Literary Meme Analysis #1 | The Blue Curtains

the blue shirt symbolizes his immense depression and his lack of will to carry on.
Feat. Jeff Killinger
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/ misterkteaches
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Recommended Reading
Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author,’ sites.tufts.ed...
Terry Eagleton, ‘Literary Theory: An Introduction.'
‘The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock’ by T.S Eliot, www.poetryfoun...
www.theparisre...

[@samur002]

On the topic of poetry and reference, I really like this poem/joke by Ryan North Roses are red But not all reds are roses Language gets weird If everything transposes

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Ha! This is great.

[@potatochipbirdkite659]

I like to take this argument from the other side, observing whether they want to strictly apply a strict meaning from a phrase that is obviously not literal, and my go-to is a Tom Waits lyric: "The piano has been drinking."

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

That's a great example. Song lyrics in general are super helpful on this mostly because they are a kind of poetry in their own right.

[@bangboom123]

Great video! I think I also have sympathy with the original creator(s) of the meme. Modern schooling systems are dependent on the idea that education entails the ability to digest and regurgitate set material at the beck and call of some authority. The anxiety the meme responds to, imo, is that, if every possible aspect of a text could have meaning, then you need to analyse everything, which can be overwhelming. From the perspective of the child in school, the teacher might indeed expect them to know that the throwaway line about the curtain was a symbol for depression, and their inability to cough up that understanding means they're failing as a reader. So the meme gets a cathartic kick out of saying the teacher's reading is nonsense, and cuts down on the workload the reader imagines themselves to have.

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

This directly links to a part of the script that I decided to cut - that this meme (like all memes) essentially tries to make the cognitive work of reading something easy and immediate. Plus I completely agree with the wider point about the material struggles of teaching

[@booleah6357]

The irony of overanalyzing a meme about overanalyzation is just great. You made some very good points in your video about the difference in communication and interpretation in language.

[@Tomoka51]

The most frustrating part of this meme for me is less the meme itself and more the amount of people that took it as gospel of "literary analysis is worthless" and not the likely intended joke of "overzealous English teachers are the fucking worst for stifling creative interpretation of literature", which is still funny and not nearly as harmful to common understanding of literary analysis.

[@commiedeer]

In fairness, that's not so much the fault of the people who took the meme literally as it is of the idiot "literature critics" that prompted the meme in the first place. Pseudo-Intellectualism was and still is going to be the death of us.

[@matthewgagnon9426]

That's every meme. They start off with nuance or with layers, and then some people hear it and take it at face value and start using it wrong. Then the wrong use becomes mainstream.

[@Emileigggggh]

YES GOOD I did hate when teachers would act like there's One Correct Reading, but I also think it's important to note that some creators add things subliminally and that if something is mentioned, there's probably a reason- it doesn't HAVE to be symbolic, but if it can be found to mean something deeper then sometimes that can deepen the meaning of the work and make engage with it more enjoyable.

[@Emileigggggh]

"Subliminally" i meant unconsciously, oops

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Yes, excellent point!

[@nightthought2497]

My art is always constructed to be interpreted outside first, and then my context is added after. I name every piece I make, but I will not speak it's name until the viewer has named it for themselves. In doing so, the names become a conversation and exploration of the shared experience of the world. Half my art is the conversation.

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

That final sentence is a really beautiful way of putting things.

[@nightthought2497]

@@JonTheLitCritGuy you just made my hecking day

[@paperbackwriter1111]

So, does this describe hermeneutics?

[@arryks]

noam chomsky's book "manufacturing authorial intent"

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Ha!

[@montyvideo4238]

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but the speaker has glasses on which represent his position in a world of perspective. Also, his walls in the background are painted white, representing the infinite emptiness of different perspectives that mixed with any other, could create all existing colors

[@tanakisoup]

What’s weird to me is that it’s so easy to tell if something has meaning in a story. For example, if a room is being described, and the curtains are said to be blue, that doesn’t mean anything other than that the curtains are blue. But if every other sentence talks about the color blue, then you can infer that the color holds more importance to the story or message

[@kukumaukusu]

The death of the meme-maker

[@nicholaszacharewicz693]

This is just about the last thing I ever expected to see on this platform. But I am glad to have seen it! And am already looking forward to the next one!

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Thank you so much for watching!

[@Ezakur]

While I agree with your points in the video, I think the more interesting underlying argument at play with regard to the meme and the situation is "why does it matter who has the power over meaning and interpreation?". A lot of the discussions about death of the author and the like, miss Barthes' political implications. If we need to reintroduce the context to the text's blue curtains we also need to reintroduce the context to the meme: what happens in that classroom? what power structures are at play over the interpretation? is it a matter of correctness or a matter of emancipation over who gets to intepret? Of whom is it in the interest of that the curtains are just curtains or that they are something else, in that classroom? If not, we're just arguing about art and meaning in a vacuum of ahistorical and apolitical implications. Which is exactly how literature and art is thought all over the world in the school system. (mind the english as second language over my post 😛)

[@ThatDangDad]

Wonderful! I can't wait for more meme deep dives.

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

I smell a series here....

[@propoppop9866]

I think this has something to do with media being released in parts in the modern day, if you think jimmy was mourning his long lost wife only for the next episode to show jimmy got over it in a healthy amount of time then your previous interpretaion is ruined. Also with a more modern focous on world building and things like hard magic systems people have to spend more time diserning what is literally going on and discovering the rules of the stories world.

