Classic storytelling offers clear heroes and villains. Deeper popular media denies you that comfort. Consider The Last of Us (the game and the show). The protagonist, Joel, commits an act of universe-level selfishness—saving Ellie at the cost of a potential cure for humanity. The narrative doesn’t condemn or celebrate him. It forces you to sit in the discomfort: Would I do the same? What does that say about love, or about me? Similarly, Marvel’s Infinity Saga succeeded not despite its villain Thanos, but because he articulated a twisted, internally logical environmental Malthusianism that made audiences argue . A shallow story tells you who is right. A deep story makes you question what “right” even means.
A teenager arguing about moral utilitarianism via The Good Place is doing philosophy. A watercooler debate about whether Walter White was “always bad” or “became bad” is a rehearsal in tragedy and character transformation. A TikTok essay on the queer coding in Yellowjackets is an act of close reading. The medium is not the message. The depth is the message. deeper xxx
If yes, then you’ve found depth. And you found it right where most people live: in the popular, the shared, the mainstream. That’s not a dilution of culture. That’s its quiet, powerful evolution. Classic storytelling offers clear heroes and villains
The next time someone dismisses a blockbuster or a streaming hit as “just entertainment,” ask them: Did it make you feel complicated? Did it change how you see a real person in your life? Did it leave you with a question, not an answer? The protagonist, Joel, commits an act of universe-level
But that binary is a lie.
Most popular media explains conflict through individual bad actors. A corrupt CEO. A rogue wizard. A jealous rival. Deeper entertainment expands the frame to show systems . Andor , a Star Wars series, is a masterclass. It doesn’t just feature an evil Empire; it dramatizes how bureaucracy, economic precarity, and carceral logic create rebellion as a rational, inevitable response. The hero isn’t purely virtuous; he’s a cynical nihilist radicalized by a system that leaves him no other exit. Likewise, Succession (massively popular, structurally brilliant) isn’t about “greedy people.” It’s about how a media empire’s internal incentive structure produces and rewards trauma, turning family dinners into hostile takeovers. The depth lies in realizing no single character could fix it—even if they wanted to.
The real danger isn’t that popular media lacks substance. It’s that we’ve trained ourselves not to look for it. We consume, rate, and move on. But when a show like The Bear spends an entire episode on a broken online ordering system—a logistical nightmare, not a villain—and turns it into a harrowing meditation on inherited trauma and the impossibility of fixing the past… that’s not escapism. That’s art. There will always be shallow content. There will always be pretentious content that confuses obscurity for intelligence. But the most exciting space is the messy middle: the popular, genre-driven, commercially successful work that smuggles in moral complexity, systemic critique, and self-aware storytelling.