#a lot of my frustrations with the kind of media/lit analysis you see online all spewed out at once

[bombshellsandbluebells]

there's a really fun intersection of ideas coming together to affect how people engage with fiction and stories right now and all of them are bad

any story that contains harmful/problematic subject matter supports and condones it, therefore it is always bad to have any kind of problematic or harmful subject matter in any story. also, the author probably does those things themselves if they're writing about it. so they must be an evil person

any story that has conflict is bad because conflict and bad things happening is upsetting and that means it's harmful and I can't handle that and so no story should ever have conflict or sad endings or upsetting things. yes, even when I'm going to genres that literally promise those kind of things happening. what do you mean people died in this post-apocalyptic show? what do you mean upsetting thing happened in this horror novel? inexcusable

every single story must cater to Me and My Wants and what the creator intended or even what other people can get out of it doesn't matter. it didn't give me what I wanted and therefore it is Bad

canon = only what is directly stated in a story, unusually only through dialogue. therefore if a character doesn't say something, it's not true. or if a theme or message or idea is not directly stated, it's not there. the only thing that matters in a work is easily stated plot points, the summary of events. and also the ship, of course. (subtext only really matters when it's about proving a ship is canon)

and it's leading to a point where the only kind of story some people can engage with are conflict-free, sanitized, shippy, fandom-style romances where everything is filled with cute tropes and nothing bad really happens and the couple gets together in the end and it's not interested in looking into any kind of deeper or more complex themes or questions

there's a serious problem with media/literature literacy right now - the ability to analyze a work for deeper meanings and draw conclusions not directly stated in the text or engage with it beyond shipping two characters together (and that's not solely the fault of fandom and shipping/fanfic culture) but then that is intersecting with this rising purity culture that wants to scrub any mention of something "impure" or "problematic" (defined, of course, subjectively) from art

so we have audiences who can't engage with dark subject matter and actually look at how the text uses them or what it's saying or why it's there (sometimes just because fiction is a reflection of the actual world we live in and those things happen) and instead just labels anything with dark subject matter "evil/problematic", anything that is sad or upsetting (to them personally) "bad writing", and wholeheartedly makes statements like "this horror novel is bad because it has dark subject matter" or "tv shows are supposed to always be happy, so it's bad that you the author wrote something sad"

and I don't know where I'm going with this other than being frustrated. I know that I'm in a different position when it comes to media than a lot of people in fandom spaces; I was an English Literature major with a minor in Film Studies and I work in film - I'm literally more trained to be able to analyze literature and media and I genuinely think there is a huge problem with how media/lit analysis is taught right now that leads to a lot of people having a warped understanding of it (my god, I have Thoughts on the whole "the curtains are blue" or "red = passion" type analysis)

but it is extremely frustrating as someone who doesn't even particularly like fluffy, happy, no conflict stories to see people argue that those are the only acceptable stories, or to see people be bold and entitled enough to tell creators what/how they should write (and I critique what I find bad writing all the time, I recognize that, but the criteria for bad writing should not be "made me sad" or "i didn't like it personally")

or to see people harassing horror authors for putting upsetting subject matter in their horror stories or going on moral crusades because a story had problematic things in it without even stopping to look at HOW those things existed in the work (like is it actually a work steeped in hateful rhetoric reflecting the author's harmful views or is the bad thing literally portrayed as a bad thing that happened in the work)

and that's not even stepping into the whole media/lit literacy issue of every single idea being spoon-fed to audiences now, of 50 "(Blank) Ending Explained" videos the minute any new show/movie comes out, regardless of whether those works are incredibly straightforward and you only need to watch the media to understand the ending (Ted Lasso Ending Explained?? Really?? not a subtle show) OR if those works are a lot more metaphorical/abstract and there actually ISN'T any direct explanation for what happened / what it means (discussing the ending of Annihilation should be a lot more about what the work is saying, what thought it leaves you with and why it ends there, not some kind of plot breakdown - a discussion, not a summary)

and perhaps this is a message to myself as well. a reminder to go back to engaging with deeper films and new novels and analyzing what I take from the work and a little less time just pulling ship/character details that would make for a good Tumblr post out of a story with a fandom following.

but it's also me going, please, please, please. for the love of god. accept that stories that have bad, upsetting things in them, that have sad or bittersweet endings, are valid and good and ok to have. we have had them since the start of humanity, because stories give us a way to explore those things.

and sometimes, stories also just give us a chance to go "wouldn't it be fucked up if" and that's okay too.

[jeparlelibremente]

Demian (Hesse)

“There was the world of my parents’ house, or rather, it was even more circumscribed and embraced only by my parents themselves. This world was familiar to me in almost every aspect - it meant mother and father, love and severity, model behaviour and school...”

“The other world, however, also began in the middle of our own house and was completely different; it smelt different, spoke a different language, made different claims and promises. This second world was peopled with servant girls and workmen, ghost stories and scandalous rumours, a gay tide of monstrous, intriguing, frightful, mysterious things; it included the slaughter house and the prison, drunken and scolding women, cows in labour, foundered horses, tales of housebreaking, murder and suicide...”

Spoiler alert for the book in question

The dichotomy of Hesse’s narrator runs through the novel with singular accuracy; we are reminded, again and again of these two worlds that exist only as his own creation - and this is important: the problem is philosophical, existential. Hesse virtually gives this up in the prologue chapter, at any rate - analysis and interpretation not even necessary. But it’s crucial to bear this in mind, because I wanted to talk about why this theme is recurring in Hesse’s work; his books are populated with narrators plagued by internal crisis, who endure an entire lifetime of misery before eventual catharsis and denouement. “Misery” here may imply some tone, but it would be hard to classify them as happy or unhappy, they seem to exist only to deliver a kind of weapons grade ideology of psychoanalytic reflection right into the mind of the reader. And I would be hard pressed to name another writer who can peel back the layers of the human psyche as easily as Hesse. The Nobel Prize in literature has at times been controversial, but few would doubt the place of Hesse in the pantheon of the Western Canon. How many authors have even remotely tried, successfully, to explain the meaning of life? Siddartha isn’t even parable or metaphor, synecdoche or analogy; it is the eponymous character embarking on a quest to determine the meaning of life. And just like Sinclair in Demian, the tale is driven by an existential thirst: something is wrong, this is not enough, there must be more. More what?

