It’s okay to critically analyze your pop culture as if it were literature.

flutiebear:

BECAUSE IT IS.

Pop culture is culture. It IS literature. Every book you ever read for English class, every play and poem and short story, it once was new, and fresh, and contemporary.

Shakespeare was like the Whedon of his time (or the Kripke, or the Rowling, or the Moffat, whoever you like). People lined up to see his plays, they lost their everloving mind over his dirty jokes and innuendos, and yes, they even asked themselves, am I reading too much into this? Is all this really there?

And look, look, five hundred years later we still lose our everloving mind over these plays because pop culture is literature. It always has been and it always will be.

They teach you these skills of analysis and critique in school for a reason. Because they expect you to use them.

So go ahead. Pick apart your pop culture. Examine it from every angle. Dig through canon. Make theories. Read too much into things. It’s okay. You’re not just allowed to do this; you’re supposed to do it, because that’s the point of story: to engage, to inform, to inspire. It’s why we invented it in the first place.

AMEN.