What I mean by that is that Pepe was never intended to be a fascist/reactionary shibboleth, and was originally intended to be a college stoner that liked to pee with his pants fully down because it felt good, man. Attempts to steer Pepe back with additional comics, lawsuits, and attempts to regain control of the character by the original maker had mixed results and to this day Pepe (and Groyper and other mutations) is unfortunately still generally a fascist/reactionary shibboleth, especially when seen in the wild and presented by strangers.
There was some validity to the original usage of "the curtains were fucking blue" in its original context, especially when it came to the kind of "have a conclusion and look for evidence" sort of bad-faith analysis that was all too common in my upper division courses at university. Not every professor did that, of course, but those that did had a prepackaged expectation for what they wanted to find, everywhere, regardless of what the author or artist originally intended for any given work, or even if you subscribe to "death of the author" it was also regardless of what the viewing public or the class for that matter would have otherwise seen with it. A hammer-shaped ideology would see everything as a nail, so to speak.
Having said that, when I see "the curtains were fucking blue!" said online (or worse, in person, as has happened more times than I would have liked), it is used the same way as saying "shut up, I don't want to think about that, reductionist evaluation of the thing with pretenses of objectivity only" but with less honesty. If a game (or movie, or show) has skeezy or otherwise questionable content or messaging, the curtains must be blue to that person.
The consequences of the proliferation of "the curtains were fucking blue" can be seen in the fairly common belief that the only good art is only photorealistic drawings, done with some specific medium for novelty's sake, and typically done of pop culture characters that the viewer is already fond of, as is common on Reddit.
Yes, sometimes the curtains are indeed fucking blue. But other times, it is aggressive ignorance to say so. The most extreme example I can think of that I have personally experienced was a discussion on another site about the ideology of 80s television following Reagan-era deregulation of entertainment, news, and media in general, and the topic of GI Joe came up. I personally enjoyed that show as a kid, but as an adult, I could certainly see just how thick and heavy the messaging was from the introduction onward. "GI Joe is the code name for America's highly trained special mission force. Its purpose: to protect human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world." I didn't even have to look up that text; it's burned into my memory, so successful was that messaging.
I heard those exact words, dropped like a bomb into the discussion: the curtains were fucking blue. That same person then said that GI Joe had NO political messaging whatsoever, that it was "nonpolitical" in his own words, and that saying otherwise was wishful thinking and, again in his own words, "having an agenda for your narrative."
I truly believe it's possible to enjoy (or have enjoyed) entertainment while both criticizing it and accepting criticism of it. But this wagon circling attitude when it comes to literary analysis is disturbingly common now. I still enjoy Tolkien's works, for example, but for some fans, something like this: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/175 can and has been seen as a threat, somehow, to the continued enjoyment of the work.
The curtains are sometimes more than blue. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. :rat-salute:
Would you say these guys also "went off the rails?"
https://mattiasinspace.substack.com/p/is-show-dont-tell-a-cia-psyop
https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-144-how-the-cold-war-shaped-first-person-journalism-and-literary-conventionss-42bf68ccaef
I might be more willing to hear you out if you didn't make it personal.
It is useful writing advice for entertaining modern audiences (in part because that's what modern audiences have come to expect, so it becomes self-reinforcing) but I wouldn't call it fundamental, considering how the "show, don't tell" mandate is relatively new when it comes to the very old canon of literature and literary analysis going back thousands of years.
Did I?? I thought I just said that I didn't agree with or understand where you were coming from.
I think that link agrees with me? They say that show don't tell is good advice, in moderation.
Editing in because, wow, even moreso
Who's making it personal again?
Aristotle, Poetics
Averroes, 12th century Spanish writer
I'm sure I can find more examples, if you like. Isn't show, don't tell, like, the entire idea behind poetry?
I didn't even say it was bad advice to "show don't tell" as much as it was pushed dogmatically in recent history as some absolute mandate. Some things simply have to be told, including in the classics in antiquity. The predecessor king of the Danes in Beowulf was told to be a good king; there wasn't a cinematic presentation made of it unless the verbal mention of the overturning the tables of the enemy camp counts.
Yes, I do think you're making it personal. I actually edited that bit out because I looked at it a second time ("in part because that’s what modern audiences, like you") and it was unintentionally incendiary in how it sounded. Yes, modern audiences can and do expect that delivery style. I do as well, actually, especially when I go and see a movie. Maybe I should have mentioned that but I didn't. That's on me.
My intention is just to discuss the concepts, I still don't see what I said that was personal.
When you said that show don't tell isn't fundamental, I took that to mean that you don't consider it good advice, except in a modern context, because of how it's been pushed. If you agree that it's generally good advice (in moderation) regardless of time and place, then we're on the same page. Of course the specific phrase is relatively new, but as I showed, the fundamental concept has been around since ancient times.
As an aside, like, the CIA also funded Jackson Pollock and I don't think his paint splatters are anti-communist. They also funded psychics and shit. They were just throwing shit at a wall to see what would stick, imo.
Starting off with a :jesse-wtf: and telling me I went off the rails isn't exactly an invitation for anything but a defensive response.
"Show don't tell" isn't new, but the school of thought that started making it more mandatory as an expectation is. Especially if that's taught in a sloppy and slapdash way, it leads to a lot of author intent failing to get delivered. That doesn't mean that a bad classroom is necessary for intent getting lost in the "showing" and "not telling." For example, Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" never actually was intended to be a direct criticism of the meat processing industry but instead a wider-reaching message that culminated in a happy ending with Sinclair himself as governor of California. As the well known quote goes, he aimed for the heart and hit the stomach, and we got the FDA as a result. Still a good thing, at least.
