Very thoughtful writing on a topic that I struggle with, often feeling torn between staying quiet until I've done some careful thinking on a subject and the urge to just fire off takes. I really like what you say about takes being partially defined by assumptions of audience ("making up a guy to get mad at" phenomenon), especially within the contemporary climate of 'what does it mean watch/like something'. Something that came to mind as I was reading was Bourdieu's Distinction and thinking of the take similar to taste as an act of social distinction (recognizing that this may require similar assumptions of audience). Morality, politics, and activism become synthesized in the take, which functions as a discursive practice within a discursive field, but one that situates the interlocutor within that field.
Being very invested in the discourse just saps energy. (Or even if it doesn't feel that way, it nevertheless distracts from probably a lot of other, more worthwhile activities and goals.) None of it is activity we anticipate being really satisfied about on our deathbeds, anyway. Still, it can be tempting even for those of us who feel this way, just because we're wired to be social ...
And the take is certainly contingent on the presumed audience, which needs to be attuned to all the priors & shared premises, and that extends also to the presumed opponents or scapegoats.
Since last Friday, I've repeatedly seen the take that seeing BARBIE before OPPENHEIMER, or seeing it rather than the Nolan film, is a political act. (And of course, it's a decision being publicized on social media, often from people who haven't even seen it yet.) This utterly baffles me, but it bears out your second paragraph.
Of course consumption, entertainment, etc have political dimensions. But I also think that a lot of people have kinda taken a kernel of an idea extracted from a Cultural Studies 101 lecture, and a general notion that "the personal is political," and run with it all the way into a corner, where the judgments just reinforce consumerist orthodoxy. It's this weird and facile reduction of politics to a window display of tastes. (Again, I'm not really saying anything about Barbie or Oppenheimer yet...)
Part of the issue comes from taking ideas that are worth honoring on the macro level (eg., valuing women's filmmaking is a political act) and playing them out on the level of opinions about individual works.
I agree, and I think that making this slip tends to weaken the political impact of the critique and what it's presumably targeting, however strident the rhetoric might get.
Very thoughtful writing on a topic that I struggle with, often feeling torn between staying quiet until I've done some careful thinking on a subject and the urge to just fire off takes. I really like what you say about takes being partially defined by assumptions of audience ("making up a guy to get mad at" phenomenon), especially within the contemporary climate of 'what does it mean watch/like something'. Something that came to mind as I was reading was Bourdieu's Distinction and thinking of the take similar to taste as an act of social distinction (recognizing that this may require similar assumptions of audience). Morality, politics, and activism become synthesized in the take, which functions as a discursive practice within a discursive field, but one that situates the interlocutor within that field.
Being very invested in the discourse just saps energy. (Or even if it doesn't feel that way, it nevertheless distracts from probably a lot of other, more worthwhile activities and goals.) None of it is activity we anticipate being really satisfied about on our deathbeds, anyway. Still, it can be tempting even for those of us who feel this way, just because we're wired to be social ...
And the take is certainly contingent on the presumed audience, which needs to be attuned to all the priors & shared premises, and that extends also to the presumed opponents or scapegoats.
Since last Friday, I've repeatedly seen the take that seeing BARBIE before OPPENHEIMER, or seeing it rather than the Nolan film, is a political act. (And of course, it's a decision being publicized on social media, often from people who haven't even seen it yet.) This utterly baffles me, but it bears out your second paragraph.
Of course consumption, entertainment, etc have political dimensions. But I also think that a lot of people have kinda taken a kernel of an idea extracted from a Cultural Studies 101 lecture, and a general notion that "the personal is political," and run with it all the way into a corner, where the judgments just reinforce consumerist orthodoxy. It's this weird and facile reduction of politics to a window display of tastes. (Again, I'm not really saying anything about Barbie or Oppenheimer yet...)
Part of the issue comes from taking ideas that are worth honoring on the macro level (eg., valuing women's filmmaking is a political act) and playing them out on the level of opinions about individual works.
I agree, and I think that making this slip tends to weaken the political impact of the critique and what it's presumably targeting, however strident the rhetoric might get.