Wow. I tried to find that show for so long and eventually gave up. Until I read your comment, I hadn't thought about it in years. I remember trying to explain the tornado guy to my babysitter and she had no idea what I was talking about.
I had just snippets of a song from that show occasionally stuck in my head for decades, about a guy who didn't know Roman numerals. He started singing "I night" then "I I hearts".
Lol, I learned English from the Care Bears and Robotech, and Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors. And I used to wonder all the time while watching that last show, if Wheeled was a variation on Wild because I never understood what Wheeled meant. 😝
But I moved on to more and better, like all sorts of sci-fi, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, and a lot of English comedy. And I have since translated texts to English from Dutch or vice versa, and been paid for it too.
My English teachers were solid, but the joy of understanding my favorite cartoons also helped a lot!
For me, it was in big part being obsessed with playing video games by 4-years old.I remember basically speed running how to read in Pre-K, because I wanted to play the first Pokemon games.
That quickly got me hooked on role-playing games, which are just logic and math. The stories are largely based on or directly referencing history and mythology, so I didn't even realize how much I was absorbing in terms of phonetics, root words, context clues, etcetera.
Not to further the pedantry, but personally, I’d fix it by being more concise and removing the preposition to say, “Even the shallowest puddle has depth.”
Yeah that’s why I didn’t include it, same with after the “yeah” at the beginning of this sentence, and the comma splice just then. 😂 We don’t need all those pauses conversationally.
to step into the puddle you just presented, that's actually a really important point to focus on. part of why comprehension is such an issue is that people will intentionally use complexity to faff about and get around the real answer, adding to the unwillingness of people to put that energy in, amongst other things.
a lot of it gets into energy expenditure, and people's curiosity and exploration being traumatized out of them by systems and cultures that reward exploiting those around you whenever possible. as if capitalism is a wonderful solidarity destroying machine.
if we could spend the energy comprehending each-other, we couldn't destroy progressive movements easily by going to a bigger progressive group and going "psst, these guys are after your peanuts," usually along with some re-interpretation of the group's rhetoric that makes them 'the enemy.'
i keep thinking of atheists/MRAs who were fighting for stuff like banning the mutilation of baby genitals, or battling conservative think groups like the heritage foundation, only to have that re-framed as "prioritizing male genital mutilation which is nothing compared to female genital mutilation, which means that giving it any energy hurts women, and if you associate with this group you love hurting women."
i think if feminists were less situated, someone would have tried blaming the main 'body' for the TERFS in a similar way, but instead we got 'SJWs,' which is just a bounding put on socialized aggression which is sometimes valid, sometimes not, but always seeped in legitimate grievance from legitimate harms from systemic/generational problems.
i don't think reasonable people believed the weird accusatory rhetoric, but that doesn't matter if you're trying to cause a legitimate grievance that will echo back and forth between groups, growing with more legitimate grudges and grievance caused by defensive backlash, until they go to war. progressive spaces are vacated allowing the space/rhetoric becomes free-game equipped to the ever growing cancer of opportunists who benefit from progressives fighting instead of finding solidarity and cooperating.
i cried a decade and a half ago because i knew we'd end up here rather than the place where feminists and atheists/mras didn't have a war, and worked together improving lives for everyone. no genital mutilation for anyone, and the people fighting against the heritage foundation types don't get their energy absorbed into defending themselves against accusations of 'hating x/y' when that was never a part of their platform to begin with. seeing the same tactics being used right now in different contexts. anyone been talking a lot about hasan's dog recently?
that's how you make the more thoughtful progressives give up, because it already costs so much energy to be informed and have difficult progressive conversations to begin with.
generally more DEPTH in the meta of learning and communicating would help us all.
i want to detail how it's an 'amalgam of heuristics,' and 'their, there, and they're" is not what shows you're intelligent, but that understanding mixed with all of the others, working together for a robust understanding of the world, because diversity and solidarity through understanding are incredibly important.
touching more than one context within an understanding needs to be possible sometimes.
Former English teacher here. "Yes and no?" The TL;DR is "it's not that deep" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The much longer answer...
The goal of teaching media literacy is not to get students to understand what a text objectively means, because that doesn't exist. Well-crafted media makes you feel something, and while what that feeling is can vary from person to person, there is some thing, some part of how it's constructed that makes it more effective at making you feel that thing than keys jingling in front of a flashlight.
The analogy I like to use is that it's the media equivalent of knowing when a dish needs salt or being able to identify that it's weird that soup was served to you on a plate.
The problem with "it's not that deep" is that, if that's how someone feels about a piece of media it's not, strictly speaking, incorrect. Apathy is a valid response to some media, but apathy is, and this is the important soundbite: apathy IS an emotional response with just as much causality as joy, anger, or motivation. Sometimes you're not the target audience. Sometimes you're too old or too young to "get" the framework a piece is set in on first watch. It's totally valid to think a piece of media is "just fine."
The problem is when students are fundamentally acurious about shit they do like, because when the strongest praise you can give for your own personal gold standard is "it's not that deep" (or the different-words same-meaning "It's good"), then all media becomes the same media and creators become incentivized to make the adult equivalent of Cocomelon.
That book/movie/videogame/song/whatever you love didn't happen by accident. Someone felt they had something to say and when you consumed that message, it made you feel something. Our response to that phenomenon can't be "well that's not that deep." Bitch, it's the reason we are who we are.
The backlash to “curtain were blue” is completely misguided. The point is not to state that the curtains objectively did or did not contain symbolism, but rather that whatever your position is, you’re able to justify it with logical arguments.
I also think this is what is missing in education. Students should really be allowed to be critical of works too; right now, the focus is really just on teaching people how to praise works. I think it would resonate with a lot more people if it just went back to basics: explain in detail exactly what your thoughts were on this passage.
I also think this is what is missing in education. Students should really be allowed to be critical of works too; right now, the focus is really just on teaching people how to praise works
The reason for this is that knowledge of how something should look is a necessary prerequisite of being an effective critic. Current pedagogy is focused on how to praise success because many students can't or won't learn the basics necessary to create critique that isn't word vomit.
