#media literacy is a very specific term with a very specific definition. and im not shitting on the person who made that post

[capfalcon]

btw media literacy is not the same thing as english class and i am please begging people to read more about media literacy because it is so far from english class, signed sincerly someone with a degree in media studies

[kojoty]

oh yeah I’m cis and I haven’t even seen the movie but I remember seeing a call out post for someone (pretty sure they were trans and like twenty) for like. Saying they liked rhps in the tags of a gifset from it or something and me being like …??? because I had always heard lgbt/especially trans people in real life and even academic situations talk about it pretty positively. ive seen it happen to like maybe slightly outdated but ultimately historically very meaningful (and not like vile stuff I’m talking like price of salt lol) lesbian media as well (im a lesbian so that’s more my specialty) and it’s genuinely so surprising to me every time

I think it boils down to what I'm going to carefully call a 'privilege' in a lot of younger LGBT communities, where we are at a point in our history that, for the first time ever, possibly, we actually have a wide array of representation and LGBT voices in our media, so much so that we can kind of pick and choose, (1) what we want to see to a certain extent, and (2) have more availability to discount other medias that are more 'problematic' in nature. There's a good part of that-- we HAVE that representation, but, at the end of the day, I think it also supports a kind of historical illiteracy that is REALLY dangerous.

Older LGBT people still exist and might utilize the terminology from older aspects of our cultures, and might have the same media/communities literacy to move on to the more modern terms and representations we use, and there's an unfortunate push in a lot of younger communities to outright just... banish those voices, rather than teach, or, more poigant IMO, listen to older voices and their reasons for those words/movements.

Two, I think people kind of don't realize the extent to which a lot of these older 'problematic' medias are... In on the joke? Like not only were there actual censorship laws by the greater social hierarchy that LGBT voices were forced to adhere to-- I haven't read Price of Salt, but if I'm remembering correctly, this falls into the category of having to adhere to certain tropes, and having to construct a lesbian story through the wavelengths of those laws-- but social ones, and social stereotypes.

So while, say, something like Rocky Horror utilizes some of those tropes and fear-mongering... I do... Think some people in this era of lambasting it somehow think Rocky Horror didn't care? That it wasn't in on the joke? When the media was made for LGBT people, and is... Kind of poking fun at it? Reclamation, so to speak. Sure, not perfect 'representation', but part of our history none-the-less, and the critiques I saw back in the day were definitely aiming at a more 'pure' lgbt representation. Which I think is the opposite of the point of our communities TBQH!

There's that old adage-- that tumblr bastardized-- of course, that 'satire isn't satire if you don't realize it's satire', which, sure, that critique can be levvied to a lot of stuff. But simultaneously, sometimes the satire/tongue-in-cheek/joke isn't clear to YOU because you don't know the context, the history, the community. Which is more a failing on YOUR part (not you, anon, the royal YOU) for not doing due dilligence and automatically applying a modern lens on something that... has a specific historical context... than it is on the text itself.

Rocky Horror is purposefully, flagrantly, in your face about LGBT tropes at the time, and that's part of the fun imo. This is all a long-winded way of saying-- do your research, and you don't have to like something or be turned off as a viewer from something, but you should at least... know the context before levying a bad-faith critique on it. Sometimes just comes down to a lot of newer communities get 'icked' out by the dirty, gritty, repressed, and sexual parts of the communities that will always, 100% be a part of us and any other communities pushed to the social sidelines by severe censorship and judgement.