Readers of The Bruja Professor know I am all about having joyful, productive, and nuanced conversations about the stories we love. Sometimes it seems that it can be so fashionable to roast a thing because you don’t like it, don’t understand it, won’t engage with content that’s had PROBLEMS (to put it mildly), or because you woke up on the wrong sid of the bed. Others will sing the praises of a thing, defending a story TO THE DEATH against naysayers while ignoring huge red flags in the content simply because they don’t want to deal with the fact that a beloved author might have some serious skeletons in their closet. In either case, the message is clear: There shall be no productive conversations here today!
But where’s the fun in those one-dimensional conversations? To me, there is little joy in shutting down any potential for an opportunity to grow and expand our worldview simply by being willing to explore to engage with the discomfort surrounding problematic texts (and, in case you forgot, there’s no such thing as a problem-free text). Part of this, I think, comes from the fact that we don’t want to be judged for what we like, as those of us who love genre media and pop culture so often are. We also don’t want to feel guilty for still enjoying that piece of media from our childhood that hasn’t aged well. Others likewise don’t want what they enjoy to be “ruined” by analysis.
But, as my students find, you can both love a thing and be critical of it, appreciate what is to be appreciated AND acknowledge places where a text fall short or is representative of the time in which it was produced. You can also have a lot of fun analyzing popular culture! In fact, thinking critically about media can deepen your enjoyment of it. Just ask my internet friends, many of whom have been guest contributors on this blog—and my IRL friends, too!
We’ve already talked about the art of joyful problematization with Andrea Martucci, host of Shelf Love on the blog, which offers an excellent way to have fun analyzing media. Today, I want to add to that conversation with another wonderful podcast host, Latisha Jones, host of Interspectional Podcast. Just listening to her talk to her variety of super cool guests highlights the importance of having nuanced, balanced, and, most of all, fun and generative conversations about media and how it shapes the world around us.
For example, Latisha often talks about the rule of “two truths,” or recognizing that two things can be true about one text. Let’s try two truths about pop culture to see what we’re talking about here:
Pop culture is wonderful!
Pop culture is trash!
Both are true. It’s impossible to ignore how powerful and affirming pop culture can be, but that power goes both ways—it can be inspiring or make you see the worst in humanity. And, those two things—wonder and trash—are relative, depending on the context, point of view, and personal investment.
Here’s another round of two truths:
Pop culture subverts the status quo!
Pop culture reinforces the status quo!
Again, both these things are FACTS. Sometimes, pop culture is so powerful it can change the status quo, literally normalizing certain narratives that were formally seen as taboo or unheard of. For example, The Mary Tyler Moore Show of the 70s was one of the first shows to normalize the story of the “working girl,” a beloved TV show narrative that continues to this day.
But, we’re also seeing a ton of media that reinforces the status quo of that now ubiquitous working girl storyline that still mostly focuses on thin young hetcis white women. So in one way, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a trailblazer, but the stories that followed are less revolutionary because they depict only the same kind of woman having that empowered narrative. Other shows, like Insecure (2016), reinvent that story as an exploration of how to be a confident, empowered black woman…when you feel anything but. Now, it is no longer just a narrative about a young white girl (mary Tyler Moore) making her way in a man’s world, but what it means to be a successful black woman in a post-Trump world.
See? Nothing is simple when it comes to pop culture. But it’s worth taking a deep dive into the stories that we love so we can see how they shape our understanding of ourselves and the world around us—for better and worse. And, if you haven’t already, PLEASE listen to Interpsectional Podcast, where Latisha expertly guides listeners through the delightfully nerdy conversations surrounding the problematics media that we love, that we sometimes love to hate, or that we hate to love. Hey, our relationship with media is complicated! And that’s okay.
But if you ever do struggle to engage with problematic content, particularly media that you feel conflicted about, Latisha has some fantastic tips for engaging with it all while developing our critical thinking skills and having fun unpacking the delightfully messy world of pop culture. Check out what Latisha has to say about engaging with problematic content in her lecture below.
Guest Contributor Bio
Latisha Jones is a writer, actress, filmmaker and theater educator. Born in New York, but raised in the DMV area, Latisha earned her bachelor’s degree in screenwriting and playwriting from Drexel University and her master’s degree in Educational Theater from New York University. As a theater educator, she had worked with students of all ages with a specialty in multicultural education. She has developed an anti-racism seminar series called “Difficult Conversations” which focuses on using theater techniques as a method of community development, encouraging dialogue and fostering understanding between people of various ages, classes and cultures. She worked as a consultant and facilitator for various theaters, non-profit organizations and community groups actively working to deconstruct and rebuild themselves in an anti-oppression framework.
The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.
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