Summary
Having a non-existent education and no grasp of history, culture, or cinema is not always going to be enough to really enjoy some films to their fullest.
#FirstCoffeeThoughts
Not every piece of media is for you. I am unsure why SO many Americans don’t understand this aside from just the general audacity of white people.
Hating something because you don’t understand it is very typical of white Americans but I see this often with members of the Global Majority who are out of touch with their own culture and cultural history or who simply are groomed and brainwashed by white supremacy like many of their own oppressors.
Media Literacy when it comes to ART is 100% critical thinking.
Can you watch and enjoy films like Exhuma and Whispering Corridors 6 if you are not Korean? Sure. You can watch them and take them at face value for being horror films and enjoy that aspect of them.
But neither of these films are for Americans and if you know nothing about Korean history especially the colonial period, the Gwangju uprising, the 5 Eulsa traitors, Korean shamanism, and general knowledge of Korean culture and politics, then you completely missed 99.9% of the film’s meaning.
You simply cannot understand how powerful, brilliant, socio-political, daring, unapologetic, and important these films are to the Korean people and why they were necessary to make in the times they were made in. You have no clue what you’re even looking at … and you don’t have any connection to it so you can’t understand the need for them to exist.
The same is true for Sinners.
Most people have no clue what Sinners is truly about or what it exists or why it’s important.
Not everything is for you.
Having a non-existent education and no grasp of history, culture, or cinema is not always going to be enough to really enjoy some films to their fullest.
Some art is going to go over your head.
Some art is going to be more than you can handle.
Some art is simply not going to be for you.
Some of this art will get nominations and awards and recognition and it will be talked about and written about by many people and you’ll be lost because you don’t know why.
The problem is, especially when it comes to incredibly mediocre white people, they get ANGRY when something isn’t for them.
They get ANGRY when those things that aren’t for them get recognition and get focus and get acknowledged in significant ways.
They get ANGRY because they don’t believe things that are not for for them should get attention.
Their stupidity and ignorance causes them to lash out and say they hate it or try to downplay it simply because they are left out of it.
It’s hard to feel left out. It’s sad to see something and everyone around you seems to understand it and be moved or changed or somehow elevated by the experience but you are not … you are just there completely oblivious that something magnificent, historic, and deeply important is happening.
Like Londo seeing nothing when Kosh came out of his encounter suit …. IYKYK … to see nothing when everyone around you is seeing God must be an awful experience.
But you earned that experience.
If you cannot take it upon yourself to have an open mind, to read, ask questions, and grow your understanding of other places, other cultures, of history … if you cannot push yourself to become media literate or even just simply fully literate … then you earned being left out of great art and historical moments in art. You earned your place amongst those who will never truly understand what they are looking at.
Ignorance, in 2026, is very much a choice.
Stay mad. You did it to yourself.
