[johnchristopher]

> If you fundamentally don’t understand where it’s coming from that’s a different question altogether.

I think what you bring into the piece of art you are looking at/into (or rather immersing yourself into) matters as much as what the author put into it. So I do agree with you, "where it's coming from" is always interesting to follow. Sometimes it doesn't click on the level we want to click but that's okay, maybe it'll click later (sometimes you need to experience some things IRL to really understand what was going on with a piece of art that didn't click and sometimes what you experienced in real life will make it unbearable to look at some art evoking it).

Regarding Gris: yeah, the hype didn't help. But I poured 3-4 hours into the game on 2 different occasions and the game did bore me and I didn't find what I was looking at interesting, at least not enough to keep me playing.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

You’re right in what the consumer brings to a piece matters just as much as the piece itself. But being able to process the piece at all is what I was trying to get at there, in a media literacy sense. It’s very easy to dismiss a piece of work due to a lack of media literacy (with caveat that it is possible to also be so up the ass of the institution that one makes art for which the only people who can find it comprehensible are other institution-saavy folks.)