#misinterpretations

Misinterpretation is such a wild thing, cause sometimes I forget that there are multiple ways people see something and I’ve made multiple posts now (and it happens so often irl - which is why I have a tendency to ramble) that have had misinterpretations, usually when I’m trying to be concise and not ramble a whole bunch. There’s nothing wrong with it, I either roll with the different perspective or try and give more context to them, but it’s so interesting to see sometimes. On a similar note, sometimes people restate what I mean but it seems like they thought I meant something else and I’m never quite sure if they are paraphrasing what I’m saying to show they understand or not.

Also trying to work out if people are being rude or are just confused is so hard to do too.

And no, I’m not talking about books written in 1884, when Mark Twain could drop the n-word more often than a hyperactive squirrel with paws coated in butter would drop an acorn and have no one bat an eye. I’m not talking about movies released in 1961, when a white actor could play a racist caricature of a Japanese landlord to widespread praise from critics. I’m talking about 2006. 

That year, Markus Zusak gave us The Book Thief, an eerily beautiful coming-of-age book set in Nazi Germany whose virtues would be drowned out by the flood of trigger warnings modern gatekeepers would attach to it. Opening with the death of Liesel’s brother (tw:death, tw:child death, tw:parental abandonment) it includes a loud, abrasive foster mother (tw:abuse, tw:child abuse, tw:verbal abuse, tw:mental abuse) who is portrayed as a headstrong protector of her family (tw:abuse apologism) and the Jew they hide in their basement (tw:white saviorism), as well as a meek foster father who kowtows to his wife’s ways (tw:domestic abuse) and teaches Liesel to roll cigarettes (tw:smoking). It’s narrated by Death (are there even enough trigger warnings for that?) who, rather than condemn characters who have embraced Hitler and Nazism, points to the bitterness, grief, and misinformation catalyzing their fervor (tw:Nazi apologism). 

For those of you readying a barrage of rebuttals to that summary, scrolling down to the comments to tell me that I stripped the book of any nuance—that’s the whole point. The Book Thief is a very nuanced story that conveys its message in shades of grey. Few characters are wholly good or wholly evil. Death is a neutral figure, condemning the horrors of war while pitying those who fight it no matter their side, portraying the nightmarish consequences of hatred while showing the reader how it is born. But since when has nuance ever mattered to someone riding high on a wave of righteous anger? 

Moving on, 2006 was also the year My Chemical Romance released The Black Parade, which sees Death (tw tw tw) telling the story of The Patient, a man whose life was filled with war, depression, political unrest, PTSD, religious guilt, self-loathing, broken relationships, and near-constant suicidal ideation—a life that ends in his thirties from heart complications due to a long, painful, emotionally draining battle with cancer. Millions of depressed kids, teens, and adults have found catharsis in the album’s raw, honest lyrics, but those same lyrics would earn the band a #CancelMCR hashtag today. To wit: 

Another contusion, my funeral jag/Here’s my resignation, I’ll serve it in drag: Mocking drag queens and men who crossdress. Using a very real expression of gender identity for shock value. Blatantly transphobic. 

Juliet loves the beast and the lust it commands/So drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands Romeo: Toxic relationship. Probably violently abusive. #DumpThePatient, lady, and #MCRStopRomanticizingAbuse. 

Wouldn’t it be grand to take a pistol by the hand?/And wouldn’t it be great if we were dead?: Oh my fucking god, they’re romanticizing suicide now? How was this album even allowed to be made? Who let this happen and how soon can we #cancel them? 

If you’ve heard the album, you know none of the above interpretations are remotely true. You’ve probably shaken your head at the Daily Mail’s infamous claim that My Chem promoted self-harm and suicide, but the sad truth is that if The Black Parade were released in today’s climate, that claim would probably be taken up by the very people who now consider themselves fans. The raw honesty that resonated with so many could easily be taken as a stamp of approval on the very suicides its songs have prevented. The anti-suicide anthem, “Famous Last Words,” could be ignored or twisted into a mockery of those who condemn suicide, and the darkly wholesome “Welcome to the Black Parade” music video would likely be taken as enticement toward teens who want to end their lives: “Look at all the cool things you’ll get to see once you’re dead and gone!” 

Again, anyone who is even a casual fan of The Black Parade knows this is a deliberately malicious misreading of the material. My Chem’s music has been gratefully embraced by LGBTQ+ kids looking for a place to belong, and the band members have been outspoken in their support. They’ve been quoted, on multiple occasions, speaking out against suicide and self-harm. We know Parade is not pro-anything except pro-keep on living. But we know this because we gave the band a chance to tell us. We assumed good intent when we listened to their music, and so their intended message came across without interference. Were Parade released today, in the era of AED (Assume the worst, Exaggerate the damage, and Demand outsized retribution), the resulting furor (and refusal to hear their objections to the rampant misinterpretations) could very well have forced My Chem to vanish into obscurity. 

