What's something you used to like as a kid that you now, as an adult, realize had some pretty fucked up messaging?
What's something you used to like as a kid that you now, as an adult, realize had some pretty fucked up messaging?
For me it's Dragon Ball Z, that was a pretty fucked up show tbh.
Like holy shit, all the characters are terrible people except maybe Gohan and Trunks.
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Though I consumed many pieces of fiction mentioned here, and admit they made they problematic assumptions, I want to disagree with the general vibe that it is the job of fiction to be perfect and unproblematic in every way.
I can absolutely see how bad messaging could make you not enjoy it, and bad messaging is always worthy of criticism, but it doesn't inherently make any fiction objectively 'bad'.
Big Joel talked about this in a video about the Lion King. He went on for like 15-20 minutes about how messed up it is that the hyenas are portrayed as naturally evil, basically a plague of locusts that, if allowed into your territory, will turn it into a barren wasteland and how this is just how they are. How they're a horde of violent savages that must be kept out of lion territory, and the story validates this by showing that once Scar takes over and the hyenas are allowed in, it is indeed turned into a hellscape with no food left over for anyone.
And then he says "But here's the thing: The Lion King objectively slaps".
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It would be hard to make the claim though that Frank Herbert supported the gender politics in the Dune universe or was trying to message that this is how society should be. He clearly wrote about a world where everything is the worst possible version of what we have now, it would be out of place if their gender politics made sense.
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I don't agree with you take. Specifically the Bene Gesseriat in his fiction stated those plot points about men could only do this or that and were notably wrong about it. They then caused a mass genocide of trillions of people by accident. Siona was the ultimate being.
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The entire premise of the book is that it has unreliable narrators and human cognition is limited based on the frame of view. The first story is told from the point of view of Princess Irulan and not Herbert. In later books Leto II is able to find the golden path only because he has the cognition of all humans that came before him and is able to see problems from any point of view.
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I'm not trying to stop criticism of entertainment, that's a massive assumption.
If I've misread the vibe, that's okay, I could be wrong, it's just what I've felt. Apologies for any misunderstanding.
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The issue for me is that a lot of the media is targeted at kids, who do not view things critically or "in context". This "it has to be viewed in context" is one of the greatest cop-outs in my opinion, because it makes consuming entertainment media an academic exercise, which it won't be 99% of the time. People will defend Herge's comics for example as "a product of its time and it has to be viewed in this context" which is true on its surface, but then those comics are still found in the childrens comic book section at the library, because those are the only ones who are interested in them.
And it really is everywhere this messaging, and it's impossible to protect your child from it because it will be confronted with it by means of parents who don't inspect the media their kids consumes as critically. Or maybe they're even onboard with the cute messaging of paw patrol or whatever.
If a piece of media addresses problematic themes (via fiction or other) it must be in an age-appropriate manner than sets it in context itself and shouldn't require secondary literature to understand the background.
Also I hate watching childhood shows and having the memory of them marred by realising the fascist messaging in them.
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"to be perfect and unproblematic in any way."
This is what I demand of the food I feed my kid, and I don't see why I should demand less from the media they get to consume either.
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I cant tell if you're joking because those legitimately are the only two options for baby food in the innovative free market. I'm so glad my wife is such a creative and talented cook because our situation would be dire otherwise.
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also the baby paste is also likely to randonly have lead in it.
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