"The media dumbing down people and their ability to consume more complex forms of media" ... I find it fascinating that the students didn't recognize that the "dumbing down" of society by the media is, in itself, a form of censorship. While censorship typically refers to the suppression or prohibition of speech, ideas, or books, Bradbury's broader concern with media's role in intellectual degradation suggests a more insidious form of censorship: limiting the scope of thought by reducing the complexity of ideas available to the public. This subtler form of censorship through simplification and distraction prevents people from engaging with more challenging, diverse ideas, thereby narrowing the intellectual landscape. The students' insistence on a simpler interpretation (censorship) over Bradbury's more complex explanation (media's influence on intellectual depth) inadvertently embodies the very issue Bradbury highlights. I can imagine how infuriating it was for Bradbury.
That is, an excellent point and something I didn’t initially consider. This is why I love good faith discussions of media. There’s always the opportunity to learn more and widen the depth of understanding of things you enjoy. - Karl
there’s actually a name for this: Epistemic Injustice, that is, Injustice related to knowledge. broadly speaking, there are two kinds of Epistemic Injustice, Testimonial Injustice, and Hermeneutical Injustice. Testimonial Injustice is silencing people from telling their story, their perspective, presenting their set of facts. you see this a lot in political news, one side telling you what the other side says (why listen to trans people when you can listen to Tucker Carlson tell you what trans people think?) another type of testimonial injustice is discrediting someone’s statement based on some element of who they are (ask literally any woman about a bad experience they had at the doctors where no one would listen to them) Hermeneutical Injustice is the one I find really interesting though, it means Injustice through denying someone the vocabulary or knowledge needed to understand their situation. imagine growing up not knowing being gay was even a thing that could happen, you’re 15 and having weird feelings, you just know you feel different and wrong, or like, a lot of women experience post-partem depression, hormone changes after giving birth can fuck you up, it can get really bad, people commit suicide. just knowing that Post-Partem depression can be a thing that can happen might be the difference between someone getting help and not. Hermeneutical Injustice is the reason burning books is so dangerous, Fahrenheit 451 is explicitly about this phenomenon. an uneducated society is an easily controlled one.
Another reason why I always challenge myself to read books by various authors. Many different works, especially when discussed at length, can be so engaging to the point where people can interpret the book's contents down to something that's almost right but is so narrow that they miss the other 95% of the work.
@@JonSonOfJoe dude the fact that americans just straight up can’t fucking read is both terrifying and incredibly frustrating cause it’s like, fuck dude how are we supposed to make anything better?
I make it a point to read authors I probably won't agree with, because it's important to challenge yourself. Ayn Rand is juvenile and her works lack any sense of nuance, empathy or understand of how the world actually works. I would not be able say that so confidently had I not read the fan fiction that she put out.
"It isn't books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books.... The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not." “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” -Ray Bradbury
@@JosiahBradley you don't even have to remove them with how tribal everything has become. Just say that the media goes against your tribe and therefore shouldn't be read and the masses will follow. Its weird with how youtube and news media appears to be that everyone wants to be in the front of the topic but not discuss the topic openly or fairly. Be an influencer and build a community but don't waste time with trolls or those who oppose you.
I think one of the problems is that a lot of people see no difference between "political" and "partisan political" They seem to think, if it has nothing to do with a political party looking for voters, it is not political. Problem is, they have no idea what the word "political" means, so they can't properly answer any question about it.
That argument can be used both ways though, if a person is complaining about "politics" in a game/movie/book/whatever they are generally complaining about partisan politics not generic morals like "genocide is bad" or "War is hell" and the people mocking the "keep games apolitical" crowd don't understand that a condemnation of partisan hackery is not the same as condemnation of having a message. Also greetings from August.
I had a roommate once tell me the History Cahnnel was terrible because it left things open to interpretation and didn't tell him what to think. It was not my first warning to get far away from that person.
@@Azmodius12 Then if he was upset that Ancient Aliens left history up to creative interpretation instead of giving actual facts, I think I'm siding with your former roommate.
@MadameCirce that person was upset any time they were forced to think for themselves. They were into the screaming conspiracy theorists who always told them exactly what to think.
Interpretation is the entire point of DnD and other table top games. A Dm writes and tells a story but that changes based on how the players interpret said story. It never matters in the end what you wrote because the end product changes regardless.
and here we have one interpretation of D&D which is commonly accepted but is far from the original intent. The DM writing a story is not the core of D&D. A setting and scenarios, sure. But if you write a whole story ahead of time, you're probably doing it wrong. yes this reply is ironic
My friend in our discord posted a meme that said something like, the DM has the power to make the next adventure a heist, but the players have the power to make the theme song the Pink panther, mission impossible or the benny hill theme.
This is very true. I've been trying out Baldur's Gate 3, and I was really taken aback by how their Forgotten Realms are so grim and bloody, whereas mine are more fantastical and full of wonder. It really hampers my ability to enjoy the game.
on people reading in to Lord Of The Rings themes that he didn't intend to write: "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" - J. R. R. Tolkien
the episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield with the guys who are pitch black on one side and pure white on the other side, being racist towards the guy who was the same only mirrored, couldn't have been less subtle in its message. Shatner and Nichelle Nichols had an episode where they were being forced to kiss and the censors were trying to get them to do it in a way that would be okay with racist folk from the Deep South as interracial kissing hadn't really happened on TV at that point, and Shatner and Nichols deliberately messed up any take that didn't show them actually touching lips as a screw you to racists. How Shatner can turn around now and say "Star Trek wasn't political" is absolutely mindboggling
It's ironic that people interrupt the author to say that Fahrenheit 451 is about censorship when they're in effect censoring the author's words right then and there. Also, a work can be about more than one thing. Both readings make sense and I think the themes involved can be meaningfully linked with one another.
I saw an interview with Mark Hamill, and he was asked if Luke was gay. And he said something along the lines “I didn’t play him as gay but if you see him that way and get something from that, then he’s gay”
Got to love the lack of self awareness of when presented with the interpretation that it's mass media suppresses ones ability to critically think that the first response is, nuh uh, I was told it was about censorship... When you unwittingly become the target of the book as opposed to the target audience.
One of my favourite movie franchises, is lethal weapon. I recent came to the realisation that the reason i like it so much, is because to me the films chart someone's recovery from depression. Riggs starts off angry, suicidal and emotionally numb. Throughout the films, he becomes lighter and more caring to the point where he realises he has a new family, and then eventually starts a new family of his own.
I truly am for the infinite interpretation of art, I do believe that art can be both studied and enjoyed as a reflection of the author, thus analysing its original meaning, or as a contextless piece where every interpretation is equally valid and even the author itself becomes a spectator and has no power. So I am generally very familiar with the concept of Death of the Author, especially since it's there to prevent an author from changing the themes of their art by way of just... changing their mind later in life and retroactively warping their art (or even more generally inserting themes after or somethhing like that in art after its completion) But overall, the idea saying "No, you're wrong", death of the author aside, to the author is just plain disrespectful. Not necessarily ridiculous, just absurdely disrespectful
Having done whistleblowing for over a decade, the amount of people that are TOO dense to just... get ANYTHING, still baffle me. Like, they LITERALLY stand there all "I don't get it..." or "... What do you mean?". I can't even count the number of times people pull the equivalent of "You're just being a horrible person for ASSUMING that Dr. Evil is a bad person!". The power of stupidity and echo chambers are immense.
My fave is Lord of the Flies. In 1973 I pissed off our English Lit teacher when I pointed out that the book could not happen as written. Piggy is nearsighted. Therefore, his glasses are concave and cannot start a fire. He was not happy when the 4.0 teacher's pet in the class yelled, "He's right!" Don't try to tell someone with 20/400 vision that his glasses can start a fire. Sorry, I've been wearing them since 3rd grade. I kinda know what my lenses can and cannot do.
@@TimothyLafreniere I'm pretty sure that you don't understand what "concave" means. Turning the lenses over doesn't change their inherent concave properties. Anyone with glasses will be the first to know that through simply looking through their glasses from the "wrong" direction. Does it make the resulting image slightly distorted? Yes. Does it still focus the light in such a way that it still makes the image clear enough to read? Yes. You would need a CONVEX lens in order to focus light enough to start a fire. Turning the lens around doesn't turn a concave lens into a convex lens. For someone saying "people think they're smart sometimes but they aren't actually very clever", you have a clear ignorance over how lenses work.
My favorite part of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy’s wife spending all her time in the 3 walled tv room and mentioning how disappointed she is that they can’t afford the fourth wall. I think of it every time I see a bigger flat screen television
I read Fahrenheit and 1984 back to back originally and I think it's really interesting how both author's different backgrounds really show in their writing given the novels' similar concepts.
Personally I think "Brave New World" by Huxley is winning, you need to round out the trifecta by reading that. Not an original thought, Neil Postman wrote a book called "Amusing ourselves to death" 30-odd years ago. After reading that Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) put out an album called "Amused to death" a few years later. As an aside, Postman manages to be an even bigger wanker than Rogers.
@@blazemgb11 Huxley is closer to Bradbury in saying "Who needs books when you've got TH-cam & TikTok". Where Orwell takes away (while saying he isn't), Huxley says "give them everything they want". Or think they want, so long as they don't get uppity. And even if they do, well, they're free to leave. A perfect society where everyone is happy. The world seems to be mostly Huxley & 451 while adding bits of 1984 because we're not paying attention and don't care anyway.
People insist that "Idiocracy" is pro-eugenics when it is actually just about not being passive and lazy and essentially just uses a eugenics as a really dumb plot device.
I’d argue Rick from Rick and Morty also fits in this category. And it’s always a certain type of person who misses the very obvious point that these people are terrible
My favorite recent interpretation is for the movie 300. The film we see is not the actual event but is the one character's story about it as if we are around the camp fire.
