Is media literacy in crisis?

I don't know "Poor Things" (yet) but I latched on to you saying that people seem to have a problem with the main character being very sexually active. I've always thought that the reason LGBTQ+ rights took a turn around 2000 that some saw as positive, was because a subset of our community promised, essentially, to stop having sex and get married instead. Many of the current problems the LGBTQ+ community is facing in the Anglophone world are caused by hetero society finally noticing that being allowed marriage didn't stop some of us frightening the horses.

Thank you for this video essay! Excellent connections between discomfort, inescapable privilege, and media literacy. I also love how you opened the video talking about responses to Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights. I don’t think media literacy is dead, but your message makes it clear that it can require empathy and uncomfortable self-reflection.

Thank you so much for this brilliant and important video!!

I hated Wuthering Heights as a romance, because I was told it was a romance and that made it so disgusting. I hated it more for how people loved it as a romance. I was the person screaming “what is wrong with all of you?” I’ve since met a community of people who enjoy Wuthering Heights for what it is and am slowly overcoming my trauma. I plan on reading it again soon and enjoying it, because I love gothic literature and I’ll never let that be taken away from me again. Also, everyone who says Wuthering Heights is a romance: Stop it. Get some help.

I would add the movie Cuties to this list. Netflix promoted it horribly, and that made people never want to see it. In fact, they were very angry at a movie they've never seen. The movie is actually an examination of all the things people were screaming about. How it's hard to be a young girl and especially to be a young girl in an immigrant family who expect you to be one way, and a society they don't understand wanting you to be another. How hypersexualization can distort how young teens see themselves and how sexuality is expected from girls that are far from being women. It deals with media pressures on sexual expression, peer pressure to conform, and then when expressing what they've seen, digust from older generations. But everyone judged it from a 40 second clip they saw on the internet. I try really hard to not judge something before I've seen it or read it (I've failed, but now I try to catch it earlier). I think people get swept away in these anger waves without actually knowing what they're angry about.
(I would also like to add Lolita and Catcher in the Rye to your list of classics that are consistently misread)
(Also, also, thank you for talking about this, it's a really important topic)
(Also, also, also, I adore Wuthering Heights and you've reminded me that I need to reread it)

A great video, and a hugely important topic to discuss! It's so valuable to feel that discomfort and learn how to look at it directly without flinching. Or, rather, to feel that flinch and examine it.

Also re: The Matrix — I remember how the film went from a 5/5 plain ol' good sci-fi, to an actual modern masterpiece after I really figured out the extent of my own queerness and just how much that's what the movie's about. It feels like home now.

Great video and insight as always ❤Every time there is a discussion about media literacy I always remember that stupid meme about blue curtains and metaphorical meaning within the text (or lack of thereof) and it makes my blood boil. And rn the social media is full of people that refuse to interact with fictional text on more than shallow literal level, be it a book, a manga, or a video game. And like you said, many of it is done out of privilage and the idea that "discomfort" is something to be avoided at all cost when it comes to interacting with art.

Can someone help me understand how not wanting to see a woman with an infant brain have intimate relations with grown men is so wrong? I don’t think this type of art will communicate these feminist ideas clearly to anyone who doesn’t already understand them? Maybe I’m wrong.

"Frankenstein is a nasty man" My initial response is "No duh, that's the point". I love Frankenstein! I tried Wuthering Heights recently but DNF'd it. Just not for me, so confusing. I do have Poor Things but still have to read it.
Talking about being uncomfortable I was so confused, because Frankenstein never made me uncomfortable. But then the women/queer people/people of color etc. making people be uncomfortable it clicked, oh yea, my existence as a queer disabled trans man makes them uncomfortable, and I relate to the "monster". No I don't condone his actions but I am disabled and deformed (obviously not like the creature but still) so I feel for him, so much, and hate how shallow everyone is in running from him in fear just based on how he looks, even his own "father". Shallow people really make me angry to say the least... and I guess that's what makes them uncomfy? That's all I can think, confronted with their own shallowness.
I still need to watch The Matrix films! I'm 35, I know I suck at watching things.
Great video! I know there's been times I was made uncomfortable because of my white privilege to. I hope to always be learning, growing and examine anytime media makes me uncomfortable.

