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"Intellectuals" and Literary Analysis
I consider myself to be a smart guy. I'm very good at logical operations and memorization, and am generally quite competent at anything relating to computer science, biology, or mathematics.
I am not, however, what you would call "intellectual." Most of the people who call themselves this are people who are good at abstract thinking rather than concrete thinking, such as philosophy or literary analysis.
I don't have a problem with this. What I do have a problem with is these people saying that I am somehow "stupid" for not understanding these things the way they do. The other day, I heard someone call another person an idiot and "anti-intellectual" for not liking Shakespeare's plays, and daring to say that they aren't entertaining.
Spoiler Alert: Most people don't consume media in real life the way they do in English class. When people read or watch fiction, most of the time they're not paying attention to subtext or trying to analyze the overall story themes. They just want to watch the story unfold in an entertaining fashion.
The mere idea that anyone who doesn't turn consuming entertainment media into work is stupid is pure arrogance.
Comments
I feel like I have something to reply to your post overall but I don't have a fully-formed thought yet. But I'll reply to one bit where I do:
But what does "entertaining" mean? Because it could mean a lot of things, including paying attention to subtext or trying to analyze themes.
For what it's worth I am entertained by analyzing themes, as well as putting myself in the characters' shoes and understanding and trying to reason through what they do as if they were real people. (Partly why I don't get much into comedy.) In contrast I know some people watch stuff because large explosions and high-powered energy blast fights, and stuff like that. And still others watch stuff because romantic text/subtext and will-they-or-won't-they.
And a darn lot of people DO pay attention to subtext, or at least insert their own understanding into the subtext. Darn lotta shippers out there.
If you think you need to analyze a Shakespeare play to enjoy it, your English teachers have no idea what they're doing. Half of why he was so good was that he wrote crowd-pleasing plays with lots of sex jokes and murders and exciting stuff, but that if you did want to read more into them, there was enough of substance there that you could do so. He was the Christopher Nolan of his time.
IJBM: The idea that analysis is always work and unfun.
I think where some of this issue comes from is frustration in the conversation, or when you're having a conversation on one level and someone else is having it on a different one. This is a problem I often run into when talking about games, because I'm very focused on the sophistication of a system and the amount of agency it affords a player. So if I say that I dislike a certain game for X or Y reasons, the response might be "that's your opinion". And that's a fine response from a purely subjective point of view, but it isn't a response that takes place in the same mode of conversation I was having.
It's easy for people to forget that they might be in a different mode of conversation because of their investment in a particular medium or form of art, and if they take their mode of conversation as the default, being shaken into a different form unexpectedly can be an "offensive" experience, because it immediately devalues your points. They do, after all, exist in a mode of conversation that the other participant was not engaged in.
Go to any MBTI community and see "intuitives" hating on the "sensors" for something very similar.
Still, I believe that you're definitely missing on something if you refuse to get involved in any work that requires something more than the most superficial thinking processes, if you want to gain a deeper understanding of the world.
I really enjoy analyzing "deep" works, think about ideas and consider myself a pretty good abstract thinker, but just today, after going to lunch with a friend, I looked like a complete tool staring at the receipt and our too large cash bills, hopelessly trying to calculate how to pay the bill plus an appropriate tip.
There are communities for Myers Briggs tests? I thought it was just a silly thing people did online for shits and giggles.
They were taken seriously at one point, but these days they're more-or-less completely discredited.
One reason being that people who take the test twice very rarely get the same result.
That's because people who are quick to criticize Shakespeare often do it out of active disdain for classic literature in general, which is anti-intellectual. Granted, it's still a knee-jerk reaction.
I only hated analyzing literature until I didn't have to do it for a grade anymore. Just saying.
Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory and reading Spoof Aesops into stuff is brilliant fun, no matter how intelligent one is.
^^ And as I still have to do so for a grade for one more semester, I shall continue to hate having these (supposedly) DEEP and MEANINGFUL statements about the HUMAN CONDITION shoved down my throat.
Man
I don't know how it goes in America, but you're kinda allowed to disprove or argue against the text you're reading, you know? Hell, I got higher grades on my "Fuck you Hemingway" papers than on my "You know who's great? Cervantes" papers.
I don't think I've ever caught flak for liking/disliking assignments in my English classes, so I can't speak for how common this is in the rest of the U.S.
By the way, Juan, if I may ask, having not read much of Hemingway and having no impression of him one way or the other: why do you dislike him? Just wondering, as someone who's currently in a writing class wherein the teacher reveres writers such as him and Raymond Carver.
I have more of a love/hate relationship with Hemingway than an outright hate one. I liked the Old Man And The Sea. It's just that his books tend to seep with this mentality regarding war that also, funnily enough, bordered in love/hate. And the love seemed to be more prominent in the stuff I read, like "For Whom The Bells Toll"
I also think that his cut and dry prose, while elegant when it comes to non-fiction, simply made his stories really disengaging. I don't really like ultra-florid descriptions or anything (God knows I have issues with Tolkien's books even if I still loved them overall) but I feel that there needs to be a balance between overtly descriptive and curt. Chandler was really good at this because he was a master of analogies and metaphors, so he always came up with fun stuff like "Her teeth were as white as orange membrane", which is short but clear and florid enough to feel as part of a book.
I wrote a paper against Hemingway at the time because 1) When I was a teenager I hated everything and 2) I had noticed that most of my teachers loved it when students argued against the text rather than following along with it.
Ah. K.
I'm only really familiar with "Hills Like White Elephants," which didn't really stick with me, and his six word story, which, while neat, is still a six word story.
Maaan. This semester it's all "your grammar and structure in this essay have no problems, but you lose a mark because your interpretation of such-and-such character is WRONG." Honestly, the more I read through so-and-so short story looking for examples of so-and-so theme, the less interested I become.
Also my teacher has an annoying habit of tying stuff to his Social Justice class IF I WANTED LECTURES ON SJ I WOULD'VE SIGNED UP FOR SJ but that's neither here nor there.
Yeah you don't always have to play along with the class's obvious analysis direction unless the teacher is a tenured power-trip asshole, as long as you back yourself up and argue your angle correctly. I remember ripping into Red Badge of Courage for being a narrative mess, and we had more than a couple people run the usual "Romeo and Juliet is not thematically a romance" argument.
Fuck, I just realized that's something that happened half my life ago.
What level of SJ are we talking about here? Just the mention of gender/power relations in the work or the full phallocentric language rants? Because the former is pretty much unavoidable while the latter is absurdly stupid.