While there is a certain level of Dunning Krueger to an undergraduate correcting an author about the subject of his own book, I do remember that the text of the story (not even the subtext) explicitly supports the censorship reading, while the dumbing of media reading is more subtle. The fireman Beatty specifically mentions that books are burned to prevent people from reading the contents and being made to feel superior or inferior to others. I do question the apparent stance of Bradbury that he never intended the book to be about censorship even if in conjunction to his views on media at the time... and I really wish Bradbury was alive today to ask him directly and the interpretations of his book anymore.
You can tell someone you don't agree with their interpretation (even the author) but you can't tell them they're wrong lol. That being said, some authors claim "I never meant that" which is as fair as a consumer saying "that's not what I took from it". It's always fascinating to see critical analysis that shines a light on things you didn't pick up on or consider but it's also fascinating to see critical analysis that portrays a piece of media in a way you completely disagree with.
There are few interpretations of media that are just flat-out wrong, and most of those seem to boil down to a misunderstanding. My favorite to this day is the Silent Hill 4 Circumcision Theory which, long story short, tried to claim that the main villain was made an insane serial killer specifically because he was circumcised. Now, I know circumcision is a touchy subject and I won't dip my toes into it here, but it seems to me that the entire theory is based on this one person mistaking an umbilical cord (a key item in the final boss stage) for a foreskin.
Ppl have been saying One Piece isnt political when in the single digit chapters one of the 1st things that happens is that the Marines and concept of a WORLD GOVERNMENT is corrupt & dystopian since they only hold up the "law" instead of protecting citizens to the point that even those with good intentions are disposable if they dont obey absolutely
I didn't read Fahrenheit 451 until I was in my 30s. All that I really knew was from the cultural zeitgeist that it's about censorship. So I went in to it expecting the government or the church or some other ruling body that was trying to suppress ideas and concepts to make the population compliant, obedient, and stupid (turns out, that's the plot of 1984). I was not expecting a story about a nation of people who were so wrapped up in soap operas and sitcoms that they didn't want more out of life. It's about kids growing up like wolves, racing cars and committing violence because there are no parents or other concerned adults teaching them to behave. It's a world where burning books is a public service because people are afraid of being exposed to things that are too big to bear without having to grow and change. Since the censorship in Fahrenheit 451 was a kind I had never considered before, it allowed me to see it in a different way, which I think is close to Bradbury's original intent: The consequences of living a life with too much screen time and too little mental stimulation and exercise.
To be fair to these unintended interpretations... I do some creative writing myself, and sometimes I make a choice to add in a seemingly unimportant detail, or a very specific wording, or something innocuous, and I don't realize what I have done, and why it was *incredibly important,* until pages later, or until a friend points it out.
There's coincidence, and then there's finding a small detail you added in the beginning of a scene that you realize reinforces the entire underlying theme of the scene, and you realize you need to rewrite the climax to fire that Chekov's Gun that your subconscious placed days ago.
To be fair most of harry potter was taken from the worst witch almost wholesale. Which is probably why she disagrees with much of the interpretation of concepts in works
This is something that's become annoying to me. People don't want to discuss things, or if a discussion starts, they don't like when you take a point opposite theirs.
It depends on the topic at hand really. If you're pro hating other human beings for one reason or another, I'm not going to get into a discussion about that with you. I think your scum and there is nothing I can say to you that will convince you and nothing you can say to me that won't just disgust me. It's a pointless endeavor. If it's just a media discussion though? Sure, have at it. Let's go ham, it's fun.
There are no discussions anymore, just arguments to win. It's sad, really, because discussions are an exchange of ideas that makes everyone think, whereas arguments are just shouting matches regurgitating talking points and factoids until the other guy shuts up.
@@nontrashfire2 I could be wrong. I haven't been in an actual academic setting for years, so maybe I'm overreacting, but it's based on my personal experience (primarily in online forums, which admittedly aren't the bastions of intelligent discussion some might like them to be).
One of my favorite media interpretations is from the channel Rhino Stew. The theory goes that Snowpiercer is a Willy Wonka sequel. It is pretty silly and I doubt that it was intentional but it works on a number of levels.
"All summer in a day" although I don't remember flowers, the children were very ashamed once they realized what they'd done to her. It was the one day in many years that it would stop raining and the sun would, briefly, appear. The poor child was locked away, forgotten, while her schoolmates reveled in the warm, bright sun. Bradbury has a way of reminding us of the importance of little things.
Venus, but close enough for government work. All the kids were native and so had never seen the Sun, bar that girl who only arrived from Earth a few years back and didn't care much for the local weather. You only get one sunny day every seven years, so she'll be in her teens before she has the chance to see it again.
So, reading the Wikipedia section on the themes is a trip. Perhaps I was biased by this video, but as they were pointing out, it starts out with a confident assertion that the theme is censorship, and then discusses how Bradbury thought differently (though it's arguable that this is a chronological ordering rather than an importance ordering). But that's not the most interesting part to me. Reading Bradbury's quotes over time, it looks like he becomes more and more of the stereotype of an old man shaking his fist at the younger generations for being on their devices and 'woke' (or his contemporary phrasing as PC) because he misunderstands the points of what was being discouraged...
One of his TV shows was filmed at my work back in the 80s, I work at a historic house and stumbled across the behind the scenes photos that a previous coworker took, someone always has to supervise filming crews to make sure the house and it’s contents are safe so they got a chance to be up close and personal with all the goings on
People's political opinions don't always stay the same throughout their lives, and sometimes creators will try to reframe their earlier work to fit their new outlook. I don't really know if that applies to Ray Bradbury, but it's well known that he was quite progressive earlier in his career, but became very crotchety and conservative later. It is actually possible that he chose to stress different themes within Fahrenheit 451 as he grew older. As obnoxious as the students at his lecture were, it's still pretty weird to get angry over the fact that people thought his novel about literal book-burning was about censorship. Rowling is actually another example of this- when she wrote the Harry Potter books she definitely portrayed herself as a progressive, and the progressive ideas in them are most likely 100% intentional. It was only later that she caught transphobic brainrot off of Twitter and started palling around with fascist goons just because they shared her weird obsession.
Appropriate suggestion for me in the end because SOOO many people will argue Captain America punching H1t13r (censored because I don’t know the details on how TH-cam demonizes videos and don’t want to get FF in trouble) wasn’t a political statement. Like he was literally punching a world leader, and one we weren’t even at war with yet.
For the record, a comment won't get a video demonetized, But your comment will get all the medically flagged and deleted for talking about stuff that is censored. I'm not sure if his name is censored but most words related to him are.
I'm a newer subscriber of this channel(found you when you took the aerodynamically advantaged hosts spot) but Ive watched 75% of all your videos and I miss the green screen mashup.. love you small wood Edit: I also enjoy most wiki weekends. I listen to it at work and it is the ONLY superhero content I can listen to. Tangents are amazing
in my opinion the authors intention clearly defines the true meaning of a book, regardless or what your interpretation of it would be or what you want to take away from it. But i also remember my teacher telling me that my interpretation of a book/character was wrong because "nobody else interpreted in that way before, so it cannot be right", while one guy at the other side of the room had the same interpretation. I didnt get a perfect score but still a good grade
This is only tangential to the opening of the video, but the MGS brainrot I have compels me to say it. George Sears/Solidus Snake, the final boss of Metal Gear Solid 2, fights Raiden using two swords named the Democrat Blade and Republican Blade. Metal Gear Solid 1 references SALT I and II and denuclearization as plot points. One of Big Boss's primary motives throughout the series is that he's sick of soldier's lives being thrown away for money. That series couldn't be any more overtly political if it came to life and ran for public office.
The first 10 minutes are basically the perfect discussion on the analysis and interpretation of art and media to me. I feel like far too often that conversation is boiled down to nothing. Damn, this is satisfying
There are a couple of great quotes from George Carlin (rest his soul). 1: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." 2: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that." 3: "If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to have selfish, ignorant leaders."
Ray Bradbury is synonymous with more than F451. The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, I Sing the Body Electric, Ray Bradbury Theater, etc...
Im Surpised there isn’t a Fact Fiend Bingo card for each fact fiend video. One square is Karl talking about Metal Gear Rising. Another I think be fun is Karl saying nearby blank or far away blank. Love any more suggestions to fill out the card
Karl quoting himself Karl saying "bringing it back to" 90s video games Square, specifically Nintendo or just a Nintendo square One square for tea, one for alcohol, one for unknown One for bonely or mentions thereof I can think of more but have a splitting headache and just drank a almost .5g of methadone
I know lots of bits of lots of things, but the way I continue to learn new interesting things is by starting with the assumption that I'm a layman about pretty much everything but my own personal experiences. If you can maintain the mindset that you only know bits it's so much easier to get new bits to fit in and not bounce off your assumptions.
Book or movie? They were very different. Pretty certain Heinlein thought the political system in the book was good, after reading his other works. The Day after tomorrow was outright racist.
Tolken in an interview in the 50s being told by the interviewer that the one ring represents the A bomb. Which he refuted, reminding them that he wrote it before the bomb existed
Make Haste To Write does explain his prose and way of writing, and it's a bit of a shame that most people don't read his short stories. Bradbury would go about his daily life and just spot things, before extrapolating out to a logical end, and writing a short story about each small part, his thought processes, then re-compiles them back in a compilation. And once you know he's doing it, then F451 breaks down in to short, analytic stories, sharing a main character, compiled in to a greater novel. To analyse the book as being about censorship is to focus down about one or two short stories, rather than reading all of Bradbury's short stories which make it up.
I had a similar experience when doing a book report on Lord Of The Flies in college. I became so fascinated with vast differences between the common interpretations and the authors intent, along the authors arguments ageist those interpretations, that was what my paper became about.
