# 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:** 2
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/21 "2010-09-11T20:53:40Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > A lot of children’s media seems to do that sort of thing - the boyfriend and I were stuck in a doctor’s office once watching a Clifford episode where there’s a new three-legged dog in town,and somebody has to explain to some of the dogs that it isn’t _contagious_ or anything so you don’t have to treat him differently. Meaning, of course, that if somebody has a contagious disease, discriminate away! Are you saying you should NOT take steps to avoid transmitting contagious disease??? If you knew of a neighborhood child with measles, I hope to god you’d “discriminate” by not allowing your children to play with them! (until the contagion passed). ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/22 "2010-09-11T20:55:43Z")
Yeah, but you should let the neighborhood AIDS child out of the house for five minutes every third Sunday, right? ETA - and if you’d told Jenny McCarthy to go fuck herself and given your kids the MMR, well, you wouldn’t be so worried about the measles. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/23 "2010-09-11T21:03:58Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > A lot of children’s media seems to do that sort of thing - the boyfriend and I were stuck in a doctor’s office once watching a Clifford episode where there’s a new three-legged dog in town,and somebody has to explain to some of the dogs that it isn’t _contagious_ or anything so you don’t have to treat him differently. Meaning, of course, that if somebody has a contagious disease, discriminate away! That I can understand. If someone has something that can be transmitted, you do have to treat them differently. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/24 "2010-09-11T21:07:26Z")
> [@antonio107](#): > > I THINK it was supposed to be an indictment of vigilante justice and why it’s wrong. But it didn’t work. I just watched the Punisher and ‘300’, and had a strong urge to take the law into my own hands. 😃 From various iterations of “Batman”: if my life ever gets so messed up that I’m gunning down two innocent people in some alley, I should also shoot the _ **third** _ person – and _ **doubly** _ so if that lone eyewitness is their son, who can now be reasonably expected to swear vengeance and prepare himself for some kind of relentless war. No, seriously. ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/25 "2010-09-11T21:20:58Z")
I read the Dr. Seuss ‘The Lorax’ to my son. It is the book in which Dr. Seuss went environmental and it’s about these greedy people who cut down all of these unique and amazing trees and destroy the environment along the way. There is an illustration in it of a machine with about 5 axes, all chopping down trees at the same time. My son thought that machine was the coolest thing ever and he wanted one for Christmas so he could chop down a bunch of trees too! Way to miss the point, kid. ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2010, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/26 "2010-09-11T23:44:04Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > > [@antonio107](#): > > > > I THINK it was supposed to be an indictment of vigilante justice and why it’s wrong. But it didn’t work. I just watched the Punisher and ‘300’, and had a strong urge to take the law into my own hands. 😃 > > From various iterations of “Batman”: if my life ever gets so messed up that I’m gunning down two innocent people in some alley, I should also shoot the _ **third** _ person – and _ **doubly** _ so if that lone eyewitness is their son, who can now be reasonably expected to swear vengeance and prepare himself for some kind of relentless war. > > No, seriously. Sounds evil, but your logic is sound. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/27 "2010-09-12T00:01:33Z")
Well, yeah - if you’re gunning down innocent people why would you care how many or how old? Plus, even in a Batman-free world, witnesses. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/28 "2010-09-12T00:05:32Z")
**Shrek:** If you’re ugly only other ugly people will love you. **Star Wars ROTJ:** Even if you’re a mass murderer you can go to heaven by becoming emotional from your son’s presence and killing another slightly worse mass murderer, even if he would have died in a couple minutes if you hadn’t acted anyway. **Star Wars Prequels:** Men become insane without access to sex. To this end, Anakin used his powers to force to Padme go along with him against her will – it’s the only thing that explains their laughable relationship. **Green Mile:** If you meet a Christ-like figure you should kill him because being perfectly good in a corrupt world is hell. **Thelma and Louise:** It’s empowering to murder patriarchal male oppressors. You’ll have to kill yourselves later, but it’s OK because you’ve developed a bond and proved yourselves right. **Superman:** Even if you’re tall, built, handsome, and good at your job women will ignore you. But if you wear your underwear on the outside, fly around and save the world the same women will be all over you. **Forrest Gump:** It’s better to not care for the material world. If you do care you will lose your ship, your legs, or die of AIDs. \*\* Saving Private Ryan:\*\* The U.S. government would rather kill and or/waste the time of a dozen soldiers than have some bad publicity. **Butterfly Effect:** A single traumatic event in your childhood determines all aspects of your future self. **Cape Fear:** Women of all ages will want to have sex with a known psychopath who bites women in the face. **Hoosiers:** Teamwork is for losers. **Matrix:** It’s better to live in a gray hellscape reality than a comfortable fake virtual world. **Mr. Smith Goes to Washington:** Elites get whatever they want and their plans can never be overturned by the commoners, unless a Congress critter has a complete melt down in front of everyone for no reason. **Pet Semetary 2:** Furlong’s character wanted to bring his mother back from the dead so he could make love to her. Understandably. **Rear Window:** It’s OK to be a busybody snoop who breaks into your neighbor’s house if you suspect foul play from weak circumstantial evidence and female intution. **Stepford Wives:** Men prefer their wives to be soulless, compliant automatons who do housework all day than real people with ambition or personalities. **Taken:** He saved her daughter from a life of forced sex and drugs. Her dream is to be a pop singer, so her life is going to be filled with unforced sex and drugs. **Predator:** Freud was right. ---
**Author:** ![Jet\_Jaguar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jet_jaguar/32/3562_2.png) [@Jet\_Jaguar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jet_Jaguar)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/29 "2010-09-12T00:06:03Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Hello\_Again](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/85e7bf/32.png) [@Hello\_Again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hello_Again)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/30 "2010-09-12T00:41:36Z")
> [@Jet\_Jaguar](#): > > 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. This is actually what it is supposed to be. This: > [@](#): > > 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. was an unintended consequence that Upton Sinclair remained bitter about all his life. He said of the book, " I aimed for people’s heads but I hit them in the stomach." ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/31 "2010-09-12T00:45:40Z")
