I don’t think Brian de Palma had anything to do with that film. You must be thinking of Ridley Scott.
Scott’s rationalization in that regard came eighteen years after the fact and contradicts what he told people at the time the movie was made, including, among others, Harrison Ford, who claims he and Scott discussed the script at the time and that Scott specifically dismissed the idea Deckard was a replicant.
Given that the shooting script was like the fourth totally different version of the script - I don’t mean minor rewrites, but major differences - and that Scott consequently screwed up the final edited version eight ways from Sunday (e.g. the mixup in the number of replicants Deckard has to hunt down) I have difficulty believing he planned the movie all that well.
As to the OP, I don’t understand. The big long spoiler box is the way EVERYONE interprets that episode, isn’t it? Maybe not in so many words, but I have never met anyone who “misinterpreted” it the way the OP seems to be implying is common.
That one never really worked for me. Mostly because the rationales for societal aesthetic mores lie in worrying about perople having defective genes and/or horrible skin diseases.
No, it can’t logically be read as a satire on capitalism. The “man” involved made no secret of his desires: he ate and exploited animals. There’s no satire to it.
[Gulliver’s Travels]
Ah, no it ain’t. The book was exceptionally specific about the politics of England in Swift’s day. The reaon it’s being played as a fantasy tale is because the book has become completely incomprehensible (until the later sections, which come across more as Gulliver’s hangover and hallucination than anything else)
I’d agree, actually. It was apparently supported by the director’s cut, but I thought it actually detracted from the film. And made no logical sense: in order to track down some replicants they make and release another one (IIRC, death penalty offense for them, too). They would have had to find someone with Decker’s skills already and then copy him; how having a weak, “normal” replicant who didn’t know he was a replicant was supposed to help matters I don’t know.
Well Orwell’s come up a few times already (I’m waiting for the misinterpretation of Down and Out in London and Paris) but I wanted to say something about the end of 1984.
I think it has been misunderstood…or perhaps it’s just that it took me so long to understand it. It is, I think, seen as Winston’s final capitulation to Big Brother. The complete breaking of his will. His acceptence of Big Brother’s power of him and his slavishing licking the boot that was crushing his face.
But I don’t think so. That much had already happened.
He was listening to telescreen report of INSOC’s vicotories. He realizes that by idenifying with and loving Big Brother he can become part of the boot. He can take part in the only pleasure possible in such a society…the degredation of others. And that is the point where his humanity truly dies.
Made the book even more chilling when I realized that.
A friend of mine once told me that H.G. Wells’ books are consistently misinterpreted, and always in terms of the “easy way out”. It struck me as a pretty good way of looking at things. War of the Worlds isn’t just a story about comic Bad Guy from another planet who catch colds and die, it’s an indictment of the British Empire and its treatment of the natives, made at the height of the Empire’s power. (A theme that Wells would return to more than once). The Island of Dr. Moreau is a satiric view of mankind and society (a la the Land of the Houynhms" in Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”), especially in the last chapters. The Time Machine isn’t just a cuyte story exploiting a new idea in science fiction, it provided a glimpse at the logical extreme in class stratification. And so on.
In every casual conversation I’ve ever had regarding that episode, even with other geeky fans, the first spoiler box is the description and interpretation that I’ve heard. People don’t seem to remember the plot elements concerning the relocation farm, just the inverted standards of beauty.
At a New Year’s Eve party a friend of mine also recalled it as described in the first spoiler box.
If only I had seen this thread before that, I could have given the more refined and erudite interpretation Number Six proposed in the second box. (It’s been years and years since I saw the episode myself.) It would have solidified my reputation as a smug and arrogant know-it-all. Not that I really need much help with that.
I watched Eye of the Beholder yesterday for the first time since I was, like, 12, and I hadn’t remembered that a lot happens after the woman’s unmasking, so I’d say it’s very possible that the interpretation that stops there is pretty widespread.
So then it is a comment on capitalism and not satirical? To be honest I interpret Animal farm as a criticism of those who abuse and weild power and the failiure of those who give up the ideals of their revolutions for the power gained by them.
Wow on a literalist hot streak here. If Guliver’s travels has no lasting meaning I believe it would have quickly disapeared with many other forgotten fantastic yet pointless tales. It still works because it can still be open to interpretation.
His original intent was contemporary satire, but the nature of the things he satirized still exist in different forms. The man was taking on human nature and its weaker elements that hold us back. The small minded petty ideologies that lead to war, the useless foolish endevours that we pursue that lead us from truths and finally the very beastial core of humankind, these are the things Swift attacked.
These things are still with us. As long as we keep denying them Swift’s work will remain relevant.
Look at the theme of the film and Decker being a replicant does actually make perfect sense. The replicants were created to do all of the dirty work for people. They were disposable people who would be shut down at acertain time. The human characters in the story are less human than the replicants.
The emotional awakening of the replicants send them home to seek a longer life to truly get a chance to enjoy the emotions and sensations they are now discovering.
Decker too has an emotional awakening during this film and finds it harder to do the job he was “programmed” to do. The doubts that creep in over the course of the film are the results. It may also explain why he seems to be such a crappy Bladerunner compared to the reputation the other characters give him.
As far as his being weaker than the others I suspect they wouldn’t want him too strong as he was not an off world model. Instead, he was supposedly skilled at tracking and eliminating, rather than hand to hand combat. Why else would he carry that big ole cannon around.
Thematically, the idea that he was created to destroy his own kind just further demonstrates how inhuman the real people are.
Oh and as for the OP I have always heard the second interpretation.