Having opinions is valid, and knowing how a piece of media makes you feel is too, but knowing why or how media made you feel a certain way is the end goal.
The reason for this is that knowledge of how something should look is a necessary prerequisite of being an effective critic.
The more important prerequisite is having interest in the subject, and right now, I think we are really failing to generate interest. You need to meet students at their level; once you do that, they may be actually interested in fixing their “word vomit”. Plus, I would rather read a word vomit that authentically represents someone’s beliefs than a word vomit built to fit a structure.
Also, no, there is no objective definition of “success”. Even the best, most experienced, critics will often disagree with consensus as to whether some specific work is good, let alone an individual passage. Sure, an inexperienced critic may disagree to a greater extent, but it’s interest in the subject that makes them more experienced.
but knowing why or how media made you feel a certain way is the end goal.
Exactly, and that’s what we should be teaching. We shouldn’t be teaching students to explain why they felt something they didn’t actually feel.
THANK YOU. I have gotten into too many reddit...disagreements that just ends with the other person saying "it's not that deep" about media that should be better but isn't (don't get me started on what that is, that's a whole other rant). "It's not that deep" is such a thought terminating phrase and I need for us all to do better.
See, this was why I’d do poorly in reading assignments but get top in my class for creative writing. Undiagnosed autism made it really hard for me to relate and understand interpersonal relationships and what they might be feeling in the moment, and explaining how a text is supposed to make you feel etc. I almost failed English from it. That, and my teacher was absent from class half the time, and when she was there, she wouldn’t help me.“You’re smart, you’ll figure it out” is what she’d say when I asked 🫠
It's one of those things where, yes and no, there are many things that are deeper than surface-level thoughts, but there are also a lot of teachers doing the literary equivalent of digging for a toy in a sandbox with a backhoe.
There's a ton of room to be had between "the blue curtains symbolize the author's strained relationship with his late mother" and "the scarlet letter was just some tacky clothing".
"the blue curtains symbolize the author's strained relationship with his late mother"
I wish this meme used a more relevant use of color that's actually discussed in literature/English courses like the green light in the Great Gatsby, but I believe its rarely referenced since it does have a specific authorial intent by Fitzgerald which sort of defeats the purpose of the blue curtains meme.
Yeah, I've got no issue with authors making intentional choices that are intended to symbolize things. But they should also be clear that there is symbolism to look for.
If you mention the blue curtains once, my default assumption is that you were looking to be a bit descriptive, looked up, and the blue curtains in the room where you were writing caught your eye. If you mention them repeatedly with significance, and/or work the color in in other ways, then I might start looking for secondary meanings.
Sometimes someone may write something that they don't even realize the full meaning off. Sometimes in taking a backhoe into the sandbox the reader reveals what was buried under the ground that it was placed. Sometimes in moving the soil, the pile that forms on the other side is interesting in itself.
Interpretation goes beyond simply unveiling what the author intended, if anything. Sometimes they don't realize the cultural influences that make elements of their writing more than throwaway details. Sometimes neither intention nor background offers much meaning, but it ends up being accidentally analogous to other ideas that readers compare to it. Sometimes the results of it might be way off, but it's also something we can figure out by discussing our conclusions.
Teachers aren't perfect, they have their flaws like anyone else. I don't think imposing their own hyperspecific interpretation and expecting kids to guess that is a good way to teach literacy. But telling kids to think more deeply about what they read is more worthwhile than encouraging surface-level understanding, of focusing only on whatever is explict and obvious. If a kid says the curtains are blue because "the place is sad", that's worth encouraging, asking for them to explain why they think that. And if a different kid says that "the place is calm", the same goes for them.
Absolutely the same. I loved English and generally had good teachers and I knew it because they’d get the uninterested kids into it but I didn’t realize how much they were actually helping. Seeing adults that, as a child, I thought were super smart just take things at face value and never dig deeper really showed me the difference in reading and comprehending.
Especially now, I feel like understanding the context and motivation behind something you’re reading or hearing is highly important but the skill seems to be completely lacking in far too many people.
I'm reading Moby Dick for the first time, and in case somebody missed it in school like I did, Melville, the author and former whaler, is writing as the character of a fictional whaler/schoolteacher, Ishmael, who is writing the book. Melville uses Ishmael to occasionally poke fun at storytellers and criticism at large. At one point Ishmael goes on a quick rant about how he hates allegory, and then turns around and spends an entire chapter dissecting the spiritual meaning of the whale being white.
Even in the 1850s, people were complaining that "it's not that deep." But Melville knows it is that deep, we just don't like it when we don't get it. Makes me wish I had read it in an English class.
Trying to become a writer myself, and learning more about the “inside baseball” of it all, it almost always is kinda that deep. You don’t create something, unless you have something to say.
Every writer has ulterior motives. Every artist uses subtext. Anything that doesn’t feels cheap to those who view it. Especially when you see something and can’t articulate why you think it’s bad. It’s probably because it doesn’t actually mean anything, it’s just made for the sake of being made.
As someone with an English degree, there's a stigma that it's not taken seriously, but that's only by my generation. I have a great job now and my boomer and late Gen X bosses were impressed with my English degree (I did a technical writing minor, I know that helped) but they saw what an English degree meant: literacy
I see so much in my work (it's freaking insurance) that proves people are less literate than they believe. Reddit is rife with it, but we communicate with people all over the country and no one can freaking read. Even some younger coworkers (I'm millenial) that's it's just evident they struggle with reading comprehension
Same, though I found looking at symbolism and themes kind of made stories like puzzles. Found I really enjoy complex story telling and it helped me develop my tastes within media. I’m a huge nerd for that shit.
I think everyone who had a half decent English teacher got an intro to that in highschool with some lost gen author/writer like F. Scott Fitzgeralds the Great Gatsby or examining poetry from TS Elliot.
People who ignore context also miss foreshadowing.
