I usually refer to this as the Fight Club Effect, but is there another name for it?:
Basically, that the Message of your story isn’t what you can argue in a paper, or how you wrap up the last 5 minutes or whatever—the Message is whatever most people’s takeaway is.
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Like in fight club, you can say that there were messages about the absurdity and hypocrisy of countercultural movements, or that the end of the movie confirms that Tyler is the bad guy, not admirable, etc,
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but the people walking away from that movie overwhelmingly had the takeaway that they need to be more countercultural, that Tyler was right, that society needs to be punished and destroyed, etc.
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tvtropes call this “do not do this cool thing” which i’ve always loved as a name for it. the torment nexus tweet captured something related really well:
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Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
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also this discussion
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“focus your energy on what you want to see more of” has some distressing implications for the whole genre of dystopian fiction. it suggests that dystopian fiction doesn’t successfully act as a warning, and if anything makes dystopias look cooler, more familiar, more thinkable
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This is a big part of it, but sth closer to like… a bit of indeterminacy or unskillfulness about where your time and energy are focused. *thinking* it’s focused on one thing, but not realizing that it’s unintentionally on sth else
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like fight club for example, maybe the creators did consciously want a particular message,
But clearly they were subconsciously enamored with Tyler and project mayhem, and that shows through really potently
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they cast brad pitt and everything. really wanted to make him look extremely cool and succeeded. i feel like this is a whole trend in american culture, to performatively criticize something while shadowily enjoying it