One of my favorite things that I took away from Fahrenheit 451, is realizing that the earbuds I use to listen to videos so I can fall asleep, are basically the book’s equivalent to Seashells.
On a similar note, Your quote reminded me of a similar one by David lee Roth. I know, weird but he once said “all art is autobiographical, especially when it isn’t intended to be” and I always found that to be an interesting lens to look at things thru.
Ray Bradbury was one of the most creative writers in fantasy fiction, with a rare ability to depict emotion in strange worlds. He was also a dedicated teacher of how to write, with books and talks all on that subject. 451F featured picture rooms, rooms with electronic on the walls dumbing down the inhabitants. So, Ray was correct about the theme of his own book, except that stories can usually have more than one theme.
According to the writer and director of the starwars series the empire were NAZIs and they were absolutely intended for the audience to hate. The funny part of this is that there are people who glorify both now which is horrible.
I can't speak for the real life group, That is horrible and worthy of condemnation. But for the fictional one, I don't think most people actually support the Empire. It's mostly just we think they look really cool, and love to play as or run them in games. Like I play the Empire and basically every Star Wars game. They look awesome. Just that mean I really want to be under the thumb of an oppressive, fascist, xenophobic, regime? No. Of course not. And I imagine if you genuinely ask people about that they would say no.
@TheLordofMetroids Something to consider is that about the empire is it was a very easy way to point out the absolute evil of the nazis and what they did. I understand why people can think hey this is really cool technology and all but they were extremely evil and they almost destroyed the world. I don't claim to know everything only that it is what he said. I also know that there is a lot of turmoil in the united states and other countries that unfortunately has caused the world to view the good guys as the bad and the bad as the good. I don't claim that they are perfect people only that they are better than many of the bad people who want to watch the world burn. Thanks for your time and perspective.
it baffles me that people are now saying that its ok to strip the meaning of a piece of media to purley make it "entertainment" i see this a lot with the facisim of the Empire in Star Wars and the anti-capitalist nature of Squid Game
The thing that gets to me with a lot of these sort of anti-intellectual "I don't want discussion, I want to tell you why I'm right, and for you to just accept my ultimate authority despite a complete lack of qualification, logic, or nuanced thought supporting my position" people, is the "too long, didn't read" culture that they've spawned. Where people will completely dismiss a comment because they were too lazy to read what you have to say, and then somehow that supports their assertion that they are right and you are wrong because what they have to say is inherently valuable, and what you have to say was never of value. But, like, if I am disagreeing with your points, I effectively need to use at least three times as many sentences to fully lay out my argument. One sentence is needed to say *what* I think is wrong, a second sentence is needed to assert *why* I think it is wrong, and a third sentence is needed to assert what I think is right instead. Sometimes you require additional sentences to provide supporting arguments, or to pre-empt expected objections. And you need to do this for every single point you wish to disagree with, if you wish to present a fully formed and complete argument. So, naturally, as an argument progresses, and as more and more points get dissected and countered, comments will get progressively longer and longer over time. And, assuming the other party is not arguing in good faith, you will eventually reach a point where somebody says "I'm not going to read all that, but you're still wrong and here's why". It makes it clear that for them it was never about the argument, their responses never had anything to do with what you actually had to say on the subject, they just wanted to "win" and tell someone they view as lesser about how superior they are with their interpretation that makes them so clever. These people view the moment your response cannot hold their attention any further as the moment they have "won" because clearly if what you had to say wasn't worth it for them to read, clearly nothing of value could have been communicated. It's especially frustrating when somebody who I was never talking to, just some random person who stumbled upon my comment in the void of the internet, has the absolute, unmitigated GALL to say "I'm not reading all of that" in response to a thoughtful and well reasoned comment. Like, not everything is about you, not everything is for you. If you lack the attention span to read a longer comment, you are OBVIOUSLY not the intended audience, especially when it was not made in reply to anything you said. Nobody asked you to read it, nobody asked you for commentary, you are simply being hurtful for literally no reason because you are telling someone that something they put time and effort into writing and posting has no value because you have the attention span of a gold fish and that somehow means you have value while they don't. In either of these cases, if you cannot be bothered to read, don't fucking respond. It's genuinely that simple, and yet somehow the internet at large views the people who put in the effort to form well reasoned and complete arguments are the ones who are rude because it's a "wall of text", and the people who tell them as much are heroes for it. It doesn't get much more anti-intellectual than "I can't be bothered to read what you have to say, therefore I am right since I haven't read anything that proves me wrong, and because you are clearly disagreeing with me, you are clearly wrong based on the same logic". It's literally justifying a position with willful ignorance and a refusal to actually think. And people like that think what they have to say has value.
I love the fan theories where it’s good things and not dark. Like that Game of Thrones is actually a D&D campaign, or that Pudge in Lilo and Stitch is the spirit of Moana
I love Fact Fiend videos, because I not only learn about interesting and unusual topics, but also about myself as a person. Mr.Smallwood has allowed me to see something beyond just a funny youtube video, and it has allowed me to change for the better. Thank you.
My main issue with the Scott Pilgrim movie is the story is very rushed. It’s basically adapting 6 books into an hour and a half long movie. In the books, the story takes place over the course of several months, whereas the events in the movie take place over the course of roughly a week. I do still like the movie, just not as much as the books.
Wolf researcher David Mech has been trying since the 80s to get people to listen to him that his first book is crap and Alpha theory is not actually seen in wild wolves. The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species - published in 1970 the author finally got the book out of print in 2022 after many years of additional research which disproved the Alpha Wolf Theory. Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation - published in 2003 much more accurate.
I remember my 8th grade teacher showing my class the Fahrenheit 451 film after finishing the book, and us all laughing at the hilariously bad scene with the jetpacks (that weren’t even in the book).
I think there’s something to be said for when a large part of an audience insists the meaning of a piece of media is different than what the author intended. And yeah F451 is stereotyped as “the book about censorship”, which is probably due a large amount of laziness on the readers, but if your audience all comes to the same conclusion, how do you address that?
I know you guys aren't big on talking about Warhammer 40k, but something that so many people (specifically right wingers) miss the point of is that the imperium of man aren't the good guys of the story or at least ones you shouldn't be rooting just because they're the human faction. In fact, I feel under this curse as well and call things I thought as cringe heresy like a moron. Another example of a similar case would be starship troopers. And don't even get me started on the "objective art critic" frauds either when it comes to "the correct" interpretations in media. Also a little side note, I'm quite certain the Rambo 3 ending about the change was an urban legend that spread about online, that being said, the concept of the "enemy" depicted in media by their appearance or personality is a bigoted problem as old as time that unfortunately will never improve anytime soon.
The biggest issue with Death of the Author as a concept is that they settled on "Death of the Author" as the phrase to describe it, since that immediately makes it an inherently author-hostile concept, when the intended use of the mindset was "the Author's interpretation of their own work is just one valid reading among many, and does not invalidate other readings simply because they're the author"
I heard about fahrenheit 451 on public radio, and the interviewer was talking about how funny the book was. I read over quarter of the book before I realized it might not be a comedy. Turns out the book they were talking about on the radio was catch-22.
When I was in high school, we were assigned to read a certain poem which I remember being called "Five Ways To Kill a Man". Each stanza was a different era's way to kill some one...one was something like 'bash his head in with a rock', one was 'put him on a horse with a pointy stick and send him down the isle at some one similarly dressed', but the fifth and final stanza was something like "The fifth way to kill a man is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle of the 21st century, and leave him there." This struck me as dark humor at its finest, a mocking commentary on the state of the 21st century as so terrible that leaving some one there was tantamount to murder. The rest of the class, including the teacher, insisted that I was wrong, and it was a very serious and sad poem with no funniness whatsoever, which at the time really annoyed me that even the teacher didn't see the dark humor. I also wrote a poem of my own one time, fast paced and full of internal rhymes, with a dark theme. No deeper meaning, just stuff that rolled off the tongue. "Dark heart start your spark and see", that sort of thing. I got a bunch of amateur poetry critics online arguing with me that the 'transition' from the first half of the poem into the second half was too abrupt. I could not for the life of me get them to explain what transition, let along what 'halves' they were somehow seeing, considering all it was was a thematic word cloud.
I have this exact frustration with Beauty and the Beast. As a weird kid I thought it was the most romantic story ever. Imagine someone loving you for what's on the inside, for not judging you by society's expectations, and doing everything you can to protect that person... only for everyone to say "ew, you think a story about Stockholm syndrome and beastiality is romantic". DISAPPOINTED.
@Tirnel_S Yessss! Ariel didn't want a man, she wanted legs and then she said "well... while I'm here. " Its almost as if when you're living your truth , you find what you're looking for. None of our disney heroines were boy crazy. Any boy crazy characters in the Disney universe are looked down on: evil step sisters, that pink squirrel in Sword and the Stone. I love love, but its a bonus, it can't be your whole thing!
A more learned man than I, once said something to the effect: “if you know what the media is saying it is propaganda, art is trying to describe something we don’t yet understand.”
This might be semantics, but 'Interpretation' of a story is, to me, personal and any one story can have a limitless number of Interpretations by any number of people, because to interpret is something 'you' do. It's your mind processing the data of a story. But the 'Message' I think is what the author wants it to be. As in "I made this book to push forward my Libertarian beliefs" could be a clear statement an author makes and, if treated as true, should be the percieved 'Message' from the author through the book, even if that is not how you interpretated it. Because a message is something made by the messenger. Even if the message is made poorly or is, in itself, garbage.
I consider this as real life copying fiction. In the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School, he played a wealthy man who decided to enroll in college in his fifties. For his literature class, he hired Kurt Vonnegut to write a paper about Vonnegut. The literature professor gave him a failing grade because the paper shows he, “didn’t know the first thing about Vonnegut.”