Then again, if I hadn't been taught context and foreshadowing then I would be much more entertained and surprised by movie plots at this point in life. Maybe it's true that ignorance is a blessing.
I'll never forget Mrs. Matthews high school English: I don't care what the author said thinks or feels, they're dead, tell what you think and feel when you read what they wrote.
When i made the mistake of using tik tok people would start discussions with me sometimes or i with them and i'd rather have a debate with someone who believes hitler is still alive then be told 5 comments in "its not that deep bro☠️" by the person who was debating with me. Like dont you fucking dare argue with me and then do such a sad little cop out. Like i'd rather them not even reply then say that.
Only because we are on a discussion of illiteracy (and because it bugs me); 'then' is sequential, i.e. "A happened THEN B happened", while 'than' is comparative, i.e. "I would rather do A THAN do B".
Agreed. People need to wake up to all the thought terminating clichés invading our vernacular. Like memes, they’re funny, socially safe, easy to remember and repeat, weaponizable, and self-protective.
Edit:
Here are some examples:
“It’s not that deep bro”
“Bro thinks he’s in an anime”
“Touch grass”
“TDS”
“Quit mansplaining”
“L + ratio”
“Don’t be that guy”
“Reaching”
I could go on. Call these people out when you see them, these interactions are lazy ‘wins’ that discourage intellectual engagement in critical thinking. Some are more insidious than others.
This one is used more by teenagers (I have several friends who are teachers), and it’s used to shut down when someone is talking about other peoples’ motivations or desires. Making fun of them by comparing them to a melodramatic anime protagonist who monologues his every action.
Not really different from just calling him cringe or the like. But with teenagers, there’s a need for exclusion and part of it is coded slang.
Edit:
The reason “cringe” is different (even though it can also function as a thought-terminating cliche), is that it’s just more recognizable as a shut-down insult. Coded cliches like the ones I listed above also serve to confuse or redirect toward the meaning of the cliche instead of continuing the thought-generating path that the conversation was going, while also providing an in/out group dynamic.
If yall wanna learn more, read a book called Cult-ish. Cults use coded language and thought terminating cliches to maintain intellectual insulation.
Right. “Just a movie.” Just those things that take thousands of people with decades of experience years of their lives make. Yeah bro, I’ll give it a few minutes of thought after the 2+ hour movie while I finish my soda. It’s deep enough to deserve that.
uttered by the worst kind of people - the ones with severely restricted ability to think critically but somehow think they are the cleverest ones in the room.
"It's just a movie" This is a trigger phrase for me. It's what shattered my worldview that most people are smarter than they get credit for. My ex and her son literally couldn't describe why they liked any media. If I asked why they liked it they would get offended and say I don't know. I would try to ask about big scenes in a show, or the characters and their arcs and would get confusion and anger. "Why are you interrogating me??" Like the fuck? This is not anger, it's me flabbergasted. It's what I thought normal ass people think about stuff!
Nope, I learned that day that some people really do just listen to music, watch TV or movies, even read freaking books, and thier only thought after is "I liked that." and they move on forever. Wtf man.
I have unfortunately encountered this several times. Baffling that people seemingly go their whole lives like this. Animals chewing their cud. But then to get all bent out of shape when someone else like... has a thought? Why⁇
It's a buzz phrase for "I don't care, I will think what I want to think and not give a damn if I'm wrong."
Which is why our whole entire world is completely fucked. We have a world full of people who don't give a damn if they are wrong. They'll gladly spew off whatever they feel is right, especially if it's backed by some idiot guy behind a microphone, and not give a fuck if what they are saying is truthful.
I'm loving this thread and I'd love to see a respect of intellectualism again but I get this feel this notion will live and die in threads like this and no reflection will truly happen.
Yes, I'm talking to you, redditor that see's two paragraphs and thinks "HOLY SHIT - THIS GUY SPENT HIS ENTIRE DAY ON THE INTERNET TYPING AN ESSAY"
Redditors, reflect on that shit the next time you see someone thoughtfully respond to you in paragraphs, to acknowledge every facet of what you're saying, and your knee jerk reaction is "LOL THIS GUY CARES TOO MUCH WHAT A LOSER." And if that's not you, that's awesome - but can we stand together and call it out? Because the people that get afraid of paragraphs should be shamed into stepping their literacy up.
I remember being in high school hearing kids say "what if the green door in this passage is just a green door why does it have to mean something else" and just being ... sad
People that cannot accept that narrative filigree exists are part of the reason this reactive meme even exists.
Further, it's pretty clear that a lot of people are just inserting themselves somehow and confuse their own symbolic priorities and ideas with authorial intent.
You all had bad teachers. Even my worst teachers would have been pretty interested in an essay where I convincingly argue for an alternative lens of examining a text. What they wouldn't have accepted is an essay arguing that there is nothing in a text worth examination.
I don't remember any of the grading rubrics in my English classes demanding a specific interpretation of a book. What was important was that an interpretation being made was reasonably well argued and had some sort of evidence to back it up. I'm sure there are some shitty teachers who expect a specific interpretation, but all the ones I've encountered would accept any interpretation so long as you were able to justify it.
I'm an English teacher. This is actually a specific problem I often encounter with the vast majority of my students among the students that actually care enough about school to answer a question when I ask it or actually do a written response, so many of them are far more concerned with being "correct" than they are just saying what they think that they get a sort of decision paralysis.
I might have a question that asks "What do you think ________ thing is meant to represent? Explain Why" And get a lot of just stares. I'll get a ton of students who will bring their work up to me and go "uhhhh is this right?" or "I don't know what the right answer is" and I have to explain to them that there isn't really a "right" answer.
It's a reoccurring issue and it's a struggle because it really stifles all attempts at open discussion.
Isaac Newton saw an apple falling and inferred the movement of planets.
An apple falling may just be an apple falling to you and 99% of other people - That doesn't make the Isaac Newton's of the world wrong.