Regarding "Poor Things", from the scene descriptions I've heard, I couldn't watch it due to the gore and animal cruelty. Gory images have always been traumatizing for me.

A friend sent me this video. Probably because I am always going off about how people don't understand a book and "don't know how to read'. I am not going to argue with you about people bringing their privilege to the table - or in this case the book. This is only part of the problem. I am currently getting my MA in English Literature and upon graduation this spring to get my MFA. I think I'm qualified to talk about this. The majority of my professors have been saying that things are getting worse and worse with each incoming group of students. They don't know how to critically think, they don't know how to engage, they don't know how to write a basic paper. And it's been worse since the pandemic when we were all on Zoom. It's this lack of thinking critically, it's this banning of books, and so much more along with privledge.

Brilliant. Thank you for challenging us 💖

Media literacy has never been prevalent.
Right now, more people are engaging with more art in many forms than ever in history. And I'd actually guess that there are also more people engaging with that art in complex, literate ways than ever. But that leaves a tremendous number who simply don't have those skills.

People need to learn to be more able to recognize, sit with, and analyze their discomfort. Not only in relation to art, but art is an excellent path for intentional exploration.

I really appreciate this video, and I want to understand more. I'm having a hard time seeing my discomfort with Poor Things as privilege. I am a 30-something white woman. I consider myself very sex-positive. And the movie itself mI found brilliant and troubling in the best way. But going into it, being told it was "empowering" and "feminist" is where I get lost. I didn't feel empowered at all watching that movie. If anything, I felt like "empowerment" was being reduced to a high sex drive and conventionally attractive body which was almost always displayed as still benefiting the patriarchy, or the men around her. Again, if this is the point, brilliant movie. But I felt like 90% of the movie was about her value coming from what she looked like, and what she could offer with her body. We got a short scene where she learns more about suffering in the world, and then it's back to more sex. I read a review that referred to a type of "manic pixie bride of Frankenstein" and I agree. I know I'm privileged. I know I have a lot to learn about media literacy. But I push back on the point that anyone who has a critique is just not literate enough to understand.

TL;DR: I loved the movie, but I disagree with the reception that it's empowering for women and feminism. I found it to be a powerful statement, but not a positive one.

I'm genuinely curious, if anyone has the time or interest in sharing their thoughts! I want to see if there's a blindspot here. And if not, I'll keep thinking about it. <3

Privilege is definitely a factor in issues of media literacy, but it's not the only aspect. A lack of empathy is an aspect. Stanning is a huge aspect (strong bias for one character causing an inability to empathize with other characters who may be in opposition to that character, or who the stan sees the narrative as favoring "unfairly" -- the stan will then twist everything that character does to suit their narrative). Simply not having the context to engage with a work well (whether because of poor school funding, or previous lack of interest in literature/film, or etc.) is another issue.

I remember being very offended that I was assigned to read The Bluest Eye in an American public high school in the 1990s. The reason I was offended is that there is an explicit father/daughter rape scene in it. I'm also from the city it was set in, but did not live there at the time, and there is father/daughter CSA in my family background, although not me personally. We didn't really talk in terms of "triggering material" at the time, but that was the reason I didn't think it should be assigned (but that we should definitely read other books about the Black experience that didn't have explicit incestuous CSA in them). I felt there was a very good chance that at least one or two kids in the classes who had to read that book were being abused at home and should not have to deal with it as assigned reading. The teacher was male and I thought he was a good guy on the whole, and he definitely assigned the book because he wanted to discuss and confront privilege, but he totally left his male privilege out of the equation.

On another note, I don't agree about Poor Things, and I think the issue with it is the overarching/controlling involvement of presumably cishet men. It is hard to critique abuse without showing abuse, that's true, but there are more and less exploitative ways to depict it. It reminds me a lot of Angela Carter's Nights At the Circus, which does similar things in a way that I didn't personally find as exploitative. Poor Things works super well as a critique of the male characters (and in that context, the fact that it was a male-driven project is not problematic) but I don't think it serves its female characters well, even if I think Bella should have sex with whoever she wants. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ People may dislike Poor Things for reasons other than pearl-clutching, their own privilege, etc... as you said, it's not immune to critique.

