A lot of people, and not exclusively chuds, understand narrative fiction as a process by which you identify yourself with the protagonist and experience the narrative through them. This leads to the perennial complaint that such and such a character is unlikeable or problematic, which ruins the fiction, because the whole point is to identify yourself with them.

American culture, and especially the anti-intelectual/reactionary conservative culture, doesn't reward any kind of introspection or deep analysis. People are just kind of expected believe whatever the television or news says.

for whatever reason, i was looking at an analysis of grapes of wrath, the john steinbeck novel. the book is filled to the brim with pro-labor/pro-worker messages, is about workers in the great depression, mentions marx and lenin by name. the entire book is very pro-union.

yet this one analysis i saw said that when a character strangles a baby turtle, that "represents the stranglehold of communism" ???? my brain exploded reading that. why would a book that takes place in the great depression NOT be about...yknow the stranglehold of capitalism? lol

Another example: I went to see Nick Offerman perform live a few years ago. He made some comments about Trump and one the hardline conservatives in my social group walked out. He didn't understand that Ron Swanson is a satirical character and Nick Offerman doesn't always agree with what Ron Swanson says. I'm sure other people with different ideologies make this mistake too, but I don't see it much in my community. That's part of the reason why I'm asking if there's any research into this.

it's possible but we have to be careful we don't fall into the lib elitist mindset here. critically thinking about a film, book etc. is a skill that needs to be developed just like any other. people could just not have the time or the energy to do so. idk, i know plenty of libs/sucdems who don't think critically about media either.

Depiction = Endorsement is an attitude you see in a lot of conservative media reactions, and frankly you see it from some libs too.

I've heard of studies about cons being uncomfortable with ambiguity or uncertainty, my guess is that leads to attaching to the obvious and then having no desire to think about multiple possible interpretations.

Obligatory phrenology disclaimer, I guess

i think its because theyre dumb as fuck

I think people who "identify with" those characters know they're bad but just think being bad is cool (because, you know, they're depicted as exciting and cool looking and badass). I mean, the word badass itself is supposed to have a negative connotation but actually doesn't. I think it's more about American mythos/propaganda overpowering whatever critiques are in some piece of media. And some people just want to have some kind of avatar or character they identify with who is 'edgy' (I mean lot of people who like these folks, you know, are actually like these characters, and it probably doesn't matter that they are negative depictions).

If I watched an anti-communist movie that portrayed Lenin as some kind of evil badass, I would probably still root for him. I saw some scenes from "Olympus has Fallen" and found it funny how badass the Koreans in the movie are (even though they have them commit a bunch of random nonsensical crimes). I don't think any of us would watch some stupid reactionary movie and be like "I've been owned, we must abandon communism" because of some depiction of communists. It's probably the same way for people who are actual sociopaths or wannabe gangsters.

And of course, as ch*po, says, nobody changes their mind or learns anything new through movies and stuff.*

Edit: *Unless you make it extremely obvious.

They don't even comprehend metaphor like at all

this study is somewhat related: The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report

As a hobbyist fiction enjoyer (only being semi-sarcastic here) I agree with the sentiment. But. A lot of these characters are cool. Sure, they're pieces of shit. But a lot of them also get to live out people's wildest dreams. Even if it all comes crashing down in the end, these films make such a spectacle of the drug-fueled ragers or the machiavellian violence or the suave high-life that these character live through that it can be easy to forget you're watching an old-school fable about the evils of greed. I've never even seen Wolf of Wallstreet but the only thing I know about it, the part that's stayed in the popular conscious, is Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill having fun extravagant coke parties.

It's not like Macbeth where the parts I remember from it are the tragedy as Macbeth learns his wife is dead and later lives to see the witches prophecy fulfilled, cruelly twisted. Half of Macbeth's runtime is not taken up with Macbeth fucking hot chambermaids and drunkenly singing about how good it is to be king. If it were it woulda sent the wrong message.

Though I think some of the examples from the meme are better than others. I don't know how anyone could watch more than the first episode of Mad Men and think Don Draper was someone to aspire to. And the Joker. I liked Joker but I can't imagine anyone seeing the film and really identifying with the guy. I also think Goodfellas' message is pretty clear because those guys never even made it to the really extravagant stuff. But like the most recent Great Gatsby probably isn't clear enough because all people remember is the party.

See also The Big Short, where it cast a bunch of people trying to profit off the implosion of the housing bubble as rougish antiheroes who knew everyone was fucked and decided, perhaps against their better natures, to get theirs. Could they have really done anything about it? I guess not. But they were still pieces of shit who chose to prosper off the suffering of the people. It's kinda fucked the movie casts them in a sympathetic light. Yet when I think of that movie, what's the first thing I think of? The nice suits. The fancy offices. I think about what I would do with all the money in the world. I think of Margot Robbie when I should be thinking about the Robber Barons of Wall Street.

So my theory is it's a problem of framing. Sure, these movies go "oh yeah, and then these people were fucked and had miserable lives ever after" but they don't always dwell on that the way something like Mad Men does so what people take away is all the fun cool stuff.

"I'm already am eating from the trash can all the time. The name of this trash can is ideology. The material force of ideology makes me not see what I'm effectively eating. It's not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament, when we're within ideology is that; when we think that we're escaping into our dreams at that point, we are within ideology."

It's basically what Zizek keeps harping on about and I'm going to throw out that the man basically will answer your question on that. Ideology is the lense through which we view the world, and as such, all the chuds can hoot 'n holler about the most toxic assholes portrayed in film and identify with them to the point where it doesn't stop with watching the movie, but glorifying them.

"But the coice between the blue and the red pill is not really a choice between illusion and reality. Of course, Matrix is a machine for fictions, but these are fictions which already structure our reality. If you take away from our reality the fictions that structure it, you lose reality yourself."

Take Rick, because that's the most online example possible, he's the de facto libertarian dream of what a person is supposed to be, he's so smart and competent he has ascended to godhood over the mere mortals to not only our reality, but reality itself and he got there by all by himself through hard work and IQ.

It's why the folks in the meme are basically reddit icons, most of them aren't wrong. Anybody would hate to meet these dicks in real life, but embedded in their respective medium they're absolutely correct. Most of the characters portrayed in the meme have one central flaw, they're alienated. Which is what a lot of people feel like, but then these films go on to show about how either that's a good thing or how they use that alienation to become cool badasses who persevere against the odds, which I think is a lie that everybody likes to tell themselves at some point.

It's basically why there is no anti war movies in mainstream film. You can't make a heros journey that people get invested in and still portray the experience as bad enough that people don't see the appeal in it - the heros journey is all about the struggle against the odds - no matter how much gore and horror you add. Every protagonist friend dying tragically and horribly just adds to the experience. An actual anti war movie would be 60 minutes of a romcom, followed by 30 minutes of pure unaldutered horror where people come out and beat you up while the protagonist dies horribly, having achieved nothing at all. No one would watch it.

Often when I watch a film I'm pretty much just watching the bright colours and loud upbeat music so I think I managed to go under the radar on this one

I think it can apply to anyone. You see what you want to see unless you're actually someone who actively engages in analysing a film or trying to get the 'deeper meaning'. I sometimes insert lefty themes, consciously and subconsciously into films because it makes me enjoy them more.

Why can't Goodfellas be about some cool guys being cool? I don't think anyone's in a place to tell someone what art means to them. All this shite about the auteur, the death of the author, yada yada yada, just feels pointless to me. People watch films to be engaged/entertained, and it's up to them how they do that.