Art is intended to be processed. Consumed. Taken into one's self, digested, and evaluated. what art is not meant for is the constant incessant comparison to real contemporary events. Art is a lens through which to evaluate the self, and nothing devalues critique and emotion and thought than constant incessant retreading of known territory. When confronted with someone who compares a real genocide to circumstances in their favorite Young Adult novels, it can be tempting to simply tell them to read some other damn book, but I will tell you this is simply not enough. The problem isn't that it's mass media being referanced. In my opinion it is equally as bad when a politican calls upon mythology in a speech. The problem isnt ever the media necessarily, but the referance itself.
These kinds of media references cheapen and degrade both the source material and the topic of conversation by flattening both. The point of art is never to say "Wow wouldn't it be fucked up if this happened?", but to provide a launching off point for discussions and examinations of an eventuality or a system or a character. The literal factual events of a plot are not the takeaway you should be getting from a piece of art. This is the core problem with these types of referances. What does saying "this is like black mirror" to every tech industry cockup do but draw a line between a piece of media and what that piece of media is about. It's nothing but a title drop. If I, every time I saw something about the Catholic church, were to say "That's just like Dante's Inferno!" what would this add to the discussion? All that statement does is demonstrate to you that I know x media is about y topic; Grade school book reports contain more nuance and examination.
This kind of lackluster discussion isn't just a problem personal to the people who do it, however. I'm not writing about people who use spelling mistakes to discredit other peoples points. The solution there is just don't talk to those people; all language is constructed to some degree and the point is to accuratly communicate above all else. No, this becomes a problem when frequent use of this type of x media y topic association becomes common parlance. The media in question becomes an indicator of an in-group above becoming a piece of art with its own statements and discussions to make. This piece or work becomes reduced form a complex form of expression and humanity into a single, central meaning.
Reiification is the name for this process, usually in music, when a piece becomes stripped down to a central meaning or motif, often from overuse or simply cultural ubiquity. You know this music, you know where it belongs, and in what piece of art it belongs. It's YouTuber music and we both know it. Music that's often placed into visual media can take hold of these problems more quickly than music that's played by itself primarily. Debussy's Clair de Lunehas associations, sure, but none are nearly as strong as you'll have hearing Williams' Imperial March, The. This reification can be used to a work's advantage by intentionally establishing these associations via the leitmotif, and similar concepts in visual design are used to similar effect. Reification is neither good nor bad, it is simply a phenomenon. However, when pieces become reified outside of their authorial context they often lose much of their initial meaning through sheer power of association.
Take Black Mirror as an example. If you asked me when it came out to describe it, I'd've probably said something like
If you asked a person picked at random to describe it now, after years upon years of incessant "Woah! Just like Black Mirror" after every single time a tech company does something terrible they would probably say
quickly followed by
Herein, I would argue, lies the problem. No, not with my home invasion tendancies. No my issue with it is that it doesnt just cheapen the conversation being had, reducing that to nothing, but that it cheapens the overall effect that the work had in the first place too.
It is in this way that works move from dynamically interacting with the societies that produce them into static objects, fossilized into one descrete cultural interpritation of the work, against which any revised viewing chafes so intensely. This is a death of the art piece as itself.
Right, Right, yes. It's provocative I know. what do you mean it wasnt just the racism, xenophobia, lack of an competant characterization, the antisemitism, and that wasn't the problem? Yes yes I know but I really do need to be heard here. The problem isn't that HP is bad (it is), or that people invariably use it to defend the most milquetoast positions possible (they do), the problem is that it's bad for the political health of the discussion entirely. These kinds of referance based arguments have cropped up in political discourse since the dawn of politics, with one hunter-gatherer painting a large lion with his face on it and a sickly gazelle with his oponents face on it on the side of a cave wall. The birth of the politcal comic, and of a political narrative.
We are a narraive species, and understand the world through stories. So, when politcal discussions, the lifeblood of the structures and way we live, love, and exist, devolve into this it sorta sucks ass. Like. I dunno. This whole post is just me gesturing at a thing ive seen a bunch of people do and saying "thing bad actually!" Riviting intelectual commentary I know. But at the end of the day what I really yearn for here is a reality where people are genuine. All of this oh its just like x oh its just like y is always just a way to shield yourself from having to make a real argument beyond simple association of themes. Genuine expression, genuine belief, genuine thought, you'll get nowhere without these.
And for the love of god you need to like experiance something, anything other than media made for teenagers at some point.