Tropes that Hate Media Analysis (or "The author meant the curtains were blue")

There are a series of tropes, including What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?, Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory, and What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?, that are weirdly hostile to the idea of media analysis. They seem to specifically dislike the kind of analysis seen in some high school literature classes, where the teacher insists that a portion of a work has a deeper meaning that the author didn't intend. This is best summarized in the meme:

All of these trope descriptions seem to be written in the voice of someone who is or has just stopped being a high school student, and who was taught that a) every facet of every work has a deep hidden meaning and b) there is only one correct meaning. This is only one method of media analysis, but the tropes seem to dismiss analysis as a whole. (This is odd considering the site's love of Wild Mass Guessing, which is the same type of analysis, just not taken seriously.)

I've seen some ridiculous "curtains were blue" takes in academia. They absolutely exist, perpetuated by students and professors alike. They're not that common and the trope descriptions should be made less negative to reflect that.

Description tone is an issue for the Trope Description Improvement thread.

Yes, it's strange that the articles are going "Media analysis bad" when that's exactly what we do ^note the dividing line seems to be symbolism and "whether I liked this work", and the negative takes can stand to be toned down.

I know you did the check for Didactic, but if you check the other ones as well you might be able to see if the tropes themselves are being used to complain.

I really hate that "the curtains were fucking blue" stuff^note hey students — if the detail was included, there was likely a reason to include it, whether to set the scene to simply establish the environment or, indeed, to symbolize something internal about the character through his environment. I think these tropes could exist if it was simply about alternate but unintended symbolism in the work, but they do feel a bit redundant.

(I can affirm I even added to Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory in the past because I was salty while doing cleanup about a point someone repeatedly insisted upon on the wiki which is highly unlikely to be intentional by the writers... so I know firsthand that these are salty items. )

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 23rd 2022 at 7:21:59 AM

I completely agree, it's like as if the meme had come from some high school student who hated literature class. Every word has a meaning, even if it might just be there to establish the setting and it doesn't have an inner subtext, and these kind of jokes are just needlessly rude and agressive.

I mean, it definitely did come from an angry high-schooler, or someone pandering to them. There's a lot of memes like that.

I don't use a lot of symbolism in my own writing, but I also don't care to describe the color of someone's curtains, so...

But isn't the purpose of these tropes (and What Do You Mean, It's Not an Index? as a whole) is that they're wrong? As in the author has denied that there was any intended symbolism?

Most schools of analysis don't actually rely on authorial intent. Once a text exists, it can be read in many ways, and just because the author disagrees doesn't make a reading "wrong". Besides, a lot of examples just treat the readings as "obviously" wrong and don't cite the author disagreeing. What Do You Mean, It's Not Political? is particularly bad, listing works with obvious political themes as if it's wrong to point them out.

Okay, but the idea behind these tropes is that there's a disconnect between audience interpretation and authorial intent. If there are a bunch of examples where the author hasn't denied the interpretation, then maybe those tropes need a clean-up.

The reasons I posted here and not in the Description Improvement thread are that the tropes are so focused on the complaints that I'm uncertain what the tropes are meant to be. I'll run a use check for the others in the upcoming days, War Jay.

The descriptions for these tropes focus way more on sneering at the idea of academic analysis than just saying "some readers disagree with the author" in a neutral way.

Well, yeah, such analysis is always going to be contentious because it's essentially idle speculation - without Word of God you can never know for certain why a given element was included. Also, many people don't like it when you ascribe motives to them based on idle speculation.

Sometimes even with Word of God you can say that a creative decision was *unconsiously* made for whatever reason, even discounting things like Lying Creator.

Tropes like these always depend on if you agree with Roland Barthes' Death of the Author or not - if you do, they are utterly useless since in that view authorial intent matters only as much as everyone else's. I'm not sure if the site should take a stand on this or not, but the sneering tone does feel counterproductive.

It's not speculation about authorial intent because there's no need to involve the author at all. Thinking every analysis is making a claim about authorial intent is part of the issue with these pages.

Are you saying Death of the Author makes this kind of analysis invalid? That's wrong, it's actually the opposite. It also doesn't mean all readings are equally valid, just that readings should focus on the text, not it’s author.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Mar 24th 2022 at 12:38:37 PM

Well, the author is the origin of the story and even if we discuss elements that were unconsciously/non-deliberately introduced, you are engaging in speculation.

That is not true, you do not need to discuss or speculate about the author to analyze a story. Unless you make specific claims of authorial intent, you can just discuss what the story contains, the effect those things have, and the meanings they generate.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Mar 24th 2022 at 2:38:03 PM

I didn't mean that Death of the Author made this kind of analysis invalid, I meant that a trope like Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory (where an author's intentions are most important to consider) isn't useful to someone who follows a philosophy where an author's word only matters as much as everyone else's.

Edited by harryhenry on Mar 25th 2022 at 7:17:47 AM

I wanted bring this thread back because I think What Do Y Ou Mean Its Not Didactic has some serious problems.

1. It seems to equate "literary analysis" with "hot takes about what a work 'really means'". That's not what serious academic literary analysis is, and equating them gives the page a sneering anti-intellectual tone.

2. The part about how it's actually justified to read messages specifically into works aimed at children is obvious self-justification, because this page mocks the idea of media analysis on a site dedicated to media analysis, so someone wrote an absurd section about how it's actually more worthwhile to write a 30 page essay on the hidden meaning of a Spongebob episode than to think about the meaning of Moby Dick. It's genuinely embarrassing.

That seems like something you should bring to the complaining thread.

TBH I’m a little worried that keeping this trope as is, in its current state, is bad for our image offsite. We already gets lots of “TV Tropes ruined media analysis” takes on the rest of the internet, the last thing we need is a page that could be interpreted as enforcing that.

I think I’ll do a wick check for this once I’m done with Camera Screw because I’m concerned about complaining too, plus I want to see what kind of use this trope gets. I have an idea for what to do here, but I want to check wicks first to see if it will work.

Yeah, it's kind of weird to have a trope that just says "your analysis / hunt for symbolism is wrong".

If this effort can rid us of the last "What do you mean it's not..." snowclones, it'll be worth it for that alone.

I think that if we do clean up or TRS the "what do you mean" tropes, it'd be good to have a Word of God requirement like Author's Saving Throw, just so we can definitively prove that the author did not intend for people to read their works a certain way. Granted, that would cut out a good swath of examples that potentially hold water, but if it can cut down on stealth complaining about nonliteral interpretation, I'd be all in for it.