Yes, it’s called Hitman. So what?

Over the past several days, I’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of tweets with some variation of the sentiment, “It’s called Hitman, of course it’s about killing people!” I don’t understand what argument this statement thinks that it’s responding to. Nobody is saying that Hitman does not set out to be about killing people.

Roger Ebert famously said, “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.” 

Statements like “It’s called Hitman, of course it’s about killing people!” seem to suggest that criticism should never engage with how a thing goes about doing what it sets out to do, how it is about what it is about, and that the only time something is worth critiquing is if it accidentally does something entirely different from what its stated aims are, and nothing else. That we can never, ever question or critically engage with the intentional values of anything. But this is absurd. It’s like saying “But Frank Miller’s comics are supposed to be fascist propaganda!” or “But Grand Theft Auto V is supposed to hate women and trans people!” 

Of course, many of the people employing the “It’s called Hitman!” defense don’t even consistently apply the principle of it; they only utilize it when something they admire is being critiqued, and are happy to criticize something for being what it is when they don’t like what it is. I am certain that at least some of the people crying “It’s called Hitman!” on Twitter criticized Gone Home for being about lesbians, as if that’s a narrative with an agenda that must be criticized, while the glorification of the act of killing through an emotionally detached male hero is something that we shouldn’t even consider the implications of, something that we should never bother examining or engaging with critically.