# What movies or books do you take the "wrong" thing away from? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 11, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402 "2010-09-11T14:01:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/181 "2011-06-21T21:19:39Z")
> [@FordTaurusSHO94](#): > > A lot of people thought this story was inspiring. Maybe I got the right message and they were the ones that were wrong. If you’re talking about the book _Into the Wild_ and not the movie, I don’t know that it was really intended to have a “message” in the sense of a moral. I think it was more about solving the mystery of why Christopher McCandless of Fairfax, VA, who hadn’t been seen or heard from by his family in two years, was found dead in Alaska’s Denali National Park. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/182 "2011-06-21T21:26:55Z")
> [@j66](#): > > Mystique: betrayed and killed; I can’t remember what annoyed me so much now This is getting away from the actual topic, but what really annoyed me was that the betrayal seemed so out of character. Movieverse Magneto might not be a nice guy, but making him so racist that he’d cold-heartedly abandon Mystique because she was turned into a human against her will while saving him? That struck me as blatant character assassination. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/183 "2011-06-21T22:36:07Z")
[QUOTE=Wheelz] And I’ll add \*Snow White \*to the mix: Girls, it’s OK if you do nothing proactively to take charge of your own life and get yourself out of trouble. Just wait for a man to come along and make it all better! [/QUOTE] Funny, a few weeks ago I was listening to the podcast of an ultra conservative radio program giving their list of the most conservative/pro-American films of all time. Snow made the cut because it showed a woman’s true place in society and the proper role of men. ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2011, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/184 "2011-06-21T23:48:40Z")
**Icerigger** , can you remember where you found this, or what some of the other titles were? I’m curious what they meant by “pro-American.” ---
**Author:** ![Crawlspace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Crawlspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crawlspace)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/185 "2011-06-22T00:11:57Z")
> [@etv78](#): > > UMM.. these things are TRUE! 😕 Sorry, but I refuse to believe that intelligent people are any less entitled to, or capable of having fun. > [@etv78](#): > > 1.Going to school is training for the WORK world! Irrelevant to the point at hand since the main character was exceedingly capable of enjoying herself while maintaining grades good enough to get into a top tier school. But top tier isn’t good enough. They had to drive home that her desire to do well in school while embracing all she found enjoyable in life (silly little things like art, jazz, opera, foreign cultures/language) could only end in disaster. She poked her head out once, almost got killed, and scurried back into her hole to be a good little cog. This is not to say I didn’t like the movie. I thought it was one of the years best. It just makes the main character so much more tragic. > [@etv78](#): > > 2.It’s not about him! (or the groom for that matter) So the movie made explicitly clear. He was a bank account number to them. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/186 "2011-06-22T01:02:31Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Yeah, but making enough money to survive does not involve making your job into your life. I work 35 hours a week and that is it. Works does not have to be what you do to live; it can be what you live to do. Money means a lot to me, not so I can buy more stuff, but to minimize the chance I will end up tied to my wheel chair facing the wall in a nasty nursing home stinking of piss and lysol. > [@Grumman](#): > > This is getting away from the actual topic, but what really annoyed me was that the betrayal seemed so out of character. Movieverse Magneto might not be a nice guy, but making him so racist that he’d cold-heartedly abandon Mystique because she was turned into a human against her will while saving him? That struck me as blatant character assassination. Thank you. Shudder. Terrible movie. ---
**Author:** ![lindsaybluth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/90db22/32.png) [@lindsaybluth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lindsaybluth)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/187 "2011-06-22T01:50:53Z")
> [@statsman1982](#): > > But whichever parent was watching me was never in fear of being disowned by the other because of it. What a bitch that Maggie Gyllenhall character is. > \That movie _still_ angers me. Agreed with everything you said, except I liked the movie. I liked the evolution of his character. I just hated Maggie Gyllenhall and found her a self serving idiot. That’s besides the fact that anyone who is 30 could truly fall in love with anyone who is 60. That itself was too unbelievable. ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/188 "2011-06-22T02:00:22Z")
