#critical consumption

[witikli]

i know no one cares but im just gonna put it out there that i fully support and encourage critical consumption of harmful/problematic media. we cant just ignore it. talk about it, talk about how it could be better. or people will keep making harmful media. you’re allowed to enjoy harmful media without supporting the creator. pirate that shit.

[mysticdragon3md3]

Why We Love To Hate Wish by Calxiyn Cares Too Much

[craft2eu]

CRITICAL CONSUMPTION: Wien bis 08.09.2024

Ständig neue Trends, Textilriesen, die jährlich Dutzende neue Kollektionen unter prekären Produktionsbedingungen auf den Markt bringen, geschredderte Neuware internationaler Luxuslabels und die Zerstörung von Ökosystemen durch textile Müllberge: Die Mode(industrie) steht im Hinblick auf Konsumverhalten, Herstellungsprozesse und Nachhaltigkeit zunehmend im Fokus. Tenant of Culture, To Be Titled,…

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Market based mistakes.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[whereserpentswalk]

You couldn't make star wars today because they'd claim that destroying the death star would make them as bad as the empire and the real villains would be revealed to be rebels who went too far.

[sapphiresaphics]

Arcane is an excellent litmus test for your media literacy. Not even joking.

Like I love Arcane, but it is NOT subtle. My favorite example of this is when Ambessa enters into Caitlyn’s room in Season 2 Episode 4. Maddie has been talking Caitlyn down and trying to convince her to call off the martial law and reestablish the council. Ambessa needs HexTech and she needs Caitlyn to get her someone who knows how to use HexTech. So she LITERALLY walks over to the fireplace and begins stoking the embers. She’s LITERALLY stoking Caitlyn’s rage and anger. It’s MASTERFUL storytelling and visual framing. Chefs kiss 🤌 10 outta 10!

You can call Arcane a lot of things… But SUTBLE? No… it is assuredly NOT subtle.

Which is why it’s hilarious to me when I see all these REALLY BAD TAKES from people who are confused or angry at the actions of characters or who really cannot comprehend why a character would do this or that. Which indicates to me that they are either not paying attention, or they’re really bad at understanding how shot composition, framing, dialogue, subtext, and everything else that goes into making media WORKS.

Vi is desperately trying to tell herself that Jinx is dead so that killing her wont hurt at much. You can tell this from the cracks in her voice acting, the way she can’t look people in the eyes when she says it, the way she can’t look at the bullet flying at Jinx, the way she IMMEDIATELY stops the second a kid gets in the way and doesn’t try to take the kid off. Like the framing, the line reads, her actions… it’s ALL telling you that when she says “my sister is dead” she is LYING TO HERSELF. It is NOT TRUE.

And then you’ve got people going on Twitter and Reddit and tumblr freaking out about “how could Vi forgive Jinx so easily? This writing is so inconsistent! Can’t they just stay focused? Why is it all so ham fisted? The plot makes no sense!”

And I’m just here like…. Are you fucking SERIOUS? Are we watching the same show? Are you guys really just this STUPID???

I love Arcane. The story is amazing. The characters are complex. The visual shorthand and framing is exquisite. The montages and animation are unparalleled. The story is nuanced and complex while being accessible to everyone, even people who’ve never played League of Legends before.

But subtle?

No. This show takes its message and beats you over the head with it like a BRICK.

How are people missing this stuff?

Are we that far gone as a people?

Are people today just not savvy at all when it comes to the media they consume?

Are people just this DENSE that they can’t read SUBTEXT?

[captainsparklefingers]

I bet Brennan Lee Mulligan is jealous of Nana Morri for having a second tummy face.

I'm sure this observation has been made already, but hey, never a bad time to bring it up again.

[shuunnico]

"I don't want to criticize Rings of Power too hard because it has "enemies to lovers" in it and I love that."

An actual sentiment I saw.

Get better standards. Please.

The inclusion of a trope/idea/etc you like does not make something good, nor worthy of your defense. Praise good media for being well written, criticize poorly written media.

This is why so much stuff is poorly written now. Because all it takes is for a trope to be used, a character archetype to exist or the inclusion of a basic idea (a reference, a character you find hot or relatable, etc) for people to praise it.

You love strawberries? Stop eating dog food and praising it because someone put a rotten strawberry on top.

Find and eat a strawberry shortcake, made with skill, care and quality ingredients. There, the strawberries are used to enhance every other quality of the cake.

Because nobody is going to be wasting their time, effort and money making strawberry shortcake if you'll pay for and eat dog food.