[@GamingWithCalvin1]

Blue curtains in literature is a specific example, and it's probably easy-ish to tell if they symbolize anything by the context of which it's shown throughout the book. Are they setting a scene, and trying to use colors to make the place feel more real, or is it shown in a context which is either setting a more drab scene, and/or in a time of emotion. The best guideline is, if it's mentioned more than once, then the curtains are probably either symbolism, or it ends up being Chekov's curtain. If not, it's either just blue bcus blue, or a subtle enough symbol that you'd probably do better to ignore it. Movies and TV are a different story, blue curtains there have about a 90% chance to be blue for no real reason/a symbol not worth your time, and the context has to be REALLY pushing it for them to be of note. Of course once again, the curtains are a specific example, this applies to a lot of things. For example, I was reading a comment on a youtube clip of Davy Jones' introduction in pirates 2, and they said maybe his peg leg is a symbol for how love can slow you down. I'm like 85% sure the character designers just figured that it's a pirate movie series and they hadn't had anyone with a peg leg yet. If it's symbolizing anything, it's probably to show him being less human. And even then he's already a tentacle monster with a claw hand, that's inhuman enough. They'd have done better to give him the leg of some kind of sea creature

[@DctrBread]

practically speaking, a lot of the appeal in a book will be, in a way, unintentional. A great creator probes and explores areas where great literature is made, and a lot of that greatness can be unpredictable.

[@ElectricDidact]

Excellent work!

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Thank you as always my friend 😌

[@subsectiond]

What always frustrated me about this meme is that it looks at the physical surroundings of a setting like the novel is a movie. As if mentioning curtains at all was required and the author chose a random color because they had to render a physical space(which also speaks to ignorance of set design). I can't remember the last time i even encountered curtains in a work of literature. Bits of physical space is often written out for rhythm of the text, feelings of a character or space, or simply verisimilitude. But the idea of a bunch of physical details being in a book for no reason would be profoundly frustrating. It would read like the descriptions of products in American Psycho. All in all, this meme gets on my nerves cause it's an argument for lazy meaninglessness by children that too many adults have since taken seriously. Anyway, I'm ranting. It's nice to see another video from you and i look forward to more.

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

The link to American Psycho is completely apt and a good way of summing up why this meme is so frustrating! Thank you so much for watching ☺️

[@emhornerbooks]

This is a good point! And I think that ties in to one of the things that's frustrating for students - often this kind of detailed scene-setting is what we see in old novels by people like Edith Wharton where class is a REALLY BIG DEAL, and the scene-setting is doing a lot of work in situating the social class of the characters. But we're too removed from that time period to understand (for example) that fresh flowers out of season mean MONEY, so when a teacher tries to persuade us that no, it actually means something... it feels fake. (Especially in the US, where we really don't like talking about class!)

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

I don't like doing this but this absolutely does connect to the video I made about reading the classics and why we have to take a historicist approach to literature which allows us to ground our readings in history and not just what we think a certain symbol means now.

[@calumbyrne5926]

If a book is good enough to be chosen by the school system it’s definitely not gonna be written by an author throwing out random bullshit descriptions that have no meaning or room for analysis I get the original joke wasn’t that serious but the meme has evolved into “literary analysis is pretentious and dumb and all art is made for arts sake and has no meaning or deeper layers stop being such a dork just have fun” and has had a crucial effect on media literacy for allot of people

[@MisterKTeaches]

Excellent. And not just because I'm in it.

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

✊✊✊

[@13silentpoets]

Just in time for my lunch break

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Perfect timing!

[@13silentpoets]

@@JonTheLitCritGuy my soup bowl is blue, should I be concerned?

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

@@13silentpoets what could it MEAN??

[@quiroz923]

Now do the meme that’s just the curtains are blue but with the Raven.

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Lmao, there's the next video sorted

[@Malkmusianful]

That comic/meme thing gave me an aneurysm

[@jacobnebel7282]

I believe at the core of the meme is exasperation with English teachers who DO try to impart some deep meaning to every little piece of text. Sometimes the blue curtains do actually mean something. Sometimes the author just needed a rhyme or to match syllable counts between lines. Sometimes the author is only fleshing out a scene. Sometimes the curtains are just blue. What a work means and what a work means _to a particular reader_ are two completely different things. In regard to the former, interpretations which match the author's intention are objectively the correct ones. After all, the author knows what they meant. They may do a poor job reflecting their intention to the work, but it is still the only correct one. Rarely do have records of what an author's intent was though. In regards to the later, no particular meaning is any more or less correct than a favorite flavor of ice cream.

[@gerrynava981]

You skipped the whole segment about the problems with focusing on the author only lol

[@ShadaOfAllThings]

You know, I always gotta wonder why people focus on this kinda English Teacher Weirdness. Like, yeah, the curtains might have actually been blue for depression. That's possible, I can even see that, color is often used to create that kinda symbolism. The thing that weirds me out is when English teachers do things like say "This book written by a PTSD stricken WW1 Veteran about how he can't see the world as happy or authentic where he projects this mindset onto a teenager is a book about the human condition for teenagers". I'm talking about Catcher in the Rye for those who aren't in the know, but fucking hell it is weird to me that a person can compare an entire class of teenagers to a PTSD-suffering veteran who was going mad from drinking his own piss and think "Yes, this perfectly describes my students, and now I don't need to worry about the prevalence of PTSD-like symptoms in my class".

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Interpretation is hard! Generalising doesn't really get is anywhere I guess. This is part of the reason why I really like the work of the American critic Fredric Jameson who says that we always have to think historically, which would help us avoid exactly the situation you are talking about.

[@MrOpellulo]

You know robbing context, history and common knowledge to a topic to pretend to offer a "logic" and "rational" explanation (that, just "naturally", comes out as anti academics, populist nonsense) is a trick employed by a certain specific demographics... The one that uses this meme, or produces sassy internet "sins" videos.

[@JonTheLitCritGuy]

Gkad I didn't need to spell it out explicitly 😂