I see things like "but we have so much media that depicts Nazis as the bad guy" and I'm just sitting here thinking... I think we storytellers vastly overestimate how much fiction can influence people. Like stories are important but the message will be lost on many people. - ThreadSky

hazelmonforton.com • 38 days ago

I see things like "but we have so much media that depicts Nazis as the bad guy" and I'm just sitting here thinking... I think we storytellers vastly overestimate how much fiction can influence people. Like stories are important but the message will be lost on many people.

Comments

hollynielsen.bsky.social•38 days ago

I read a great paper about well-known people in the late 19th and early 20thC listing in newspapers books that influenced them, and you have wild stuff all over the place politically and philosophically from people across the political spectrum. People will always pick and choose their message

hollynielsen.bsky.social•38 days ago

It’s looking at the history of reading that makes me view any claims about how influential and transformative games can be with deep cynicism, particularly when they’re not paired with a player study

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

I remember a friend's daughter came home from grade school saying that she hated gay people. And she picked that up from a friend, who picked it up from a parent. But her favorite show was Steven Universe! What about Sapphire and Ruby? Didn't make any difference until it was explained by her dad.

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

The show's LGBTQ+ message couldn't do anything in a vacuum. It needed a peer or authority figure to explain it to this kid. Because the prevailing beliefs of our community ultimately matters more than the fiction we consume when it comes to our opinions, politics, and attitudes.

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

People will twist whatever they read or watch to suit whatever politics they already have. It's Kurt Vonnegut's custard pie. There's only so much that we can do as storytellers.

arafrances.bsky.social•36 days ago

Yeah, the world is in trouble. But we can make it a nice custard pie. https://www.noracooks.com/vegan-banana-cream-pie/#wprm-recipe-container-8640

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

Yeah it's depressing! As much as I wish we could, I don't think we can save the world with art alone.

barack-obama.bsky.social•38 days ago

I'm not a historian, but I feel like we've adopted legalism/possessing the authority to enforce law as a principle of rule because there aren't enough sensible people out there who can understand the meaning behind art/faith/rhetoric or whatever to get the wisdom in it as a community

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

I don't think this is a modern problem, either, I don't think "media literacy" is any more dead than it always has been. This is just how most people consume their entertainment.

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

Maybe I’m cynical! But I just can’t get behind the highly romanticized idea of “the transformative power of stories” anymore.

spaceprez.bsky.social•36 days ago

Its not even just that people have low "media literacy"

Also people simply have low morality and no consistent principles. Many people will just do whatever benefits them and will only avoid hurting others in order to avoid getting in trouble.

gameism.bsky.social•36 days ago

Yeah, it's always been difficult. I didn't understand why I felt Opera was ultra boring but loved Musicals until I had to sit through four live Operas (with subtitles). They REPEAT the same verse THREE TIMES because audiences couldn't keep up with the story otherwise 🤦

jordantbrown.bsky.social•38 days ago

I think there probably are people out there that can be moved by art into changing but that isn’t the standard. The vast majority are simply not engaging that deeply with any art.

coil.bsky.social•36 days ago

castlin.bsky.social•36 days ago

he did offer a follow-up about the pie in a '73 speech:

castlin.bsky.social•36 days ago

"While it is true that we American fiction writers failed to modify the course of the war, we have reason to suspect that we have poisoned the minds of thousands or perhaps millions of American young people. Our hope is that the poison will make them worse than useless in unjust wars. We shall see."

hazelmonforton.com•36 days ago

I don’t think fiction is meaningless! Just that it can’t change perspectives in a vacuum.

plasmaring.bsky.social•38 days ago

Yeah. Every time there's a discussion about chuds adopting bad guys as their heroes, the starting point usually seems to be that the story failed to depict them as cartoonishly evil enough to get the point across. But there's not really a misunderstanding. Their values are actually different.

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

They can even adopt the good guys as their heroes, and still come out with shitty politics!

plasmaring.bsky.social•38 days ago

Yep. One of these days I want to do a deep dive into how fiction was viewed during/around the first Trump administration, because it really was approached as this transformative power (and still is in a lot of ways, but I'm seeing way more pushback against it now, thankfully)

plasmaring.bsky.social•38 days ago

Coming back to this hours later because I was thinking about how the other part of not being able to use fiction to shame Nazis is that you can't use it to teach people with Good Politics to be revolutionaries. Like all the "no more redemption arcs, we need to harden hearts" stuff.

mayangelsandheroes.bsky.social•38 days ago

Yeah. I always roll my eyes when people say Kylo Ren fangirls got fascists elected. While there’s racists where everywhere many of the vile fanboys probably loved Luke Skywalker more and either saw Kylo as whiner or were jealous of him having the ladies’s attention.