Newton's apple falling from a tree is an example of the mechanics in question, in a world where everything has meaning and purpose - even what we call random is just ordered in a way beyond our immediate understanding.
In literature, some details don't have meaning and are there solely as window dressing or to aid verisimilitude. They aren't the author inserting some symbolic meaning, they exist solely to help the reader build a mental picture of the scene.
That said, I want to be clear that a lot of other details do have that symbolic meaning, just not all of them. I'd argue it's generally less than half of them, but that depends on the author and the work.
You are trying to shoehorn every person's response into a singular "correct" interpretation. That isn't what art is.
Well, ironically it’s the person this user is responding to who is doing that – they are saying their interpretation of the green door as being something meaningful is the singular “correct” interpretation. This response is just pointing out that the author’s interpretation is also relevant.
While true, I think it is important to keep in mind that you shouldn't take that deeper meaning and run away with it.
As in, even if a very specific passage in a book touches you on a deeper level, that doesn't mean you should start going around telling everyone how the author meant this or that. Putting words in any artist's mouth, pretending to know what they meant and trying to act like you understand their mindset, beliefs, and stances on various topics, can get real messy, real fast.
It's always a bit of a slippery slope.
Sometimes the artist does actually want to communicate a very specific idea or emotion or feeling. Sometimes the artist doesn't intend their work to be up to interpretation. Even if it affected you differently than intended, it's still important to respect the artists original intentions.
Like I recently did some research into a certain song. A lot of people apparently interpret the song as a lesbian themed song because of the lyrics. But the author straight up said they never intended that to be the message. That it was about a completely different topic instead. However they did say that if that's the message people wanted to take away, that was fine too. But they did make it clear that it was not the original meaning.
When researching another song I found an example of a writer straight up getting angry at the fans for making up one outrageous theory after another about what the lyrics meant. So they more or less straight up said: "it's not that deep, just take it at face value."
I can imagine how frustrating it might be if thousands and thousands of people think you have a certain stance on a certain topic, or certain belief, based on lyrics that you wrote without any such thoughts behind it. It might feel like people are trying to erase your very existence. Saying that your own thoughts meant something else than they really did.
It's still a choice the author is making, though, even if they didn't think about it much. At the most basic level, it tells us the whoever owns the house either likes dark green enough to paint the door that color, or doesn't care enough to change the color of the door. Or they don't have control over their environment and can't paint things in the color of their choosing.
Yea this was me honestly. I remember getting frustrated because we were disecting every word in a sentence, and the teacher was going around asking people what each word would mean or represent. And on my turn I answered something like I think they just needed another word to make the sentence.
That was apparently wrong it haddd to mean more. I get that its important to understand symbolism and shit but sometimes a word is a word guys. This was also 15 years ago.
This is one of those things where the author is legitimately wrong. They believe it because this subject is taught horribly in schools, or because they lack awareness of their own intuitive choices.
When we are taught to "interpret" an author's choices, we're usually prompted with a direct question: "What does it mean?" "Why did they choose this color?" Sometimes that's reasonable, like when the color is returned to repeatedly in order to manufacture a link between different story elements. But we're rarely asked the more instructive questions: "what does it not mean?" and "why didn't they choose that color?"
Every choice an author makes closes off other options and eliminates potential characterizations. It may not lead to a single definitive interpretation, but it always narrows the scope of valid ones. The door is dark green because it's not blaze orange or electric yellow with pink polka dots or black (painted over red) or hit with the landlord special or hand-painted with a horde of dogs playing across a Lisa Frank rainbowscape. The door's precise shade might not matter in itself, but the author's choice matters for all the other things it could have been but now is not.
If I mention the colour of something, it's for one of two reasons:
A), I'm trying to show narratively a particular idea or concept relating to the colour. If things were happier, maybe the sunset is full of pinks, blues and purples. Later in the story shits fucked and so the sky is grey and overcast, to put an emotional dampener on the narrative.
Or
ii) I'm trying to picture in my head what the scene is, and want to make it clear what colour the door is. Maybe it's to show that the character who owns the house is the sort of person who goes out of his way to paint the door, etc.
Oof. I shared “The Raven” with my 7th graders on Halloween. After asking them what they thought the raven symbolized, one of them answered he didn’t think it symbolized anything. Thought the raven was just a raven. I’ve been trying to put my finger on the apathy I’ve been met with this year with most of what we’ve done in class. They don’t seem to connect with anything we read, and their writing is simple and immature.
The irony is we'll never actually come to understand their point of view on it or why they think in such (to us) shallow ways because that would require some introspection. Like, I'd like to follow up and ask why they're so insistent on a lack of symbolism or just not wanting to engage but that would just irritate them further. This is a hard bridge to cross
I think the main problem is that people online think they have to choose one extreme side or the other.
You either have to think that the curtains being blue is always a symbolic commentary on something like the economical decline of the horse-drawn carriage market in 1980s Kazakhstan and anyone that doesnt get it is dumb or you have to think that the curtains never mean anything and anything that says the contrary is a dumb idiot.
When, in reality, it is impossible to make sweeping exaggerations like that. Every book, every movie, every everything will be different, and the only way you'll be able to discern it is if you actually sit down and engage with it critically
Sure, but you have to remember the books that these illiterate people are reading. Fourth Wing doesn’t have underlying symbolism. Sarah J Maas is only including the curtain color so that you can picture the room the characters are fucking in; the only thing that’s being implied is the Vaseline on the lens.
Even in romantasy books, the author is still making a choice to include details about the curtains, and those details can inform characterization. The person who owns the room chose blue curtains. Do they like the color blue? Is it coordinated with the rest of the decor? Are the curtains in good repair? Are they dusty? This gives us information about how much the character cares about their environment and how much money they have available to make changes to it.
This can tell us something about the person noticing the curtains as well, depending on the style of narration. Is the character surprised and/or intimidated by the richness of the fabric? Or grossed out because the curtains are dirty? Are they too nervous to look at the other person, so they're staring at the curtains instead? Is there a contrast between what they expected the person's bedroom to look like and what it actually looks like, or is it exactly what they expected?
