the injury of finally knowing you

watching spiderverse makes me never wanna see another live action movie ever again like. why did we ever start making comic books into live action movies?? make it animated to explore the art form instead of trying to make it hyper realistic you fucking cowards

Okay but have you just concidered

Robert Downey Jr.

i have and i don’t care about him

I’m making this post with another in mind, which unfortunately has been lost through the abyss that is the tumblr dashboard.

A comment on a reblogged post read something along the lines of, “it’s ok to enjoy media uncritically.” I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something along those lines. I don’t know to what degree that OP meant those words, but tbh the way it was written, gave me the impression that OP was saying, “it’s 100% ok to enjoy media without thinking critically on it whatsoever.”

Though (if I recall correctly) that post was in regards to mental health, and enjoying media without stressing out too much about it, I cannot express how much I disagree with that comment.

Media should not be consumed without any criticism whatsoever. Fictional or not, media has real world consequences. Media inspires real world actions, for better or worse.

If media is consumed, it should be understood that there are likely (if not always) issues attached. The issues attached can be either good commentary on a given issue (eg, Get Out is commentary on whiteness and antiblackness), or straight up problematic (eg, Marvel Comics current issues with glorifying Nazis).

I get that enjoying media critically can be a huge mental toll. But media does not exist in a void, and something wrong with a given media should not be dismissed. It should, at the very least, be acknowledged as existing in a problematic way. (Example: “I acknowledge that Marvel is having issues with pro-nazis hired as their writers, and will keep this in the back of my mind” vs “Sure, Marvel has pro-nazis as their writers, but I’m just going to forget about it”)

In a world where we are exposed to world issues more than ever before, the badness can and is overwhelming. I get that. I’m not asking that you exhaust yourselves past the point of being healthy, in the search for understanding why specific media is problematic. But I am asking you to at the very least, acknowledge why a piece of media can be considered problematic.

Media is meant to be enjoyed, but you shouldn’t enjoy it without acknowledging its issues. Still, I don’t think it’s necessary to exhaust yourselves on what those issues are.

Media should not be consumed completely and wholly without any form of criticism whatsoever. Media does not exist in a void, separately from the “real world.” You don’t need to watch every episode to look for evidence of why something is bad, but you need to acknowledge that the bad exists.