“Not Getting It” Is Fine, Actually

There are vanishing few instances in which someone could invoke Poe’s Law that I would not find grating, particularly when it comes to media criticism. The reasons should be obvious, but it seems reasonable to simply say that sometimes, not getting the point of a piece of artwork is a YP, not an MP. It isn’t necessarily my problem that you missed something that should be clear. Your problem may be that you overestimate an audience’s current level of comprehension. It may also be that you believe that the speaker or artist must be constantly checking in with the least interested or literate party to see if they “get it.” Maybe you suppose that they must balance their vision with the consideration of their message and how that message is communicated in particular.

Chasing that balance is a fool’s errand, of course. There is no guarantee that every or even most of an audience will come away with a clear understanding of authorial intent. Truthfully, there will always be people who reject even the most explicit statements out of hand. Plenty of people fast forward through the therapy segments of The Sopranos. Even experienced critics saw Starship Troopers and somehow watched Neil Patrick Harris goose-stepping right over their heads. To make the themes and authorial perspective any more clear would require a close up of a character speaking into the camera what the viewer should take from a given shot, something David Chase actually tried to do when too many viewers started to view Tony Soprano as aspirational in spite of dozens of hours of screentime suggesting that they should not. Continuing to chase that audience would eventually strip the art from the work entirely, all to capture the pathetically limited attention spans of people who have already made up their minds about what they will believe.

This perspective carries the assumption that an artist must be in the business of convincing people, or at least enlightening them. If I am feeling especially generous, I can find something agreeable to the sentiment. Art, as I see it, is what makes legible worlds that are completely impenetrable otherwise. Danny Brown taught me about a world of paranoia and desperation through absurdist gallows humor, not by calmly describing his childhood. Art at its best is not didactic, nor is it best able to teach through a lecture. Lectures and propaganda can be crafted artfully, but it is imperative that we make the distinction. Didacticism is an entreaty, but art can and should be a challenge. It is that word that we can hinge our debates around when it comes to the utility of difficult, satirical art. When we demand that a work be made with the lowest possible barrier to entry, what we are actually doing is empowering profiteers and the stagnation of critical thought.

FD Signifier, a recurring character in my posts, has a fantastic video about Tyler Perry. Go ahead and take a few hours to watch that first. Now that you have, recall the analogy he crafts about how he learned to appreciate fresh Italian cuisine at the same time that he developed a taste for canned ravioli. He insists that there’s nothing wrong with the junk food, but his mother made the intentional choice to present him with more challenging and fulfilling meals not only for health purposes but because even if it is more difficult for a developing palate to appreciate, complex dishes expand on what is presently desirous to the diner. This is to say that it is not simply a failure of intellect to analyze media, it is the failure of artists or Content Creators who have decided to dump extra butter on cheap noodles and try to profit off of the underdeveloped tastes of would-be audiences who have been reduced to consumers. At best, they’re craftspersons who can find exactly the right balance of work to commercial viability. At worst, they are dumping out the slop bucket into a trough that they dug.

There are plenty of ways to have this conversation about the intersection of depiction, intention, and valorization, but I find myself coming back around to a particular hobby horse of mine: good faith. The well of debate has been so thoroughly poisoned by bad faith actors that I hesitate to even use the word at this point. Charlie Kirk loved to “debate” and I have no desire to replicate a single thing about that man. In spite of my aversion, I encourage the reclamation of debate and controversy, as dialectics are the key to understanding and debate is at the core of dialectics. Genuine challenges to consensus are sparks that fly when two oppositional ideas clash and the flames temper a new synthesis. If we only assume the worst inferences from our interlocutors (even with good reason), we have already conceded an interpretation. The narrative is now in the hands of someone else who may have ulterior motives.

On the note of concession, there is a risk of ceding the truth to the opposition when skirting the depiction of antisocial behavior for fear that it may seem too attractive. Even (especially?) the most incurious viewer will call bullshit if you were to rewrite Wolf of Wall Street and try to tell them that it isn’t cool or fun to do drugs and have sex with beauty queens. Of course it’s cool and fun, you’re finding all of the pleasure centers in your brain and smashing every button you can find. Even if an artist is staging a morality play, as Martin Scorsese has almost exclusively done in his career as a filmmaker, a key component of this sort of story is honesty. Men in our society already want to look like Tyler Durden, fuck like Tyler Durden, and be smart, capable, and most importantly, free in all the ways they are not. It doesn’t take Chuck Palahniuk, David Fincher, or Brad Pitt to put that in their heads. Wagging a finger and telling them they don’t know their own desires does nothing but leave the door open to those who would validate those desires while valorizing their worst impulses. You can’t be too permissive with these people but you can’t lie to them either.