> [@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. Upton Sinclair was an unabashed socialist, and even ran for office under the Socialist Party banner, so I’m not sure your interpretation is wrong or unintended at all. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/32 "2010-09-12T00:49:23Z")
Yeah, you were SUPPOSED to care about the workers, but really all you cared about was their non-figurative fingers in your sausage. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/33 "2010-09-12T01:02:00Z")
Benny was not the bad guy in RENT. Mark and Roger should have gotten jobs. Seriously, you can’t play guitar for 15 hours less per week to pour coffee or wait tables so you don’t have to be homeless? Asses. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/34 "2010-09-12T01:38:28Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > **Thelma and Louise:** It’s empowering to murder patriarchal male oppressors. You’ll have to kill yourselves later, but it’s OK because you’ve developed a bond and proved yourselves right. > … > **Matrix:** It’s better to live in a gray hellscape reality than a comfortable fake virtual world. I admit I wasn’t paying close attention, but… what were the _right_ messages in these movies, then? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/35 "2010-09-12T02:15:38Z")
_The Dark Knight_ : So, the Joker sets up this crooked version of the prisoner’s dilemma, right ? Two boats, one full of honest citizen, one full of convicts, both rigged to blow. Each boat gets the trigger to the bomb on the other boat, and if neither side blows up the other 20 minutes from now, boom go both boats. The honest people have a vote, and the overwhelming majority of them vote “blow the cons”. However, the only one to step up to actually push the button is a thoroughly unlikable little shit, and even he doesn’t do the deed in the end. The cons don’t get a vote at all : the prison guards just try to keep them in check and piss their pants. Until Scary Black Man rises up, calmly moves over to the guy who holds the detonator, and intimidates him into handing it over. Then he tosses it out the window. Now, Nolan intends this to make some kind of grand point about we’re all decent people in the end, and to make it crystal he even makes the Bat say so out loud. I suppose there’s also a War on Terror subtext to be found as well. But to me, what the whole event really says is : “honest”, law-abiding citizen are abject cowards to a man ; whereas criminals, outlaws and vigilantes are the only ones who have the moral fiber and the balls to go against the grain and do the right, self-sacrificing thing by themselves, out of their individual will rather than just blathering about it and hoping someone else does it for them. Which I’m not even sure I completely disagree with, frighteningly enough. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/36 "2010-09-12T02:31:05Z")
> [@Zeldar](#): > > Okay, I’m more serious than not with this one: I always rooted for Wile E. Coyote. Me too! That roadrunner was an annoying little shit. Wait – were we supposed to be rooting for that smarmy little bastard all along? > [@marshmallow](#): > > **Shrek:** If you’re ugly only other ugly people will love you. Holy shit, why is this so funny to me? > [@Kobal2](#): > > Now, Nolan intends this to make some kind of grand point about we’re all decent people in the end, and to make it crystal he even makes the Bat say so out loud. I suppose there’s also a War on Terror subtext to be found as well. > > But to me, what the whole event really says is : “honest”, law-abiding citizen are abject cowards to a man I know! I was thinking, “Wtf are you talking about? The whole time, they were all, ‘They’ve had their turn; blow them the fuck up!’ How does this prove that people are not total pricks?” My turn: **The Giving Tree**. I swear to gods, when I was five, I thought the moral of the story was: People are bastards and will fuck you over. Don’t get taken in. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/37 "2010-09-12T02:48:19Z")
The ending of _Colossus: The Forbin Project_ filled me with a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead. And I think I was supposed to be a _lot_ more sympathetic towards everyone in _The Day After_. I’m guessing it says more about my psyche than the screenwriters that the pitiable wretches that death left behind in a world devastated by nuclear holocaust™ came across like more like Randy from _A Christmas Story_. Only more self-righteous. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/38 "2010-09-12T03:21:42Z")
> [@spark240](#): > > I admit I wasn’t paying close attention, but… > > what were the _right_ messages in these movies, then? You might be right about T&L. But for the Matrix it didn’t seem to really have a point. Maybe resist the system. Or one man can make a difference. The real world vs fake world dichotomy was only a minor aside in the middle, but it seemed to me that the machines were doing us a huge favor. Cipher was a douche, but I think that would be most people’s reaction. Or maybe I’m weird like that. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/39 "2010-09-12T03:29:53Z")
A commonly (well, back in the '80s) misinterpreted book was Michael Lewis’s _Liar’s Poker_, which he wrote as a condemnation of a system that allowed young guys to make 6-figure incomes, but was interpreted as a guidebook for young guys who wanted to make 6-figure incomes. Even Lewis admits that the book missed its audience. ---
**Author:** ![HelenGawn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@HelenGawn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HelenGawn)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2010, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402/40 "2010-09-12T04:19:35Z")
**Dead Man Walking** - capital punishment is a good thing, even for the condemned. Without the knowledge of certain, imminent death they would never repent their sins and ask God for forgiveness. (I’m an atheist, BTW.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-movies-or-books-do-you-take-the-wrong-thing-away-from/553402.md?page=3)