I liked Pete’s Dragon, probably my definitive Walt Disney picture, along with Napolean and Samantha. I have yet to do a meta-analysis… I just remember being fascinated, in wonder, and generally enjoying them.
But unfortunately I had to look back on them, thanks to this thread and generally realize the darkness of their plot, to some degree.
Geee! Thanks SDMB for the cynicism! How can I thank you?
And you would be wrong. As Marley23 points out, homages make it sound like those ideas were intentionally placed. They obviously weren’t.
What I am seeing are Randites, desperate for validation, grasping for ideas in the movie that will confirm their biases. I find this more shallow and less interesting than trying to figure out the artist’s intention.
Threads that I start often seem to have a way of spinning off into tangential directions. Once the name Ayn Rand is mentioned, look out - a wreck is about to occur, complete with bent steel frames, crushed instrument panels, leaking engine coolant, and James Spader fucking the guy who played Casey Jones in the Ninja Turles movies up the ass.
So if you don’t mind, start another thread if you want to debate Ayn Rand.
Good thing I’m not a Randite then. And if you’ll take another look at the poster from the movie I mean to indicate that there could be undertones of fascism, not Randism. The movie certainly comes across as anti-egalitarian, in at any rate.
But again, I think unconscious influences and projections are a more interesting topic, and kind of implicit in the OP: I don’t think Spielberg, if you asked him, would explicitly acknowledge that “why yes, I intended ET to be a disturbing anti-authoritarian fable with an anti-science subtext”. I suspect the idea may not have ever (consciously) occurred to him at all. But that’s what we’re talking about here, isn’t it?
nitpick: She does, in fact, eat one fingerful of “The Grey Stuff - it’s delicious!”, straight out of the serving dish. And I cannot *believe *I have neurons dedicated to that memory.
Even better. “Girls, instead of enjoying a wonderful meal, eat a few grams of gray paste.”
But Disney movies tend to be about the pain–but inevitability–of growing up; Spielberg’s tend to be about *refusing *to grow up.
And most of Spielberg’s movies are Christ stories two, which strikes me as odd for someone whose Bar Mitzvah name is Shlomo. He’s your classic self-hating Jew; inward-turned anti-Semite. My armchair-psychology opinion, of course, and therefore as like as not bullshit. Still, it’s how I see him coming across from his movies.
You should understand that it doesn’t matter how you see him coming across, lissener. Unless Spielberg comes out and acknowledges that he is a self-hating Jew, you’re just a big silly for talking about anything other than the artist’s explicit statements on how we should interpret his work. (Thank you, Baldwin and Yookeroo, for helping me understand and correct my previous foolishness!)
Perhaps that echoes some bit of fascist art I’m not aware of, but that goes over my head. And the movie really isn’t anti-egalitarian. What it’s opposed to - sort of like Harrison Bergeron, but much, much less serious - is enforced egalitarianism, like what you often find in schools. Egalitarianism, I thought, was about everyone’s equal value as a human being. That is not the same as pretending that everyone is equally good at everything, and a lot of people would agree that our society has really tilted toward the second point of view in recent years. But that point of view is phony and doesn’t serve anyone well.
Belle eats some porridge with the Beast later on. So that’s two incidences of food (more than either Ariel or Jasmine from what I remember)
I did find it odd that he had the one Jewish character in Saving Private Ryan get killed, with Spielberg being a Jew himself. But at least Adam Goldberg got the chance to redeem himself with the Hebrew Hammer.
Um, nuh uh. Literary exegesis of Shakespeare’s plays or whatever does not require an explicit statement from the artist. It’s just theory, as I acknowledged, like lit. crit. I’ve never heard such a thing, that all exegesis is invalid, and only an artist’s statement has any validity. That’s preposterous.
Unless you simply meant to point out that it’s my opinion, and not definitive fact. That’s not preposterous, but it is redundant, since I said so myself.
Well, according to Baldwin,
Yeah, well, I disagree by about 180 degrees.
Lots of Jews died during WW2.
Yeah of course, that’s my point. Those were mostly civilians who were defenseless. Spielberg created a Jewish character who was a well-armed and trained soldier, and even he got killed. I’d think that a Jewish director would prefer the Jewish character to survive, just out of feeling more of a personal connection with that character if nothing else.
The lion might have been a good guy but the foosa (smaller predatory cat-thingies) were shown a crazy killers. The saber-tooth in Ice Age only became a good guy when he rebelled against his fellow pack-members who were, naturally, cast as the villans.
Yep, you nailed it IMHO.
Except sometimes even the artist isn’t aware of the full implications of his work - the subconscious or socialised elements that creep into every piece of dialogue and every action sequence.
Also, I think it’s a mistake anyway to assume that there is a ‘correct’ interpretation. The audience, in fact, must be the ones that interpret, because no matter what the intentions when a piece of work is put together, the meaning is inevitably derived by the viewer or listener.
As to the OP, subversiveness is a crucial part of most works of art I think. You normally need to have some conflict to enable plot development and interest - and authority figures (especially anonymous ones) are something of an obvious choice when artists are looking for the audience to sympathise with other characters. To me, I’ve always assumed it’s encapsulated in that great fear of the unknown - and the more subtle fear that regardless of where we are, there are others that control our immediate desires. This is never more so the case than when we’re children, but doesn’t go away as you get older!
I haven’t seen the film for a long while, but didn’t pretty much everyone of note, except the title character, get killed? The whole point being the futility of the mission where a lot of good men died just to save one guy.
Everyone got killed at Ramelle except for Ryan, Upham (the squirrelly little translator), and Reiben (Ed Burns).
The point wasn’t about the futility of a mission where an entire squad got killed saving one guy. The theme of the movie is sacrifice and duty. Ryan chose to stay in Ramelle to defend the bridge with his unit instead of shipping off home. Capt Miller and his squad stay to help with the defence even though they don’t have to because holding the town is critical for the war effort.
Perhaps conincidently, the two soldiers who were killed prior to Ramelle, Caparzo (Diesel) and Wade the medic (Ribisi) demonstrate the most self sacrifice. Caparzo is killed by a sniper while trying to help a little French girl and Wade performs his duties as a medic under heavy fire with no concern for his own safety. The two soldiers who survive, ironically, are the ones who demonstrate the least amount of sacrifice. Reiben is constantly the most vocal about abandoning the mission and Upham is unable to muster the courage to help Mellish. Upham is unable to even sacrifice his morality as the other solders have been forced to when he pettitions Miller to release ‘Steamboat Willie’. Ryan is the only soldier who both survived and served completely honorably.
