Hidden meanings

[J.R.]

Okay, there's that flap about the pederast overtones in Jeepers Creepers and some believe a scene in Saving Private Ryan symbolizes America's blind eye towards the holocaust. Has anyone noticed other possible messages? I've spotted a candidate:

Everyone knows about the social satire inherent in Romero's dead films, but here's one I haven't heard of anyone else picking up on- when the zombie girl kills her mother in NOTLD. The girl has become a member of this new society, and her mother is a member of the old, a subserviant wife who dares not question her husband. It seems to me that maybe that is supposed to be a metaphor for feminism, with the girl slaying her mother, and her ways, to make way for the new world.

[Neville]

About NOTLD, it may be very possible. Romero has often denied that he had introduced on purpose social issues into his movie, but he also said "It was 1968 and everybody had a message." Recently I have been reading his script on "Day of the dead" and have been surprised of how many social liberal ideas it contains.

About other movies with hidden contents, I mentioned a long time ago that I believe "Species" to be a film about AIDS. Not only we have an alien deadly lifeform, but it is also named after acronyms (SIL) and kills those who look for fast sex.

Also heard many movies produced during Vietnam war offered methaphorical visins of the conflict, such as "The Sand Peebles" or "Little Big Man".

[Nathan Shumate]

That interpretation of NOTLD is actually an old standard; all through the seventies, every film critic in the world picked apart NOTLD for male/female messages, race relation messages, failure-of-authority messages, dissolution-of-the-nuclear-family messages, male-supremacy messages...  You don't see much of that in recent reviews because, frankly, it's a burned-out arena.  (You'll never see a review of the original NOTLD on my site, for example, because I honestly don't think I can contribute to what everyone else has said.)

Nathan

[jmc]

Cronenberg's FLY remake can definitely be seen as a metaphor for AIDS, though since disease is a common theme with him I'm not sure if it's necessarily AIDS or just any catastrophic disease.  But when the film was being made, AIDS was a major topic.

I think it's more interesting when the filmmaker isn't really aware of these "hidden meanings."

[raj]

I had to have it pointed out to me that Alien (the first) is partly a metaphor about rape-- which is why it was so unnerving.

[Drezzy]

Throw me in the subject of those you need to tell that it was about rape...

I can see loosely how Alien has things about rape, but please go into detail...

[Fearless Freep]

I think it's more interesting when the filmmaker isn't really aware of these "hidden meanings."

I think that really means that the 'hidden meaning" is therefore in the head of reviewer rather than the movie itself.

[J.R.]

Along the lines of the Alien series, I always thought Aliens was about Vietnam. A bunch of Marine grunts are sent into an unfamiliar habitat by money-grubbing bigwigs to fight enemies they know little about. And I don't even have to mention the perallel between the queen alien  and Ho Chi Min, having as he did a large eggsac and a razor-sharp tail.

[SomeDude]

Sorry if I'm kind of changing the topic again,but I just had to say,I think hollywood is brainwashing our kids. young guys are becoming immune to nudity. I think this is going to cause them to grow up to be a lot more perverted then past generations. I'm only in my late 20's,but I can see how things have changed. when I was a kid,I would have got a thrill watching the ladies fruit of the loom ads,but you wouldn't see stuff on tv like that back then. about a year ago,I lived on a college campus,girl's don't think it's a big deal struting around in their bra and panties in front of strange guys,as they see it,as long as their nipples and crack of their crotch is covered "nobody can see anything. Why do they think this,because they see all the actresses doing this. I know guys love this,but what used to be a cheap thrill,barely even turns younger guys heads now.  I remember when many famous chicks wouldn't even pose nude,they got jobs because of their acting talent. don't get me wrong,I love nude girls as much as the next guy,I  just think there's place for it and it's not on network tv or in movies made to attract 13 year olds. I just think thet if sex isn't a little taboo,people won't apreciate it as much. I'll shut up and not go on about this,but I also think all the sick humor and violence also influence our kids also. The action heros of today don't have values like they used too. when I first saw "the warriors",I walked around for months with a baseball bat thinking I was the main character "swan" in the film,luckily I didn't have to hit anyone with it. kids these days probably think they're the characters Vin Diesel plays,I wonder if any have tried to parachute out of a car after they drive it off a bridge. James Bond may have done something like this in an attempt to lose the bad guys and save his life,but "Xander Cage" steals a car and does it just for fun. I still love watching this stuff,I just wonder what effect it will have on the world?

