Learning to Unlock Texts: Does analysis suck out all the fun?

New series alert! This time around I want to share some of my hard-earned university knowledge by discussing textual analysis and how to apply it to critical thinking in general. This reflection and the next will get us started on the series, then we'll take a break and return to it in the new year.

I’ve met a lot of people who maintain that studying an arts degree at university ruined their ability to enjoy reading books or watching films for fun. Of course, these encounters mostly took place while we were still at university, completely buried in texts we needed to analyse and write essays on, and that environment can ruin doing anything for fun. Nevertheless, there is a persistent belief that you can either enjoy a text or you can analyse it, but not both; the two acts are, apparently, mutually exclusive.

This may be true for some people who mostly enjoy engaging with media when it allows them to switch their brains off for a bit, but I have personally never entirely accepted the idea that analysis is the antithesis of fun. For me, analysis is the fun part; I suppose I must be the literary and cinematic version of the kid who likes to take apart radios to see how they worked. And at any rate, I’m incapable of turning my brain off anyway (thanks ADHD), so I might as well give it something to do while I read or watch whatever it is.