's 'a sin.' Why do they dislike gay marriage? Because it's 'a sin.' Why are they trying to keep books out of public libraries? They're allegedly 'pornography' but if you actually look at them a lot of books on the list are just from the perspective of someone who isn't a straight Christian white man. They are quite literally trying to force legislation based on their own religious views.
On multiple occasions I've witnessed the accusation of someone not "properly" reading the Bible even when the person in question is *literally* quoting it and doing very basic analysis.
There seems to be a built-in assumption that reading a text must include interpreting it such that its message doesn't conflict with established belief. Maybe this just applies to all media for conservatives.
Often, if you tell a person like this that you have a different interpretation or belief, they will flat out refuse to believe you; they'd rather argue about how your beliefs *must* be mistaken or not genuinely held than accept a challenge to their established framework.
My mom, who was a pastor, straight up told me that not all bible stories were literal.
I’ve always found the psychology of conservatives fascinating 😀
Also not all religious folk are conservative. While there is plenty overlap. There are some exceptions
I'm reminded of a conseravtive friend I used to know. We played music together often. He became a fan of Erasure. He went to see them play live and came back disturbed. The lead singer came out on stage in a ballet tutu. He never realized they were gay. I was floored, I mean, some of their songs are openly specifically about the gay experience. He said he never listens to Lyrics, they are unimportant to the enjoyment of the song. I realized he was the only friend who never sang when in a car full of singing friends.
Willful ignorance. That's what it is.
How the fuck are you gonna be an Erasure fan and not listen to the lyrics? How the fuck can you be a fan of *music with lyrics* and not listen to the lyrics? That’s incomprehensible to me. Even when I listen to songs in languages I don’t speak, I’m still hearing lyrics cause that’s part of the song that *makes it sound like the song*.
@Mordrevious You can still enjoy the melodic tones of the vocals without properly understanding them. It happens a lot when listening to singing in foreign languages (e.g. Cheb Mami’s accompanyment in “Desert Rose”) and even sometimes if the lyrics are misheard (c.f. Weird Al’s “Smells Like Nirvana”). And some musicians, like Andy Bell, use a lot of gender-neutral lyrics so they can resonate with people of any gender and any orientation.
Aren't Erasure the guys who did the Robot Unicorn Attack theme
I think that's what it is with right-winger and music... they like the music and the chorus but the lyrics are just "blah blah blah". With "Born in the U.S.A.", they just perceive the chorus and the music.
It's always baffling to me how many conservatives love South Park. Like yes it makes fun of everyone, but the show runners frequently made it clear (in the show AND in interviews) that they hate Trump. Fans of the show started even complaining that it always just makes fun of Trump but never of Biden. Hmm I wonder why.
South Park often also has a message in the episodes that's clearly progressive, like the episode of saying the n word is loved by many conservatives, even though in the end the message clearly is "white people can't understand why being called the n word is so insulting, that's why they shouldn't use it".
Another example is "The Boys". Many conservatives started complaining about how it's anti conservative in the latest season, but i.e. my conservative brother who loves the show was like "nah it's not political, it makes fun of both sides and is pretty nuanced". Yeaaah sure...
Your brother seems to be very willfully ignorant
Trey Parker and Matt Stone are somewhat libertarian, so I'm pretty happy that they don't really write the shows anymore.
TBH, the whole "why do they talk about Trump and never Biden" thing is hilariously flawed even if the writers being spoken about are truly apolitical (as the Giant Douche v. Turd Sandwich thing strongly indicated they *thought* they were at one point). It presupposes they're both doing things equally worthy of note, and well, they aren't; both in terms of Trump happening to be President at a much more influential time and in terms of Biden's behaviour violating established norms (i.e. 'doing things we *need* to talk about') far less often. I'd be amazed if an eight year Biden Administration collectively has as big an influence as any six months Trump was in office within Biden's lifetime for the same reason I'd be much more surprised to get 100 on an exam in a random topic than I would be with 30% on the same.
I’d say it does kind of make fun of both sides at times, but it is very clearly left-wing in its overarching opinions. Also if you miss the subtext about homelander and trump, you gotta be blind or something.
lol you think south park is progressive
most "both sides bad" useless centrist garbage imaginable
Why are conservatives so ANYthing??? Because Dear Leader told them???
This is crazy, because I told a guy that I work with that the bane of republicans, and the reason they lost so bad in the midterms, was because of young people. And he literally turned right around and told me that a “survey” (no particular citation of which survey) shows that most young men are republican. I told him that survey means nothing. The voting results tells you everything you need to know.