[jmc]

Actually, I think the sex comedies of today, such as they are, are way more tame than the ones during the eighties, at least when it comes to showing nudity.  

But you might just be talking about the way people dress in videos, on awards shows, etc...never mind.

[raj]

Well, the whole movie was about avoiding/fighting this creature that attacks you, shoves this thing inside you (against your will), where another creature is created inside you. . .

The movie is effective because it pricks that primal, subconscious, fear of rape.

[Nathan Shumate]

Fearless Freep wrote:
>
> I think that really means that the 'hidden meaning" is
> therefore in the head of reviewer rather than the movie itself.
>

Not at all.  People who put their heart and soul into a work often reveal more about themselves than they intend; the themes which they fixate on are often driven by desires, fears, etc., that they had no conscious intention of putting into the text.

Romero has said openly that NOTLD is about communication and its breakdown -- but that doesn't mean that you can't also draw perfectly valid interpretations of intergenerational strife, breakdown of authority, etc. from the film; these were, after all, overpowering concerns at the time it was made, and like cigarette smoke that the smoker can no longer smell, it still seeps into his possessions.  (I haven't included any racial overtones because the part of Ben wasn't "written black"; Duane Jones was cast after the script was written.)

As another example, Tolkien widely denied that the Lord of the Rings was "about" WW2 -- but the whole thing is overflowing with parallels to that war (and the previous one) which Tolkien had lived through, most specifically in ideas about how no matter how one fights, the brutality of the conflict will forever prevent a return to the status quo.  LotR may not have consciously been ABOUT WW2, but Tolkien's wartime experiences, and his observations of the aftermath on his pastoral childhood home, inform every page.

Nathan

[Fearless Freep]

Not at all. People who put their heart and soul into a work often reveal more about themselves than they intend; the themes which they fixate on are often driven by desires, fears, etc., that they had no conscious intention of putting into the text.

That's true if somehow the divined meaning relates back to the author.  For example, relating "Alien" back to a fear of rape would only really make sense if the original writer was a woman, and still doesn't explain why the movie is so effective for men as well.  I would hesitate to reverse engineer from that "hidden meaning" back into an opinion or judgement on the life or mental state of the author

As another example, Tolkien widely denied that the Lord of the Rings was "about" WW2 -- but the whole thing is overflowing with parallels to that war

I would say that that is more in the eyes of the reader than the writer.  Remember, Tolkien was also a strong Christian and many people read into his stories a lot of metaphors to Christianity, especially in the character of Gandalf representing Christ.  Although I'm a Christian myself, I don't really see that at all.   I think that's more wishful thinking on the people who want the story to mean and say more than it was intended too.   You could say that there are a lot of parallels to a *lot* of things in LotR.  Tolkien was a professor of mythology, and the parallels between LotR to certain European mythologies is stronger than the parallels to WW2.   I think it flows the other way, WW2 was almost like an epic myth in the scope of the battle in good verse evil where evil can be identified to a single  person.  That Tolkien was writing a story based on mythology at a time when a living epic was being played out doesn't mean that his story is about that real-life epic

[Fearless Freep]

Sorry, Tolkien wasn't a professor of Mythology but of languages.

I think there is a difference between saying "a story was influenced by the writers experience in..." and "a story is about..."

[Chadzilla]

I think both points are vaild.  Some criticism says more about how the critic perceives the material than the material says about the artist.  However an artist's "body of work" will reveal a propensity towards a certain approach to a given material (i.e. Cronenberg, Hitchcock, Faulkner, etc).