I know this is probably going to be controversial, but like...you guys know that, "the curtains were just blue" was never intended to mean, "Nothing in a story ever has any deeper meaning." right? Because that's not why people started saying that, and it's important to not go too far in the opposite direction.
When people said, "the curtains were just blue" what they really meant was, "Focusing too deeply on every tiny little detail as if everything is important to the story no matter how inconsequential risks obscuring the bigger picture and may make it easier for you to miss the real subtext the author really did intend." I get really annoyed by a lot of media criticisms when both sides are right, yet they fail to engage with the other side because they seem to think their viewpoint is superior and doesn't exist in tandem with the other.
Yes, oftentimes people use "the curtains were just blue" to mean a plot-relevant detail wasn't actually plot-relevant and miss the point of the text entirely, but sometimes the curtains really are just blue and you need to be able to tell the difference if you want to make good media criticism.
I mean...I suspect that's why people can have such dogshit media takes like that an E-rated game can have bestiality in it, or that a movie is fatphobic because it *checks notes* has fat people in it. I mean, it's literally the only reason I can think of for why people would say something that ridiculously fucking stupid that doesn't make me want to load a gun and prove why the USA is the worst country in one event.
So now you have a bunch of people who mock "the curtains were just blue" rightfully because it's a stupid reason to dismiss real subtext, and because this is the internet where tiktok and the piss on the poor website exists, a bunch of people always go too hard in the opposite direction and assume every tiny detail must have been carefully crafted for a purpose as if curtains can't just be a color without it meaning anything.
Like. Guys. Sometimes a spade is just a spade. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes things really are just what they seem.
If you refuse to acknowledge this, you end up sounding like those quack therapists who believe that if a client was late to their therapy appointment, it must be some deeper subconscious attempt to sabotage their own healing, when the much more obvious answer in that case is that maybe the bus schedule really was disrupted and they were actually just late for a perfectly mundane reason. You need to be willing to accept the possibility at least in some cases that there really is no deeper meaning.
If you're confused about why this is such a problem and can't fathom the idea of a therapist treating you wrong because they believe shit about you that isn't true, remember the whole "a kid's game is bad because bestiality" example I'm still fucking pissed about and I WILL be pissed off about it until the day I die;
If your conclusion from the story of Sonic '06 is that SEGA thinks bestiality is okay, you totally miss the actual story where Elise is torn between duty and love and where Sonic basically tells her to repress herself even though it definitely kills him to have to do that to someone he cares about. The story is a tragedy of friends torn apart by literal time itself, of a break that caused a demon to be unleashed caused by the death of that friend, and even once he comes back, they still have to be torn apart again by the very nature of the demon that caused the tragedy in the first place.
Does any of that make sense if you're not willing to acknowledge Sonic as an autonomous character who can make choices intelligently and is definitely not just a literal fucking animal?
The other example that pisses me the fuck off; If you believe WALL-E is fatphobic, you totally miss the movie's ACTUAL point, which is that learned helplessness as a trauma response on such a large scale allows AUTO to get away with atrocities because literally nobody has the power to stop him; It's a commentary on complacency and rampant consumerism.
Even dumber is the claim that the movie is a criticism of socialism because everyone has their basic needs met on the Axiom when the movie literally tells you outright that Buy n' Large becoming a monopoly is what even causes the earth to be covered in garbage and only the richest people could even afford to board the Axiom in the first place. In the literal words of their ADVERTISEMENT; "Spend your five-year cruise in style!" implying that some people are NOT spending their 5-year cruise in style as this is something unique to the Axiom in particular, again, I quote; "The jewel of the BnL fleet; The Axiom!"
Once again, it really feels like people are only taking the tiny details into account and don't recognize what's staring them in the face because they're literally just zoomed in too far to realize that detail they're hung up on is insignificant in the grand scheme of the story.
That doesn't mean curtains are never a color for a reason, but it does mean that you shouldn't default to one single response to a stimuli no matter what it is, and for some reason, people these days just really want to take shortcuts and then prance around with it like they're the smartest people in the fucking world for suggesting something about a thing that they literally just made up. It's not revolutionary to miss the point, dickhead. Stop acting like it is.
You don't sound like an intellectual; You sound like a moron who can't fucking read. Now stop poisoning my eyes with your dumbass rancid takes.
