You Better Watch Out for Your Laundry Oh Boy!

(July 27th, 2026)

"Okay, I got you."

*Removes the B from the BREAD sign*

i'm sort of having a mild brain fog moment rn so i can't fully articulate what i'm on about, but i think a lot of able-bodied artists view things like canes and crutches as interchangeable. and they often don't know enough about the wide range of mobility aids to make an informed decision about what their character might actually use based on their disability

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?

Different languages are processed differently. An example of this would be Spanish Vs. English. English says "The Black Dog" (no underlying masculine or feminine undertones), while Spanish says "El Perro Negro" which has the adjective after the noun and contains the 'masculine' noun El Perro. Because of this a person who speaks Spanish may think unconsciously that the dog is male while a English speaker might think it is male or female. Funnily enough, English speakers still often have genders they assign to certain nouns, like there are still many English stories the lead with a male dog and a female cat for example. Different languages can control how you think! This also doesn't even consider rhyming or common "sayings" in different languages or undertones of meaning that are commonly understood in one culture versus another (much like your story!).

There is also history bias between the author and the reader. The author may describe a black dog, remembering a past pet female dog they loved and cared for and expect the reader to love the dog they described, but the reader may picture a mean black dog and get negative feelings if they had been bitten by a black dog in the past. This sort of error of communication is what I believe causes the most strife between people, especially on the internet.