I seem to remember Bob Dylan, when asked about the meaning of one of his songs, said he no longer felt qualified to define any of his songs, as other people seemed to understand them better than he ever could.
Fact Fiend isn’t political, there’s no evidence that Karl has ever talked about anything of the sort. Karl totally is super apolitical, I’m right because I think I’m right.
3:49 is so much more true with the last season. The fact people are finally getting it after 5 seasons but are not accusing the showrunners of "going woke" because they think "they changed Homelander to make fun of them." is getting more and more funny.
Saying Mario isn't political clearly never paid attention to the communist symbolism with the flagpole. You're tearing down a peace sign flag and raising a flag with a red star. Not to mention, Mario looks like Stalin. Everything is political.
What misunderstood media I like most is Star Ship Troopers the movie and is one I myself misunderstood for a long time. It is a satire, the thing is a fake propoganda/military recruiting film from a fascist future. As if we were all aliens and all we know about the earth was from watching Triumph of the Will. For years I thought it was an action movie that was oddly sympathetic to what appeared to be a fascist world government...turns out that was the joke. There is an argument to be made that the action was too fun and invited misinterpreting the satire for an endorsement of the intended target of the satire. There are folks that think all satire flies too close to the sun as it is either ridiculously broad or subtle enough to invite the target of satire to take ownership of and champion it as an endorsement of their ideology. I can see it, I'm troubled by it, but I still enjoy Starship Troopers as a bizarre and singular piece of science fiction satire, a movie showing a fake recruiting movie from a fascist future.
This is a regular issue within the godzilla fanbase, where some folk will argue that godzilla is and were never political, yet (barring a few movies in the early eras) most were made with a message in mind
The difference between the author's and readers' interpretation of a work is the difference between reality and dreams. The author's intent is the world as it truly is. The book is the interface through which the reader experiences the world. And the reader's interpretation is a new reality formed from the inherently incomplete information gleaned from the interface filtered through the reader's experiences and biases. All dreams are valid, but we shouldn't put them ahead of the book itself when discussing it. Otherwise everyone just talks past each other without realizing it. (ETA: The author's interpretation is the most valuable, but can be useless if their interface fails to communicate. A bad author can end up creating a book divorced from its own reality.)
I think writing anything that involves people will inherently have some sort of political element. Even if all your characters agreed and with each other that alone would be interpreted in a political way.
Thanks to the deeply messed up rules for analyzing works, the person who told him he was wrong can absolutely be considered right. I hate it, but I acknowledge it.
I believe Orwell stated that he wrote 1984 as a way of showing how authoritarian control of language leads to control of thoughts, but then discovered that he'd proved the opposite. The hero in 1984 may not have precise words to describe what he feels, wants and thinks, but he still feels, wants and thinks those things.
My favorite piece of media people misinterpret or insist doesn't have politics will always be Starship Troopers. It's so unsubtle about it's politics and what it's satirizing but you'll get people will get red in the face angry just insisting it's a rad action movie and not about anything.
The perspective of mass media dumbing the populace via making them read less is interesting. Because I partially agree and partially disagree. Because I have seen both reactions in the wild. I have seen those that haven't read a book since school, and I have seen those that are spurred to read by the media they consume. For instance, due to many anime ending on a cliffhanger I became an avid manga reader and have transitioned to pretty much only reading manga and not even watching anime. As well if it wasn't for the manga reading pursuit I wouldn't have gotten into a lot of classic fiction. To give an example by reading baki I became curious who doppo orochi was based on due to seeing a similar character in Keisuke Itagaki's stellar adaptation of Garouden. Upon doing some research I found these characters to be based on the real life Mas Oyama. Upon reading up on him as much as I could I found a bit about him isolating himself in the mountains to train for years, his only reading material being the book of the 5 rings by Miyamoto Musashi. From there I bought a copy myself and was witness to a kind of timeless wisdom, one that transcends eras and is applicable to nearly everyone. This methodology is often my approach to things. I latch on to something currently popular in the zeitgeist, in this case it was the most violent prisoner arc of baki, and then I work my way backwards, finding all the building blocks which created the thing I love so that I can understand it more. It is due to this that I have amassed a book collection nearly a thousand strong. About half is manga and half is philosophical writings. Writings from stoics such as Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, most of Jung's bibliography due to being inspired countless times by recorded talks from Alan Watts; to some very navel gazing fare but for me it's some of the few writings which articulate the way I have come to view the world. So this is why I kind of have to redefine what Bradbury is hitting on. The age of mass media can lead to ostensibly brain rot, but only in those that weren't going to read anyways. Effectively these things make those that are already predisposed less intelligent while serving as an ample tool to those that are inquisitive. The fact of the matter is, the majority of people are just trying to make it through day to day life, most are not on some journey to broaden their understanding because they don't care about the same things. I've learned this time and time again when trying to espouse the benefits of reading, or of certain movies or games. Many just don't want something that will make them think and question things, they want the entertainment equivalent of fireworks, something to be pretty and entertain them for the moment. And really it's not even a matter of intelligence, so much as a matter of priority. Many are just much simpler in their priorities and there is nothing wrong with that so long as they are happy in the life they are leading. There is a anecdote from Alan Watts which touches on this subject, he talks about being asked by a geneticist what the ideal traits in a human should be with the burgeoning gene editing technology. Watt's response boils down to "there should be a wide variety of different people, different hopes, ambitions, and dreams". This is the core aspect, wouldn't the world be much more boring if everyone agreed on what the best movie was? It is the fundamental conflict of it that gives it meaning, you feel it your duty to champion the things which you feel doesn't get the love it deserves. In this vain books have entered a kind of sacred garden. Those of us that actually read have become a select few, and we get to bear witness to such magical worlds that most don't. Enjoy and revel in that, don't fret about what others are doing.
In the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" Tom Hanks, playing Charlie Wilson, learns the US is leaving Afghanistan after defeating the Soviets you can hear an airplane descending in the background. A director's nod to the 911 tragedy. They cut that part out in future showings.
Another example of media being interpreted in ways that weren't intended, Lilo & Stitch has been adopted by the autistic community and praised for its portrayal of Lilo, an autistic girl, and her struggles trying to grow up in a world she doesn't understand and which doesn't understand her. According to Chris Sanders, the co-director of the film, this was nowhere in their minds when they made the movie and something completely unintended. Though he has embraced the interpretation of the film and will even jokingly take pride in in the fact he made such a good movie about autism.
One of my favourite moments of flat earthers debunking themselves is when this guy went to do a test involving a light, but I don't remember who he was. the basic setup was that you would put a light in one location, and a point at which you could see it in another. If the light was held at chest level and visible, then the earth is flat, and if it's only visible when raised, then the earth is round. They perform this experiement, find out the earth is actually round, and you can watch their souls die when they realize they're wrong. It's hilarious.
My friend was studying poetry in highschool, in particular the works of poet Peter Skrzynecki who wrote a bunch detailing his experience as an immigrant child growing up in Australia after leaving Poland shortly after WWII. One poem about the voyage from his homeland to Australia has the lines "As we crossed the sea And looked at red banners". My friend's English teacher told her class how the red banners were a metaphor for Communism. My friend disagreed with that interpretation and the two had many heated debates about it. Fast forward a few months when the class is attending some literary event with that poet as a guest. The teacher grabs my friend and marches up to Skrzynecki and says "Excuse me, Peter. I'm hoping you can settle a debate regarding Crossing the Red Sea..." Without waiting for further context he immediately shot back with "It's not communism. The red represents blood". My mate was a smug arsehole as it was, but from then on whenever he disagreed with the teacher in class he'd quid "Remember how the red isn't Communism?"
"The media dumbing down people and their ability to consume more complex forms of media" ... I find it fascinating that the students didn't recognize that the "dumbing down" of society by the media is, in itself, a form of censorship. While censorship typically refers to the suppression or prohibition of speech, ideas, or books, Bradbury's broader concern with media's role in intellectual degradation suggests a more insidious form of censorship: limiting the scope of thought by reducing the complexity of ideas available to the public. This subtler form of censorship through simplification and distraction prevents people from engaging with more challenging, diverse ideas, thereby narrowing the intellectual landscape.
The students' insistence on a simpler interpretation (censorship) over Bradbury's more complex explanation (media's influence on intellectual depth) inadvertently embodies the very issue Bradbury highlights. I can imagine how infuriating it was for Bradbury.
That is, an excellent point and something I didn’t initially consider.
This is why I love good faith discussions of media. There’s always the opportunity to learn more and widen the depth of understanding of things you enjoy.
- Karl
there’s actually a name for this: Epistemic Injustice, that is, Injustice related to knowledge. broadly speaking, there are two kinds of Epistemic Injustice, Testimonial Injustice, and Hermeneutical Injustice.
Testimonial Injustice is silencing people from telling their story, their perspective, presenting their set of facts. you see this a lot in political news, one side telling you what the other side says (why listen to trans people when you can listen to Tucker Carlson tell you what trans people think?) another type of testimonial injustice is discrediting someone’s statement based on some element of who they are (ask literally any woman about a bad experience they had at the doctors where no one would listen to them)
Hermeneutical Injustice is the one I find really interesting though, it means Injustice through denying someone the vocabulary or knowledge needed to understand their situation. imagine growing up not knowing being gay was even a thing that could happen, you’re 15 and having weird feelings, you just know you feel different and wrong, or like, a lot of women experience post-partem depression, hormone changes after giving birth can fuck you up, it can get really bad, people commit suicide. just knowing that Post-Partem depression can be a thing that can happen might be the difference between someone getting help and not. Hermeneutical Injustice is the reason burning books is so dangerous, Fahrenheit 451 is explicitly about this phenomenon. an uneducated society is an easily controlled one.
Another reason why I always challenge myself to read books by various authors.
