When I was a kid, I loved the idea of media analysis. More straightforwardly, I loved the idea of being known as the kind of deep kid who analyzed the media I engaged with, because that meant I appreciated things on a deeper level, or better understood why other things were bad.

I still enjoy analyzing things, don't get me wrong, but the idea of "media analysis" has become a trend in itself. It's how you end up with every other person on Twitter suddenly having the exact same 100% totally original take of "Bear is the REAL villain!" at the same time, all worded like they came to it on their own.

I definitely did this as a kid too. I remember regurgitating opinions that I thought made me sound educated or like I had really thought about something, even though we were all on the same internet and anybody could probably tell I had picked up the same opinion from ten other people saying it. That's not to say people can't genuinely agree with each other or come to the same conclusion separately, because obviously they can. But you can usually tell when that's not what's happening.

What made it funnier was that even while I was guilty of it, I would get annoyed when other people did the same thing about something I actually knew a lot about. One I could never fucking stand was, "Andrew Garfield was a good Spider-Man, but he wasn't a good Peter Parker." It sounds deep enough to make everybody in the room nod along, but if you know enough about Spider-Man outside of the movies, it's such a bullshit critique. There isn't this clean separation where Spider-Man is one character and Peter Parker is another, and a lot of what people think Peter Parker is "supposed" to be comes from other movie versions anyway. But everybody used the exact same wording and acted like they'd independently figured something out.

It's embarrassing, but most people have probably done some version of that. Having your own opinion can feel riskier. What if it isn't deep enough? What if you don't actually get it? What if everybody else has a huge analysis and you can't figure out how to word your thoughts? What if people don't think you're smart because you can't write six paragraphs about why?

I'm mostly calling out my childhood self here, but I doubt I was uniquely insecure about that.

And the thing is, sometimes you really don't get something. Sometimes there is more going on and you missed it. That doesn't mean the show has a 200 IQ requirement and you're too stupid to understand it. Even really simple things can have nuance. Kids' shows can have nuance. Short stories can have nuance. Something doesn't need to be complicated to have depth. Sometimes all it takes is for it to come from a perspective that isn't yours.

People have depth, and people make things. Because of that, I honestly think it's harder to make something with absolutely no depth than people act like it is. Even when somebody isn't consciously trying to say much, their own perspective still gets into the work somehow. What they think is normal, what they think is funny, what they leave unexplained, what they assume the audience will understand, what kinds of people they sympathize with. All of that can be reasons behind why you're left disliking the writing, but it's an entirely different issue than lacking depth.

So when somebody says something has "no depth," I usually don't think that's the whole problem. Sometimes they just mean there wasn't anything there that interested them, which is completely fine. Something can be boring, or badly written. Maybe it didn't make its point in a satisfying way. Maybe whatever it was trying to do just didn't work for you. But "I didn't find anything in this" and "there is nothing in this" aren't always the same statement.

I don't get My Little Pony at all. I'm sure there are reasons adults enjoy it, and those reasons probably aren't some insanely complicated academic thing. Maybe they like the characters, the tone, the dynamics, the humor, or whatever else in ways that I personally can't see. It doesn't do anything for me, so I don't get it. I can say that without deciding the show has no depth just because it's for kids, and without taking it as some insult to my intelligence that other people see something in it that I don't.

And yeah, sometimes maybe you actually do need something you don't have yet to understand a work properly. More life experience, more knowledge about the subject, better emotional intelligence, a different perspective, more attention to detail. That's very possible, and I don't think admitting it makes anybody stupid.

Lately I've seen people make fun of fans who respond to criticism with "you just don't get it," and obviously that can be a lazy defense. Sometimes you understood something perfectly well and still thought it really sucked. But I don't think the possibility that you didn't get it should be treated like some ridiculous excuse every time either. It's possible you really didn't, and being able to admit that shouldn't be embarrassing.

To me, being able to say "maybe I don't understand this well enough to make that claim" is part of actually being good at analysis. You don't have to like the thing afterward, and you don't have to pretend something bad is secretly brilliant. You just have to leave some room for the possibility that your reading isn't automatically the complete one.

If all you're left with in the end is "it has no depth," then I have to admit, I'm inclined to believe you didn't get it.

Maybe we would all get more out of media if we stopped sometimes and asked whether we're actually trying to understand the work and the person who made it, or just trying to prove that we're the kind of person who has deep and correct thoughts about it.