LogFAQs > #969197806

adjl posted...

People are fond of saying this, but by and large, it's one side trying to make meaningful improvements to media portrayals that stand to yield actual societal benefits, and the other side freaking out over any deviation from the status quo.

That is certainly what one side enjoys telling itself to justify its own shitty behavior, yes.

But that in itself is part of the problem.



adjl posted...

Mythology is thinly-veiled political or ideological statement hidden behind metaphor. Everything about every mythology humanity has ever conceived boils down to trying to explain the way the world works in a way that makes enough sense to convince others to agree with it.

I'd agree to a point - but I'd also point out that it's often a question of unconscious beliefs and assumptions coloring a shared story that evolves over time across many tellers rather than a deliberate attempt to create a specific narrative by a single individual or small group of individuals.

And none of which necessarily matters when an artist is deliberately attempting to mimic the form of the medium without writing in the same context. Tolkien wasn't trying to explain how the world works in an attempt to get others to agree. He was trying to tell a story that "felt" like mythology and which could inspire the same sense of joy and wonder he felt when reading the various mythology of other cultures.

Tolkien wasn't creating "mythology" for the same reason people create real mythology. His intentions were entirely different, and they're reflected in the nature of the work.

Tolkien himself repeatedly said that anyone who tries to figure out what LotR really means is pretty much automatically wrong, and they've completely missed the entire point.



adjl posted...

It's nonetheless very rare to find a truly apolitical work of art. This notion of "everything's so political these days" has very little basis in reality.

The problem is how you define "apolitical art", and how you choose to interpret what you're looking at and the intentions behind its creation. It's entirely possible to read meaning into works even where such meaning was never intended to exist, and it has grown vastly more common in the modern era, where we've developed a highly metatextual and allegorical view of the world. It's the driving force behind concepts like Death of the Author - it doesn't matter what the person who created a work says it's about, because we've decided it's metaphorically about something else and we're egotistical enough to assume that the only thing that matters is our perception of the world.

We assume that because we see patterns, those patterns automatically exist, were intended, and are the most important implications of a work - even if our perceptions are nothing more than apophenia.

Modern culture is quite possibly one of the most narcissistic and egocentric paradigms humans have ever created. And we define literally everything through the lens of that perception, even when it's blatantly and completely wrong to do so.

Which gives us a very flawed understanding of the world we actually live in. And a view that is only growing more and more flawed as every individual separates themselves out into microcosm echo chambers that narrowcast their own viewpoint back at them and radicalize their views.

This is why pointing at one group and saying "THEY are the problem" is often missing the point. EVERYONE is the problem. And until people understand that, the problem will never be solved. Scapegoating and tribalism (regardless of which side you're on) makes things worse, not better.