What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

a note on analysis

A few times lately, I’ve seen people contrast various schoolgoing tumblr users’ complaints about the literary analysis they’re forced to do in class (‘the teacher asked me what it means that the curtains in Book A are blue - man, sometimes they’re just fucking blue, you know??’) with the fact that the same users frequently do their own voluntary, in-depth analysis of pop culture ('see this thing Bruce does with the cradle in The Avengers? let me tell you why it matters’). The contrast between the two is presented as an example of ironic, selfish obliviousness: that is, the users are really only bitching about school because they’re immature and that’s just what you do as a teenager, because clearly, if they really had a problem with analysis as a concept, they wouldn’t spend so much time doing it for fun. 

And this is really starting to piss me off.

Because, look: the difference between analysing a thing you love because you love it, and analysing a thing which, at absolute best, you haven’t had time to fall in love with yet, is monumental. Analysis is how we show our passion for stories; it’s not how we learn to love them in the first place. It’s like showing someone a heap of gears and cogs and disassembled parts and expecting them to care about clocks, forgetting that unless you’ve actually seen the clock tick and been entranced enough to wonder how it works, there’s nothing to tie the two together.

And let me tell you, the literary analysis (if you can call it that) you’re asked to do in high school is, overwhelmingly, bullshit. By which I mean: there’s always an implied “right” answer, usually one that’s in keeping with the overall theme of the class/unit/module/semester/whatever, but sometimes just the interpretation your teacher favours; either way, though, it’s an answer you’re told to memorise because it’s what you’re meant to say on the test, not a conclusion you’ve reached through your own academic process.

I mean, I went to a pretty good private school - hell, I grew up to become an author - and I hated the English curriculum with a fiery vengeance, especially in my final two years, because of the extent to which having my own opinions was frowned upon. I was, for instance, flat-out told before our major exams that if my analysis of the set texts varied from the interpretation we were given in class, even if I could support my thesis with quotes and a solid argument, I’d be marked down “for being a smartass” (verbatim response from the head of our English department, who at least had the good grace to sound apologetic about it) - and this a module whose core fucking outcome was meant to be “critical thinking”. And while I certainly had some awesome English teachers, too - and while I don’t want to generalise and assume that every student, everywhere, was lumbered with the same painful experience as me - it’s still a common enough problem to illustrate my point: namely, that there’s a world of difference between analysing something you don’t care about for school, with all the restrictions and hindrance that entails, and analysing something you care about for yourself.

Literary/textual/popcultural analysis is an awesome thing for a whole bunch of reasons, and it can be great fun to read. But you’ll always be able to tell the difference between analysis written by someone who knows and loves their subject, and analysis written by someone who doesn’t really care, or whose true opinions are being curtailed by external pressures, because the latter kind will have very little to teach you, either by reading or writing it. 

Point being: there is absolutely nothing wrong or inherently self-contradictory in finding school-oriented analysis frustrating and dull while coming home each day and bashing out a solid 2000 words on the subtext of Thor and Loki’s relationship for the sheer joy of it.

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    Unfortunately, such a failing is a very common one in today’s society. As I just commented in another post, we live in a...
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