[detroit-become-moomin]

Howdy y’all, my essay on the abject is finally out! It discusses a number of issues, including purity legislation, self-advocacy in media consumption, and how we interface with dark/ugly topics in art and literature. It also delves into the issues surrounding HB900, Greg Abbott’s (failed) censorship law. It’s free to peruse, no paywall, so consider giving it a read if interested.

READ HERE

RT HERE (really helps!)

[angel-archivist]

If you think that’s what a trans woman looks like you are transphobic and also an asshole. I don’t like you. I don’t like what you stand for.

Listen guys I know they didn’t make all longlegs fans surrender their critical thinking skills when they walked into the theater so whats with this behavior on tumblr.

Im saying longlegs reminds me of the history of transphobic horror that has played a huge role in the villainizing of trans people and how its effects are still found today in modern horror whether its implicit of explicit. But im glad you believe and trust the cis actor who used a derogatory word for intersex people when describing the character and the cis writer who based the movie heavily on silence of the lambs over other trans people. Personally I usually like to hold off on parasocial relationships with men in positions of power but you do you!

[ruelpsen]

It's disappointing seeing people continue to choose to get food for stuffings from places on BDS boycott lists (McD's being the most common one I've seen) but man, despite my disappointment I'm not surprised I keep seeing it. Some of y'all still can't boycott Chik-Fil-A and we've known about their shady homophobic shit for YEARS.

[palmtreepalmtree]

This is a really clarifying take on what happened with Sports Illustrated:

And look, things change. Cultural institutions evolve, fade, die out. Not every magazine needs to exist forever. But it is a bummer when an otherwise popular, viable, even beloved cultural institution is killed off — while there’s a team that’s working overtime at the helm that wants to keep the lights on — because a Wall Street firm or an adventuring licensing company can increase earnings at the margins by cutting out its heart.

The tragedy of AI is not that it stands to replace good journalists but that it takes every gross, callous move made by management to degrade the production of content — and promises to accelerate it.

Back when I worked at a talent agency in Hollywood, we represented a lot of journalists from what were then A-list publications because their feature writing was so vivid and immersive their work would regularly become the basis of screenplays. There would be bidding wars over the rights to the articles.

My boss would toss a copy of SI to me and tell me to read a flagged article and tell him if I thought it would make a good movie.

Those stories were so incredibly good, it was the highlight of my day.

That level of writing is still out there - I know it is - but once we started to think of it as 'content' instead of journalism or writing, and we raised an entire generation to expect that this kind of artistry and work should be available to them online for free in exchange for their clicks alone, we really, really lost something.

Anyhow, that's my soapbox.

[hilacopter]

no babe you can form your own opinions you've just learned to automatically check what other people think and form them in accordance in fear of having the "wrong" ones and have hindered your own critical thinking as a result

[riverssongs13]

I was recently in a discussion about books and consuming literature and how it's generally an individual experience. I posited to the person that intellectualising and consuming books is an isolating activity for me (especially for the past few years) because I no longer have the same peers/group of people whom I could discuss and digest books with, and that I realised one of the main reason why I stopped reading books is the said lack of people to read books with.

They then launched into a tirade of explaining how they never realised me, as an "elitist" English major, would need to "consume books with others" because all their life their book reading experience has been individualistic and never supplemented with discussions afterwards with other people. There was never a sit-down kind of discussion on how they found the book, what lessons they got from it, how did the book make them feel, all that jazz. It was more of "oh you're reading that book? How far along are you? You should finish it, it's good" then they go their merry ways thank you very much.

They thought I would scoff at the idea of a "book club" because I would just dismiss other people's ways of absorbing books, that its absurd to talk about books like its a case study of a multitude of things, coz at the end of the day, it's an individual experience, and how you experienced it is entirely your own and nobody else's. Kinda like eating a piece of candy and that's it. That's the whole experience see you bye!

I was taken aback and a little bit annoyed (with how they just jumped right into their litany while I was still in the middle of my "woe is me I'm lonely" word vomit but that's another thing entirely). Yes, admittedly, I'm the "Typical Elitist English Major", coz I was already doing my degree during my Identity vs Role Confusion years [Erikson, psychosocial development], and being surrounded by the upturned noses of literary elitist snobs is not a good thing for a 15-yr old impressionable, hormonal child. But that's beside the point (I always get out of tangent demmit).

