The Fallacy Of “Media Literacy”

Sorry, folks, but once again I’m forced to deal with the culture war and how it affects storytelling and how we discuss storytelling.

The Urban Dictionary has, as of this writing, three definitions for “media literacy”

[1] Media Literacy describes the act of being capable of handling different forms of media and being competent,critical and literate. It means being in control of what to interpret into things we see or hear and believing everything right away.
Media literacy is about helping people to become more competent with what they see/hear etc in the media and be critical about it.

by JetBlackColors September 1, 2015

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[2] A term for critical thinking used by people who learned everything they know from video essays on YouTube.

Getting a joke is media literacy. Being good at Zelda is media literacy. Seeing this post is media literacy

by Cranes June 21, 2023

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[3] A @#$#% buzzword thrown around by pseudo-intellectual Reddit and Twitter users when parroting their unoriginal analyses of movies, games, tv shows, etc. that they stole from their favorite E-celeb on YouTube. They use it to insist that the #$%#$% goyslop they consume is more profound than it really is in order to make themselves appear like intellectuals and farm upvotes on Reddit and/or likes+retweets on Twitter from other impressionable retards who read their posts.

A: “If you realized why Ellie let Abby go at the end of The Last of Us Part II, then congratulations on having basic media literacy.”
B: “@#$%# off you pretentious @#$%$#%…”

by wtrbrth March 2, 2024

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The sad thing official dictionary sites and Wikipedia will tell you the first one is accurate. In truth, or at least in practice, the second definition is the more accurate while the third one is just angry, though I have to agree with it. “Media literacy” is the new buzzword used by the usual suspects to push back against people who disagree with their reading of a text or program. “You don’t think this story is solely about [insert social cause du jour] here then you clearly lack media literacy.” This statement is made by people younger than I’ve been absorbing stories to sound smart in the hopes of silencing critics. It hasn’t worked, but it has ruined the discussion. It’s another of the dividing words in current story discussion, and it’s time to discuss this foolishness.

Without naming names, a YouTube channel I have not only enjoyed and agreed with but used in daily video posts to share with readers dropped this term in one of his videos, because I thought he was smarter than that. He also called out bigotry by using a clip from someone who I know isn’t a bigot because while I don’t always watch their main channel I do see them as part of a panel on one of the other channels I follow. It’s tough for me, who wants honest storytelling discussion, to see two channels that would usually agree actually be against each other not because of honest differences in opinion but out of a misunderstanding, sometimes willful, of what the other party said. I can agree with someone I usually don’t, and disagree with someone I usually do, but I try to do so honestly and figure out what they actually said or meant, while still judging them for how it sounded like they meant it. Choosing words carefully is more important now than ever thanks to social media making the 24 hour news cycle worse than it ever has been.

“Media literacy” follows the same trend as “[insert group here] coded”, the idea that a character or alien/fantasy species is coded to be gay, or black, or transgender, when nothing of the sort was in the minds of their creators. Orcs, a fantasy race created to represent the evils of man, or just plain evil. For some reason a few years ago somebody with no understanding of how characters are intended to be used insisted they were black people, and I forget which evil fantasy race is suddenly Latino. It’s the mindset that leads to all tomboys being gay despite my generation and its stories convinced that a girl who happens to enjoy activities usually drawing boys are still girls, still into boys once they hit puberty, and just prefer pants to dresses and G.I. Joe to Barbie. It’s also led to gay men being the most flamboyantly feminine they can be even when they aren’t drag queens, something that a couple of decades ago was actually scorned for being “homophobic”, by the same people who think women should be all kinds of masculine “birthing persons”.

In all these cases, it’s just a new way to say “shut up or I’ll tell everyone you’re a hateful monster”. The idea here is that “if you had enough media literacy you would know I’m totally write on everything”. It’s the same division as “true fans” or “not wanting to be racist/sexist/homophobic/Nazi”. Hey older netizens, remember when invoking Nazis into your conversation was a sure way to show you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about and ending the conversation? Well, that’s the goal. Ending the conversation, but with the “media literate” person able to claim victory because clearly you couldn’t follow their brilliance rather than using a term that showed you weren’t worth talking or listening to. I quit that video the moment I heard him say “media literacy” and now I’m questioning everything he’s said in videos I’ve used on this site in the past. It doesn’t make you the smartest person in the room, it makes you an intellectual elitist only interested in winning the conversation, not proving your viewpoint or learning what someone else’s viewpoint is. I expected better of him.

“Maybe making you watch every episode of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law all in one sitting will make you see how amazing it really is!” “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!”

There’s a difference between inferring something from the text and it actually being true. For example, there’s a scene in Bravestarr, an episode I’ve posted to this site before, where the hero’s mentor went crazy and murdered someone over a friendly competition he lost. (Because he never loses.) In the scene, it’s just Bravestarr setting up camp for the night. There’s no dialog, internal or external, and no narration. It’s just Bravestarr preparing for a showdown with the man who trained him, who carries a dangerous weapon rather than the usual Neutralizer stun pistols now available in stores, kids. I could read the moment two ways: he’s either thinking “this is the man who trained me, my friend and mentor, so I’m not sure I can take him” or “if the man who made me who I am went crazy like this, could that someday be me”. He might not even have either of those thoughts, but we’re left to guess what’s going through his head.

The “media literate” will immediately take a stance and insist you aren’t media literate like they are. Therefore only they know what’s really going on through his head and will tell you what it is. Clearly this or that character is coded for a certain group and only that group. Clearly these platonic friends are actually ready to ride each other like a rodeo bull. Clearly they’re right because they practice “media literacy”. Of course those reads are always tied to the culture war, to a far-left ideology that treats anyone even remotely not as far left as they are as the far-right, a favorite boogeyman in the discussion. You don’t agree with them 100%? Well clearly you aren’t liberal enough, not black enough, not gay enough, hate your own status as a woman (for daring to want to be a mother or be feminine and not having breast reduction surgery), or whatever else extremists think. It’s the anti-McCarthy perspective, extreme for the other team. Coding, media literacy, and the “istophobe” labels have only one goal: to shut up people who don’t agree.

It’s the “true fan” of the 2020s, only with a sociopolitical agenda rather than simply being the “one in the right”. You don’t know what you’re talking about unless you agree with “me”, except in this case the media literate are actually illiterate, caring more about dominating a popular brand for their cause and shutting up anyone who stands against them then what the author intended, rewriting what the author’s intention was rather than your own interpretation. “Tolkien actually meant for Sam and Frodo to be gay.” No, he was using his time in war to show close friendship. It’s also why the fanshipping community gets played to, because it’s no longer about having fun with the narrative, but insisting your view is accurate and these characters should be together because it was always planned. That’s why Tim Drake, the third Robin, is now bisexually gay totally bi to explain why he was into girls (unlike another “Drake” at Marvel), because wanting to bring his friend Conner Kent (Superboy #2 depending on the timeline) back from the dead clearly had to be because they’re gay. See also Kirk/Spock.

In short, media literacy is a bull@#$#% term meant to shut up detractors. It’s not a real term, or if it was it isn’t now. So please stop using it. “Media literacy” is a koala bear, as in koalas aren’t actually bears. There is only literacy, and if you didn’t read the thing or if you don’t care what the writer intended to the point that “death of the author” is more like “murder of the author”, you aren’t worth listening to. See, I can create buzzwords, too, and have in the past to describe things. I don’t think that makes me smarter than anyone else. I just prefer to put a name to my pain. I use big words because they’re fun. People who break out terms like “media literacy” and “(X) coded” sound more like this guy:

Don’t be like this guy.