It's Not That Deep... Or Is It?

It’s not a new complaint for me, but just for the heck of it, I’ll say it again: there are few sentences I dislike more in the English language than “it’s not that deep.”

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

As I scroll through my phone on my couch— or in my bed, or on public transit, or at the gym— I hear people talk about “the death of media literacy” like it’s some unchangeable, immutable force encroaching upon today’s youths that can’t be stopped, no matter what. And sure, there’s some truth to that idea. But also… there’s a hunger for in-depth analysis and critical thinking that makes me think there’s still time to turn back that particular tide.

For context, a few tens of thousands of people know me as “that girl who talks about Star Wars a little too much.” On my YouTube and TikTok channels, I create analytical videos that break down the sociopolitical foundations of media franchises like Star Wars, TV shows like The Good Place, and books like The Hunger Games. I delve into history and context, as well as ideological research, analyzing the source material in the same manner that my high school and college and grad school humanities seminars taught me to. In other words, thinking about the material critically, taking it on its own terms, examining both diegetic and external history, ad thinking about deeper meaning.

It’s worth mentioning— and it’s something that I note, not infrequently, on my channels— that the reason I can usually find a deeper meaning is because I tend to talk about pieces of media that were intentionally made as commentary on real-world issues in the first place. But it’s also very much part of my academic training and the nature of how I think about things to understand that nothing— not art, not movies, not TV, not books— is made in a vacuum. It’s a large part of why I don’t put much stock in analysis that depends upon the “death of the author” to make its point heard.

Even media that isn’t trying to comment on the context in which it was made nonetheless reflects that context, sometimes even providing a lens that the more intentional commentaries might miss. My favorite example of that phenomenon is The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien swore up and down that he didn’t write the trilogy as an interpretation of or allegory for his experience as a soldier in the First World War, nor as his experience living through the Second World War as a veteran who had already survived the first one. But the parallels are there anyway, in the fallen soldiers interred forever in the Dead Marshes and the way that the Shire— the utopian, pastoral home worth fighting for— doesn’t manage to escape unscathed after all and the way that war is portrayed as necessary in the face of evil but that the characters given the most glory in the end are those defined by their compassion rather than their bravery. It might not be a parallel that Tolkien intended to draw, but it’s not a difficult one to find, either.

But media that does exist for the purpose of saying something about the world at large, and that was written as a specific mechanism for understanding the wheels of political machinations in the real world?

That, my friends, is always that deep.

So yes, I’m going to keep digging into the original Star Wars trilogy as a discussion on the Vietnam War and Nazi Germany and the rise of American pseudoimperialistic military overreach, and its prequels as a discussion of how people and governments who believe themselves to be good and democratic can backslide into autocracy and fascism, especially with trade wars and misguided counterterrorism efforts as catalysts for “red-pilling” young believers in a cause. And I’m going to keep talking about Star Trek as a piece of media that is deeply rooted in the idea that humanity can do and be better as long as we remember that we are all a part of something greater than ourselves. And I’m going to get as granular as possible with my analysis, because every little piece that passes through writers’ rooms and edits and actor choices and copyeditors and directors and character workshops is a choice that someone made, a reflection of an understanding and a piece of logic that can be followed through to its conclusion.

It’s not just me. When I post a video talking about that process, people respond. They have their own historical groundings and their own analyses, and they’re desperate to share, to discuss, to “stitch” my videos with their own interpretations, to start threads in my comments section that would be pages upon pages long if they were printed out on paper. And “the youths” are a part of it— I get high schoolers and college students in my comments, I get 35-year-olds, according to some of the data that my platforms share, I’ve got subscribers in their late 80s. And they’re all looking for an opportunity to take the conversation beyond the shallows.

I’m not saying that media literacy isn’t struggling, but I think it’s far from dead. Perhaps it’s gotten comfortable hiding behind an AI prompt or a rubric that doesn’t require as much depth as we used to demand. But just because it’s been put away doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. Maybe it’s just a little shy. It just needs someone to crack open the door.