When someone reads a book (or plays a game, watches a movie, etc) they inevitably have some first impression: the book is an allegory for X, the moral of the story is Y, character Z is a hero, etc. When they read the book a second time, or just think about it more deeply, they might realize that the text contains elements that contradict their first impression. Maybe the allegory doesn’t quite fit. Maybe there’s a subplot that seems to conflict with the overarching moral. Maybe the heroic character turns out to be a bit more morally grey than they first realized. What should the reader do?
I think the answer is obvious: you revise your first impression. If the book doesn’t work as a simple allegory for X, then maybe the book isn’t an allegory for X after all! Maybe the moral isn’t Y. Etc.
But what a lot of people do, and this drives me absolutely fucking nuts, is they say something like “Wow, this allegory about X doesn’t work. The author obviously doesn’t understand X.” or “Wow, this heroic character is an asshole. The author must be a terrible person if they think this is what constitutes heroic behaviour.”
The most cartoonish example I’ve seen is Ben Shapiro’s review of the Barbie movie, where he keeps wondering why are there adult jokes and themes in a movie that he’s preemptively decided is supposed to be for children, but I see the same pattern everywhere.
This is especially true of adults who revisit books they read as children. They compare the actual substance of the text to their terrible, immature, literally juvenile first impression, and are shocked to discover that the book doesn’t seem to be doing what they thought it was doing. But instead of thinking “huh, I guess I missed a lot of the nuance when I was a child” they think “Wow, in hindsight this book is terrible. I can’t believe the author thought this asshole was a hero!” No. You thought the asshole was a hero. That was your mistake, not the author’s.
Thats because people do not understand that books are not necessarily there to give you an answer to what is right or wrong in the world. Books have topics or themes but not necessarily a hashtag massage meant to propagade a greater cause. Take an author who writes about rape and does not have the prepetrator punished for his crimes in the novel he writes about. Now some people will say: Hey, does the writer support rape? Why does he not condem the happens? Because the writer might want to show how sometimes rape might happen and is never being actually punished in our society due to reasons…like the prepetrator being rich, the people not believing the victim etc.
The real good authors do not give you the answer to morally complex situation on a silver platter…that is what interpreation is for. A good writer does not throw you over the head with is opinions but allows the reader to discover his own truth through the text.
The problem of our society is that some people want to turn books into the bible meant to teach people what are the right views and what not, but that is not what books are for. Books are not the bible or the Torah meant to brain wash people they are there for entertainment and expression of art.
Another problem I see is that some people are just completely unable to give proper criticism: Criticism is not good crictism if you go personal like calling the writer a pedophile, going on twitter and pointing out single passage taken out of context and claiming this is homophobic or sexistic. That is harassment and soiling the reputation of a real life person who has feelings, kids, a family and a livellihood. I hope at one point one of these authors loses his patiences and sues the these people if they go too far.
Real criticism takes the context of the text, the era and proves that criticism based on the text and not based on your personal bias. And now to the most important point: self-importance and hinsight bias. Many people do not understand that their personal experiences as a gay person might not be the only truth there is. There are many gay people who have different experiences and just because some person might write about issues in a way the other person disagrees with does not mean he or she is homophobic or wrong. The arrogance to think that your experience is the only experience is not a valid basis for literal criticism just just arrogance of the highest level. At last, hinsight bias which is one of the worst ways to interpret a text and something people have been doing for centuries. Take for example Franz Kafka. Many people know he had a bad relationship with his father so they interpret every little shit about daddy issues into his text without ever actually making the effort by trying to find their own interpretation. Kafka was a real life person with a far more complex life than just his father being an asshole and his texts are far more interesting to be read without reducing everything to this one point. I am also gonna make the same point about JK Rowling and how some people are now trying to do active revision of her work because she has fallen out of favour with people due to her toxic opinions on trans people. Claiming now in hinsight that she always was a transhobe and that it can be found in her text needs more than just personal opinions. You need to prove it by the text, but most of the time it is just a flimsy text passage taken out of context. And that is the real problem: many people simply cannot seperate the voice of the author from the voice of the character.
Another thing, I think some people are actively trying to discredit authors and take a joy in doin so by going through books and pointing out problematic passages. They are a common mob and they should not be catered to because they ruin the joy of writing and reading in equal measure. They are just common bullies and should be ashamed of themselves and find a different hobby.
At last, I have come to the point where I say: Writers should write anything they want and do not deserve personal attacks for it even when it comes to topic like rape and pedohpilia. Nobody should be personally attacked for writing a fictional book because at the end of the day it is not real.