It sure looks like the likes of Javier Bardem, Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, and Mark Ruffalo won’t be making movies for Paramount in the foreseeable future.
He’s not wrong that the reader/viewer can take what they will from a work and translate it through their own lens… but come on, that is some neutron-star density if you can’t read the deliberate social commentary in Star Trek. Roddenberry himself has spoken about it.
It makes me pretty convinced that person, and those who share his views, are people who feel called-out or attacked on some level by whatever social issues are being highlighted, or feel insecure that they don’t “get it.”
There is a really wild segment of the human population who seem totally incapable of working out abstract ideas like ethics and values on their own and rely on systems like government or religion or unfortunately, content creators to guide them. This is a bigger problem than we realize and we take for granted that just because we all grew up watching the Ninja Turtles beat Shredder that we can all discern that “good is better than bad.” Not everyone gets that, and this is everyone’s problem.
Yeah, I know the guy could be an intentional contrarian just because he thought that was the way to show his intelligence. And I think he is on the spectrum. But I don’t think he was kidding or merely being contrarian about this. Probably why I talked about it to him so much. Sure, many things have multiple interpretations, and I often thought that some pretty basic English lit teachers thought there were “rules” to how to interpret literature and that there were “correct” answers to what something like Old Man and the Sea “means”. I can understand rejecting that.
But rejecting that even things as blatant as Narnia and Star Trek are not intentionally conveying a message? Mind-blowing. I don’t even understand why you’d be all that interested in fiction of any kind at that point.
And yeah, as you point out, this kind of obvious intelligence in one way, but a glaring of lack of intelligence in others is highly problematic in the moral sense.
I was going to suggest that he might be on the spectrum, as it’s pretty stereotyped that autistic spectrum disorder can make it hard for some people to pick up subtext, nuance, overtones and other forms of communication that aren’t direct. (I was diagnosed recently as an adult but I’ve never had problems dismantling all the layers of media or reading emotions so it’s probably a different part of the spectrum.)
But this is also exactly why so many people on the spectrum identify with science fiction and fantasy, because in many of these franchises the social narrative or analogy isn’t exactly subtle.
And it opens up so many questions - like, what DOES communicate social messages and life lessons? What kinds of media DO convey ideas about society? Only documentaries about politics? What about non-fiction movies? What about fiction stories and movies that aren’t sci-fi or fantasy? Does he even watch stories about human emotion or abstract works of fiction that are STRICTLY social commentary? I would immediately start asking him so many questions LOL.
Honestly though, I would take this. I would prefer someone who says openly that they’re disconnected from social narratives than the people who pretend that they understand ethics and values communicated to them, but are actually just horrible sociopaths trying to act human.
He’s not wrong that the reader/viewer can take what they will from a work and translate it through their own lens… but come on, that is some neutron-star density if you can’t read the deliberate social commentary in Star Trek. Roddenberry himself has spoken about it.
It makes me pretty convinced that person, and those who share his views, are people who feel called-out or attacked on some level by whatever social issues are being highlighted, or feel insecure that they don’t “get it.”
There is a really wild segment of the human population who seem totally incapable of working out abstract ideas like ethics and values on their own and rely on systems like government or religion or unfortunately, content creators to guide them. This is a bigger problem than we realize and we take for granted that just because we all grew up watching the Ninja Turtles beat Shredder that we can all discern that “good is better than bad.” Not everyone gets that, and this is everyone’s problem.
Yeah, I know the guy could be an intentional contrarian just because he thought that was the way to show his intelligence. And I think he is on the spectrum. But I don’t think he was kidding or merely being contrarian about this. Probably why I talked about it to him so much. Sure, many things have multiple interpretations, and I often thought that some pretty basic English lit teachers thought there were “rules” to how to interpret literature and that there were “correct” answers to what something like Old Man and the Sea “means”. I can understand rejecting that.
But rejecting that even things as blatant as Narnia and Star Trek are not intentionally conveying a message? Mind-blowing. I don’t even understand why you’d be all that interested in fiction of any kind at that point.
And yeah, as you point out, this kind of obvious intelligence in one way, but a glaring of lack of intelligence in others is highly problematic in the moral sense.
I was going to suggest that he might be on the spectrum, as it’s pretty stereotyped that autistic spectrum disorder can make it hard for some people to pick up subtext, nuance, overtones and other forms of communication that aren’t direct. (I was diagnosed recently as an adult but I’ve never had problems dismantling all the layers of media or reading emotions so it’s probably a different part of the spectrum.)
But this is also exactly why so many people on the spectrum identify with science fiction and fantasy, because in many of these franchises the social narrative or analogy isn’t exactly subtle.
And it opens up so many questions - like, what DOES communicate social messages and life lessons? What kinds of media DO convey ideas about society? Only documentaries about politics? What about non-fiction movies? What about fiction stories and movies that aren’t sci-fi or fantasy? Does he even watch stories about human emotion or abstract works of fiction that are STRICTLY social commentary? I would immediately start asking him so many questions LOL.
Honestly though, I would take this. I would prefer someone who says openly that they’re disconnected from social narratives than the people who pretend that they understand ethics and values communicated to them, but are actually just horrible sociopaths trying to act human.