I didn't know that about Paul Ryan. That said, again, I haven't seen the amount of misinterpretation and inability to understand both surface and subtext in media to the degree it's been for the last 5-10 years. There were always media illiterate people, but in this day and age, it has become the norm. When people came out of Avatar, people saw it as a simple action movie with a somewhat naturalist message that parallels the colonialization of the Americas. Nowadays, I can asure you that there'll be people defending the humans and/or thinking it's some movie about anti-wokeness or that it shows white supremacy or some bullshit political take. Or they'll just deny that the movie had any message, which I mean fine, it's some action movie, but again, completely denying the text of the movie also shows media illiteracyIt's funny that you should cite people misunderstanding Rage Against the Machine as an example because there was a whole thing in 2012 about Paul Ryan, a Republican politician, being a big Rage fan. More recently, there was a big hubbub about Donald Trump, who dodged the Vietnam draft, playing "Fortunate Son" at his campaign rallies in 2020. Willful misunderstanding has always been a thing, though it's definitely possible that recent shifts in the digital landscape have exacerbated things.
nahWhat if the whole thing is people thinking that it's that deep, when in reality, it's not that deep?
Most art has meaning. Not all, and it doesn't have to, like Doom doesn't need to be a commentary on the 2008 housing crisis, but most of art has some meaning at least. For people to be told into their faces the exact message a piece of art wants to tell without any ambiguity and to still (un)willfully misunderstanding it, that's just dumb, gives breeding ground to grifters and, despite seeming not that big of a thing, is damaging to society