In 1930 Freud published Civilisation and Its Discontents and began to tackle a problem that must have taken root in his mind even as he formed the early theories of psychoanalysis: the drives of the id are fundamentally incompatible with the principles of a peaceful civilisation - how does the ego mediate between the id and the super-ego? It’s one of the most unfortunate paradoxes of our species that as math enables us to connect more broadly and more rapidly, many of us are losing the ability connect on any deeply intimate emotional level; we marry the wrong spouses out of anxiety of loneliness, we surround ourselves with acquaintances but struggle to make ourselves understood. We’re screaming in a vacuum and nobody can hear. We suffocate. We suffer needlessly. We turn to Tinder and see profiles of “ENTJ” replacing dialogue and passionate conversation. Don’t get me wrong; online dating profiles only give you so much resolution to work with, and you’re going to need to write something - but so few people seem ever able to progress beyond this point. They attach themselves to someone, anyone, simply because they are there. There may be little attraction, shared interests, chemistry, humour - but - as an object, an abstraction, an idea - this person will do. We have increasing divorce rates and more pictures of our kids and failed relationships on Facebook and Instagram then ever before. We didn’t even have Facebook and Instagram before. People reflexively marry in order to post the relevant pictures to the relevant social media sites and tick the relevant boxes. Then what? The prognosis is poor; misery begets misery, and our children are learning unconsciously to mimic this behaviour. Disaster. And who is to blame for all of this?

Everyone at some point in their lives has to kill their parents. Youthful teenage rebellion is a psychologically fulfilling necessity. You need to individuate - the truth is you’re going to be carrying a lot of baggage (negative connotation not necessarily implied) and you will need to take responsibility for this. Understanding oneself is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do - by the time we have the cognitive faculties to do so, our impulses and instincts, attachments and transferences are so keenly developed that un-rooting them takes considered effort - I know all too well how extremely difficult this process is. Putting your finger on some unconscious instinct is like trying to thread a needle in the dark. Exhausting. Sleep, repeat. People are who are treated really badly by their parents tend to develop problematical personalities; borderline personality disorder has only increased in diagnostic rate; and it is only a description of behaviour, not even a real diagnosis with somatic malfunction to point to! Narcissism is even worse: modern psychiatry has very little to say about our increasing divorce rates and failed relationships. Why, after five years of marriage do you want to stab your husband in the face when he laughs in just that particular way? Take solace: the problem is not your husband, the problem is you. Or perhaps the problem is both of you. Either way, this is not the person you were supposed to spend your life with. People say monogamy is unnatural, but in truth this is an intellectualisation with one goal: to avoid making any concrete decisions. If you don’t make a choice with consequences then what have you risked? And in the perverse interpretation of narcissism, what does your partner choice say about you? The alternative is to frantically pick someone, anyone, and run with it. If it doesn’t work out (it won’t) you can always un-friend them and un-tag all your photos together. It is this invisible fourth wall that is causing your frustrations. Your inability to meld to another persons well-being. I am not anti-social media, I am anti-you not understanding why you repeat the same patterns over and over in despair.

“I was glad my father upbraided me about my muddy shoes. It side-stepped the issue, the graver sin passed unnoticed and I got away with a reproach which I secretly transferred to the other affair. In so doing, a strange new feeling lit up inside me, an unpleasant, ruthless feeling, full of barbs - I felt superior to my father!”

Sinclair knows from the beginning that something is wrong; the opening passages of this essay are taken from Chapter Start. I feel like it’s low hanging-fruit to look at Sinclair’s remarks about his father and then look at Freud and back again; and besides, his mum tries to comfort him after the ordeal with Franz Komer begins, and Sinclair doesn’t really display any Oedipal tendencies -  his refusal to eat the chocolate she brings can be seen as a pattern of positioning himself to move away from his parents. Max Demians’ initial appearance is a convenient way to Deus Ex Machina dear old Franz out of the picture, but by this point it is already too late: Sinclair has tasted the forbidden fruit of knowledge (that Franz Kromer can so easily trick Sinclair should not be lost on the reader: Sinclair’s naivety shines through) Whoops. Also, this is... kind of the titular character. He wasn’t about to slink away. Sinclair and Demian hang out, they talk about stuff in a way that probably only Nietszche would find amusing. Sinclair is semi-infatuated, retreats back to the safety of his parents and sisters (take note that he has no brother, yet attends boys’ schools) and goes back to study. He learns about interpretation, and begins to think deeply about the character of a man. He sympathises with Cain, and not Abel. This is important: it is the first time his intellect has demonstrated the ability to abstract, it lets him reason with symbols: semiotics is the basis for metaphor. “You mean the mark isn’t a literal mark?” Demian says some edgy stuff with one common theme: be true to thyself.

Several years and puberty later, and cue boarding school. Sinclair is going out and getting wasted, his talk is cynical. He is deeply, deeply alone. He knows all the right moves to make socially, but he connects with no one. Grades are bad, and his old friends are trying to distance themselves from him. That’s ok, he’s made a lot of new ones - that he feels nothing for. Uh oh. For a book written in 1919, this is starting to look a lot like... us.

Part 2 soon.