And look. I’m not against content moderation wholesale. I actually think it’s done some good in the world of entertainment. Podcast hosts and book reviewers who warn audience members about triggering content allow them to avoid that content before they suffer an anxiety attack. As a librarian, I have personally and enthusiastically recommended Does the Dog Die?, a website (doesthedogdie.com) that tracks hundreds of anxiety triggers in media, to colleagues who work with kids so they can allow their students to request a different book or movie if the assigned one would cause undue distress. Trigger warnings can prevent anxiety attacks. Content moderation allows audiences to make informed choices. 

But some things are toxic in high amounts, and when it comes to content moderation, we’ve long since passed that mark. 

When trigger warnings are used not as honest labels of content, but as a means to frighten people away from material they might otherwise enjoy, trigger warnings become toxic. 

When self-appointed content moderators tell others what interpretations they should take from a piece of entertainment, rather than allowing them to come to their own conclusions, content moderation becomes toxic. 

When artists are afraid to produce their most honest work for fear their honesty will be twisted into something dark and ugly, the world of fandom becomes toxic. 

Content moderation is not bad in itself. It can actually be a valuable tool for sufferers of anxiety, PTSD, and other disorders. But when it goes hand in glove with cancel culture, it becomes a monster, keeping audiences from discovering something they might otherwise enjoy by twisting the content into something it’s not. 

I agree with that. 

He was also trying to do better, to be better. With the trauma of leaving her behind to sacrifice herself last time, he was also trying to fix that. KNOWING that she was alive, and sacrificing her would make it easier for them?? He couldn’t do that.

BUT, you know, while that’s the plot line character arc and that makes a lot of sense, I believe that he ALSO has a personal arc, on a deeper level. We have head and heart development, and he made a great deal of forward movement on using his head in season 5, and I think he actually finished his hero’s journey. But that left him without a deeper character development story.... except, I think he took Monty’s OTHER instruction to heart. Not just to be the good guys, but also to live a good life like him and Harper. To find love.

The thing is, not only did Bellamy seek out love this season with CLARKE, allowing his feelings for her to come out and lead his decision making AND to be honest about them with her, but he also regained his love for his sister. This is in addition to his love for his people who he refused to leave behind and sacrifice. 

I was just reminded of this when I found an old video of my eyeballs shaking all over the place when I got overloaded and stressed.  It wasn’t that I looked at the camera in the video, at least not that I remember from looking it over really fast.  Just that I saw the eyes and, because of being reminded of eyes in general,  remembered something I learned a long time ago about eyes and video cameras.

So when I was a kid I was in a weird ultra-low-budget educational movie about grief.  They told us never to look directly into the camera.  They said that if you looked straight at the lens, then no matter what it really happened, it wold look like you were deliberately staring into the camera, and people would read all kinds of things into that, that aren’t really there to read.  They said even glancing for a second can cause this.  

Also, people in general see someone looking at a camera as the same thing as eye contact.  It isn’t the same at all. Some people who avoid eye contact also don’t look into cameras.  But some people do one or the other and not both.  It looks like eye contact in the finished picture or video.  But it’s really just staring at a little (or large, as the case may be) box when someone hits a button and/or points it at you. 

I remember watching a documentary sometime in the past 10-15 years.  Many subjects of the documentary were young (not yet adolescent, even, as far as I could tell) children.  Children who had either not been taught about these things, or had been taught and forgot, or just couldn’t help looking at the camera sometimes anyway.  More on that in a second, I need to add a note about being unable to avoid it even when trying:

From my time on the news -- it is hard to pretend the camera and camera crew are not there.  I was able to avoid looking sraight ino the camera, but I (and the other people being filmed) found it impossible to pretend we were alone, which is what they were asking us to do.  I think it may be especially hard for autistic (and possibly some other neurodivergent people too) people to pretend something or someone isn’t there.  I don’t know if the children had this problem, or some other reason for looking straight at the camera sometimes.  But I bet it’s hard for kids to pretend entire camera crews out of existence too, especially in a high-stress situation like being filmed.

So anyway -- back to these kids.

I saw a lot of people talk knowingly about how this one girl was obviously playing to the camera and not really interested in doing the things she was doing.  They based this on the fact that at one point she opened her eyes and appeared to stare right into the camera just before doing an even more fervent version of what she was doing beforehand.

And -- they could be right.  She could’ve been hamming it up for show.

