Please, please, please for the love of God be critical as fuck of mainstream media.
The Bee Movie is a bad propagands for exploitative colonial capitalism.
Hotel Transylvania seems to be saying that the fear marginalized groups face towards the groups that have historically marginalized them is unreasonable because "it's the 21st century." Also it shows a rich-ass hotel owner as a good guy.
Black Panther, for all it gets praised, seems to be about how rich, powerful bipoc that are sheltered from the discrimination normal/poor bipoc face don't have an obligation to not live cushy bougie lives. And also about how poor people using less-peaceful means of protest and just burning shit down after peaceful protest failed is not acceptable.
I am saying this as a person of colour who is friends with a lot of non-white people. Even being middle class shelters you from so much. Obviously it shelters you from poverty but also from a lot of racism. Yeah obviously my life would still be a whole lot better if I was white. But if I was white and poor it would actually be a whole lot worse than if I was poc and middle-class, which is what I am now.
Pretty much every movie and TV show has unattainable beauty standards. In
Good Omens it shows that it's okay to go out and fucking get crepes in the middle of a famine. I hated that so much. What the hell.
In Doctor Who it has never once shown an example of a society living in harmony with and on the Land and you can just fucking tell it's a British show or more specifically an English show. It's still good in a lot of ways though. But also they act like the fate of the universe rests on this one guy who is more important than everyone else.
Firefly has authoritarian undertones.
Star Wars advocates for horrific amounts of child abuse in it's prequels and there is a really good Youtube video about the jedi and toxic masculinity.
Most superhero movies are about a keeping the status quo exactly the way it is against villians that actually have a point. (Examples of villains that have a point: Vulture, Killmonger, Poison Ivy, Joker, Loki, Magneto, Hela, Syndrome, the list goes on)
How to Train Your Dragon advocates using wild animals as pets which is some bullshit if ever I did see it. Wild animals belong in the wild, where they are free and at home. It paints itself as a nature-friendly franchise but it pushes the very white idea that nature needs to be tamed and controlled.
Frozen 2 says that it's a good idea to marry the son of the man who genocided your people. It seems to be more about forgiving oppressors than it is about liberating the oppressed.
So many Disney movies push the idea that monarchy is a good idea. As someone whose homeland has suffered - yes suffered - under monarchy for millenia, and which still does not have proper democracy, I am begging you to please not buy that. People power should be the only power. I long for the day when we can all get together and make decisions like how the Indigneous people of where I live right now used to do. Like all people, actually, used to do for literal millenia before this whole "accumulation-based society" thing started. But until that happens, can we at least please have fair elections?
Hamilton fucking exalts and makes you feel sympathy for the racist, sexist, classist, rich, slaveowning founding fathers.
Percy Jackson is just a fucking bootsucking nightmare and no, no I'm not going to explain. And it doesn't even get Greek Mythology remotely right.
Brooklyn Nine Nine exalts the police force, which has a long history of being and still absolutely is racist, sexist, classist, ableist, and terrible. The police protect possessions, not people. And they keep the wealth in the hands of the rich. Why would you like them? Why would you exalt such an institution?
Twilight shows stalking as romance, Fifty Shades of Gray shows stalking as romance, How I Met Your Mother shows stalking as romance, fucking Stranger Things shows stalking as romance. There's a really good Youtube video about that trope as well.