If one puts a group of people in a room, and asks those assembled to read a book, watch a movie, listen to a song, or look at a painting, it’s very likely to generate myriad opinions across a spectrum. We're human, not automatons. We can, and will, argue over anything. There’s also likely to be a subset of that group who will argue there's messages beyond the obvious ones on the surface of the work. They'll have a different interpretation of forms, lyrics, characters, etc., and take away different implications than what may have been intended.
However, some of those interpretations are out there. Like way out at fucking Pluto out there, where others may be along the lines of something the filmmakers may have intended. The news a Christian group had done something stupid by calling for censoring a TV series, whom I would bet dollar to donuts NO ONE behind this stupidity has probably ever watched a single moment of Amazon’s Good Omens, since they created a petition to have it removed from Netflix—a streaming service it doesn’t even air on. This is but the latest example of people being outraged over perceived slights and reading messages into it which may not even be in there, and many times those people are stone-cold idiots.
Last month, Fox News contributor, former MTV Real World cast member, and wife of a congressman Rachel Campos-Duffy released a children’s book, which she touted as being in contrast to other works for kids, textbooks, movies, television series, and cartoons which are “merchants of socialism.” Because compassion, generosity, fairness, and justice are good things in most stories, and values everyone from Disney to the Brothers Grimm have accentuated, I guess that makes them socialist for not going all Ayn Rand and having heroes who are selfish assholes. Wanna know who got a bad rap according to the current brain trust at Fox News? Ebeneezer Scrooge, that’s who! This becomes even more ridiculous once one starts considering some of the films conservatives either claim (e.g., Ghostbusters, since the Environmental Protection Agency is a major antagonist) or label as “liberal.” Apparently, Short Circuit is a liberal movie because Johnny “no disassemble” 5 supposedly paints the military in a negative light—even though the antagonists in the story is not the military, but the security forces of a corporation.
So what are the most interesting and most ridiculous instances of claimed deeper meanings?
- Speaking of Scrooge and Christian overreactions, the modern iteration of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian movement toward embracing old rituals and past religious traditions in the 1830s and 1840s, with the popularization of ideas about the holiday in works like A Christmas Carol. Given that Christmas replaced a rather lively pagan festival (and actually incorporates some of its traditions), puritans and protestants objected to the celebration of the holiday, which was seen as a holiday associated with drunkenness and debauchery, along with anti-Catholic accusations which claimed Christmas was an invention of the Catholic Church (i.e., if one is stuck only in literal interpretations, the Holy Bible only specifically sanctions the Sabbath) and argued it had “the trappings of popery, anti-Christian rags of the Beast.” In 17th century America, celebration of Christmas was illegal and could result in a fine of five shillings. Fast forward to the mid-19th century where Dickens’s novella both captured the popular sentiment in England which sought to restore the holiday, and reinforced certain ideas about Christmas which dovetailed into his own social commentary about the scourge of poverty after witnessing horrific child labor. In 1798, economist Thomas Robert Malthus published a treatise named An Essay on the Principle of Population in which he argued population and food supply were linked, and any surplus in food inventories will expand population until the situation becomes unsustainable. According to Malthus, not only will the world eventually run out of food, but the increases in population will also flood economic markets with a glut of surplus labor lowering wages, inevitably creating both famine and poverty. The term Malthusian catastrophe (e.g., think Soylent Green) is named in his honor and based on his work, with the basics of this idea having been incredibly influential. Malthus’s views about scarcity of food is said to have been a source of inspiration for both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in developing the theories surrounding natural selection and evolution. However, some of Malthus’s assertions have not borne true—human populations aren’t growing geometrically—and other assumptions didn’t anticipate technological factors which have made obesity a bigger problem for a good chunk of the western world in 2019 than the threat of starvation. Also, another aspect of evaluating the concept of a Malthusian trap is the fact Malthus was a rich asshole who advocated letting poor people starve. Malthus supported workhouses with brutal conditions meant to motivate poor people to stop being poor, and the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 which curtailed food given to the poor was “based on Malthusian reasoning that helping the poor only encourages them to have more children and thereby exacerbate poverty.” Dickens was disgusted by how much the ideas of Malthus came to dominate popular political ideology, and put some of Malthus’s views in the mouth of Ebenezer Scrooge: “If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
- Back in 1999, Jerry Falwell made headlines when he accused the British preschool series Teletubbies with promoting a “gay agenda” to children. The basis for his charge amounted to reactionary speculation over a color and a shape exhibited by the character Tinky Winky. According to Falwell: "He is purple - the gay-pride color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle - the gay-pride symbol."