**Lost in Translation** You have a free week in Tokyo!! You have complete freedom while your husband is working. You can see what you want and take as much time doing it, nobody saying “this is boring” or “are we there yet?” Stop brooding, get out of your room, and explore this fascinating place! ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/189 "2011-06-22T03:53:11Z")
As for the OP, this is a great thread but your takeaway on Full Metal Jacket may not be as contrarian as you thought. > [@Zsofia](#): > > Like, I finally got around to seeing _Full Metal Jacket_, which I found a profoundly uneven movie that should have just been the first half, but whatever. I don’t think Kubrick expected me to find the drill instructor a sympathetic character, but all through the scenes on a strangely not-very-South-Carolina Parris Island (I thought it looked all wrong and lo! it’s Britain, urgh) all I could think about is what a shitty job that guy has to do - maybe he joined up for, say, Korea, and since then he’s been training a peacetime Corps until we get into Vietnam and suddenly they give him these kids for a couple of weeks and it’s his job to give them anything he can to keep them from dying in a damned meat grinder. And do they appreciate it? Nooo, they shoot him in his underwear in a bathroom. What do you think he thinks about at night? Probably about how those little kids in the next room who still have puppyfat in their faces are about to die with their guts hanging out in some rice paddy on the other side of the world in two weeks. And they’re never even going to thank him. It really pissed me off, honestly. I started a [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=583526) a few months ago that discussed this, and the consensus seemed to be that Hartman was not a bad guy nor did Kubrick deliberately set out to make him into a bad guy. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/190 "2011-06-22T06:19:59Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > **Stepford Wives:** Men prefer their wives to be soulless, compliant automatons who do housework all day than real people with ambition or personalities. Actually, that was the message you were **supposed** to take away. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/191 "2011-06-22T06:21:53Z")
> [@Jet\_Jaguar](#): > > Upton Sinclair’s _The Jungle_. I know it’s supposed to be an exposé of the American meat industry at the turn of the century, the public outrage at the time was so great that it led to the passing of the Pure Food and Drug act and the establishment of the FDA. But that’s not what I get from the book, at least not primarily. I see it more as a condemnation of laissez-faire capitalism, and the promotion of socialism and labour unions as a solution. [**That’s** how Sinclair **meant** it.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle#Public_and_federal_response) > [@](#): > > Upton Sinclair originally intended to expose “the inferno of exploitation [of the typical American factory worker at the turn of the 20th Century],”[5] but the reading public instead fixated on food safety as the novel’s most pressing issue. In fact, Sinclair bitterly admitted his celebrity rose, “not because the public cared anything about the workers, but simply because the public did not want to eat tubercular beef”.[5] And, yes, of course Sinclair was a socialist, he self-ID’d and once [ran for governor of California,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair#Political_career) as a Dem but on [an avowedly socialist platform.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_Poverty_in_California_movement) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/192 "2011-06-22T06:32:20Z")
> [@Mekhazzio](#): > > **Forrest Gump** : Don’t bother trying to improve yourself, as your quality of life is determined by random chance and the foibles of whatever people you happen to run across. That is a better message than the clearly **intended** one, which is that virtue is more important than intelligence – not in any scale of abstract values but in bringing material success. Sorry. Real-life Forrest Gumps can do a lot more than get by, but they do **not** get rich, not by their own labors. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/193 "2011-06-22T06:45:15Z")
> [@RandMcnally](#): > > The film says this outright: > The men up there don’t like a lot of blabber > They think a girl who gossips is a bore! > Yet on land it’s much prefered for ladies not to say a word > And after all dear, what is idle babble for? > Come on, they’re not all that impressed with conversation > True gentlemen avoid it when they can > But they dote and swoon and fawn > On a lady who’s withdrawn > It’s she who holds her tongue who get’s a man And the message – the **intended** message, and it’s hard to find any other – in _Annie Get Your Gun_ is that a woman can’t get her man unless she sacrifices her own colossal ego to his and lets him win. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/194 "2011-06-22T06:51:25Z")