Yes, the CIA funded some slapdash things, but I still disagree about both the intent and success of "show don't tell" academic reformations. A lot of Marxist theory is very wordy to the point of it being a meme even here ("read theory!"), while by contrast capitalist ideologies and liberalism are very easy to absorb and have been internalized for generations in the United States with very little contest. Simply showing something and only showing something to such people with no telling, students or audiences seeking entertainment, isn't likely to get any message across even if one is intended unless that message is already supporting the status quo.
Since you started your replies with :jesse-wtf: I'll use Breaking Bad as an example. It certainly shows a lot. It doesn't tell all that much. It's entertaining, and Brian Cranston is a fantastic actor. But in that relative void of literary messaging, how many people quote Walter White because he had all the cool lines and see him as some role model compared to those that see that he was enjoying being the bad guy all along and his path toward it (the "breaking" of the "bad") was a self-justified exercise from the start of his cancer diagnosis?
I'm not even going to say that telling and not showing that would change minds after the fact. What I am saying is that when so much is left open to interpretation, both in the past and now, people are going to take from it what they were looking for. That's fine I suppose, but if the author's intentions were different, that may be disappointing to them.
I said that I agreed with your OP. I didn't understand what the fuck you were talking about so I used the wtf emoji. I apologize if it came across as a personal insult, as that was not my intent.
I agree that it's possible for the message to get lost this way, but for the record I'll note that "The Jungle" predates the CIA and "show, don't tell." Language is an imperfect tool of communication, and the intended message can be lost just as easily through telling as through showing. If I write, "John was sad," then I'm basically just hoping that the reader has the same feeling come to mind that I'm thinking of, because sadness can vary greatly in how it feels and in intensity. Furthermore, as words change in meaning over time and across languages, the meaning can easily become lost or changed. If I instead describe how John expressed his sadness, then the reader is much less dependent on shared understanding of specific words. If I write, "John could not be roused from his bed for three days," then you can better understand what I'm trying to convey, and that meaning is more robust across language and culture.
It may be that the tell-iness of classic Marxist theory factored in to the promotion of show don't tell. But this doesn't mean that show don't tell is an inherently anti-communist thing, as those works are only one way of expressing the underlying concepts.
Speaking personally, I was raised Catholic. In Catholicism, there is one, exact way to talk about certain things, such as the Trinity. This parody does a good job of satirizing it. The fact that the Trinity cannot really be expressed except by telling proves that it's a weak, hollow concept, really just a series of words to recite. The nature of truth is that it has substance - when something is true, there are many different ways to show that it's true, many different ways of expressing it. Showing is helpful because that sort of hollow dogma cannot be shown. As such, when a concept is shown, it is generally more compelling.
I know "The Jungle" predates the CIA's antics by quite a few years. If you read me more closely you'd see I was giving an example that a bad classroom (or CIA manipulation) isn't necessary for mistaken interpretations to happen, for purposes of fairness.
Your example of John not being roused for three days, without any further teacher guidance or author implications, could very well be interpreted as the character becoming very ill.
Your Catholic upbringing as you brought it up does help me see your perspective on things. You said I had some poor teachers, which I did (some good ones too, but I digress), so if you want me to understand where you're coming from when it comes to dogma obfuscating the nature of truth, I ask the same in return when it comes to a poorly taught classroom with uninspired students that simply decide what suits them from their pre-determined preferences without actually interacting with the material or deriving meaning from it, and how such things can make even a Steinbeck novel lose the entirety of its purpose in favor of "some family got their house bulldozed and a car dealership ripped them off, I guess. When's lunch?"
To teach a single dogmatic interpretation and to open things up to the point that all interpretations are equally valid are both extremes which don't require any real understanding of the nuance of the text. The proper balance is one of informed individual opinions. If an interpretation is based on factual inaccuracies, misinterpretations, or bad faith, then that interpretation is not valid.
However, this "proper balance" is not a balance between dogma and modern literary criticism. The balance is between dogma and lazy/apathetic teachers. "All interpretations are equally valid" is a strawman version of The Death of the Author, it is not a serious academic position.
Informed opinions weren't really allowed to form in that classroom and a few like it. The pace of the classes was "show and show and show and show and test on facts rather than ideas in the literature."
Framing my argument of telling not automatically being undesirable at all times against showing is strawmanning what I was saying. I was not suggesting or even implying teaching a single dogmatic interpretation.
deleted by creator
Ok then. You are wrong. Show don't tell is good and you should agree with it
Telling is literally so easy wtf
deleted by creator
So I take it you agree with me now, since I told you what to believe? Or was I unclear?
I don't consider it good advice as an absolute mandate. Sometimes it really is useful or even necessary to tell something rather than show it.
You were going on about dogma and how stifling it is, after all. I experienced dogma in my own way. I didn't invalidate your experience, I'd rather you don't invalidate mine.
I just think we're on different wavelengths tbh. I didn't understand how I was making it personal and now I don't understand how I'm invalidating your experiences. I'm just arguing that your experiences were the result of bad teacher(s) rather than ideology, I'm not saying that they didn't happen or anything. Honestly I don't really want to continue the conversation.