- While The Purge series of films was originally written off as nothing more than schlock, each new iteration has made the theme of social inequality more explicit. Set in a future where a right-wing party called the New Founding Fathers of America has instituted an annual holiday where all crimes are legal for one night under the claim of purging negative emotions, the propaganda of the regime claims instituting the event has resulted in 1% unemployment and an “America reborn.” In actuality, the purge is intended as a legalized form of mass murder, in which the poor and other undesirable elements of society are eliminated through death squads, and the purge itself is a metaphor for the destruction done by the social inequalities created by poverty. In the Purge films, the wealthy are able to protect themselves or take part in the holiday with a degree of safety, while the poor are preyed upon by racists and elements of government who have judged them to be burdens or non-human. The Purge thus becomes a story for how people will rationalize abandoning the unfortunate if given only a perception of fairness, even when the result is not (e.g., elevation of the idea of the free market as judging “winners” and “losers,” without allowing for the idea that hundreds of years of bias and discrimination plays a part in some of these things).
- An interesting comparison can be made between Avatar and Aliens. Both films were directed and had their screenplays worked on by James Cameron, and both have similar themes about colonialism. In both stories, a technologically advanced force of humans attempt to overtake an alien species on a far away world, in order to force the nature of the planet to conform to corporate wants and aims. It’s just in Aliens we’re on Ripley’s side the entire time, and ready to nuke the site from orbit, since it’s the only way to be sure. Cameron has stated he based the fights with the alien xenomorphs on the Viet Cong, while Avatar touches on both environmental concerns, as well as being made in the aftermath of the conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan. Avatar also came under criticism by those who claimed it did a space-ified version of the “white-savior” trope.
James Cameron: I feel that this whole climate change thing is never really going to get solved unless we really have full cost accounting and we fully burden the cost of what we’re doing. And by “what we’re doing,” I mean burning fossil fuels and so on. And if you don’t see that the cost of gas isn’t $3 a gallon, that it’s, you know, $10 or $15 a gallon, when you pay for all the military actions necessary to secure our oil supply lines and to secure our way of consuming energy here in North America, that’s what you’re paying for. You know, it’s just this invisible tax, and we’re all paying it. You know, I mean, I’m a Canadian citizen, but I live in the U.S., and I pay taxes here. And, you know, so I’m helping to pay for the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan.
And why are we there militarily? Oh, yeah, sure, because we got attacked. Why did we get attacked? Because we were messing around in the Middle East, you know, the Middle East region, since the '30s, pulling—you know, spending billions of dollars a day there, you know, in energy. And, you know, we have to—we're dependent on it. You know, what, 70% of our oil comes from offshore sources. We’re dependent on it. This nation would grind to a stop. So, you know, we put ourselves into a situation where we have to take these unethical military actions. Well, I consider Iraq unethical anyway. Afghanistan was a little more righteous, because that was, you know, direct response to an attack. But the point is, why are we putting ourselves in that situation in the first place, spend all this money on military action to preserve the flow of oil to ourselves? And, you know, so, to me, it always goes back to energy. It always loops back to energy and our really almost complete lack of a coherent energy policy in this country.
- Debates as to whether Robert Heinlein’s classic 1959 novel Starship Troopers promotes fascism have been ongoing since probably the day after it was published. Written by Heinlein as an argument for a non-conscript, voluntary military and against the United States unilaterally banning nuclear weapons testing, the story is set in a future in which a united humanity confronts alien threats and follows Juan “Johnnie” Rico from young civilian to experienced veteran of the Mobile Infantry in the war against “The Bugs.” But what has made the novel controversial is its presentation of a future human government based in meritocracy, where one’s citizenship—eligibility to vote, run for office, hold certain jobs, or even teach some subjects at school—is based on being a veteran of federal service to the Terran Federation. Heinlein glorifies the nobility of service to the state and the life of a soldier/space marine within the state. Director Paul Verhoven’s 1997 film adaptation originally began as a completely unrelated but similar project, which eventually incorporated elements of Heinlein’s work after the rights to the novel were purchased. According to reports, Verhoven is said to have not been able to finish the novel, because of his dislike for it. Thus, the film version is in many ways a parody of Heinlein’s story, which uses the frame of it but completely changes the tone of the property. The elements which have been criticized as fascistic are made more explicit. Instead of glorifying service, Verhoven changes elements around to argue how governments sell obedience to the state and devotion to war. Rico, who in the novel is Filipino, becomes the very not-Filipino, Nazi Aryan dream ideal Casper Van Dien. Buenos Aires and Argentina as a whole seem to be full of white Americans instead of Argentinans. The Terran Federation has the aesthetics of Nazi Germany in its architecture, uniforms, etc. And the event which causes the Bug War is subtly implied, but never made explicit, to be a false flag operation intended to justify the invasion of Bug territory. Overall, the movie uses Heinlein’s story and science fiction conceits to test whether the audience will root for the bad guys, given the power of action movie tropes and the narrative push of following protagonists on a journey, even if that journey is a genocidal, colonialist one.
