We once read a book called "Feed" in high school - a ham fisted anti-capitalist book. Wherein citizens are 100% connected to an internet like service that only exists to sell them products. 90% of the class couldnt get it. Even when the teacher sat down and explained the entire plot of the book they still couldnt wrap their head around it.
I'll always bring this up. The USA has a functional literacy rate of 87%. The median American reads at around a 5th grade level. Total illiteracy is common enough for whole industries of literacy aides to exist, like people who will read stuff for adults.
Even with people who know how to read, and got through college, having a structured stance on a piece of media doesn't seem common. Reading into subtext doesn't seem common except among total nerds. I really get sad when I hear something like "it's just a movie." Yeah, it's a movie that propagates a specific ideology, you can't see it?
I don't think people are dumb, I think people are overworked past the point of caring about anything other than their immediate circumstances and it's a complete tragedy.
When I go to my folks’ place out in a very rural woodsy area, the local stores have pamphlets for helping illiterate adults learn to read.
Yeah, I used to work as a literacy instructor for adults, like what those pamphlets advertise. It was a medium sized city and our phone was always ringing asking for classes. Sometimes it was people calling to ask if we could help them buy groceries since they had to read nutrition information now. One time I helped an illiterate couple sign divorce papers. More than once I met people with more impressive jobs than I'll ever have taking the classes. They had the finest bullshitting abilities on Earth and had somehow achieved senior level positions without ever having functional literacy. Yes, one was a cop.
This is kind of heartbreaking tbh
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Are we including all the senior citizens who refuse to bring their reading glasses when they go to the supermarket?
No, the elderly people I worked with both couldn't see well and also never learned how to read. It's even more depressing than how I describe it.
Schools are shit too, except for the privileged minority
"Yes, and movies are based on things that happened or things people believed."
I was attempting to tell a coworker that Marvel movies are pro-CIA and pro-imperialism, to which the response was "They're just movies. You just gotta turn your brain off and enjoy them"
Yeah sorry I don't enjoy DoD financed propaganda
Unfortunately we have to start from square one or we sound like conspiracy theorists (it ain't a conspiracy if the CIA explicitly says they do it but w/e). Specific examples first, then connect them once enough clues are gathered.
"So Iron Man just wins at Afghanistan because he has better guns? And he's fighting in Afghanistan because the terrorists have guns he built in the first place? That sounds a lot like... hey, ever see that movie War Dogs? Pretty good comedy, check it out some time."
People don't see any subtext if they're propagandized enough, it's actually terrifying. There's a best of the worst episode about Carnosaur, a right wing propaganda, where the main character is a security guard for a construction site plagued by hippies chaining themselves to bulldozers and stuff. The hippies are portrayed as braindead potheads, and there's an insane scientist who gives birth to a t-rex in the hopes that the dinosaurs will wipe out humanity. I'm talking Poison Ivy from Batman & Robin level of blatant anti green propaganda. So basically every left leaning character is evil and stupid. Jay, a professional movie critic points out how every left leaning character in evil and stupid, and then instead of recognizing the movie for the right wing propaganda, he somehow assumes the movie creators are left leaning but also incredibly stupid. He thought they tried to show their point of view in a positive light but failed so spectacularly they came out as villains. It's honestly one of the dumbest takes I've ever heard in my entire life.
professional movie critic, btw
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