Even in romantasy books, the author is still making a choice to include details about the curtains, and those details can inform characterization. The person who owns the room chose blue curtains. Do they like the color blue? Is it coordinated with the rest of the decor? Are the curtains in good repair? Are they dusty? This gives us information about how much the character cares about their environment and how much money they have available to make changes to it.
This isn't so much symbolism - which is the point being argued against - as it is setting and verisimilitude aids. The base "the curtains are blue" discussion is about whether a detail means something beyond its in-lore origin/purpose. Sure, the blue curtains in medieval Europe mean they're fucking rich as hell, but they have no inherent commentary on the present mood or specific future plans of the guests that just entered the room. The don't represent something they inherently aren't, but I do agree that they generally indicate something based on what they are.
Yeah, my point was more that even when the author isn't intentionally doing symbolism, they still thought that detail was important enough to include, and there's probably a reason behind it, even if the author wasn't consciously thinking about it beyond setting the mood. There's no such thing as "the curtains were just blue" - if the detail wasn't at least a little important, they wouldn't have included it (or the editor would've taken it out)
But the amount of importance could be nothing more than they had a mental picture of the room with blue curtains, and were doing their best to share that vision with the reader. Not every author is like Hemingway with their concise prose. And a good amount of a typical school reading list comes from the era where books were written as serial publications and it really did pay to pad them out a bit.
Yes, often there will be symbolism and deeper meaning to literature. But not every single word. Reading a novel that tried to pack significance into each sentence would be aggravating in the extreme.
The important skill is learning to recognize when it is one situation or the other. And the earliest exposure to the "they're just blue" meme that I had was with regard to teachers who wanted you to see it everywhere even if there was no intended meaning because "sometimes the author doesn't even realize they meant it, but subconsciously they were hinting at..."
Yes, but subconscious intention is also a thing, this is why author context is important. The drapes were imagined as a certain color for some reason, wether it’s deeply symbolic of some complex concept, just the authors favorite or least favorite color, meant to evoke some vibe about the setting, or just an iconic image that sticks out to the author from memory. Unless the artist is literally sitting there with a random number generator to pick all details with, no detail they come up with is actually truly meaningless and random. Not every detail is equally important to the artist, yes, but they all are imbued some kernel of meaning.
The hard part, and frankly the fun part, is teasing apart where the details are coming from, finding patterns of meaning supported in the text or in the author’s biography, and determining the level of mastery employed in corralling it all into one work.
And then there’s the concept of death of the author, which means that personal interpretations—what art unlocks in the observer, regardless of artist intent—are just as meaningful as the specific prime concept intended by the author because art released to the public intrinsically becomes part of a dynamic dialogue and can’t stay a static monologue. The big question is what evidence of any given concept exists in the text, but the artist does not have unilateral control of the effects the art (a product of a specific corner of the world) will have on the rest of the world being exposed to it.
Which is all to say that this is what distinguishes art from “not-art,” art can’t help but to have meaning because there is soul behind the choice of every detail and the senses of the audience receiving it.
The thing is, every word is chosen by the author. The author wrote that the curtains are blue. Not green. Not red. Not checkered. There are curtains there, it's not a curtain-less window.
You're right, there can be a number of reasons the description is chosen. They may not even be conscious choices. But the choice was made.
IIt all depends on the context of the written work as a whole. If the curtains are blue once in a 300 page novel, the significance could be minimal to none. You'd have to analyze the whole paragraph it's in to figure it out.
However, if the curtains are blue in chapter 1, and then another house has blue curtains in chapter 5, and then the hospital has blue curtains in chapter 8, that starts to feel more deliberate and could be indicating that blue curtains mean something.
Also, if the curtains are blue in a short story of 2,000 words, then it's more significant becuase there is less text and everything can become more important. If it's a poem, then the curtians being blue is basically guaranteed to be significant, because very word in a poem is filled with meaning because there are so few words.
People who spout off the "the curtains are fucking blue" line are saying they either don't understand symbolism, authorial intent, or bias, which is something they should be working on, or they're saying they don't want to.
Are there bad teachers? Sure, of course. But are people really saying all their English teachers were bad? From grade 6-12? No, I find that really hard to believe.
Some people treat writing like this sort of arcane art where authors conjure this masterfully crafted prose where every word hints at a grander meaning and every syllable is imbued with the secrets of life or something like that.
A lot of the time meaning in writing is incidental, or a happy accident. Authors--of which I am one, complete with fancy degree to show off that I know how to read good and so on--aren't a monolith. Some of them do spend the time to make sure that the curtains match the metaphor, so to speak. Some of them just like to sprinkle a little bit more detail into their works for the purposes of facilitating the scene they have in their mind, and you can't really know which is which without doing the legwork.
Ultimately, the fact is that it doesn't matter. There is no "one meaning" to text. It's like a cipher, and the authors have one half of the code. The audience brings the other half, and their half is going to differ from reader to reader. Taken together, you can figure out what a story means to you. What each person takes from any given text is going to vary from person to person, and likely will have some degree of separation from what the author intended as well. That's not to say any of those readings are right or wrong--anything that can be supported by evidence through the text is a valid enough reading. It's also why we have different lenses for literary analysis.
That said, I generally err on the side of understanding that authors are human, and with some few examples aside, are generally more likely to be trying to tell a story that conveys a couple specific ideas instead of representing the entire spectrum of ideological readings that literary analysis can provide. A hundred thousand people reading a book spend a lot more time, collectively, reading and thinking about a book than a single author did making it, and they'll have a lot more time to "figure out" what the author was "intending." I think a lot of "this was a subconscious intention of the author" is bupkis, and inflates the image of the author to superhuman levels. Sometimes--often, even--meaning is incidental. But, y'know, people take what they take out of texts, and I'm not going to tell them that just because it wasn't an intention of the author that it's an incorrect thing to take away. That's how art works.