Anyway, love the channel, Willow, and even if I don't agree with every point, I'm always interested to hear what you have to say!

Honestly, everyone should watch this video 🖤

tenderqueers and conservatives have a very, very similar mindset—they both seek to demonize art that challenges, that provokes, that discomforts, that subverts. they both posit their mainstream view of art as escapism and comfort as under attack, when not rocking the boat is the status quo. there’s already at least one comment exchange i see acting as if they’re holier than thou for hating dystopian because it’s “uncomfortable” and they shouldn’t have to be “uncomfortable.” acting as if expecting media literacy is “ableist” and “privileged.” that’s the thing that gets me—it’s not enough to make excuses for a lack of interest in genuinely challenging art, but they have to demonize it and act as if they’re morally superior for not engaging in it, whilst also presenting themselves as victims of these expectation of engagement. they have to make up for their own insecurity—because they feel inferior that they are too mentally sheltered and lacking in empathy to explore art beyond their comfort zone—which is a privilege. in the end, it’s marginalized works by marginalized authors who are hit hardest by this brand of tenderqueerism-meets-conservatism.

Yes, it seems Poor Thing has really sparked conversations around media literacy lately. I really liked the book and loved the adaptation. I currently have a playlist of videos I'm working my way through on others' thoughts. One I watched a couple nights ago was "Is POOR THINGS Really Misogynistic? 🤔 | In-Depth Analysis" by Celeste de la Cabra, which I thought was good and I agreed with. I also watched a video recently that discussed media literacy in regard to book banning: "we're missing the point || media literacy & book banning" by Burd's Books.
This also makes me think of a documentary I watched just last night called Hell on Earth: The Desecration & Resurrection of The Devils (2002). Ken Russell's 1971 film The Devils is one of the most controversial films ever made. It was censored and banned widely upon its completion and release, including cutting out two notable scenes. One of those scenes is known as "the r*pe of Christ," probably the most well-known scene of the film nowadays for those familiar with its history despite it being lost for 30 years. Even nowadays it is hard to find a physical copy of the film- either the cut/censored version or the full version- and has exclusive and limited availability on streaming. I watched The Devils for the first time a few years ago on The Criterion Channel, which I think is only available in the USA. It's currently on the service again now and I plan on watching it before the month is over when it goes off again, especially as I just watched this documentary.
Anyway, there was a priest interviewed for the documentary who had some of the most insightful and significant comments of the doc. He consulted and viewed films in the USA and was a sort of middleman between the filmmakers and those working for the British Board of Film Censors who would be viewing The Devils (a British film)- at least that's what I gathered from the info given. He recalled how the censors were appalled and ashamed, taking against the film.
He thinks the r of Christ scene is "integral to the film." "A scene that portrays blasphemy but is not a blasphemous scene." And particularly is important because it is part of a larger sequence intercut with one portraying "a true spiritual enrichment." He and Russell also pointed out how the scene was in the script (which it seems the censors read beforehand), which was namely based on Aldous Huxley's book The Devils of Loudun, which was based on actual events and historical records. And there's a perceived difference / (potential) difference of interpretation between a reader picturing/imagining a scene or events through reading the words and when a filmmaker commits them to film in detail for viewers to see.

I think the biggest issue is that people have ceased to treat books, movies, TV as art. It’s all become content.

Conservative bigots co-opting the Matrix is annoying but also hilarious because of the actual content of the story (and the fact that the brilliant women who made it are trans as you mentioned)

''Media literacy'' always was garbage. People discovered this sentence not so long ago and already throwing it around, screaming how bad it is, everyone is media illiterate, crisis. Internet exists for 20 something years, before most people just watched the movie and either liked it or not, most didn't give a fuck how good the writing is, how good are themes being explored, what meaning is there. (most still don't) It was left to the critic. Now people are able to talk about it on the internet, everyone is an expert in storytelling here and, OMG, everyone is so illiterate, it's crazy.

