Are We In A Media Literacy Crisis?

Online discourse has become a fun part of enjoying and dissecting big pop culture events. But after seeing all the commentary around Ryan Coogler's Sinners, our pal Brittany Luse has one question: are we in a media literacy crisis? Difference of opinion is one thing, but it feels like some viewers are missing important clues or misreading the film entirely - and it doesn't stop with Sinners. Today we've got an episode of the podcast It's Been A Minute that explores what this could mean for the way we engage with the world at large. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:20Aisha Harris?

  Okay, everybody. Ayesha here. And the other day, I went on NPR's It's Been a Minute to talk about a crisis we've been seeing in pop culture. I won't spoil it, but basically, we've all gotten really, really bad at watching movies and TV shows. Here's how It's Been a Minute's host, Brittany Luse, describes it.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Like almost every other person in the country, I flocked to see Ryan Coogler's Sinners when it hit theaters in April.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  And while I enjoyed the film, part of the fun was seeing all the excitement online. So when I was finally able to scroll through all the spoiler-heavy commentary, I was shocked to see some of the wildest takes I've seen on a movie in a while. For example, there's a Chinese character in the film named Grace, played by Lee Jun Lee. And for those who haven't seen it, this is a light spoiler, but she's responsible for a pretty big moment in the film. But what I, and also the director of the film, Ryan Coogler, felt was a rash decision made by a mother in distress, some viewers thought was a representation of a lack of POC solidarity from Asian folks in Black communities. Even stranger, some audience members thought Annie,

• 1:30Speaker 02

  played by actress Wumi Mosaku, was one of the main character's Smoke's mother. Now, for those who don't know, Annie is the estranged wife of Smoke, one of the two Smoke Stack twins, played by Michael B. Jordan. Just wild stuff. But this isn't the first time the audience has been out of step with the content itself. The endless rabbit holes and theories around season two of Severance made me want to swear off the fandom entirely.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  It made me think about a phrase that gets thrown around a lot online.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Media literacy. According to the National Association of Media Literacy Education, media literacy is the ability to encode and decode the symbols communicated in what we consume, and for me, most importantly, being able to critically analyze those symbols for a richer takeaway. And seeing some of this commentary has me concerned that we're struggling with the necessary tools to even critically approach some of the things we're watching for entertainment. So I called up Pop Culture Happy Hours Aisha Harris.

• 2:36Aisha Harris?

  For better and to sound for worse, we come to pop culture with all of our baggage.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  And Code Switch's BA Parker. Oh, we don't have subtext anymore. Like, we have subtext, but we can't read it. To ask them, where else are they seeing this? And what does this media literacy crisis mean for the way that we engage with the world at large?

• 3:02Aisha Harris?

  The furthest back I can go of a recent example of this is Wicked. Wasn't even coming from, you know, Randalls on the internet or Strange on the internet. I imagine both of you saw A Strange Loop, the really great Broadway show by Michael R. Jackson.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  I'm familiar with it, but I haven't seen it.

• 3:19Aisha Harris?

  So he had some very interesting opinions on Wicked. And he actually wound up writing about this around the time of the Oscars in The New York Times. He wrote an opinion piece titled, "Is Wicked Really a Resistance Musical?" He's kind of going after people who, when Wicked came out, were claiming that it was very relevant to our times. And Wicked came out like maybe a couple of weeks after Trump was elected.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:43Aisha Harris?

  So people were, you know, tying threads together to call Wicked a musical that is representative of our times. And Michael R. Jackson basically wrote, like, he calls this progressive magical thinking and that people are trying to reclaim Wicked as like this resistance musical when it's not actually.

• 4:02Aisha Harris?

  And to me, that's kind of inaccurate. I'm not saying that Wicked is necessarily a super radical piece of theater or as a movie, but the novel that it's based off of is incredibly political. It's very different from the musical, and it is intended to be an allegory. And I will also say, the production notes for Wicked, they literally say that it is a show about the quiet, insidious rise of a fascist movement that seeks to demonize the intelligent, speaking animals of Oz, end quote.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Well, dang.

• 4:32Aisha Harris?

  So whether or not you believe that it's actually resistant is one thing, but I think it is inherently a political piece of movie and show in a way that I'm not sure Jackson is willing to give credit for.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  But that's a really fascinating read. It's made plain today by the people who actually created the thing. But I'm curious, Parker, have you had this experience?

• 4:53Speaker 03

  I mean, I had recently, I was watching clips of an interview that Katie Couric had with Noah Wiley, who's the star of The Pit.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  She asked him a question that gave the feeling like she hadn't absorbed anything that was happening on the show. There's a big scene between Noah Wiley's character.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  And like another main character.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  And Dr. Collins, who's like a black doctor. And Katie Couric says, so was something going on between the two of those characters?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  And there's like a big, like, that's a huge, what you're referring to is a huge emotional scene on the show that makes it very clear that they share some type of very serious, like intimate past.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:40Aisha Harris?