The point is, it's what we do. Yes, reading is an individual experience because nobody can do the reading for you. But there's a whole experience that comes after you eat the words. There's the discussion of themes, of settings, of symbolisms, of metaphors and allusions. There's talking about how that piece of literature reflects the society it was written in. How the author's biases and prejudices show and/or how they approach it in their writing, whether they perpetuate or implicitly try to dismantle said biases and prejudices.

There's the world-building and characterisation. There's character development and how that reflects to you, the reader, and your own experiences. There's timelines and confusion and realisations and eureka moments or boring shit and fuck I can't stand this character or oh my gods I'm in love with them I want to kiss the very earth they tread upon. There's the relationships between characters that please for the love of gods does NOT only include romantic relationships because that's not the ULTIMATE METRIC for becoming a self--actualised, well-adjusted person thank you very much.

There's discussions about problematic themes and how you as a reader should be able to consume these themes and not be ostracised for it because enjoying said themes does not mean you are a proponent of them irl; just because one enjoys Haunting of Adeline does not mean they support stalkers or stalking. There's discourse about how dare you compare ACOTAR to Interview With The Vampire go wash your filthy mouth but I'm not judging your literary taste I just have no plans of reading *that* I'm good thanks.

And so much more! Does nobody wonder why there's always a shit-ton of papers that we need to pass for every single piece of literature and written word in general that we ever lay our eyes upon? Its because of these things! These are the things we yap about in our annoying little papers of literary criticism. Because for us, The Curtain Is Not JUST Fucking Blue. And our entire program is dedicated to four years of looking at Blue Curtains™️ and dissecting why it's important that the curtain is blue and IT IS THAT DEEP, you piece of barnacle.

I mean, this person and I existed within the same circles at a certain point in our lives. They've witnessed and even participated in these discussions with the aforementioned peers, talking about social issues, books, TV shows, films, songs, records, etc etc etc. That's the "what happens next after reading a book"', and that's what I meant when I said it's difficult to read books these days because I have nobody to read it with. Nobody to process grief and happiness and euphoria and death and ecstasy and obsessions with.

Which is just a long-winded way of saying I'd like to have friends to yap about books and literature and other shit with, thanks. I recognise that it's no longer feasible to have late night discussions over coffee, talking about how Armand is the most well-adjusted, self-actualised character in the Vampire Chronicles or how classic Russian literature portrays loneliness like nothing else in this planet and Dostoyevski is the patron saint of the tortured lonely soul or that there is an inherent overlap between the grotesque and the sublime because something beautiful cannot sublimate into a transcendental level of beauty without it becoming grotesque at some point within its existence... but you get what I mean.

So yes, before I was so rudely interrupted, that's what I meant when I said reading is an isolating activity. Because reading makes one feel a lot of feelings and its exhausting to have to explain background stories and character dynamics to you before I could even get to explaining why I'm crying over "Gideon the Ninth, first flower of my house" and why I could never JUST read a book and not be completely consumed by it. Coz its not just a piece of candy you pop and you can go your merry fucking way afterwards. It's so much more than that. Fucking more. K bye.

[opalsiren]

'sabrina carpenter is soooo male gaze-y' okay name one female public figure who doesn't have to cater to the male gaze, at least to some extent, in order to maintain their position in the public eye. if you don't like her make-up or costumes that's fine but don't act like it's some salient feminist critique to say wearing lingerie makes you an instrument of patriarchy when every single female popstar has to conform to a certain standard of femininity to reach acclaim. there is certainly room for a convo about why we only listen to music and watch films when the women creatives involved have flawlessly styled hair and a full face of make-up and impracticable clothes on 25/8, and how these standards implicate women in general. but critiquing this one single individual woman for being an arbiter of patriarchy smacks of weirdness. like just say you don't like her hair and go we don't need to act like sabrina carpenter herself invented patriarchy

[whereserpentswalk]

Someone used "ungood" to describe disney remakes and it's so perfect. "Bad" does not sum up the horrible soulless products created to only fulfil capitalist desires, using artists as tormented vessels, ungood captures it so well.

Artists with passion and vision create bad art. Bad art can have entertaining qualities, and value, and sparks of life inside of them. Teenage fanfic, and b movies, and a young musicians first attempt at smoke on the water are bad, and that's ok. Ungood art does not have the same saving graces as bad art. Ungood art is empty, not just failing at quality but devoid of it.

We need to start using the term ungood. Neither Star Wars episode one, nor Star Was episode nine are good movies, but they don't possess the same lack of quality. The "live action" Lion King movie, and Repo! The Genetic Opera might both be failures at putting musicals on film, but I know which one I'd rather watch, which one still has moments I love, and which one was made to make someone at Disney see a line go up.