This reminds me of a couple of reviews I read on the IMDb on the film Queen Kong. There are people who take this King Kong parody way too seriously. It’s a parody it’s meant to make fun of certain things happening in the 1970s and stereotypes in the 1933 film. People take themselves way too seriously nowadays I get the impression. Maybe the thing with a parody is that it’s bound to offend some people. Back in the day when I grew up if you didn’t like a parody you shrug your shoulders and went on with your life. But now with social media…. It seems to me that people stay in a state of frustration much longer. You can’t make a parody nowadays without being afraid to get canceled.
You make some strong points.

Omg the matrix comparison was genius❤❤❤

As a Muslim I really appreciate you Willow❤❤❤❤

'he's actually quite a nasty man' shocked Pikachu face

One thing I remember from reading Wuthering Heights a few years ago was hating every single character but loving the book because the character's behaviours and flaws said so much and that was the whole point.

Bless you for this video. So insightful and well-explained. The explanation of confronting privilege regarding Black characters in Poor Things was so well said.

Also, I would absolutely watch a video deep-diving the Matrix, haha. I adore those movies so much.

Thank you. I saw PT with a friend and she hated the movie. She talk about how there was too much sex and wouldn't accept my argument that it was supposed to be ugly and crass and unconfy. Your explanation makes sense to me, she is super privileged and doesn't really reflect on that, so yeah.

Thank you Willow!!!

Exceptionally well said. Thank you

Me watching this, thinking, "Oh god, I hope my comment a few videos ago that Frankenstein was a bit too long and it felt like it was beating me over the head with the themes at the end and Frankenstein's whining didnt inspire the laughing aside or hit a sore spot where people kept saying it was bad😬... Like I dont think it was bad, and definitely not for the time. Just as me, now, in a modern lens, having annotated the whole time and run out of tabs, going, "death/immortality anxiety, Darwinism, trauma, the Jungian Shadow self, the self-pity, the critique of God and society, yes yes get ON with it.... God. I want to read something else now and there are HOW many more pages of this man? Im so Tired. " Lol.

But in all likelihood, the comment i am now angsting about wasnt even seen and I am just anxious over a torment of my own dumb4ss creation....

Like..... Frankenstein... God damn it. 😅

It's funny...it feels like there is more good discussion of storytelling by people who aren't professional critics or literature professors than ever (eg all the people discussing their specific problems with the end of Game of Thrones and using terms like 'character arc'). However, it often ends up very PLOT focused, sometimes character-development focused, but there seems to be more confusion around dissecting themes and messages.

And I think you're right about the privilege and discomfort, but I also think people often aren't taught to think through that discomfort. They see that the topic is there, but not what the author is trying to convey about it.

Sometimes I still get uncomfortable when, despite thinking about it A LOT, I can't figure out how a book is trying to frame a certain uncomfortable topic. For instance, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and 'In the House of the Spirits' are both Latin American magical realism novels with extensive political commentary...and which you could tag with just about every trigger warning imaginable! But the former feels more uncomfortable to me than the latter because while the political themes of both are pretty clear (it's hard to imagine walking away not understanding that the authors think banana republic imperialism/ right-wing coups are bad) the other TW-worthy stuff is handled rather differently. In 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' there's a lot of messed up stuff that happens to women and children that kinda reads more like the 'here's a bunch of random quirky stuff that happens in this town!' part of the book than the commentary on the horrors of war and imperialism. It's still an important piece of literature...but I can't love it as much as I want to because of that. I appreciate that Allende took inspiration from it and created a similar story that I CAN unequivocally love, in part because I feel secure that when a rich man SAs a young peasant girl (for example)...it's VERY clearly a case of "portraying does not equal endorsing." I feel discomfort in that scene because it is inherently horrifying, not because I'm unsure whether she thinks that is OK (unlike with the bit in 'Solitude' where one character marries a child who then dies while pregnant and...we're apparently NOT supposed to read him as a monster?).

This was great!
You're going to make me have to reassess my opinion of Hogg....dammit.