People are complex, as is the superstructure we navigate. We use mediums of communication to reduce those complexities for children so they may begin to grasp the expectations placed upon them or provide footholds for them as they climb to a suitable vantage point at which they can view the world around them. The utility of those vantage points is fleeting. Eventually, more is to be demanded in order for people to be socially literate and productive. We are only lesser because we are allowed or trained to be, so it is of the utmost importance that we be spurred on in our climb to greater heights of comprehension, no matter how difficult or even discomfiting it may be. A fully developed mind is one that can be trusted to handle delicate matters, answer questions beyond their comfort level, and be exposed to that which shocks them.

Consider the experience of a leftist who watches the films of Craig Zahler, one of our finest modern reactionary artists. His films are bitter and cynical, just as I am. They are also fixated on revenge, the purity of cleansing violence, intractable cultural incompatibility, regressive gender relations; revanchism, basically. They have, not unfairly, been labeled as fascistic. They are also very good. My praise does not come through gritted teeth, either. I likely do not share values with Zahler beyond an aesthetic appreciation for exploitation films and death metal, but his sincerity is striking, even refreshing in its honesty. I do not think he is trying to obfuscate anything when he claims to be an apolitical artist, as I believe that he is trying to give as unvarnished a look as possible through the peephole all reactionaries see through.

There is a scene in his film Dragged Across Concrete, starring Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn (of course), in which the protagonist’s wife solemnly tells him that she expects their daughter to be raped because a black boy picks on her when she gets off of the school bus. This is obviously hysterical racist paranoia, but it is not framed as such. Zahler asks the audience to perceive her as earnest. You as a viewer may find it rightly offensive, but is there not value in grappling with this character’s earnestness given the context of a society in which she would not be alone in her fear? What Zahler does in this scene, as is the case in the rest of his filmography, is collect the free floating particles of reactionary sentiment in the polluted air we breathe and show you exactly what it is we are surrounded by. It may not be a surprise to everyone, but interpreting the words of the reactionary is often more elucidating than the description given by my fellow left-wingers, if only because it requires a level of critical thinking that the passive reception of a lecture simply does not involve.

“Know thy enemy” is a bit of a hack thing to say, and it is not exactly what I am imploring you to do. What I am instead positing is the value of knowing thyself. If you watch a Peckinpah film, what does it say to you? What does your interpretation say about you? These are not easy questions, just as Straw Dogs is not an easy film. Many intelligent people have argued for decades over its meaning and whether or not it is responsible to condone it as a film. This is fair, as in the course of argument, there may be new insight gained into not only its themes, but what we value as a society, artistically and morally. This in itself is enough to validate the film’s existence, I would say. Whether or not someone takes the “wrong” message from it pales in comparative significance, in my opinion.

Walter White will always have admirers. People will always find Tony Soprano charming and funny; sociopaths frequently are charming and funny. This cannot be stopped, as if it isn’t Tony in a television show, it will be some other snake charming less literate or morally responsible people in our society. Where a creative’s responsibility as a fellow person invested in a social fabric and their responsibility as an artist overlap is not something I feel confident in identifying. What I am confident in is the assertion that there is much to be gained by creating and appreciating satirical art, whether or not it is “convincing” to those who are being criticized by it or if the authorial intent is not immediately clear to you. As a Marxist, I do not believe that ideas or their depiction can change the world. I do believe that the actions we take to change the world must be informed by the kind of insight that can only be gained through the application and appreciation of creative action, particularly which interrogates us, forcing us to be stronger, more strident, and more curious than before. This must be demanded in a world in which it does not benefit shareholders to tolerate risky cultural “products,” and it must be demanded of our peers if we are to ever ascend beyond the status of “consumer.” So the next time you annoy someone at a party by badgering them into watching Inland Empire or something, try telling yourself that you’re actually doing something useful if that makes you feel better. There might be enough truth to it to make you seem less like a pedant.