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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3670 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Please link me any good analyses of the Barbie movie you've read, be it on Twitter, Substack, or wherever. CW stuff is especially desired.

I think a huge part of the negative reaction to the movie as being "man-hating" is due to people with incredibly poor media literacy who seem to think that the filmmakers' farcical representation of Barbieland is a straight-faced endorsement of their idea of a utopia, which I think it pretty obviously is not.

Unfortunately, if you are making media to be consumed by the public, then you must be considering how the public is likely to interpret your media, regardless of whether they live up to your standards of media literacy. If I take a flight to Germany and wave around a flag emblazoned with a certain symbol auspicious to Buddhists, then I’ll likely be arrested anyway despite any claims of benign intentions on my part.

I haven’t seen the movie, but I’ve heard both the “men bad” interpretation and the “it’s actually a satire” interpretation from others who have watched it. Maybe my friend with the former interpretation, who took offense to the film, is simply lacking in media literacy. But for every one of him, there’s a woman equally lacking in media literacy who also interprets the film as professing “men bad”— and is inclined to agree with this message, and modify their behavior in life accordingly.

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