I'm doing an essay soon about The Matrix as a trans allegory/through a queer theory lens

Excellent points 🙏Poor Things is amazing - and yet, I understand the criticism (about the black archetypes, not the other stuff)
Ps: I love your sweater ♥️🩶💙

I suppose young people don't read Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' and learn about satire anymore. The idea of a mindless wife doll goes all the way back to Galatea. It's a persistant male fantasy, ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

Great video and insights.

poor things is still porn disguised as art

I was so pleased to see this Willow. Also an ex English teacher, similarly dismayed by the current lack of media literacy, lack of understanding of privilege, bias and the fact that well-written characters sre not necessarily likeable characters. 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Frankenstein' are up there among my favourite novels too and I am heartily sick of listening to friends who don't understand why that is.
Love your videos, keep them coming ❤

6 years of being on Twitter and I've watched the collective minds of people be warped in disturbing ways. Yet when I speak to people in person, they seem fairly normal. I'm convinced the whole narrative comes from armchair anthropologists.

Great video! More people should speak about this!

We in the Tiny Hands Society completely agree with you

We live in an age of young, outspoken people who are aware of the vast and endless injustices of the world - people who are angry, lost, and trapped by the state of the world want solutions. They want answers. They want to effect change NOW. And it's not happening. We're tired, scared, and pissed off.

And I think this directly correlates to the current media literacy discourse. Why? When one feels utterly unable to effect even the most basic of change in the world, turning that attitude to the art and entertainment you consume can feel like activism.

That's why you get these moralistic, puritanical outrages from people who basically think depiction is endorsement. Our only outlet in this hellscape of a world we live in is our entertainment. So when we police the ethics and morality of that, we feel like we're saying something, doing something.

That's why you see people who thinking counting lines of dialogue a female character has in a movie is doing a feminism....when in reality all they are doing is utterly failing to engage with the piece on any meaningful thematic level.

People now expect art to instantly BE POLITICAL. To MAKE A STATEMENT. If a person can't immediately graft their politics onto a piece of art and if THE STATEMENT isn't instantly recognizable, or if you find it challenging and uncomfortable in any way, you rebel against it.

And yea, all art IS political. But the problem comes from putting the politics first and the art a distant second.

I wrote my college thesis on Haruki Murakami. Now THERE is an author whose work makes people deeply uncomfortable while having quite a lot to say. I can't even imagine what some of these people would say about those books.

Frankenstein is just Old School Robocop that never had a fair chance.....

What the heck? Just because The Wachowskis transitioned doesn't mean the matrix was queer coded or about LGBT issues. The original trilogy was made before they transitioned and to my knowledge has no relevance to LGBT. It's a story about humanity reclaiming existence from machines who don't even have a concept of sex or gender and aren't organic. It's an action film stunts and chosen 1 prophecies. It also has nothing to do with the patriarchy because the machines don't have a biological sex.

I might give you that one about capitalism, but most of the criticism around that was how bad the choice of the machines using us as batteries instead of central processing units was because the directors didn't think people would understand central processing units in 1999 and the plans and the animatrix being incredibly short sighted and leading to the events of the films in universe. You made-up most of that off the top of your head while talking about the matrix being used to twist ideologies. It has been, but you're doing the same thing by making all of that up.

And what you're doing here is basically saying that if someone objects to a piece of media that relates to being queer or subversive, it means they're privileged. You're not allowing for any other interpretations to be valid. As an Australian who lives in a country with equal rights legislation that has been in place since the 1980s, I am not privileged because I'm white and I'm not privileged because I'm a man. Automatically accusing me of such is racist towards all races because it implies that I'm an oppressor or benefiting from oppression just because of who I am and it implies that any other ethnicities are disadvantaged despite the fact it is banned by my country's legislation. In addition, accusing me of male privilege is both misogynistic and misandric because it makes me seem like a bad person just because I'm a man and it implies that women have it worse than they actually do.

Former English teacher on not, keep your political punditry out of this.

I'd just like to comment on the plague doctor. My cuddle buddy got me a fairly large one after I got Covid-19. Her name is Rona, the doctor that is.

Can we discuss media literacy without reducing it to whether people get the politics or not? This is only a minor part of what art is about. One thing I find annoying about Lanthimos's films is that he is so utterly heavy handed in the shit that he is so obviously "trying to say," that his work lacks in actual artistry and substance because he prioritises being subversive and loud. In fact, I believe he thinks those are the same thing. Please do not defend PT like it's some artistic masterpiece that people only criticise because they don't get it. Having said that, yes, people have very little media literacy, and I do believe it is getting worse.

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” ― Cesar A. Cruz