“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms."
—Starship Troopers, p. 26
- Objectivists have tried to lay claim to both Iron Man and The Incredibles. The early iterations of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as well as to so degree in the 616 and Ultimate Universe versions of Stark in the comic book, portray him as trying to “privatize world security” through his incredible wealth and ability to project it. Iron Man 2 has Stark resisting government demands to turn over the Iron Man armor, with Objectivists likening it to Howard Roark’s and Hank Rearden’s refusal to have their intellectual property used by others beyond his ownership in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. However, by the time of Captain America: Civil War in the MCU, it is Stark who is a government lackey enforcing compulsory obedience to bureaucratic whims. And in The Incredibles, those government whims involve the suppression of a person’s nature. A main plot point of The Incredibles is the superheroes having to suppress their own talents and potential, leading to "lives of mediocrity" for what's considered the good of society, with the wham line of the movie being: “When everyone’s special, no one is.” Director Brad Bird is on record as saying the film is in no way meant to be a support of Objectivism, but a message of "be true to yourself." However, that hasn't stopped critics and Objectivists from seeing Ayn Rand in the movie.
- Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop is quite possibly the most successful anti-corporate film ever released by a studio. The original RoboCop masks its social commentary on government and corporations behind its science-fiction concept: "Shifts in tax structure have made the economy ideal for corporate growth." That line is spoken by Omni Consumer Products' "Old Man" (Dan O'Herlihy) as he notes that Detroit has been impacted by this, with schools, police departments and other public services suffering because of those shifts. OCP's ED-209 and RoboCop programs are his way of "giving back" and cleaning things up just enough for OCP to take over Detroit and build their private Delta City. ED-209 is a commentary on absurd product design. Specifically, when companies design something to look good, pretty, tough, etc., and forget to make sure it actually works well. Of course, who cares if it works if you get to sell upgrades and replacement parts to the same suckers who bought the damn thing! Kurtwood Smith's Clarence Boddicker is probably one of the most despicable and vicious villains of any action film. And the audience wants these sons of bitches to go down, because they've robbed people of their humanity. The overarching theme of the film is a man being dehumanized by criminals and corporations, and overcoming it. And Verhoeven has been pretty open about the filmmakers' intention of RoboCop being "American Jesus."
Paul Verhoven: The point of Robocop, of course, it is a Christ story. It is about a guy who gets crucified in the first 50 minutes, and then is resurrected in the next 50 minutes, and then is like the supercop of the world, but is also a Jesus figure as he walks over water at the end. Walking over water was in the steel factory in Pittsburgh, and there was water there, and I put something just underneath the water so he could walk over the water and say that wonderful line, "I am not arresting you anymore." Meaning, I’m going to shoot you. And that is of course the American Jesus.
- What about something like The Breakfast Club? John Hughes's collection of movies are considered to be among some of the classics of 1980s pop culture. But re-watching them now, there is arguably a conservative streak of social norms which runs through his writing. The usual take on The Breakfast Club is of a film where each character represents a teenage stereotype, and by film's end they've worked through that to find commonality. On the other hand, there is the view the film doesn't really support that. Instead, by film's end, the narrative function is pretty much what you'd expect from their character types. The girl with rich parents hooks up with the bad boy, the jock gets with the loner after she gets a makeover, and the nerd is the only one who puts any actual work into the assignment. To that end, the relationship which develops between preppy princess Claire (Molly Ringwald) and Bender (Judd Nelson) is presented as two people connecting in spite of their social statuses being diametrically opposed (i.e., rebellious loser and homecoming queen). However, watching it again, the relationship which forms is formed by abuse and still seems abusive by the movie’s end. But the story tries to sell it by attempting to position Bender as a dude Claire is attracted to because he’s keeping it real with her. Also, the "makeover" of Allison (Ally Sheedy) is something that film geeks have argued over for hours on film blogs, with some feeling the makeover is a betrayal of that character and the overall theme of the story.
Molly Ringwald: At one point in [The Breakfast Club], the bad-boy character, John Bender, ducks under the table where my character, Claire, is sitting, to hide from a teacher. While there, he takes the opportunity to peek under Claire’s skirt and, though the audience doesn’t see, it is implied that he touches her inappropriately. I was quick to point out to my daughter that the person in the underwear wasn’t really me, though that clarification seemed inconsequential. We kept watching, and, despite my best intentions to give context to the uncomfortable bits, I didn’t elaborate on what might have gone on under the table. She expressed no curiosity in anything sexual, so I decided to follow her lead, and discuss what seemed to resonate with her more. Maybe I just chickened out … If I sound overly critical, it’s only with hindsight. Back then, I was only vaguely aware of how inappropriate much of John’s writing was, given my limited experience and what was considered normal at the time. I was well into my thirties before I stopped considering verbally abusive men more interesting than the nice ones.
