I'm trying to find an essay, research, or any deeper analysis about why some people, most often conservatives, don't understand film. One of my FB friends posted this meme and it got me thinking about this phenomena.
Some people watch a film* and take the characters and the story completely at face value. They don't see any deeper message from the director. They don't understand that Goodfellas for example, is not a film about a couple of cool guys. Scorsese is not endorsing their behavior or their values.
Any help diving deeper into this topic is appreciated.
*By the way, you could say the same for literature, but since most people don't read past high school. I wanted to focus my question on film.
ETA: Thanks everyone for engaging with me. I've been a lurker and commenter since the early Reddit days, this was my first post.
Depiction = Endorsement is an attitude you see in a lot of conservative media reactions, and frankly you see it from some libs too.
Seems like it ties into conservatives' mindsets about having anything but cishet white men in media is 'forced diversity' and how getting banned from Twitter is the height of all oppression, but I dont have enough brain cells to put together a coherent thesis about it
Have you seen God's Not Dead? It's wild. Every character is surface level; good is good, bad is bad. Everything they say in the film serves the plot directly. There is no nuance. There are no stakes. Everything is exactly as it appears.
No, but I heard from a friend there's a weird anti-animal rights subplot with the duck dynasty guys
Yeah, one of them shows up. Iirc, I think he gets interviewed by the student journalist who is VEGAN and ATHEIST and later in the story her cancer comes back as punishment for her rejection of God.
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