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

It's so much easier to blame young women with zero political power than to blame, like. Actual fascists doing fascist shit.

plasmaring.bsky.social•38 days ago

Actually mindblowing that liking a character in a fucking Disney movie was treated as equivalent to dating an IRL Nazi for a while there, complete with "I guess women love men who treat them badly," but said very leftistly

yumeijin.bsky.social•37 days ago

People grossly underestimate how much local community impacts things. I remember listening to a podcast about this radio program (Musekeweya) in Rwanda that was partially trying to convince people violence was slow going and relied on bystanders doing nothing, trying to push reconciliation through

yumeijin.bsky.social•37 days ago

A Romeo and Juliet star crossed love story. Only they found that while people overtly rooted for the couple, they still didn't change their beliefs on how trustworthy the other side was. That said, they did see that everyone was for the intermarriage and changed their opinions on whether to speak

yumeijin.bsky.social•37 days ago

out against it. So while fiction might do fuck all to change a belief, it can through its consumption (and how people perceive others consuming it) change what we expect norms are, and change how people react to those new expectations.

mayangelsandheroes.bsky.social•38 days ago

Yeah. This why I don’t agree with messages of oh we need to show healthy relationships and lessen Dark romance to save women from being abused or shipping whatever normalizes jack all especially the latter since barely anyone reads fanfic.

carrielaben.com•38 days ago

I think fiction can help a bit if you're starting to realize that you *don't* agree with your community, by demonstrating that another community exists. But it can't fan a spark that isn't there.

jonmartini.bsky.social•38 days ago

As a former "authority figure" (read: HS History Teacher), even presenting the basic facts for consumption while putting into context isn't always enough. I had a few students who refused to take a moral stand simply because "both things are bad." Early 2000s for reference. It's been coming a while.

tassja.bsky.social•38 days ago

i can never take media as more than a reflection or a bellweather - if it aligns with my politics on people and identities it means that things elsewhere have forced its hand, not that its leading the charge

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

like sure, fiction can affect reality sometimes. but reality is way, way more likely to affect fiction.

tassja.bsky.social•38 days ago

I think a lot of people dont want to acknowledge how much of progress and safety is actually built behind some kind of force - which is the one thing media simply does not have. If we could write and act other people into being "better" none of this would be happening.

braak.bsky.social•38 days ago

a related issue is that we have a lot of media that depicts *Nazis*, i.e., German citizens in the Wehrmacht during WWII, as the bad guys; not as much media depicting regular guys in your town as equivalent to actual for real in-their-uniforms Nazis.

mockwooloo.bsky.social•36 days ago

And this is why they all completely lost their shit about the newer Wolfenstein games which, while still not THAT deep, did a better job of showing everyday Nazism than most media.

coelasquid.bsky.social•35 days ago

I think there’s also some element of “Nazi villains” in media making a large group of people think of them like fictional comic book villains. Like, logically they know they’re real, but emotionally they’re stored in the same Mind Cabinet with like, Darth Vader and Judge Dredd or whatever.

coelasquid.bsky.social•35 days ago

It makes me think of working in kid’s TV and they were very leery about how to depict “bully” characters because they were like “this character will inevitably be some little kid’s favourite and the message they’ll take from the show is ‘bullying is funny and cool”

coelasquid.bsky.social•35 days ago

I have a lot of beefs with media for adults being subject to the same toddler filter that shows for four year olds are, but there is definitely a point to be made about how cartoonifying a real world threat that “everyone knows” is bad inevitably builds an empathetic fanbase around it.

boozegetsmethrough.bsky.social•38 days ago

Hell, Star Wars is pretty explicit about who the Empire is supposed to be, but people still love to wear Imperial/Stormtroopers merch

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

Fascists also love to use Rebel Alliance merch. It makes zero difference.

mbrzz.bsky.social•38 days ago

like the chuds who thought starship troopers are the good guys and no matter what vanderhoven says still see them as the good guys
facists do not care about the message, they care about the symbolism and whether it makes them "look cool"

buckrawheat.bsky.social•38 days ago

From Elif Batuman's The Idiot.