Many different works, especially when discussed at length, can be so engaging to the point where people can interpret the book's contents down to something that's almost right but is so narrow that they miss the other 95% of the work.
@@JonSonOfJoe dude the fact that americans just straight up can’t fucking read is both terrifying and incredibly frustrating cause it’s like, fuck dude how are we supposed to make anything better?
I make it a point to read authors I probably won't agree with, because it's important to challenge yourself. Ayn Rand is juvenile and her works lack any sense of nuance, empathy or understand of how the world actually works. I would not be able say that so confidently had I not read the fan fiction that she put out.
"It isn't books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books.... The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not."
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” -Ray Bradbury
Rage Against the Machine put this lyrically well, you don't got to burn the books just remove em.
@@JosiahBradley you don't even have to remove them with how tribal everything has become. Just say that the media goes against your tribe and therefore shouldn't be read and the masses will follow. Its weird with how youtube and news media appears to be that everyone wants to be in the front of the topic but not discuss the topic openly or fairly. Be an influencer and build a community but don't waste time with trolls or those who oppose you.
I think one of the problems is that a lot of people see no difference between "political" and "partisan political"
They seem to think, if it has nothing to do with a political party looking for voters, it is not political.
Problem is, they have no idea what the word "political" means, so they can't properly answer any question about it.
As a political scientist, you are unfortunately, PAINFULLY, correct.
Yo, yes
That argument can be used both ways though, if a person is complaining about "politics" in a game/movie/book/whatever they are generally complaining about partisan politics not generic morals like "genocide is bad" or "War is hell" and the people mocking the "keep games apolitical" crowd don't understand that a condemnation of partisan hackery is not the same as condemnation of having a message. Also greetings from August.
I had a roommate once tell me the History Cahnnel was terrible because it left things open to interpretation and didn't tell him what to think. It was not my first warning to get far away from that person.
Are we talking the Ancient Aliens side of the History Channel or... ?
Isn't the history channel all aliens and pawnshops these days?
I'm talking 10 years ago, so aliens and apocalypse were the topics of the time
@@Azmodius12 Then if he was upset that Ancient Aliens left history up to creative interpretation instead of giving actual facts, I think I'm siding with your former roommate.
@MadameCirce that person was upset any time they were forced to think for themselves. They were into the screaming conspiracy theorists who always told them exactly what to think.
Interpretation is the entire point of DnD and other table top games. A Dm writes and tells a story but that changes based on how the players interpret said story. It never matters in the end what you wrote because the end product changes regardless.
and here we have one interpretation of D&D which is commonly accepted but is far from the original intent. The DM writing a story is not the core of D&D. A setting and scenarios, sure. But if you write a whole story ahead of time, you're probably doing it wrong.
yes this reply is ironic
My friend in our discord posted a meme that said something like, the DM has the power to make the next adventure a heist, but the players have the power to make the theme song the Pink panther, mission impossible or the benny hill theme.
@@mindlessmeat4055 *Or an unholy combination of the three*
(Which I guess could turn out as an awesome adventure...?)
This is very true. I've been trying out Baldur's Gate 3, and I was really taken aback by how their Forgotten Realms are so grim and bloody, whereas mine are more fantastical and full of wonder. It really hampers my ability to enjoy the game.
on people reading in to Lord Of The Rings themes that he didn't intend to write: "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" - J. R. R. Tolkien
odd thing: William Shatner insisting that Star Trek The Original Series was not political
Ya that will always baffle me. It's star trek. Pretty much every episode has some form of polital commentary.
the episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield with the guys who are pitch black on one side and pure white on the other side, being racist towards the guy who was the same only mirrored, couldn't have been less subtle in its message. Shatner and Nichelle Nichols had an episode where they were being forced to kiss and the censors were trying to get them to do it in a way that would be okay with racist folk from the Deep South as interracial kissing hadn't really happened on TV at that point, and Shatner and Nichols deliberately messed up any take that didn't show them actually touching lips as a screw you to racists. How Shatner can turn around now and say "Star Trek wasn't political" is absolutely mindboggling
It's ironic that people interrupt the author to say that Fahrenheit 451 is about censorship when they're in effect censoring the author's words right then and there.
Also, a work can be about more than one thing. Both readings make sense and I think the themes involved can be meaningfully linked with one another.
I saw an interview with Mark Hamill, and he was asked if Luke was gay. And he said something along the lines “I didn’t play him as gay but if you see him that way and get something from that, then he’s gay”
Got to love the lack of self awareness of when presented with the interpretation that it's mass media suppresses ones ability to critically think that the first response is, nuh uh, I was told it was about censorship... When you unwittingly become the target of the book as opposed to the target audience.
One of my favourite movie franchises, is lethal weapon. I recent came to the realisation that the reason i like it so much, is because to me the films chart someone's recovery from depression. Riggs starts off angry, suicidal and emotionally numb. Throughout the films, he becomes lighter and more caring to the point where he realises he has a new family, and then eventually starts a new family of his own.
I’ve heard of death of the author buts it’s just ridiculous to tell the person they’re wrong about the novel they wrote.
I think what you meant with your comment is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I truly am for the infinite interpretation of art, I do believe that art can be both studied and enjoyed as a reflection of the author, thus analysing its original meaning, or as a contextless piece where every interpretation is equally valid and even the author itself becomes a spectator and has no power.
So I am generally very familiar with the concept of Death of the Author, especially since it's there to prevent an author from changing the themes of their art by way of just... changing their mind later in life and retroactively warping their art (or even more generally inserting themes after or somethhing like that in art after its completion)
But overall, the idea saying "No, you're wrong", death of the author aside, to the author is just plain disrespectful. Not necessarily ridiculous, just absurdely disrespectful
My counterpoint to this would be the guy who created God of Wars TH-cam channel
@@nuredingeziqi679 your right you don’t have the agree with the authors take on their work but it’s disrespectful to say they’re wrong about it.
Having done whistleblowing for over a decade, the amount of people that are TOO dense to just... get ANYTHING, still baffle me.
Like, they LITERALLY stand there all "I don't get it..." or "... What do you mean?".
I can't even count the number of times people pull the equivalent of "You're just being a horrible person for ASSUMING that Dr. Evil is a bad person!".
The power of stupidity and echo chambers are immense.
My fave is Lord of the Flies. In 1973 I pissed off our English Lit teacher when I pointed out that the book could not happen as written. Piggy is nearsighted. Therefore, his glasses are concave and cannot start a fire. He was not happy when the 4.0 teacher's pet in the class yelled, "He's right!" Don't try to tell someone with 20/400 vision that his glasses can start a fire. Sorry, I've been wearing them since 3rd grade. I kinda know what my lenses can and cannot do.
Can't you just flip them ?
@Popirnot I'm pretty sure you're right. People think they're smart sometimes but they aren't actually very clever
@@TimothyLafreniere I'm pretty sure that you don't understand what "concave" means. Turning the lenses over doesn't change their inherent concave properties. Anyone with glasses will be the first to know that through simply looking through their glasses from the "wrong" direction. Does it make the resulting image slightly distorted? Yes. Does it still focus the light in such a way that it still makes the image clear enough to read? Yes.
You would need a CONVEX lens in order to focus light enough to start a fire. Turning the lens around doesn't turn a concave lens into a convex lens.
For someone saying "people think they're smart sometimes but they aren't actually very clever", you have a clear ignorance over how lenses work.
@@Popirnot No. The lens is still a concave lens. There is a lot more to making a convex lens than just flipping a concave lens around.
About Potter. The text of the first book is literally the main character stepping out of the Closet into a world of magic.
Harry potter is just Star Wars with lame lightsabers
@@matts1166 Yes, that's the Hero's Journey Archetype. Everyone from Aristotle to Shakespeare to J.R.R. Tolkien
My favorite part of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy’s wife spending all her time in the 3 walled tv room and mentioning how disappointed she is that they can’t afford the fourth wall. I think of it every time I see a bigger flat screen television
Bit on the nose.
@@1IGG And yet it seems to fly over some people's heads.
They can't afford it because if they did they'd have to replace it all the time
I read Fahrenheit and 1984 back to back originally and I think it's really interesting how both author's different backgrounds really show in their writing given the novels' similar concepts.
Personally I think "Brave New World" by Huxley is winning, you need to round out the trifecta by reading that. Not an original thought, Neil Postman wrote a book called "Amusing ourselves to death" 30-odd years ago. After reading that Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) put out an album called "Amused to death" a few years later.
As an aside, Postman manages to be an even bigger wanker than Rogers.
@@j.f.christ8421 I will, I've actually not heard of that one, at least in the context of the other two. Thank you!
@@blazemgb11 Huxley is closer to Bradbury in saying "Who needs books when you've got TH-cam & TikTok". Where Orwell takes away (while saying he isn't), Huxley says "give them everything they want". Or think they want, so long as they don't get uppity. And even if they do, well, they're free to leave. A perfect society where everyone is happy.
The world seems to be mostly Huxley & 451 while adding bits of 1984 because we're not paying attention and don't care anyway.
People insist that "Idiocracy" is pro-eugenics when it is actually just about not being passive and lazy and essentially just uses a eugenics as a really dumb plot device.
Walter white from Breaking bad and fight club's Tyler being good strong guys, they're meant to be the bad guys lads
I’d argue Rick from Rick and Morty also fits in this category. And it’s always a certain type of person who misses the very obvious point that these people are terrible
My favorite recent interpretation is for the movie 300. The film we see is not the actual event but is the one character's story about it as if we are around the camp fire.
It's literally in the movie. Nothing new about it.
@@1IGG He says "recent" because it was made in the past couple decades or so, smh.