The same guy literally also tried to tell me that democrats are trying to take away from republicans so that they can give it all to other democrats and liberals. I said “what exactly are they taking? Give me some specifics.” He had absolutely nothing.
You could omit "Media" from the question and simply ask, "Why Are Conservatives So Illiterate?"
Lmao, this made me chuckle
I've noticed a trend - all Republican majority states have absolutely ABYSMAL education standards. The Republican party doesn't fund education because education breeds critical thought, critical thought breaks down conservativism, leading to an end to their party and grip on power.
"Keep ' em dumb, keep 'em voting (for us!)"
LOL I posted the same thing and then scrolled down to see your reply. Well played!
Because that video in terms of length would put a Ken Burns documentary to shame.
The Fundy right wing Taliban has a book . For science. History. Morality.hell even a divine realtor,tells them who owns what land. & You can't criticize religious nutters because they shame themselves for even questioning the " word of god" you can't criticize or question it .fine keep it to yourself pray in private like your zombie saviour commands you too.
To be a conservative is to take an intellectual vow of poverty.
stop! stop, goofusmaximus, they're already dead!
My parents, who love Star Trek Enterprise: Everyone's always making up words to describe Trump. I've never even heard the word 'xenophobic' before he started running
Me, who remembers the whole season where they talk about xenophobia in Star Trek Enterprise: 😐
Something that baffles me is conservative christians that love George Carlin... And there are a lot of them!!
One thing that's a little easier for me living in Spain is when a right winger claims something left wing is "Orwellian"... I just remind them that Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War against Franco.
Most of them have probably never seen any of his performances that were done after 1985…
I remember when they tapped Colbert to do the White House Correspondents’ Dinner during George W’s reign. Liberals were laughing their asses off at the mistake. The conservatives really thought they had finally found an actually funny comedian that was on their side. The subsequent roasting was Glorious! 😂
I think the worst example I've ever found of this was a conservative Classical Greek professor who led a personal crusade to "prove" that Sappho was actually a man writing as a woman because he couldn't stand the idea that in Ancient Greece a bisexual or lesbian woman (it's under debate, but general consensus among serious researchers leans towards bi) would write erotic poetry about women. Oh the self-delusion...
That's the kind of person who shouldn't be allowed a professorship
Reminds me of British archaeologists who found ancient Egyptian sites with carvings and statues of phalluses.
They literally chiseled the penis images from the wall, and destroyed the statues.
Talk about mummy’s curses
Alexander and his friend Hephaestion, bonding over their hobby of reenacting the close friendship of Achilles and Patroclus...
@@jy3n2 I misread 'bonding' as 'bending' ... TBQH, it still works!
You just know that poor housewife has never experienced an orgasm that she didn't bring about herself.
"I'd rather receive false information and keep my conservative views than receive true information and change my opinion."
I am sure smarter people than me have talked about why they are so media illiterate.
I tend to think conservatives don't really speak or listen. They don't see or hear. Words aren't important to them because ideas aren't important to them, only power and wealth. As long as they have an unchallenged position or privilege and power that's all that matters.
They don't interact with the world at the level of ideas, but at the level of brutality, threats, hierarchy, and bullying.
It's the people without power who have to think around the obstacles of power and conservativism. Back in the days of the Hays code the simplistic and moralistic surface level story had to speak to conservative values and stereotypes. If you wanted to make a more progressive story or see one you had to read between the lines. Subtlety and nuance are for the those on the outside of the halls of power.
Conservatives are the ones that failed at schooled - oh so badly - and you can tell
Accurately astute observation.
Very well put
This is probably why so many of them seem to think “outsiders” don’t recognize their dog whistles
So True!
No Conservative notices the homosexuality in the 1948 Alfred Hitchcock's ROPE, staring Jimmy Stewart, or the homosexuality in 1958's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof staring Paul Newman and Liz Taylor.
Of course the studios couldn't spell it out in black and white like they would in 2023.
Right Wingers give good honest Christians' a bad name.
Funnily enough the British right wing had the same reaction to _Till Death Do Us Part_ and Alf Garnett, the British show and character that _All In The Family_ and Archie Bunker were based on.
That was particularly frustrating for the fine comic actor Warren Mitchell, who played the bigot, since Mitchell was Jewish.
And are SHOCKED when they hear how progressive Carroll O'Connor really was.
This topic has indeed haunted me for years. Which is how conservatives can enjoy 99% of media since they universally oppose their values.
The vast majority of the reason American conservatism still exists is because many people were raised conservative and refuse to question their beliefs or admit they might be wrong.
Same with most religions.
yup