How about this for an interpretation of “To serve Man” It is a cautionary tale of the dangers of giving up your freedoms for comforts without considering the price.
I think the message becomes clearer when you watch it with the episode with the plain girl trying to decide what “pretty” face to choose. I’m not geeky enough to know episode names. She decides not to stay “ugly”, they then force her to take the operation. They almost seem like two drafts of the same story.
I’ve always had a problem with the conventional interpretation of “Les Miserables”, especially the current musical version. From the waif on the poster, the street urchin, and the student rebellion, a lot of commentators assume the following:
That the society is divided only into the wealthy and the starving.
That the French society is ripe for revolution
That the people of Paris would rise to support the student revolutionaries
In fact, if you stop and read the book, you discover some interesting things:
Valjean becomes wealthy by setting up a factory to manufacture costume jewelry, indicating the presence of a thriving middle class.
The book takes place about 30 years AFTER the French Revolution. They had already been through the revolution, the Terror, and the rise and fall of Napoleon. Chances are pretty good that the society would not be inclined to yet ANOTHER revolution.
The people of Paris were bored by student revolutionaries, and when one or another disaffected group set up barricades, would just detour around them and wait for the authorities to remove them.
Thus, the student rebellion had ZERO chance of success. The students death’s were a total waste, especially when you realize that, in ten or twenty years’ time, they would have been working their way into postions of leadership, and could have effected real change. Their leader, Enroljas, would have had to have known this, yet he let them to death basically to feed his ego – in fact, I read him as the villian of the book.
I was reading The Twilight Zone Companion recently and it turns out that the actress under the bandages was not Donna Douglas. They wanted a “good” actress for the early scenes and a “beautiful” one for the later part. Turns out they were very surprised at how good Donna Douglas was in the scenes where the bandages came off.
I think that’s pretty ironic (or at least an Alannis Morrisette version of irony).
Which is kind of wrong, because I think she ends up being Number 8.
And she didn’t decide. She wanted to stay “ugly” because her father ended up comitting suicide after he changed because he wasn’t different anymore. I think they either brainwashed her or pumped her full of drugs so that she wouldn’t fight them.
My mom was a 10th grade English teacher, and during the year she required each student to stand before the class and recite “Stopping by the Woods”. One little girl was zipping right along until she got to:
My little horse must think I’m a queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
None of the other students were paying enough attention to notice, but Mom could barely contain herself. When the girl finished Mom said, “Boy, don’t you know that horse was terrified.”
Even with that I’m having a hard time seeing it as a metaphore for sex.
Can someone remind me of the details of Twenty-Two/Room for One More? Now that you’ve got me all nostalgic.
…Um, what? How? Why? This sounds like it’s going to be another His Dark Materials (“Let’s do a story about Satan … and take the religion out of it!”) Not that you couldn’t do it as a film, it’d just be a film no one would want to watch.
Miss Powell has a recurring nightmare about room 22 - a morgue, where a nurse opens the door and says, “Room for one more, honey.” Her agent and doctor believe it’s just a bad dream, and show her that the morgue nurse is not the same woman in her dreams. After being discharged she arrives at the airport, and finds that her flight number is 22. When she starts to board, a stewardess, the same woman in her dreams, says, “Room for one more, honey.” She runs from the plane, back into the airport. The planes leaves, and explodes on take-off.
Granted, it’s been years since I read the book (and not too closely at that), and most of my current knowledge comes from the musical, but I’d have to say that I really have not had any of the misinterpretations you credit as common.
I though the presence of the middle class was pretty obvious in the show (“I know this house, I tell you there’s nothing here for you. Just the old man and the girl, they live ordinary lives.” Ordinary just seemed pretty straightforward for comfortable and middle class. Earlier in the show, “It’s a letter to me and it’s none of your business, with a husband at home and a bit on the side.” Yeah, the woman being sung to is a factory worker, but a factory worker with a nest egg.)
Well, to nitpick, it takes place in three major time chunks (again, at least it does in the musical): Valjean right out of prison before breaking parole, young girl Cosette time, and (forgive me if I’m not remembering the ages correctly), something like ten years after that looking-at-marraige-and-love Cosette. Anyway, when we’re at the time that Cosette is courting and the student revolutionaries are dying, the general apathy is pretty clear (“You at the barricades listen to this: the people of Paris sleep in their beds. You have no chance, no chance at all. Lay down your guns or die.”) But it is admittedly somewhat ambiguous if the apathy is the result of already having seen a number of earlier revolution attempts or if this is just too early in the revolutions to stir up the people. I’ll grant you that point.
Think I explained my response to the third point in the second. Ultimately, in the show, it’s a world that’s not big on the revolution, whether it’s because it’s before or after the bulk of the effort. The timing of the revolution is really a backdrop for the characters, wonderful moral ambiguity (one of the things I’ve always adored about the story is that both Valjean and Javert are very heroic characters, but are in opposition most of the story), and when we’re talking the show, admittedly the music is paramount.
I didn’t say she was. She was the actress after the bandages came off. That was clearly not the voice of Donna Douglas during the scenes when her character is bandaged.
For the curious: What actress Maxine Stuart looks like without the bandages.
This isn’t quite what you were getting at, Kaitlyn, but seeing your former username in quote boxes reminded me of something that grinds my gears.
I am also a fan of The Prisoner, and perhaps you’ve encountered as many people as I have who feel compelled to inform me, “You know, nothing in that show had any deeper meaning.”
I know that! And I don’t care! I just like it, that’s all. Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar, and sometimes a TV show is just a trippy thing to watch. Gah!
