throuple enthusiast

Gazafunds actually deals with this anxiety and makes a decision for you if you want. Their home page has a spotlighted fundraiser and the code consider things like how close the gfm is to finishing, when the most recent donation is, etc. So it's randomized to help as many people as possible.

It is important to consider the culture of the person who created the piece, absolutely; but the different perspectives offered by the viewers is fascinating in and of itself and does not always detract from the message.

As an example, when I was younger, I watched Schindler's List. This movie is famously shot in black and white except for one section, concerning a little girl in a red coat. The camera follows her until her eventual death.

I am Turtle Island Indigenous and I was always taught that the only color spirits could see was red, because it is the color of life and blood.

So the second the girl in the red jacket came on screen, something inside me chilled with fear.

The only color in the movie was that red. At some point, I, the viewer, had died.

I remember sobbing at the sight of the burning human piles that were shown, convinced I was buried in there somewhere. The reason I had only seen red on the girl was that my death was recent. I was the ash in the air mistaken for snow. I had died before her and had followed her, helplessly, until she followed me.

The message I got for that was maybe not what the creator had intended: that there was no "being clever enough" or "good enough" or "kind enough" that would shield or protect you from such a massive tidal wave of evil.

You are not exempt from tragedy, that red jacket whispered. You are not special.

When I told some of my white friends about my experience with viewing Schindler's List, some were shocked and the rest just out-and-out mocked me for my "media illiteracy".

"it was just a filming trick to make you feel something," I remember one saying, which terrified me. How had he not felt anything even before she showed up?

The question of whether art should explain itself gets employed in the art world in a number of ways; some people will say art should be immediately comprehensible to the viewer as an argument categorically for figurative art and against abstract art. others will say art that is immediately comprehensible is low and commercial compared to more esoteric and conceptual art. Because comprehensibility is contextual, I think all these attempts at hierarchicalizing art based on its comprehensibility are wrong.

Note that some of this isn't strictly limited to a media analysis perspective but it's still important for a non-fictional and historical perspective too.

If others, especially Indigenous than me have issue with any sources listed, please feel free to let me know. Also note that some of the videos and documentaries explicitly touch on genocide, forced separation and child scoops, etc.

Beyond Ainu studies changing academic and public perspectives

The Politics of Colonial Translation: On the Narrative of the Ainu as a ‘Vanishing Ethnicity’ - https://apjjf.org/katsuya-hirano/3013/article

 The Ainu and their culture: A critical twenty-first century assessment. Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. https://apjjf.org/chisato-kitty-dubreuil/2589/article

The Time is Now: The Power of Native representation in entertainment - https://illuminative.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/IllumiNative_industry-guide_June-2022.pdf.

O’Brien, J. M. (2010). Firsting and lasting: Writing Indians out of existence in New England.

Raheja, M. H. (2013). Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of Native Americans in film. University of Nebraska Press

 Konzett, Delia Caparoso. Hollywood’s Hawaii: Race, Nation, and War. Rutgers University Press, 2017.

Dismembering Lahui

Silva, Noenoe K. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2004

Western-Constructed Narratives of Hawai’i - https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=history-in-the-making

La Croix, Sumner J. Hawai’i: Eight Hundred Years of Political and Economic Change. University of Chicago Press, 2019.

From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i

Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, 3rd Edition edited by Gina Starblanket

Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life Settler States and Indigenous Presence René Dietrich, Kerstin Knopf

Speaking of Indigenous Politics Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders (J. Kēhaulani Kauanui)

"OMG they made... a Jedi Wookiee?? wtf??? what they were smoking?" the Force flows through all living beings this is one of the FIRST things we learn about it didn't you watch the movies "wtf they made a gay Klingon who loves poetry???? don't they know they're all warriors the writers don't know nothing" we've had countless episodes that explore Klingon culture and they're an interstellar empire of billions of people we can expect them to have varied personalities and cultures "omg did you look at the Star Wars expanded universe??? this weird chicken alien gets elected president wtf so weird" one would expect that in a setting with countless sentient species by the billions of people some would get into positions of power, yes