But -- they could just as easily be wrong.  She could have glanced at the camera because she heard the camera crew and instinctively turned to look.  And then thrown herself back into what she was doing so that she wouldn’t get caught off-guard that way again.  And even a momentary glance like that could easily look like she was deliberately making note of where the camera was so she could “perform” better for it.  Because a glance can look like an intentional stare, when watching a video.

I don’t think we’ll ever get an answer to that.  But when it comes to judging people based on certain aspects of how they look on camera, I try to be very cautious if it involves anything that depends (for interpretation) on a moment when they looked at the camera.  Because that look gets exaggerated tenfold.  And because even someone deliberately looking at the camera can have zillions of different motives and not all of them are in any way related to puffing up their ego or performing or making sure they’re being watched or anything like that.

And remember that if you’re watching someone who’s in a documentary or on the news, the likelihood that they have any editorial control whatsoever is slim.  Meaning that things can get spliced together in a way that puts someone in a completely inaccurate light, either on purpose or by accident on the part of the editors and those who work with them.  

Even stuff that’s basically accurate can look wrong to people who aren’t paying attention to editing as a thing that happens in videos.  

Like... during my interview, they showed me typing, but only enough to show I was typing the answers.  They didn’t show me thinking before I was typing, and they didn’t show all of the typing, and some of the video didn’t always match the audio going on in terms of representing what happened in realtime.  All of this makes total sense and is standard.  You can’t show these things in realtime without wasting a lot of time.

So people afterwards somehow thought -- even with obvious cuts between different views, etc. -- that all of this was in realtime.  So they’d say it was strange that I never needed time to think before typing -- no, they just didn’t show me thinking.  Some also questioned that the answers were so long but the time spent typing was so short.  Nobody involved seemed aware that even news interviews are generally edited somewhat, especially when they contain extremely long boring time-consuming typing sequences.

So just beware of this... I don’t know whether to call it an illusion, or what to call it if it’s not an illusion.  But be aware of this... misleading quality of cameras, I guess.  And remember that things are almost always edited and can range from slightly off to completely misleading -- both when it’s intended to mislead and when it isn’t.  If your entire judgement of someone’s character is based on them looking at the camera, you might want to hold off on judging them.  Because they could as easily have been doing something totally different than what you imagine.  And if it’s part of a deliberate series of edits, the filmmakers may be attempting to portray someone in a particular light that may not be accurate.

I don’t know what that kid was doing.  But most importantly -- I don’t claim to know what was going on in a the mind of a child I don’t even personally know, just because she glanced at the camera for a second.

an ark is a ship. an arc is a curved line, or in storytelling, a narrative or character trajectory. 

he said SOME people misinterpreted the story becaue SOME PEOPLE MISINTERPRETED THE STORY. He didn’t say there was no bellarke or Bellamy didn’t love Clarke. He didn’t say Bellarkers were delusional. He didn’t say Bellarke was platonic. He said some people were misinterpreting the story. 

This is true. We’ve seen it a lot. For instance. Believing that Bellamy chose Clarke because she’s “the good guy” and left Echo because she’s “the bad guy,” and killing Ryker is “narrative proof” that Echo was evil and never changed because Clarke and Bellamy said they weren’t going to kill anyone, is a misinterpretation. That’s not why he saved Clarke and left Echo behind. And that’s not what Ryker’s death meant. And that’s not what happened with Clarke and Bellamy (Clarke actually killed four times as many primes as Echo did.)

This was actually a widespread interpretation in the bellarke fandom. And it matches JR’s quote. So it could be THIS misinterpretation he was talking about.

He did not say that Bellamy didn’t love Clarke. He actually said that the choice was both the RIGHT choice AND an emotional choice. So if there is emotion there, the “heart” part of the head and heart concept, then he is NOT saying that Bellamy didn’t save Clarke out of love. Saying that wouldn’t fit with canon. But since he didn’t say it, then not sure why you feel betrayed.

Also, you may think that this show is “open to interpretation” but that’s not quite true. I mean, you can interpret it anyway you want, but that does’t mean you aren’t misinterpreting things. If you don’t stick to canon then you have misinterpretation. Interpretation is based on canon. If you don’t do that, then it’s a fabrication, not interpretation. If you erase canon to make an interpretation that Echo is evil, then you have a misinterpretation If you go against canon to say that Clarke is evil or selfish or not the hero, then you have a misinterpretation. It IS possible to have a wrong interpretation. And to think that the creator doesn’t have a right to tell the audience that something is a misinterpretation, because you want to think what you want no matter what happens on screen is really entitled.

I mean, if you just want to go off into fanon and write your own story then have fun, but don’t get confused that this is the same as interpretation. It’s not. It’s transformative fanworks which are TOTALLY VALID. But not canon. That is an actual NEW story. Not canon.