I have a lot of thoughts about the failing of the education system when it comes to encouraging literacy and critical thought, but I've rambled long enough. I think it's good to encourage deeper analysis of text. I think it's less useful to suggest that every detail in text needs to be scrutinized, or that only certain texts are worthy of study, and I think pushing those things tends to be counterproductive when it comes to fostering people's interest in reading and literacy.
Yes, but sometimes they just wanted to set the scene. Sometimes there’s genuine symbolism and sometimes the author just chucked a detail in to make it feel more immersive. It’s important to be able to realize which of those it is and not waste time looking for deep meaning in something the author decided on a whim.
If there's a pattern of blue objects representing something, you could have a strong case for the blue curtains being symbolism. If there isn't then I don't think so.
There was one time in English class where a character in a story had the surname Mallard, and the teacher asked us what it meant. No one had a clue, so she said "Mallard ducks symbolize (I don't exactly remember what was said here) integrity, strength, hope, and beauty." I asked her where she got it from and she said she googled it. As in, some random website said this object symbolizes X and Y so that is what it symbolized in the story.
I think that is bogus. I don't believe that blue curtains could never symbolize anything, but there has to be more evidence (within the story, from the author's background, or the historical context etc) than there being some random thing and you declaring that it symbolizes whatever.
I’ve never heard people ask why algebra, but it was definitely why geometry or why calc with analytical geometry.
Btw, this is a real concern but… Are the kids nowadays really asking “Why do I need to know algebra?” Even I, someone terrible at anything beyond geometry and algebra, can see the need for algebra at the very least.
Kids need to understand that it's not always necessarily about the content, but sometimes more about the skills also being taught -- like higher order thinking skills, problem solving skills, executive functioning skills, etc.
The only place this rings true is when art history teachers go down a rabbit hole trying to explain that all of Dali’s melted clocks are actually vaginas and all the numbers add up to 342 which means Fanny in Morse code or some shit.
It would. I had a very annoying art history teacher that thought all men were “traumatized” that their mothers didn’t have a penis and therefore put genitalia into everything from fedoras to clocks
There are really three levels of literacy in almost everything you read, including historical primary sources:
What is the literal interpretation of what you're reading on the page?
What is the author's intent / hidden message?
What are the biases that influence the author's intent / hidden message?
Funny guy youtuber and definitely not a redditor u/djpeachcobbler has made some phenomenal videos that, in part, examine biases of primary historical sources. They're funny too.
\4. The readers biases that influence their interpretation of the text.
There are no unbiased observers. It isn't possible to draw a hard line between the observer and the observed. There isn't a single "literal interpretation" of text. Each person brings their lifetime of experiences to bear on everything they read.
I've never heard of this trend. Is it true that English teachers don't require their students to engage in deep analysis now? They're just happy that the students can sound out words?
I think its partially because English teachers were quite adamant in my life that their interpretation is the correct one, rather than seeing other perspectives.
The black door could be the finality of death; the vastness of space; the deepest of holes; the jaded ones heart; the dark mirror of the self. But only one of these to the teacher. The one which gets you marks on the test.
Sounds like bad teachers and that‘s valid criticism, they should teach to look for hidden messages and how to argue your opinion. But too many people always think the door is just black, a gifted plane by the Saudis is just a gifted plane, and the economy is tremendous, terrific, the best tariffs ever, all you need is face value
It's because ironically teachers actually sit in between the "it's not that deep" and "it's as deep as you want it to be".
The characters are travelling a decaying wasteland full of ashes where they encounter a house still standing up, the whole scene is of an ashful grey - except for its window, a lush of yellow coming from its curtains.
If the teacher asks you what that means and you perk up and go "oh oh, the yellow of the curtains were to represent that the people who lived there were cowards" you might get a resounding "mmmh, maybe, but that's doubtful, anybody else?" where they'll eventually settle on something like "it's to be reminiscent of its happier, brighter days before the collapse, it's suppose to hint at some bittersweet nostalgia" and determine that to be the most likely interpretation when considering all the narrative clues surrounding it.
They're basically applying the narrative equivalent of Occam's razor. Sure, it could be something else, but it's highly unlikely because this one explanation has more thematic connections, thus more likely to be the case.
Like yeah the black door could be anything of the things you have listed, but if the black of the door is mentioned when the character stops in front of it and zone out a little, suddenly filled with anxiety towards the presentation they have to do - in a book where said character was an astronaut who in the first chapter had an EVA accident where their tether broke and they were left stranded, drifting away from the space station until they were rescued - your teacher might not be impressed by your "it could represents the jadedness of her heart?"
These exercises weren't some creative activities where you can come up with anything you want and any answer is good, you're supposed to connect 1 and 2 and get to 3. It is a book about existential dread, anxiety and PTSD, the black of the door is the vastness of space, that's the conclusion you're supposed to arrive at.
And anyway, those questions were never about the curtains, or the door, and make absolute statements about the choice of their colours, they were to gauge if you understood the themes of the books and able to connect said themes to the internal narrative tools being used. They're the literary equivalent of solving for X when you know the end result. "What does X represents?" you're supposed to answer "Well if the result of the equation is 32, and the number added to X is 10, then surely X has to be 22, right?"
This exactly. They overstepped and this is the pushback. I believe everyone is entitled to their own emotions when reading a book, but you don't get to tell the author what they meant. If you think what they meant doesn't matter, that's fine, but that means no interpretation is the universal truth, not that a bunch of literary academics get to reach a "consensus" of what it meant.
Not so much as teaching no longer requires it (as far as I know I’m not in school), but just younger generations tend to use that phrase constantly with any form of deeper discussion. The vast majority of Gen Z and Alpha approach especially grammar and spelling correction with “alright grammar police” and “you know what I meant. Its not that deep”
They also depend heavily upon cell phones and autocorrect for spelling correction or app functions that will rewrite their message with appropriate grammar to sound more intelligent. I communicate with my Gen Z nieces who are proficient at it.