It's almost like his book wasn't wrong 😂the media made people unable to consume his information
While there is a certain level of Dunning Krueger to an undergraduate correcting an author about the subject of his own book, I do remember that the text of the story (not even the subtext) explicitly supports the censorship reading, while the dumbing of media reading is more subtle. The fireman Beatty specifically mentions that books are burned to prevent people from reading the contents and being made to feel superior or inferior to others. I do question the apparent stance of Bradbury that he never intended the book to be about censorship even if in conjunction to his views on media at the time... and I really wish Bradbury was alive today to ask him directly and the interpretations of his book anymore.
You can tell someone you don't agree with their interpretation (even the author) but you can't tell them they're wrong lol. That being said, some authors claim "I never meant that" which is as fair as a consumer saying "that's not what I took from it".
It's always fascinating to see critical analysis that shines a light on things you didn't pick up on or consider but it's also fascinating to see critical analysis that portrays a piece of media in a way you completely disagree with.
There are few interpretations of media that are just flat-out wrong, and most of those seem to boil down to a misunderstanding. My favorite to this day is the Silent Hill 4 Circumcision Theory which, long story short, tried to claim that the main villain was made an insane serial killer specifically because he was circumcised. Now, I know circumcision is a touchy subject and I won't dip my toes into it here, but it seems to me that the entire theory is based on this one person mistaking an umbilical cord (a key item in the final boss stage) for a foreskin.
I enjoy media that’s uncomplicated, easy to understand, and has no deeper satire going on; which is why I’m such a fan of warhammer 40k
That’s the one where the humans are the good guys and have no concerning behaviors or beliefs, right?
Ppl have been saying One Piece isnt political when in the single digit chapters one of the 1st things that happens is that the Marines and concept of a WORLD GOVERNMENT is corrupt & dystopian since they only hold up the "law" instead of protecting citizens to the point that even those with good intentions are disposable if they dont obey absolutely
I didn't read Fahrenheit 451 until I was in my 30s. All that I really knew was from the cultural zeitgeist that it's about censorship. So I went in to it expecting the government or the church or some other ruling body that was trying to suppress ideas and concepts to make the population compliant, obedient, and stupid (turns out, that's the plot of 1984).
I was not expecting a story about a nation of people who were so wrapped up in soap operas and sitcoms that they didn't want more out of life. It's about kids growing up like wolves, racing cars and committing violence because there are no parents or other concerned adults teaching them to behave. It's a world where burning books is a public service because people are afraid of being exposed to things that are too big to bear without having to grow and change.
Since the censorship in Fahrenheit 451 was a kind I had never considered before, it allowed me to see it in a different way, which I think is close to Bradbury's original intent: The consequences of living a life with too much screen time and too little mental stimulation and exercise.
"I'm glad that it's confined to fiction" as an American....😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 one of your best jokes EVER.
To be fair to these unintended interpretations... I do some creative writing myself, and sometimes I make a choice to add in a seemingly unimportant detail, or a very specific wording, or something innocuous, and I don't realize what I have done, and why it was *incredibly important,* until pages later, or until a friend points it out.
I like coincidence as well!
There's coincidence, and then there's finding a small detail you added in the beginning of a scene that you realize reinforces the entire underlying theme of the scene, and you realize you need to rewrite the climax to fire that Chekov's Gun that your subconscious placed days ago.
To be fair most of harry potter was taken from the worst witch almost wholesale. Which is probably why she disagrees with much of the interpretation of concepts in works
If the earth was flat, cats would have pushed everything over the edge by now.
This is something that's become annoying to me. People don't want to discuss things, or if a discussion starts, they don't like when you take a point opposite theirs.
It depends on the topic at hand really. If you're pro hating other human beings for one reason or another, I'm not going to get into a discussion about that with you. I think your scum and there is nothing I can say to you that will convince you and nothing you can say to me that won't just disgust me. It's a pointless endeavor.
If it's just a media discussion though? Sure, have at it. Let's go ham, it's fun.
There are no discussions anymore, just arguments to win. It's sad, really, because discussions are an exchange of ideas that makes everyone think, whereas arguments are just shouting matches regurgitating talking points and factoids until the other guy shuts up.
@@nontrashfire2 I could be wrong. I haven't been in an actual academic setting for years, so maybe I'm overreacting, but it's based on my personal experience (primarily in online forums, which admittedly aren't the bastions of intelligent discussion some might like them to be).
As an English major with a concentration on creative writing, I would frequently get a chuckle about other people's interpretations of my stories.
One of my favorite media interpretations is from the channel Rhino Stew. The theory goes that Snowpiercer is a Willy Wonka sequel. It is pretty silly and I doubt that it was intentional but it works on a number of levels.
"A completely fictional united states where they burn books" the dictionary was added to a state's statewide book ban recently. I'm so tired dude.
I also remember the story of the girl on Mars. On the one day the flowers bloom.
She is locked in a closet
"All summer in a day" although I don't remember flowers, the children were very ashamed once they realized what they'd done to her. It was the one day in many years that it would stop raining and the sun would, briefly, appear. The poor child was locked away, forgotten, while her schoolmates reveled in the warm, bright sun.
Bradbury has a way of reminding us of the importance of little things.
Venus, but close enough for government work. All the kids were native and so had never seen the Sun, bar that girl who only arrived from Earth a few years back and didn't care much for the local weather. You only get one sunny day every seven years, so she'll be in her teens before she has the chance to see it again.
I've read that story. The girls name is Margot, and the school is on Venus, not Mars.
So, reading the Wikipedia section on the themes is a trip. Perhaps I was biased by this video, but as they were pointing out, it starts out with a confident assertion that the theme is censorship, and then discusses how Bradbury thought differently (though it's arguable that this is a chronological ordering rather than an importance ordering). But that's not the most interesting part to me.
Reading Bradbury's quotes over time, it looks like he becomes more and more of the stereotype of an old man shaking his fist at the younger generations for being on their devices and 'woke' (or his contemporary phrasing as PC) because he misunderstands the points of what was being discouraged...
One of his TV shows was filmed at my work back in the 80s, I work at a historic house and stumbled across the behind the scenes photos that a previous coworker took, someone always has to supervise filming crews to make sure the house and it’s contents are safe so they got a chance to be up close and personal with all the goings on
People's political opinions don't always stay the same throughout their lives, and sometimes creators will try to reframe their earlier work to fit their new outlook. I don't really know if that applies to Ray Bradbury, but it's well known that he was quite progressive earlier in his career, but became very crotchety and conservative later. It is actually possible that he chose to stress different themes within Fahrenheit 451 as he grew older. As obnoxious as the students at his lecture were, it's still pretty weird to get angry over the fact that people thought his novel about literal book-burning was about censorship.
Rowling is actually another example of this- when she wrote the Harry Potter books she definitely portrayed herself as a progressive, and the progressive ideas in them are most likely 100% intentional. It was only later that she caught transphobic brainrot off of Twitter and started palling around with fascist goons just because they shared her weird obsession.
I really like that a book that talks about people being unable to read deeper into the text is perpetually misunderstood.
Appropriate suggestion for me in the end because SOOO many people will argue Captain America punching H1t13r (censored because I don’t know the details on how TH-cam demonizes videos and don’t want to get FF in trouble) wasn’t a political statement. Like he was literally punching a world leader, and one we weren’t even at war with yet.
For the record, a comment won't get a video demonetized, But your comment will get all the medically flagged and deleted for talking about stuff that is censored. I'm not sure if his name is censored but most words related to him are.
I'm a newer subscriber of this channel(found you when you took the aerodynamically advantaged hosts spot) but Ive watched 75% of all your videos and I miss the green screen mashup.. love you small wood
Edit: I also enjoy most wiki weekends. I listen to it at work and it is the ONLY superhero content I can listen to. Tangents are amazing
in my opinion the authors intention clearly defines the true meaning of a book, regardless or what your interpretation of it would be or what you want to take away from it. But i also remember my teacher telling me that my interpretation of a book/character was wrong because "nobody else interpreted in that way before, so it cannot be right", while one guy at the other side of the room had the same interpretation. I didnt get a perfect score but still a good grade
You get an A+ in my book, my friend👏🏾
So It's a race whoever interpreted it first set it in stone and nobody can diverge from it?
This is only tangential to the opening of the video, but the MGS brainrot I have compels me to say it. George Sears/Solidus Snake, the final boss of Metal Gear Solid 2, fights Raiden using two swords named the Democrat Blade and Republican Blade. Metal Gear Solid 1 references SALT I and II and denuclearization as plot points. One of Big Boss's primary motives throughout the series is that he's sick of soldier's lives being thrown away for money. That series couldn't be any more overtly political if it came to life and ran for public office.
The first 10 minutes are basically the perfect discussion on the analysis and interpretation of art and media to me.
I feel like far too often that conversation is boiled down to nothing.
Damn, this is satisfying
There are a couple of great quotes from George Carlin (rest his soul).
1: "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."
2: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that."
3: "If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to have selfish, ignorant leaders."
Lol "There is no war in Ba Sing Se.. Here you are safe... Here, you are free.."
Ray Bradbury is synonymous with more than F451. The Martian Chronicles, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, I Sing the Body Electric, Ray Bradbury Theater, etc...
Im Surpised there isn’t a Fact Fiend Bingo card for each fact fiend video. One square is Karl talking about Metal Gear Rising. Another I think be fun is Karl saying nearby blank or far away blank.
Love any more suggestions to fill out the card
Karl quoting himself
Karl saying "bringing it back to"
90s video games Square, specifically Nintendo or just a Nintendo square
One square for tea, one for alcohol, one for unknown
One for bonely or mentions thereof
I can think of more but have a splitting headache and just drank a almost .5g of methadone
I know lots of bits of lots of things, but the way I continue to learn new interesting things is by starting with the assumption that I'm a layman about pretty much everything but my own personal experiences. If you can maintain the mindset that you only know bits it's so much easier to get new bits to fit in and not bounce off your assumptions.
Starship Troopers. Discuss.