Regarding another Tom Hanks movie – I’m not sure if it’s a matter of taking away the wrong thing or simply a matter of an alternate interpretation, but for **Philadelphia** I was never clear on how exactly the law firm was supposed to be at fault in firing Andy. Yes, the partners were revealed to be homophobic – to a spittle-flecked, mustache-twirling extent – but at the end of the day wasn’t it still clear that Andy was fired because he screwed up in filing his paperwork on an important case? Still, if Andy opens his shirt and the whole courtroom gasps at the sight of his Karposi’s sarcomas, suddenly it’s clear that he’s a victim and the evil lawyers must pay. Huh? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/195 "2011-06-22T06:52:35Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I’ve mentioned this in a few threads before, but as long as we’re including books: **1984** is only tangentially about a disutopian future world and is primarily about a narcissist’s midlife crisis and disillusionment. Knowing Orwell’s work and life as I do, I can definitely tell you, that was **not** Orwell’s intention. (Even when he **did** treat midlife crisis he kinda politicized the treatment – see [_Coming Up for Air.)_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_up_for_air) But, this thread is about the unintended impressions. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/196 "2011-06-22T06:53:48Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > It is about the groom, yes, to the same extent it is about the bride, and the father of the bride, who is financing it, has every right to limit his cash outlay. We must, after all, live in the real world. In the real world, marriages are for couples; weddings are for brides. Ever see a magazine called _Modern Groom?_ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/197 "2011-06-22T07:01:48Z")
> [@VarlosZ](#): > > The main _Law & Order_ series recently came to an end, and while the obvious moral might be “Crime doesn’t pay” (since almost every week sees the guilty party convicted), that’s not what I took away from it. I think the real moral of the series is: “Don’t talk to the police.” Seriously, most episodes would be really short if the perpetrator politely declined the detectives’ offer to discuss matters downtown. > > Secondary moral: Keep your composure on the witness stand, you fucking idiot. _"Yes, alright?! I was in love with her and she betrayed me **THAT BITCH!!!** __eep_" I tell ya, the message I take away is that “law is even worse than crime.” I don’t care who the suspect is or how unsympathetic a character or how horrible the crime or how obvious the guilt; when Jack McCoy is at the other table I **always** want him/her to walk. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/198 "2011-06-22T09:00:05Z")
> [@RandMcnally](#): > > The film says this outright: > The men up there don’t like a lot of blabber > They think a girl who gossips is a bore! > Yet on land it’s much prefered for ladies not to say a word > And after all dear, what is idle babble for? > Come on, they’re not all that impressed with conversation > True gentlemen avoid it when they can > But they dote and swoon and fawn > On a lady who’s withdrawn > It’s she who holds her tongue who get’s a man The film doesn’t say it outright, the villain does. She’s the antagonist for a reason. And the love interest? He’s in danger of leaving Ariel for a woman who, unlike her, can talk. ---
**Author:** ![Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffer_Spice_1)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/199 "2011-06-22T09:23:13Z")
casablanca is recognised as one of the most romantic films of all time. i only really like it when i’m in justoutofarelationship full on mysoginistic mode - all women are bitches. rik in cynical woman-hating mood is great to watch. the worst bit of the film is the flashback to paris where they’re all happy. and she was a bitch anyway. i see no romance in it. i’m glad when he sends her off at the end, but that’s cos he’s too good for her. withnail and i - you’re definitely supposed to root for the I character. i root for withnail all the way through. and i don’t even like him. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2011, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/200 "2011-06-22T09:46:17Z")
> [@a35362](#): > > **Icerigger** , can you remember where you found this, or what some of the other titles were? I’m curious what they meant by “pro-American.” Yes, the program is called **The Political Cesspool**. The only other films I remember were The Patriot and Shane. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402.md?page=11)