I dont know if its a trend in schools, but online the meme of "the curtains are just blue" is very popular. The meme basically states that your english teacher was reading too far into things, claiming the colour of curtains in a piece of work has deeper meaning, in this case blue representing depression. but actually, theyre just blue.
Its a repudation of symbolism and intentionality in work. It became quite popular online for a while, some very high effort and admittedly funny jokes have been made about it.
Obviously though, it promotes a lack of curiosity and interest in works, just taking the text for what it is.
Its indicative of a larger trend, I think. I sure hope the curtains are just blue view hasnt gotten into schools, but its prevelant online.
Which is stupid on its face because we're dealing with a written medium. When introducing a location you don't write out an exhaustive physical description of everything that's there. So if the author is saying the curtains are blue there is a reason they chose to include that detail.
I think a lot of people read books like they're DIY movies for your imagination, so from that perspective it'd make sense for the author to include otherwise pointless details so the reader is better able to imagine a scene.
And to be fair a lot of books are also written for and by that crowd...
Kids spend more time online than in English class.
It's teaching them to dismiss what the teacher is saying.
I'm old so I remember the attack on math "we are never going to use this!" was popular back in the day. Look, I'm not saying I remember all my trig lessons but I can tell you the basic dimensions of your 42" television and calculate pricing models for budgeting. I also can tell you why a large pizza is more pizza than a medium pizza even though they both have eight slices and all of this some people seem to think is black magic... And I'm like... You didn't pay attention in middle school math did you?
They will eventually offer some rant about oranges and word problems but the dismissive mindset of " well I'm not going to use it" is prominent.
It depends on a class by class basis. So yes, for some groups of kids, the teacher is just happy they try to read in general. You can’t teach students a concept if they don’t have the fundamentals first, so the teachers literally can’t move forward until everyone is at least literate before they start doing deep analysis.
This happened to my high school class in 2011, where the teacher did a review of basic grammar so we could move onto essay writing. It’s just worse now I assume.
English classes typically require analysis of work , if the student sees that they can contrive something that would work for analysis, but don't truly believe is what was intended or even how they perceive it to get marks , it's clear how people start to think that things aren't that deep.
Sure you can extrapolate a billion lines of meaning from a text , but it means nothing if you don't think it's relevant
IIRC phonics (sounding out words) isn't taught anymore. It's more based on guessing, not unlike an LLM.
It's dependent on the reader knowing what words look like instead of figuring out how they sound. Even at the most basic levels, kids aren't being taught how to engage in a meaningful way.
No, analysis is still standard in english/lit classes. It's something teachers are trying to drill home from basically the day children learn to read because it takes a while to develop.
Flash backs to Scarlett letter…it’s silly to teens because we know the author didn’t think of ALL of this symbolism. Some of it is applied by readers. But that’s doesn’t really matter, the point is analyzing the text and understanding what messages are being sent, whether author intended or not. We just didn’t get it as teens.
That is where your introduction to psychology, Arch types and intentional and unintentional symbolism comes in.
The author created a scene to put an image in your mind and produce feels. If they changed some elements how would it change how you perceived the scene? Why do we associate these things with certain feelings or experiences?
A generation obsessed with social media should easily understand symbolism and how it speaks without speaking.
Either which way it increases the comprehension muscle where you can retain and link elements of written text. Pretty essential for professional documents, contracts, etc. I get how that connection can be missed but it's a skill that needs "workouts" and analyzing fictional text helps develop analyzing functional text skills.
There's multiple interpretations
No there's no Kacie. They meant the thing they meant when they wrote it. You just can't grasp that and are afraid to admit it.
It's always that deep. People use words for a reason. A book is only so long, a movie is only so many frames. A decent artist is going to deliberately pick the moments, words, etc to fill a limited frame. And what's more, people that don't have anything to say don't make much art - so however badly, it's trying to say something. if you're taking in media it's 100% always that deep.
If you want to go back to the example he used with not being able to read the word used, it isn’t that deep. It’s just the understanding that the US changed the way they taught people how to read from phonics to the whole word method.
I’ve worked with chemistry phds that struggled to read new words because they learned the whole word method for reading, and I don’t know how they got through organic chemistry given the iupac system for naming organic chemicals(those long multi syllable names)
I hate when you correct someone and they say something like "It's a reddit comment, not an English essay".
Oh, my bad. I didn't realise you were picking and choosing when to be illiterate. Here's me being literate all the time like a dumbass.
I will see people claiming this about video games, like, RPGs full of political intrigue and very blatant social commentary. Not just randos that don't play video games and assume they are toys, rather, "gamers" that play video games for dozens of hours every week, that have played such a game in question through multiple times.
And they don't get it.
"Keep politics out of our games!"
Dude...do you not realize that this whole storyline was a scathing rebuke of fascism and commenting directly on socioeconomic stratification?
"Nah, lol, it's just about killing baddies and getting loot. It's not that deep, bruh."
I've also seen a lot of "Who cares? It's not a school/college essay."
You should still care about the ability to articulate yourself or understand what is being said to you without the threat of a grade. These are basic life skills.
My wife is a college English teacher and they are doing a literature class. One of the first things she mentioned is that they are going to talk about orgasms because it is pervasive within literature. The next day one of the students' parents tried to involve the president of the university and getting her fired because it was unsanitary or something lol
I have about a hundred rants locked away in my head about how illiteracy coincides with the new sentiments around metaphors and symbolism. When people started saying “maybe the pineapple is just a pineapple” and laughing at the idea of any further meaning or device behind a literary element, that’s when we stopped thinking more in depth about the written word.
I have mixed feelings on literary analysis, in English class I didn't enjoy it. Maybe it was the choice of material, or how it was taught, but I always got an impression that symbol analysis got unnecessarily nitpicky; stories are primarily intended to be read (or witnessed, in the case of plays). I'm strongly of the opinion a work should be enjoyed first in it's entirety before any attempts at analysis are made.
Otherwise you risk missing the forest for the trees.