- Batman is considered one of the most popular characters in media, and the most relatable of the major D.C. Comics characters, given his humanity and how his struggle and pain are rooted in real suffering that’s not dependent on super serums or alien visits. However, there are differences of opinion on how to interpret the character, with views ranging from those whom claim the character is borderline fascist, and the ultimate representation of how wealthy 1%ers can throw around power to satiate their feelings and needs (i.e., Bruce Wayne can only find peace by dressing up in bat armor and beating the shit out of people) to others who argue the overall story of Batman is actually, and weirdly, anti-violence. The more pacifistic view of Batman sees it as a story about how if someone uses violence as a means to an end, they quickly find there is no end in sight, with the violence only growing and growing as the threats become even bigger and bigger to match the use of force. The release of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was both a critical and financial success. But then conservatives started claiming the movie, in which they argued The Joker is a stand-in for terrorism, and the film is really an allegory for “The War on Terror” and George W. Bush's presidency.
"I was amazed how many of my friends walked out of The Dark Knight completely unable to see that it was a heroic portrait of George Bush. Hell, I hate that guy, and I kind of liked the film, and still I could see it plain as day. Extraordinary Rendition? Check. Wiretapping the populace? Check (although just this one time, when it's absolutely vital. Honest.) Torture a guy for information? Sure, Batman's for it... he drops a guy off a roof to intentionally break his legs, after all ... but when Harvey tries it Batman objects, not because it's wrong, but because "What if the public saw you do it?" Don't let that kind of thing get traced back to the top. And then there's the end, where the most heroic thing that can be done for the public is to keep the truth from them for their own good, even if that means the public turns on and hates the one protecting them ... our dark savior.
- The alien threat in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which robs individuality, creates clones void of human emotion, and enforces conformity, has been interpreted as both a criticism of Soviet totalitarianism and the McCarthyism of the era in which the film was made. The movie, in a way serves as proof its possible for both sides of the spectrum to go so far in their extremes to where they’re indistinguishable.
- During the "porn chic" period of the 1970s, it was thought porn films might one day become as mainstream as any other genre of film. One of the porn films that caught the public's attention was Deep Throat, starring Linda Lovelace (the pseudonym of Linda Susan Boreman). It centers on a woman (Lovelace) who learns that her clitoris isn't where it's supposed to be, but inside her throat. She can only achieve orgasm by performing the act named in the film's title. The film made a huge profit for its investors—who may or may not have been the Colombo crime family. It also led to the prosecution of porn actor Harry Reems on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute obscenity across state lines. Also, the notoriety of this and other porn films led to something of an alliance between cultural conservatives and some feminists who led a backlash against the genre as immoral and misogynistic. For the right-wing, these films spread what they saw as behaviors in conflict with Christian values. For a segment of feminist activists, they argue pornography objectifies women and part of messaging in a patriarchal society which devalues their worth as human beings. Years later, Boreman would testify before the Meese Commission denouncing the film. It should be noted the after-effects of the Reems prosecution still exist in some ways. The prosecution was brought in Memphis, Tennessee. As recently as a few years ago, many of the online porn distributors would not ship products to Memphis or any of the surrounding zip codes.
- The Last Temptation of Christ is probably the ultimate "we haven't seen it, but we're going to protest it" film. Based on the 1955 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, Martin Scorsese's film tells the story of Jesus Christ's (Willem Dafoe) life and crucifixion, except in a much more human way than is normally done. The movie, which features a screenplay from frequent Scorsese collaborator Paul Schrader, ponders the last temptation of Christ? It is to have a "normal" life with a human family. Fundamentalists objected strongly to the film, calling it blasphemous. However, the film is a fairly flattering depiction of Christ's story. It still recognizes Jesus as the son of God, but instead of treating Jesus like a comic-book superhero, the movie treats him with the dignity of being a real person with real depth.
Roger Ebert: Scorsese and Schrader have not made a film that panders to the audience--as almost all Hollywood religious epics traditionally have. They have paid Christ the compliment of taking him and his message seriously, and they have made a film that does not turn him into a garish, emasculated image from a religious postcard. Here he is flesh and blood, struggling, questioning, asking himself and his father which is the right way, and finally, after great suffering, earning the right to say, on the cross, "It is accomplished."