  Yes.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  And I was like, oh, we don't have subtext anymore. Like, we have subtext, but we can't read it. Like, someone has to blatantly say, hey, remember that thing we did like five years ago? This is how it made me feel.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  But let's get into the meat and potatoes of why I brought you both here today. Because the online discourse around the film centers has broken my brain. They had me concerned about not just how people were misunderstanding story, as each of you have discussed, but also how people were misunderstanding pretty common racial dynamics. And a lot of these reactions were coming from black people. I want to talk about a specific situation. There's a character in the film named Mary, played by Hailee Steinfeld. Mary is a character who actually, like the real-life actress Steinfeld, has a grandparent who is mixed race. One of the main characteristics of her character is that she is passing for white, but she

• 6:39Speaker 02

  is aware, and at least privately acknowledged, like many white-passing black people, that she has black ancestry and she was raised around black people. And I have seen so many people saying that she actually was white, she should be considered white, people simply just not understanding how the one-drop rule worked back then, how segregation worked back in the Jim Crow South.

• 7:00Aisha Harris?

  What in the Lena Horne are we doing here? Like...

• 7:03Speaker 02

  It stressed me out. But my concern with this is two-pronged, because, you know, this seems like people don't know, A, how to understand history and locate a story within a certain historical context, or B, that they also don't understand storytelling, or in this case, how to understand cues and clues that a movie will give you to understand what it's trying to tell you. What do you all make of this phenomenon? Ayesha, we'll hear from you first.

• 7:31Aisha Harris?

  This is something that I've written about and thought about a lot, which is that, for better and to some extent for worse, we come to pop culture with all of our baggage, all of ourselves, and especially...

• 7:48Aisha Harris?

  In the age of the internet, when we are all kind of identifying amongst groups and demographics, whether it's like, I'm a Trekkie, or I'm a Harry Potter fan, or I'm whatever. It's like, everything becomes super personal. And you often think about things from your perspective, and then you project your perspective onto film, TV, whatever, in ways that maybe like, aren't always there. Like, they don't actually exist, but you are bringing it to whatever piece of art you're consuming. And there's some good that can come out of that. Queer and people of color fans who have inserted themselves into pop culture in that way. And I think those things are not disconnected.

• 8:31Aisha Harris?

  I think about something like Joker, the first movie, which came out in 2019, and how that movie, like, depending on where you were on the political spectrum, or how you view things, like, there were some people who viewed the Joaquin Phoenix character as an incel, as like, the worst kind of thing. And then there were other fans who were like, what are you talking about? This movie is like, it's the greatest thing ever. And Todd Phillips, he's the one who directed the film. He had to come out several times and kind of talk about it, and how he claimed like, it's not a political film, and it's like, come on, man. Of course it's a political film. Like, you can't, you can't backtrack there.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  To me, that seems like straight up denial.

• 9:10Aisha Harris?

  It's straight up denial. But, so, it's like, these things can get out of hand, and you have to acknowledge that, and acknowledge that people are going to interpret it in different ways. First of all, everything is political in some way. It's just some are more overtly so. So I think we're, everyone's just bringing something different to these movies. And with social media, people are able to share that more readily than they were 30 years ago.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  I mean, there is like, this frustrating aspect of it, like, the online discourse. Have you ever, like, the bean soup problem?

• 9:39Aisha Harris?

  No.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  There was a thing on TikTok.

• 9:40Aisha Harris?

  Please, I've heard about this, please explain this.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  There was like, a TikTok video of a lady was like, here's how I make my bean soup. And someone, the comments was like, but I don't like beans. How do I make this soup? And the creator was like, you just don't make the soup. Like, this soup's not, you know, there's other soups. And that, I feel, has infiltrated our media absorption. So there's a lot of, very selfishly, like, how does this pertain to me? Or it's like, this makes me uncomfortable, therefore I don't like it. Or, oh, it has all of these guys that I really like in it. So this, like, yeah, this movie's problematic, and it's not very good, but I love it. Therefore, it makes it a good movie. And, I mean, OK, sure.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Coming up, how our digital lives may have changed the way we interpret media.

• 10:33Aisha Harris?

  There are clues, but if you are half-watching on your phone, you're gonna miss it. And so is it media literacy in the sense of, like, people are watching and just not picking up what is being put down? Or is it also just like, they are literally not even seeing it half the time?

• 10:51Speaker 00

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• 12:15Speaker 02

  I feel like a crucial aspect of this media illiteracy is moralizing. And Alexis, our producer, she brought this up. And I'm like, you're so right. There's almost like this entertainment moralizing process where you watch a piece of entertainment and then spend time researching or processing whether the film matches your values or the values of those around you, in some cases. And then you decide how you feel about what you watched and whether you think it's good or bad. It kind of becomes less about like whether you actually think something is well done or entertaining and like more about whether or not this piece of media makes you seem or feel like a good person or confirms what you already believe about the world.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Okay, listen, being a 14-year-old girl watching Todd Solens films for the first time.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Listen.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  That'll, that'll like, ooh, I feel uncomfortable. This is weird. But also, I respect the craft. My moral compass doesn't make the whole movie bad. It's like saying, oh, Hannibal Lecter's a cannibal. How dare he? I would never be a cannibal. Therefore, Silence of the Lambs is a terrible movie, which is patently untrue. We can't use our morality to gauge the validity of art.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  I mean, it kind of feels like there's like a newer self-awareness for any people around, whether it's around feeling like a good person or at least having your choices confirmed, that like kind of gets, I feel like, audiences further away from actually sitting with art.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Another thing I think about in all this, we're talking about media literacy and entertainment, right? But there's other ways to be media literate that I think we've seen plenty of examples of. I mean, you know, more people than ever are getting their news through social media as opposed to through traditional news outlets. But this makes me wonder, like, if audiences can't accurately read a film or TV show where the writer and director are giving them clues. And directing their attention to what they need to be focused on. How might they understand or misunderstand complex news stories with huge real life implications?

