[DoneWithAllThat]

I read this as the author viewing media through a very modern (and deformed) lens: that books, TVs and movies should have a message and that message should be correct and proper for the current dogma. The idea of a story not conveying some kind of appropriate (usually left wing) morality is totally alien to them. I’ve seen this more and more - younger people seeing older movies like Scott Pilgrim (to take an example) and seem alternately aghast or baffled that the protagonist isn’t a paragon of politically correct virtue. “What am I supposed to take away from this?” is the typical refrain (or a variant of it). They’re utterly confused by the idea of characters not conforming to political and ideological stereotypes. It’s caused this winnowing of acceptable tropes and themes and frankly made most modern media extremely frustrating to consume.

You can really see it starkly when you consume non-western media. Not that other cultures don’t have their own tropes and orthodoxy, but the narrow range of the western codex becomes starkly apparent. You keep subconsciously expecting characters or stories to fall into their western political ruts and it’s startling when they don’t.