Three words guaranteed to start a debate among political science students, would you like to know more.
Book or movie? They were very different. Pretty certain Heinlein thought the political system in the book was good, after reading his other works. The Day after tomorrow was outright racist.
the stated goal of Henson when making sesame street was to serve under served communities
Tolken in an interview in the 50s being told by the interviewer that the one ring represents the A bomb. Which he refuted, reminding them that he wrote it before the bomb existed
Make Haste To Write does explain his prose and way of writing, and it's a bit of a shame that most people don't read his short stories. Bradbury would go about his daily life and just spot things, before extrapolating out to a logical end, and writing a short story about each small part, his thought processes, then re-compiles them back in a compilation.
And once you know he's doing it, then F451 breaks down in to short, analytic stories, sharing a main character, compiled in to a greater novel. To analyse the book as being about censorship is to focus down about one or two short stories, rather than reading all of Bradbury's short stories which make it up.
I had a similar experience when doing a book report on Lord Of The Flies in college. I became so fascinated with vast differences between the common interpretations and the authors intent, along the authors arguments ageist those interpretations, that was what my paper became about.
One of my favorite things that I took away from Fahrenheit 451, is realizing that the earbuds I use to listen to videos so I can fall asleep, are basically the book’s equivalent to Seashells.
On a similar note, Your quote reminded me of a similar one by David lee Roth. I know, weird but he once said “all art is autobiographical, especially when it isn’t intended to be” and I always found that to be an interesting lens to look at things thru.
Ray Bradbury was one of the most creative writers in fantasy fiction, with a rare ability to depict emotion in strange worlds. He was also a dedicated teacher of how to write, with books and talks all on that subject. 451F featured picture rooms, rooms with electronic on the walls dumbing down the inhabitants. So, Ray was correct about the theme of his own book, except that stories can usually have more than one theme.
According to the writer and director of the starwars series the empire were NAZIs and they were absolutely intended for the audience to hate. The funny part of this is that there are people who glorify both now which is horrible.
I can't speak for the real life group, That is horrible and worthy of condemnation. But for the fictional one, I don't think most people actually support the Empire. It's mostly just we think they look really cool, and love to play as or run them in games. Like I play the Empire and basically every Star Wars game. They look awesome. Just that mean I really want to be under the thumb of an oppressive, fascist, xenophobic, regime? No. Of course not.
And I imagine if you genuinely ask people about that they would say no.
@TheLordofMetroids Something to consider is that about the empire is it was a very easy way to point out the absolute evil of the nazis and what they did. I understand why people can think hey this is really cool technology and all but they were extremely evil and they almost destroyed the world. I don't claim to know everything only that it is what he said. I also know that there is a lot of turmoil in the united states and other countries that unfortunately has caused the world to view the good guys as the bad and the bad as the good. I don't claim that they are perfect people only that they are better than many of the bad people who want to watch the world burn.
Thanks for your time and perspective.
it baffles me that people are now saying that its ok to strip the meaning of a piece of media to purley make it "entertainment"
i see this a lot with the facisim of the Empire in Star Wars and the anti-capitalist nature of Squid Game
The thing that gets to me with a lot of these sort of anti-intellectual "I don't want discussion, I want to tell you why I'm right, and for you to just accept my ultimate authority despite a complete lack of qualification, logic, or nuanced thought supporting my position" people, is the "too long, didn't read" culture that they've spawned. Where people will completely dismiss a comment because they were too lazy to read what you have to say, and then somehow that supports their assertion that they are right and you are wrong because what they have to say is inherently valuable, and what you have to say was never of value.
But, like, if I am disagreeing with your points, I effectively need to use at least three times as many sentences to fully lay out my argument. One sentence is needed to say *what* I think is wrong, a second sentence is needed to assert *why* I think it is wrong, and a third sentence is needed to assert what I think is right instead. Sometimes you require additional sentences to provide supporting arguments, or to pre-empt expected objections. And you need to do this for every single point you wish to disagree with, if you wish to present a fully formed and complete argument. So, naturally, as an argument progresses, and as more and more points get dissected and countered, comments will get progressively longer and longer over time. And, assuming the other party is not arguing in good faith, you will eventually reach a point where somebody says "I'm not going to read all that, but you're still wrong and here's why". It makes it clear that for them it was never about the argument, their responses never had anything to do with what you actually had to say on the subject, they just wanted to "win" and tell someone they view as lesser about how superior they are with their interpretation that makes them so clever. These people view the moment your response cannot hold their attention any further as the moment they have "won" because clearly if what you had to say wasn't worth it for them to read, clearly nothing of value could have been communicated.
It's especially frustrating when somebody who I was never talking to, just some random person who stumbled upon my comment in the void of the internet, has the absolute, unmitigated GALL to say "I'm not reading all of that" in response to a thoughtful and well reasoned comment. Like, not everything is about you, not everything is for you. If you lack the attention span to read a longer comment, you are OBVIOUSLY not the intended audience, especially when it was not made in reply to anything you said. Nobody asked you to read it, nobody asked you for commentary, you are simply being hurtful for literally no reason because you are telling someone that something they put time and effort into writing and posting has no value because you have the attention span of a gold fish and that somehow means you have value while they don't.
In either of these cases, if you cannot be bothered to read, don't fucking respond. It's genuinely that simple, and yet somehow the internet at large views the people who put in the effort to form well reasoned and complete arguments are the ones who are rude because it's a "wall of text", and the people who tell them as much are heroes for it. It doesn't get much more anti-intellectual than "I can't be bothered to read what you have to say, therefore I am right since I haven't read anything that proves me wrong, and because you are clearly disagreeing with me, you are clearly wrong based on the same logic". It's literally justifying a position with willful ignorance and a refusal to actually think. And people like that think what they have to say has value.
I love the fan theories where it’s good things and not dark. Like that Game of Thrones is actually a D&D campaign, or that Pudge in Lilo and Stitch is the spirit of Moana
I love Fact Fiend videos, because I not only learn about interesting and unusual topics, but also about myself as a person. Mr.Smallwood has allowed me to see something beyond just a funny youtube video, and it has allowed me to change for the better. Thank you.
My main issue with the Scott Pilgrim movie is the story is very rushed. It’s basically adapting 6 books into an hour and a half long movie. In the books, the story takes place over the course of several months, whereas the events in the movie take place over the course of roughly a week. I do still like the movie, just not as much as the books.
Wolf researcher David Mech has been trying since the 80s to get people to listen to him that his first book is crap and Alpha theory is not actually seen in wild wolves. The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species - published in 1970 the author finally got the book out of print in 2022 after many years of additional research which disproved the Alpha Wolf Theory. Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation - published in 2003 much more accurate.
At the end of the day, even solipsist's look both ways before crossing the street.
The protagonist of reality would make an amazing band name
I remember my 8th grade teacher showing my class the Fahrenheit 451 film after finishing the book, and us all laughing at the hilariously bad scene with the jetpacks (that weren’t even in the book).
I think there’s something to be said for when a large part of an audience insists the meaning of a piece of media is different than what the author intended.
And yeah F451 is stereotyped as “the book about censorship”, which is probably due a large amount of laziness on the readers, but if your audience all comes to the same conclusion, how do you address that?
I know you guys aren't big on talking about Warhammer 40k, but something that so many people (specifically right wingers) miss the point of is that the imperium of man aren't the good guys of the story or at least ones you shouldn't be rooting just because they're the human faction. In fact, I feel under this curse as well and call things I thought as cringe heresy like a moron. Another example of a similar case would be starship troopers.
And don't even get me started on the "objective art critic" frauds either when it comes to "the correct" interpretations in media.
Also a little side note, I'm quite certain the Rambo 3 ending about the change was an urban legend that spread about online, that being said, the concept of the "enemy" depicted in media by their appearance or personality is a bigoted problem as old as time that unfortunately will never improve anytime soon.
The biggest issue with Death of the Author as a concept is that they settled on "Death of the Author" as the phrase to describe it, since that immediately makes it an inherently author-hostile concept, when the intended use of the mindset was "the Author's interpretation of their own work is just one valid reading among many, and does not invalidate other readings simply because they're the author"
I heard about fahrenheit 451 on public radio, and the interviewer was talking about how funny the book was. I read over quarter of the book before I realized it might not be a comedy. Turns out the book they were talking about on the radio was catch-22.
When I was in high school, we were assigned to read a certain poem which I remember being called "Five Ways To Kill a Man". Each stanza was a different era's way to kill some one...one was something like 'bash his head in with a rock', one was 'put him on a horse with a pointy stick and send him down the isle at some one similarly dressed', but the fifth and final stanza was something like "The fifth way to kill a man is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle of the 21st century, and leave him there." This struck me as dark humor at its finest, a mocking commentary on the state of the 21st century as so terrible that leaving some one there was tantamount to murder. The rest of the class, including the teacher, insisted that I was wrong, and it was a very serious and sad poem with no funniness whatsoever, which at the time really annoyed me that even the teacher didn't see the dark humor.
I also wrote a poem of my own one time, fast paced and full of internal rhymes, with a dark theme. No deeper meaning, just stuff that rolled off the tongue. "Dark heart start your spark and see", that sort of thing. I got a bunch of amateur poetry critics online arguing with me that the 'transition' from the first half of the poem into the second half was too abrupt. I could not for the life of me get them to explain what transition, let along what 'halves' they were somehow seeing, considering all it was was a thematic word cloud.
One piece is still surprising me with what I find myself discovering when talking about it
I have this exact frustration with Beauty and the Beast. As a weird kid I thought it was the most romantic story ever. Imagine someone loving you for what's on the inside, for not judging you by society's expectations, and doing everything you can to protect that person... only for everyone to say "ew, you think a story about Stockholm syndrome and beastiality is romantic". DISAPPOINTED.