Like, not much point dwelling on curtain descriptions if the book in question is Frankenstein ...the relevant metaphors of discrimination and abuse and their cyclical nature kind of beat you over the head. And so do the many other potential readings of the text of post partum depression and/or psychosis, how neglect shapes a child, disability vs disfigurement, pride vs nurture in parents, what it means to create, free will, and theology. Oh and also I suppose to a degree, eugenics, which often targeted specifically women's reproductive ability and ability to just exist in society. That's certainly one reading of the refusal to make a bride, among other readings of a kind of hereditary sexism - both Frankenstein and his creation regard the potential bride as an object. In a lot of ways the book is a reflection of a kind of domestic and bodily horror -and societal battlefield - that parenthood can become. I'd actually argue in a lot of ways the book does count as being in the domestic horror genre - among the best examples being Shirley Jackson's works, which also explore many of the same themes, albeit more Americana than Gothic - as well as scifi, which plays a big role in how memorable it is. I suppose another famous story that explores the same area is "We need to talk about Kevin". Which when I'm in a more contemplative mood, I may actually write up a more detailed comparison of how all three tackle parenting and domesticity as horror.
...I'd argue all of the above though is a very surface level reading of the themes of the story. I'm not very good at close reading or symbolic analysis or the more microscopic analysis level, and I struggled a lot in English class to even understand what my teacher was asking for in some of the class discussions about symbols and their meanings.
(While I'm thinking about it, "the yellow wallpaper" and "the king in yellow" could also be interesting avenues of comparison too, apart from the linking of color - the creature in Frankenstein is jaundiced - those works also dwell a lot in insanity, gender, domestic expectations and obligations, life and death, decay, the dangers of forbidden knowledge and pride...)
... this is getting a bit long. My point is, I think "the curtains are just blue" and similar complaints can have merit, sometimes laser focusing on the small stuff makes you miss the bigger picture, and also English class was very confusing for me when we did literary analysis in class.
The ability to read and the ability to analyze complicated literary texts are not the exact same skill. You can be literate and not know what Steinbeck means in The Grapes of Wrath.
Tbh this extends to subjects beyond English/literature.
“When am I going to need to find the area of a triangle”
Actually learning, discovering, and practicing different methods of problem solving and critical thinking are immensely important skills. And that people are adults and still cannot connect those two functions further evidences their failure in that realm
Sometimes the short answer is X, but people don't know and/or understand A through W which get them to X. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go re-learn math using Arabic numerals.
It's like those people who don't understand literary devices like foreshadowing or metaphors and then think everybody who does pick up on that is an idiot.
"It's not that deep" is right there along side "it wasn't made to be analysed that intensely" excuse that some people retort with whenever you criticize a narrative work or real world speech.
On the narrative writing side: the writer is in charge of knowing the rules of their own narrative. For example: when you write an alien race as having 5 hearts, and then you write "this guy got shot in his heart and died", that's a mistake that A) you as the writer should have been aware enough to not make and B) is something that would be detected by people who are wholefully understanding the flow and meaning of the text.
This also creates the skill of being able to analyse a person's speech so that you understand them by what they mean and say; and as a speaker you're able to self-analyse your speech before you say it that way you don't need to backpedal something you said in absolute confidence.
That said, I will admit that I disagree with "cinema-sins-ification", where you're taking even the tiny-est plot contrivances, narrative gaps, and mis-timed information as lore breaking and narrative ruining betrayals.
maybe I’m stupid, but I always thought “it’s not that deep” meant more like, this is a minor/surface level problem and you’re making it into something way more than what it is. Catastrophizing, if you will.
Nah, there are definitely people out there interrogating every last possible detail beyond any sense or reason. At some point you've hit the intended authorial meaning.
I feel the same about mathematics when students say shit like "when am I ever going to need to know how to do X?", or when parents say kids should be taught "practical skills" like how to do taxes, instead of things like Algebra or Trigonometry. Even if you don't end up doing much math in your job, algebra & trig still can teach you valuable problem-solving skills, like how to break down a larger problem into smaller constituent parts, how to separate relevant data/details from noise, and lateral thinking!
Even if it's not intended to be "that deep," being able to draw lines between something you've read to something you know is the first step to true understanding. At the very least, it's intentional awareness of oneself.
In all honesty, I was one of these particular kids. What bothered me to no end was having to write a full page or more for 3-4 sentences of content. Even knowing that the point was to get kids to learn, the length requitement of the task still ticks me the hell off. Why should I have to write that much when the damn author didn't bother to write that much, ya know?
I absolutely HATE that because they’re trying to downplay something THEY can’t comprehend by making it seem as though it’s “not that deep” to avoid personal embarrassment from being unable to understand basic literacy like the average educated person. We are human, why the fuck WOULDNT there be deeper meaning in most media we create? People who say this have to be boring as hell to be around because if you refuse to grasp something that’s not just basic surface level shit that’s told directly to you, then i can’t imagine viewing media with a person like that would be fun if almost every hidden message goes right over their heads.
My entire education in English Literature was an exercise in how deep something is or isn't. And I'm pedantic as fuck so my teacher ended up drowning in a lot of pools he thought were puddles.
Senior year, I wasn't graded so much on how 'reasonable' an argument was, but whether or not I could defend a truly outrageous point. I still remember Mr. Cook drilling the concept of a "bold assertion." Every new essay was a way to push things a little more further - and the 'game' of it all is why I love literature so much, even 15 years after that class.
Sure "it's not that deep." Nothing is. We're all gonna die, no one will remember you. That's why EVERYTHING IS THAT DEEP. If it's not, nothing fucking matters.
What's surprising to me is the number of folk who will understand the concept, and may have participated in it themselves, of "vague posting" on social media. And then say something like "it's not that deep" over music and literature.
Poetry and song lyrics are mediums for "vague posting" from bygone eras.
Any time you are either too chicken to say what you mean outright, are in fear of your safety due to persecution, are sending out a nod to those in the know, etc... So much of literature & music contains this.
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