findingfeather:

stopitjon:

I guess it’s just screaming into the void day for me, but one other thing I really wish people would get through their skulls is that critical thinking and literary criticism are not “critical” in the way that your mom is “critical” of your outfit. Critical analysis of media is a lot more involved than thinking up half-baked ideas for why said media is shit, actually.

Thinking critically about a text requires that long before you think in terms of good and bad, you consider intents and outcomes, you understand both the immediate and wider context of what you’re looking at, and you acknowledge that fiction is subjective. It’s about thoughtful examination of all aspects of the work.

What function does this element serve in the work? Why might the author have included it? How was it incorporated, and how does it interact with other elements? Setting aside possible intents, but looking closely at context and execution, what impact does this element have on the work as a whole? On different possible audiences? How does all of this play into or deviate from greater patterns across media?

And for the love of god please stop forgetting:

What lens or framework am I using to examine this text? What are the limitations or problems with that framework? What are my biases? (<-Americans do this challenge) If I choose to examine this through a different lens, how does that change what I see?

…That’s barely a start, but the point is, if your idea of “thinking critically about the media you consume” starts and ends with picking any number of random things you heard are bad and seeing if they show up or not in said media, you’ve done the critical thinking equivalent of tripping at the starting line and really have no place telling other people to follow your lead whilst you are, quite obviously, face-down in the dirt.

I would like to frame this whole post but especially:

What lens or framework am I using to examine this text? What are the limitations or problems with that framework? What are my biases? (<-Americans do this challenge) If I choose to examine this through a different lens, how does that change what I see?

And while we’re at it don’t assume that yours is automatically the most “woke” lens, that you actually know the entire and total needs and mindsets and situations even of identity groups you are part of (let alone ones you are not) and that the needs of others are simple, simple to dismiss, totally and intuitively understood by you, or that groups that you are not part of are as homogenous in their needs and perspectives as they seem to you from outside.

(IOW: even if you are queer/LGBTQIA2S you personally do not speak for every queer/LGBTQIA2S person out there and others of the same identity may need and want totally different things from you; ditto for every other category including “trauma survivor”. You may, even after considering this, still feel that a thing is bad or whatever, but I cannot fucking count how often bullshit starts from one person assuming that every other person who falls into their category feels lockstep exactly the same way they do, and that everyone who feels differently must, by definition, Not Be Like Them.) (Conflicting access/safety/etc needs: a thing ACROSS ALL SPECTRA.)