@Tirnel_S Yessss! Ariel didn't want a man, she wanted legs and then she said "well... while I'm here. " Its almost as if when you're living your truth , you find what you're looking for. None of our disney heroines were boy crazy. Any boy crazy characters in the Disney universe are looked down on: evil step sisters, that pink squirrel in Sword and the Stone. I love love, but its a bonus, it can't be your whole thing!
A more learned man than I, once said something to the effect: “if you know what the media is saying it is propaganda, art is trying to describe something we don’t yet understand.”
I think we are arguing around the term politics. Some people may mean partisan when they say politics.
This might be semantics, but 'Interpretation' of a story is, to me, personal and any one story can have a limitless number of Interpretations by any number of people, because to interpret is something 'you' do. It's your mind processing the data of a story. But the 'Message' I think is what the author wants it to be. As in "I made this book to push forward my Libertarian beliefs" could be a clear statement an author makes and, if treated as true, should be the percieved 'Message' from the author through the book, even if that is not how you interpretated it. Because a message is something made by the messenger. Even if the message is made poorly or is, in itself, garbage.
I consider this as real life copying fiction. In the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to School, he played a wealthy man who decided to enroll in college in his fifties. For his literature class, he hired Kurt Vonnegut to write a paper about Vonnegut. The literature professor gave him a failing grade because the paper shows he, “didn’t know the first thing about Vonnegut.”
Bradbury was wrong? Rugrats are dead? Karl is vampire? What is real?
My favorite is that one person that takes a semester of Religious Studies and they start correcting people when they say "oh my god" to 'oh my gods'
I seem to remember Bob Dylan, when asked about the meaning of one of his songs, said he no longer felt qualified to define any of his songs, as other people seemed to understand them better than he ever could.
Fact Fiend isn’t political, there’s no evidence that Karl has ever talked about anything of the sort. Karl totally is super apolitical, I’m right because I think I’m right.
3:49 is so much more true with the last season. The fact people are finally getting it after 5 seasons but are not accusing the showrunners of "going woke" because they think "they changed Homelander to make fun of them." is getting more and more funny.
Saying Mario isn't political clearly never paid attention to the communist symbolism with the flagpole. You're tearing down a peace sign flag and raising a flag with a red star. Not to mention, Mario looks like Stalin. Everything is political.
😂
What misunderstood media I like most is Star Ship Troopers the movie and is one I myself misunderstood for a long time. It is a satire, the thing is a fake propoganda/military recruiting film from a fascist future. As if we were all aliens and all we know about the earth was from watching Triumph of the Will. For years I thought it was an action movie that was oddly sympathetic to what appeared to be a fascist world government...turns out that was the joke.
There is an argument to be made that the action was too fun and invited misinterpreting the satire for an endorsement of the intended target of the satire. There are folks that think all satire flies too close to the sun as it is either ridiculously broad or subtle enough to invite the target of satire to take ownership of and champion it as an endorsement of their ideology. I can see it, I'm troubled by it, but I still enjoy Starship Troopers as a bizarre and singular piece of science fiction satire, a movie showing a fake recruiting movie from a fascist future.
Loved having everyone together for a fun vid
This is a regular issue within the godzilla fanbase, where some folk will argue that godzilla is and were never political, yet (barring a few movies in the early eras) most were made with a message in mind
... How can someone watch the original Godzilla and not see the political statements? How?
This is a discussion that shows why Florida is so scared of books right now. Oooohhh....the facts, SKAAWWWYYYY!
The difference between the author's and readers' interpretation of a work is the difference between reality and dreams.
The author's intent is the world as it truly is. The book is the interface through which the reader experiences the world. And the reader's interpretation is a new reality formed from the inherently incomplete information gleaned from the interface filtered through the reader's experiences and biases.
All dreams are valid, but we shouldn't put them ahead of the book itself when discussing it. Otherwise everyone just talks past each other without realizing it.
(ETA: The author's interpretation is the most valuable, but can be useless if their interface fails to communicate. A bad author can end up creating a book divorced from its own reality.)
I think writing anything that involves people will inherently have some sort of political element. Even if all your characters agreed and with each other that alone would be interpreted in a political way.
Exactly.
Thanks to the deeply messed up rules for analyzing works, the person who told him he was wrong can absolutely be considered right. I hate it, but I acknowledge it.
My favorite conspiracy theory is that Australia doesn't exist personally. They don't pay me enough to entertain that
I believe Orwell stated that he wrote 1984 as a way of showing how authoritarian control of language leads to control of thoughts, but then discovered that he'd proved the opposite. The hero in 1984 may not have precise words to describe what he feels, wants and thinks, but he still feels, wants and thinks those things.
Idk if it’s exactly the same but one of my favorite media discussions to have is the unironic use of “Fortunate Son” in war footage.
My favorite piece of media people misinterpret or insist doesn't have politics will always be Starship Troopers. It's so unsubtle about it's politics and what it's satirizing but you'll get people will get red in the face angry just insisting it's a rad action movie and not about anything.
Neil Patrick Harris literally wears an SS uniform.
The perspective of mass media dumbing the populace via making them read less is interesting. Because I partially agree and partially disagree.
Because I have seen both reactions in the wild. I have seen those that haven't read a book since school, and I have seen those that are spurred to read by the media they consume.
For instance, due to many anime ending on a cliffhanger I became an avid manga reader and have transitioned to pretty much only reading manga and not even watching anime. As well if it wasn't for the manga reading pursuit I wouldn't have gotten into a lot of classic fiction. To give an example by reading baki I became curious who doppo orochi was based on due to seeing a similar character in Keisuke Itagaki's stellar adaptation of Garouden. Upon doing some research I found these characters to be based on the real life Mas Oyama. Upon reading up on him as much as I could I found a bit about him isolating himself in the mountains to train for years, his only reading material being the book of the 5 rings by Miyamoto Musashi. From there I bought a copy myself and was witness to a kind of timeless wisdom, one that transcends eras and is applicable to nearly everyone.
This methodology is often my approach to things. I latch on to something currently popular in the zeitgeist, in this case it was the most violent prisoner arc of baki, and then I work my way backwards, finding all the building blocks which created the thing I love so that I can understand it more.
It is due to this that I have amassed a book collection nearly a thousand strong. About half is manga and half is philosophical writings. Writings from stoics such as Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, most of Jung's bibliography due to being inspired countless times by recorded talks from Alan Watts; to some very navel gazing fare but for me it's some of the few writings which articulate the way I have come to view the world.
So this is why I kind of have to redefine what Bradbury is hitting on. The age of mass media can lead to ostensibly brain rot, but only in those that weren't going to read anyways. Effectively these things make those that are already predisposed less intelligent while serving as an ample tool to those that are inquisitive.
The fact of the matter is, the majority of people are just trying to make it through day to day life, most are not on some journey to broaden their understanding because they don't care about the same things. I've learned this time and time again when trying to espouse the benefits of reading, or of certain movies or games. Many just don't want something that will make them think and question things, they want the entertainment equivalent of fireworks, something to be pretty and entertain them for the moment.
And really it's not even a matter of intelligence, so much as a matter of priority. Many are just much simpler in their priorities and there is nothing wrong with that so long as they are happy in the life they are leading.
There is a anecdote from Alan Watts which touches on this subject, he talks about being asked by a geneticist what the ideal traits in a human should be with the burgeoning gene editing technology. Watt's response boils down to "there should be a wide variety of different people, different hopes, ambitions, and dreams". This is the core aspect, wouldn't the world be much more boring if everyone agreed on what the best movie was? It is the fundamental conflict of it that gives it meaning, you feel it your duty to champion the things which you feel doesn't get the love it deserves.
In this vain books have entered a kind of sacred garden. Those of us that actually read have become a select few, and we get to bear witness to such magical worlds that most don't. Enjoy and revel in that, don't fret about what others are doing.
Yes, PLEASE keep doing these discussions. People are far too stupid and ignorant nowadays.
In the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" Tom Hanks, playing Charlie Wilson, learns the US is leaving Afghanistan after defeating the Soviets you can hear an airplane descending in the background. A director's nod to the 911 tragedy. They cut that part out in future showings.
Another example of media being interpreted in ways that weren't intended, Lilo & Stitch has been adopted by the autistic community and praised for its portrayal of Lilo, an autistic girl, and her struggles trying to grow up in a world she doesn't understand and which doesn't understand her. According to Chris Sanders, the co-director of the film, this was nowhere in their minds when they made the movie and something completely unintended. Though he has embraced the interpretation of the film and will even jokingly take pride in in the fact he made such a good movie about autism.
One of my favourite moments of flat earthers debunking themselves is when this guy went to do a test involving a light, but I don't remember who he was. the basic setup was that you would put a light in one location, and a point at which you could see it in another. If the light was held at chest level and visible, then the earth is flat, and if it's only visible when raised, then the earth is round. They perform this experiement, find out the earth is actually round, and you can watch their souls die when they realize they're wrong. It's hilarious.
My friend was studying poetry in highschool, in particular the works of poet Peter Skrzynecki who wrote a bunch detailing his experience as an immigrant child growing up in Australia after leaving Poland shortly after WWII. One poem about the voyage from his homeland to Australia has the lines "As we crossed the sea And looked at red banners". My friend's English teacher told her class how the red banners were a metaphor for Communism. My friend disagreed with that interpretation and the two had many heated debates about it.
Fast forward a few months when the class is attending some literary event with that poet as a guest. The teacher grabs my friend and marches up to Skrzynecki and says "Excuse me, Peter. I'm hoping you can settle a debate regarding Crossing the Red Sea..." Without waiting for further context he immediately shot back with "It's not communism. The red represents blood".
My mate was a smug arsehole as it was, but from then on whenever he disagreed with the teacher in class he'd quid "Remember how the red isn't Communism?"