• 14:24Aisha Harris?

  In the same way, right? Like, I think about that story about Katie Couric and The Pit, right? It's like, there are clues, but if you are half-watching on your phone, you're gonna miss it. And so, is it media literacy in the sense of like, people are watching and just not picking up what is being put down? Or is it also just like, they are literally not even seeing it half the time? And The Pit is the type of show that you like, kind of need to give all your attention to because it's not giving you everything. It's not Grey's Anatomy, it's not Broad, it's not-

• 14:57Speaker 03

  But that's also like, very direct of like, choose me, love me.

• 15:00Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, exactly. You do not hear these big, grand pronouncements of love, or lust, or whatever. It's all taking place in a single day. So like-

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Only so much can happen.

• 15:12Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, even the way it duels out information is a way that like, I think a lot of modern audiences are perhaps not attuned to, or used to, getting information, which is usually like, those big, grand pronouncements. And instead, it's like, it comes out in the way it would if you were actually there on that first day. Like, you wouldn't learn everything about this one doctor in two seconds. Like, that's not how it works.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Also, I would not want people working in the hospital that I'm being served at, like, giving a speech an hour.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  No, thank you.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  I don't need this, I'm like, please, pay attention to me. But that's a really good point. People's attention is very split. And I see those things pop up in the way that people consume news. I see that pop up in the way that people are engaging with our rapidly changing political landscape. And also, I think that makes me think about algorithms. Like, people's individual worldviews are now also deeply affected by their algorithms. I wonder, like- Where does that take us as a society? Like, where does that leave us? Where are we going, y'all?

• 16:15Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I think we're already in the abyss. It's just like, how long are we gonna wait here? And when are we gonna pull ourselves out? I mean, I even just think about sort of this same idea of how we all project our different ideas and beliefs onto our pop culture. I think about Luigi Mangione and how there have been such differing reactions to what he is accused of having done. He's currently on trial for the killing of the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, and how depending on your algorithm, you might be fed a bunch of stuff that's very pro Luigi and in support of him, or like gushing over how hot you think he might be. And you could be on the other end of things.

• 17:00Aisha Harris?

  And I think that like, it's the same side of the same coin, right? The same thing allegedly happened, and everyone has a different opinion to it and ascribes a different meaning to it. And I do think that this is, it's not that dissimilar from the way we consume our pop culture, which is that like, you know, deciding whether or not a character was right or wrong to do what they did, even something like The Last of Us, like, all the sort of like hand wringing over Joel and played by Pedro Pascal and like what he did, there are two sides to every story. And I'm all for debate, but also sometimes what's right in front of us is what's right in front of us.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  I like, I'm loving the analysis.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  The best I can compare it to is, you ever watch like The Traitors? It's like a group of people who are using their behavioral skills to figure out if someone is like a traitor.

• 17:55Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  And everyone all of a sudden thinks they're Dr. Phil. And like even, and they're like, or, or they'll be like, oh, he twitched, that means he's lying. Or like, or like, oh, they went into this hallway, clearly they are a traitor. But that's all of us. That is the level of like, kind of like literacy we're on right now.

• 18:18Aisha Harris?

  Yes. Wait, remember Spickgate? Remember Spickgate?

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, when they, when people were like, oh,

• 18:23Aisha Harris?

  Harry Styles might have spit on Chris Pine.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  And it's like, I just don't think that happened. I saw that and I was like, I don't think he did that.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Someone made that up on Twitter and people just ran with it. We're at the point where I have to, like, explain to a relative, like, no, this is AI, Rihanna is not showing her sonogram to her grandmother and posting it on Facebook. Like, that's like, oh, my God. Or a shit thing that happened to me this weekend.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  I had to be like, that's not real.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  I'm glad I was able to come and commiserate with the two of you because I have been trying to make sense of this and you all actually at least gave me some good ways to think about and understand what's going on. So Parker, Ayesha, thank you both so much.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 19:09Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  That was Pop Culture Happy Hours, Aisha Harris and Code Switch's BA Parker. And I'm going to put on my influencer hat for a second and ask you to please subscribe to this show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you're listening. Click Follow so you know the latest in culture while it's still hot. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by?

• 19:33Speaker 05

  Alexis Williams.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  This episode was edited by? Nina Potuck. Our supervising producer is? Barton Girdwood. Our executive producer is?

• 19:41Speaker 06

  Verilyn Williams.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Our VP of Programming is? Yolanda Sangwene. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been a Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon.

• 19:56Speaker 04

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