Can't overestimate anyone's media literacy.

darrn.bsky.social•36 days ago

My hope is that their inability to "get the message" is the crack where the light gets in.

wirelessw.bsky.social•36 days ago

"But...but media has to be enough, because I want to feel like a good person because I watch Indiana Jones movies!"

pyreflydust.bsky.social•36 days ago

This is also why when something that's always had a political story adds includes a piece that translates more easily to contemporary politics, a bunch of people who would've been the bad guy in those stories the whole time throw a fit about it suddenly getting political.

spaceprez.bsky.social•36 days ago

Sad but true

https://bsky.app/profile/spaceprez.bsky.social/post/3lfzwb66mg22u

spaceprez.bsky.social•36 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/singingpigs.online/post/3lfzw75tslc2n

felvotives.bsky.social•36 days ago

Yes! Same applies to history where people can unironically view the Confederates as freedom fighters, and Nazis as misunderstood champions of the German people. Without context, and knowing (read: ignoring) the actual history, it’s easy to project.

themoonis.gay•38 days ago

We've also had a concentrated effort to white-wash large parts of the nazis because of the US government's "need" to bring in their scientists via operation paperclip

novakorpov.bsky.social•38 days ago

Example:
Starship Troopers

aferaldavid.bsky.social•36 days ago

LeGuin-The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

tallandscreaming.bsky.social•37 days ago

Not to mention Nazis being depicted as one thing, one specific stereotype that doesn’t really align with what we’re seeing now for a lot of Americans. It sucks but we weren’t actually taught how to identify Nazis at all.

sanctumperilous.bsky.social•38 days ago

Unfortunately the same media depicted the Nazis as well dressed, cultured, dangerous and powerful….

allanshoe.bsky.social•38 days ago

Lindsay Ellis had a great video essay which shows that while most movies depict Nazis as bad... they are also bad ASS.

(which is why Mel Brooks' approach with The Producers is something no Nazi will ever think highly of as he makes them out to be bad... and absolute buffoons)

llbroadwell.bsky.social•37 days ago

I both agree and disagree, to a point. I think the wider concepts can be missed easily, but humanization through media representation is still valuable.

hazelmonforton.com•37 days ago

Yeah I think representation is still important because it speaks to people. I don’t think the message is ALWAYS lost. But I think it’s more of a “someone else feels this way too?” rather than changing a perspective in a vacuum most of the time.

llbroadwell.bsky.social•37 days ago

Agreed.

thewillennium.bsky.social•38 days ago

In a “medium is the message” sort of way I think it was probably less important that bad guys were called Nazis than that people internalized the structures of ontological good vs evil, heroic individualism, and mythic violence

hipstersasquatch.bsky.social•38 days ago

Also it ignores just how easy it is for some personality types to identify with the antagonists, no matter how vile they are.

redsoldat.bsky.social•37 days ago

Kinda true, I plan to make a RPG game where no matter what our character will do, Nazis will always end in a civil war which is gonna show how unsustainable nazism is in modern world. But I fear that the message will not reach everyone properly, but hey, one can dream!

naobeausca.bsky.social•36 days ago

Art cannot replace the hard work of decisive action and uncomfortable, often painful discussions with people around us concerning "good versus evil". It takes a long time. It is also not glamorous nor exciting, despite what movies show us. It's putting in the work, day in and day out.

darkestadam.bsky.social•38 days ago

Sad but true. Even with being British and growing up on WW2 documentaries I didn't get the other half of the equation until I started listening to lefty podcasts as an adult.

caraellison.bsky.social•38 days ago

I used to get deeply irritated by a republican acquaintance when I was much younger who loved the west wing and I’m like…. but in the west wing YOU’RE the bad guy????? They’d always go a bit silent about it but also Sorkin is a liberal both sideser and wooly writer so I guess it’s a bit his fault

iainhendry.bsky.social•38 days ago

I always remember the episode where they have an opportunity to fill a Supreme Court seat with a normal ass liberal and by the end all come to the conclusion that no, you idiots, you actually have to pit Level 500 Liberal against Level 500 Conservative to get the best laws

didn’t age very well tbh

acampwriting.com•38 days ago

I watched through it all when they put it on Netflix in like 2013 and I remember malding about this episode even back then. truly a looney toons conception of politics. wild how much you can still feel its influence on our moldering politicians even this deep into the dog playing basketball era

caraellison.bsky.social•38 days ago

I think it’s honestly part of the biggest mistake of all: Americans revering The Founding Fathers, of which we have roundly proved were a clueless shower of tax dodging English bastards who didn’t know anything more than the average colonial dingbat guzzling mercury to ‘cure’ syphilis

caraellison.bsky.social•38 days ago

It’s so funny because level 500 conservative is just like.. to win let’s take his family hostage and tell the fbi his dad is a pedo. politics

caraellison.bsky.social•38 days ago

I never miss a chance to laugh at Sorkin’s silliness so I’m glad you gave me the opportunity today

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

Sorkin is very "God is in his heaven and everything is normal on earth."

caraellison.bsky.social•38 days ago

I feel as if today Sorkin is very much Regretting Things

hazelmonforton.com•38 days ago

I don't think he thinks very hard about any of this.

caraellison.bsky.social•38 days ago

Maybe I’ve Sorkined my opinion of Sorkin. I’m rewriting A Few Good Men in my brain right now but all of the characters are Sorkin

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