It feels like a daily occurrence now where I can come across someone online talking about how modern audiences lack media literacy and that media literacy is dead. They often complain on how modern audiences fail to critically analyze films, take away what it’s attempting to outright say or straight out praise something the film they watched condemns. This has often led to a sentiment that media literacy is dead. But how true is that statement? Have modern filmgoers truly lost their ability to critically analyze films or is it simply a vocal minority?
Some often argue that many audiences rely on surface level meaning when watching films. According to reddit user DiamondShiryu1, “If you believe that a surface level reading of a piece of media is all that is needed and that anything deeper is worthless then you are being media illiterate.” They claim that many people may steer away from gaining any deeper meaning from specific media as some may find certain genres as “low brow” and refuse to acknowledge the deeper meaning in some works which is a fair point. There are at times movies and a lot of the times shows that general audiences may claim to be incredibly surface level when there’s a deeper message to be found.
Modern audiences may often place major emphasis on relatability in films and sometimes even filmmakers may even push this idea in marketing which ends up pushing an idea that deviates from what the film is attempting to say within its own context. Online influencers are also often the root cause of media illiteracy such as Cinema Sins for example who prioritize nitpicking and pointing out small errors while ignoring the larger picture in films.
However, it’s not all hopeless. The fact that many people are aware that there’s a problem with media literacy is a sign in and of itself that there are media literate filmgoers who understand media literacy and the problems modern audiences may have with it and the people who point out media illiteracy always seem to outnumber the media illiterate.
