At first I took away from much of Kafka’s work that bureaucracy is nothing but soul-deadening pointlessness.
Eeeenteresting. I totally missed this when I saw the movie because, hey, Jennifer Garner.
Here’s another one: in Jungle Book, when I saw it as a young kid, I did not understand - or even recognise - the romantic attraction between Mowgli and the girl from the village. The only message I got was “you’ll have a great time and lots of adventures with your cool and interesting buddies until some chick comes along and wrecks it all for you”. Also her song was boring.
That’s not supposed to be the point?
If we’re allowed to include comic books, Marvel’s One More Day series: making a deal with the devil to sacrifice your marriage with your pregnant wife for an elderly woman’s life (who has stated, very very clearly, that she is ready to die and rejoin her beloved husband) is way better than two people growing apart and settling things as good friends.
If we’re not, The Devil Wears Prada: if you work at your dream job and don’t have as much time for your friends as you did before–but still make an effort to keep in touch with them–your friends are totally justified in turning the cold shoulder and shutting you out.
At the end of Alice in Wonderland, Alice travels to the far east to extend her father’s company’s business operations to China. Taking that hookah-smoking caterpillar with her.
Um, Opium Wars anyone…
I know, right? I could be missing something.
Oh, you boys are all the same…
Dearest OP, some clarification, please, for my own personal joy.
When you say this, which are you asking about:
- Messages we have taken away from a work, even though we know that’s not what the creator intended, but we believe the message still exists within the text, as is presented.
- Messages that you completely misread, but believed to be the author’s intent at the time, because from your perspective, the message seemed to be something that it was not.
Not to make this about myself, but my mind is the only one that I can read here. Now if it’s the former, my answers for The Giving Tree and Batman Begins don’t change. I honestly thought The Giving Tree was a cautionary tale about being taken advantage of, and while I now believe there are some elements of such in the tale, that was not the larger point. I also thought the point of the hostage scene in Batman Begins is that people will harm each other to save themselves, especially if they can justify dismissing those others as “bad guys.” I didn’t realize that scene was supposed to reflect kindly upon humanity until Batman told me so.
As far as The Invention of Lying or Shallow Hal goes, I was fully aware of the creator’s intent, I just thought their evidence led to the opposite conclusion.
Well, I eventually learned that for Kafka, bureaucracy was just a metaphor for the incomprehensible nature of his relationship with his father. Kafka actually found bureaucracy rather amusing (he was a bureaucrat himself). When he read The Trial to his friends, he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. When I read Amerika, I could see the humor finally.
Still, everyone today says “Kafkaesque” as though he had been solely concerned with bureaucracy.
Oh, well yes. His relationship with his father painted his works, I believe. I never thought “Kafkaesque” dealt solely with bureaucracy, but that it was one of many aspects of existence he held that involved “soul-deadening pointlessness.”
Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.: the anarchists were right- civilization is tyranny. Fuck all y’all.
Wasn’t Young Master Bruce only saved because the Bad Guy’s gun jammed or he ran out of bullets and didn’t have time to reload? I seem to remember that from some iteration of the story.
That’s not supposed to be the point?
The Rainbow Fish: A. it’s not okay to be better than everyone else, so be more like them so they’ll like you B. You can buy friendships C. It’s okay to cut fish (people) down and demand they give up what makes them special/unique
The probable intention of the book was to teach kids to share/not be selfish, but it’s way weaker of a message than the three above.
I think I actually got the right message from the first Spider-Man movie.
In the original comic, he callously and arrogantly refused to help a security guard catch a robber, though he could easily have done so at no risk to himself. Said robber later breaks into Peter Parker’s own house, and kills his beloved uncle. Moral: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
In the movie, he refuses to risk his life against an armed thief in order to protect the assets of someone who’s just flagrantly cheated him. Uncle dies. The moral is clear: if you fail to allow a show-biz impresario (like, say, the producers of multi-million-dollar blockbuster movies…) to walk all over you, God and the Universe will get you in the end.
That’s legitimate, though–the lasting meaning is in the interpretation, not necessarily the authorial/artistic intent.
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.
There’s also an iteration where Young Master Bruce is left alive precisely because he can give the cops a description of the killer along with that “mugging gone bad” story: the guy who hired that hitman paid extra to remove suspicion from himself, courtesy of the sobbing eyewitness.
I figure both iterations arose from the same basic idea: the original origin story makes no sense, and ditto for many of the iterations thereafter, because the gunman would of course shoot the kid unless we add in some extra factor.
Quoth blue infinity:
Did someone other than Lewis Carrol write a book called Alice in Wonderland? Because in the only story by that name that I know of, Alice is about six years old, and not likely to be engaged in any business operations.
Either that or “we’re terrified of any situation that has even the slightest whiff of bestiality/deviant sexuality implications.” 
He means the most recent movie adaptation with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.
(I thought it was supposed to be a historical in-joke for the adults in the audience–because, you know, nothing says lols like the Opium wars.)
Koyaanisqatsi - modern technological society is full of interesting and beautiful patterns if you look at it the right way.
Re. Wonderful Life (which was one of my father’s favourite movies), the message we got at home is “yeah, often life sucks, but even when it sucks it’s worth living.”
I agree with so many of these:
Full Metal Jacket - something like what Zsofia said. The guy was just doing a job and trying to straighten the fat slow guy out so he wouldn’t die in 'Nam, and look what he gets?
The Breakfast Club - the nerd thing, plus Kirstie Alley (that’s her, right?). So it’s more important to fit in and look beautiful than be yourself.
It’s A Wonderful Life - What a sheer misery of a movie.
Lost in Translation - rich, jaded white people, living in one of the most beautiful cultures in the world, who can’t see past their own arseholes.
Grease - He took off the preppy sweater one second after he put it on!
All of them meant one thing and I came away with another.
I’ll add The Horse Whisperer and any book/movie in which adultery on the part of the woman* is justified. The husband was a perfectly nice guy, but she wants to screw up her marriage for a fling.
*It’s not that I like male adultery, either, but it bothers me way more when it’s a woman. It always seems to be coached in terms of “but he’s her REAL love”…