“Are we watching the same show?” Let me tell you, critics love this timeworn retort from readers or other media types who disagree with something they’ve said or written about a favorite episode or series.
Opinions are singular and can be based on observation, structural minutiae, or simple gut feeling. They’re neither right nor wrong, unless some element of that opinion is related to a false premise. Or, and this seems to be more likely to be the case now than ever, unless the person declaring that your opinion is incorrect – not debatable, simply wrong – is utterly convinced they, themselves, are right. Nothing can persuade them otherwise.
And anyone who holds a different view from theirs is wrong, misguided, ill-informed, stupid, dead to them. They believe people of the opposing view could not possibly understand what the show’s point is, what it is actually signaling, its true weight and meaning, how wrongly you have judged it. We can all watch the same program and come away with starkly different takes on what we saw.
View the complete November 17 article by Melanie McFarland from Salon on the AlterNet website here.