Below the Waterline

Trey Smith

Much of my recent book “Back to Our Future” is focused on how 1980s popular culture created many of the perverse stories we still tell ourselves today. Through movies, video games, toys and television shows of that decade, children were specifically taught whom to love and whom to hate. We were inculcated to fear government scientists (“E.T.”), EPA officials (“Ghostbusters”) and municipal governments (the various police officials that cop heroes had to “go rogue” against). We were also taught to love the military (“Top Gun”) and the super-rich (“Silver Spoons,” “The Toy,” “The Secret to My Success”).

That decade, of course, initiated a modern era that now sees multimedia pop culture products serve as a full-on shadow education system — one that still aims to tell young adults how to divide the world between good and evil. That’s why two of this year’s most anticipated pop culture products are so important — they may signal a larger effort to go beyond even the most audacious anti-populism of the 1980s and somehow turn the mass public itself into Public Enemy No. 1.
~ from Batman Hates the 99 Percent by David Sirota ~

I am well aware of what psychologists have been telling us for years: children pickup on the underlying messages of pop culture. In this vein, I guess I have discovered another advantage to being autistic. As a child, I rarely, if ever, was impacted by subliminal messaging because I tend to take life too literally.

I grew up in the era of violent cartoons. Every Saturday morning there was a veritable feast of popular cartoon characters who gouged, punched, ripped, slashed, blew up, set on fire and/or killed their adversaries. It never occurred to me that this was permission for me to behave violently.

I loved the movie, E.T., but it didn't cause me to distrust government scientists just like enjoying Ghostbusters never led me to distrust the EPA. I watched many pro-war movies and yet I have never been a fan of war.

I basically took the stories told as is. If there was a separate story being told below the waterline, chances are good that I missed it completely.

I haven't outgrown this characteristic either. In the book I just finished reading, The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells, I just found out that I missed an important part of the storyline. In reading the introductory note by someone other than the author (I typically read such notes after reading a book because I don't want any of the plot exposed beforehand), I learned that something not explicitly stated -- you have to read between the lines -- greatly impacts my understanding of one of the main theses!

As an adult, I often go to great pains to inform others of the critical importance of clearly stating whatever it is that they want to share with me. I tell them that word emphasis, facial expressions, and other varieties of nonverbal cues will, most likely, escape me. If you tell me something, while meaning something else, don't be surprised when I go with what you say. Try as I might, I almost always miss or grossly misinterpret the message below the literal message.