# Your unpopular interpretations of creative works \[Spoilers\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 3, 2009, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194 "2009-08-03T18:34:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/81 "2009-08-10T10:44:07Z")
With regard to Donnie Darko, 1) in what way does Kelly’s interpretation wildly disagree with viewer interpretation and 2) what is this elaborate back story that didn’t make it into the film? WRT: gay cowardly lion - he was kind of gay, in a girly man sort of way, but not really gay in a likes other guys sort of way. But this was a fantasy musical, everyone was acting/looking kinda gay. WRT: Pan’s Labrynth - when I saw the movie I interpreted it as being purposely ambiguous or up to the viewer to decide what they wanted to believe. Pretty much everything could be interpreted either way except for her escape. I thought i read an interview where he said he purposely made it ambiguous but that his preferred interpretation was the fantasy parts being real. I think it’s more interesting being somewhat ambiguous, but I personally prefer the fantasy interpretation because I’m a big ol softy. WRT Fight Club: Not unpopular as much as unlikely, but I love the Fight Club = Calvin and Hobbes growed up interpretation (Main guy is Calvin, Tyler is Hobbes, chick is Susie, Project Mayhem is GROSS). ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/82 "2009-08-10T10:58:12Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Fuck all this crap about Superman being a Jesus figure. He’s clearly a _ **MOSES** _ figure. Lousy co-opting Christians claiming pop culture as their own… > Anyway, Deckard was human, no question. You’re right, but I don’t think that interpretation is unpopular. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/83 "2009-08-10T10:59:49Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > But this was a fantasy musical, everyone was acting/looking kinda gay. I nominate a thread winner! (I wondered why no one had mentioned the Tin Woodsman with his dimpled smile and fluttering eyelashes when singing “If I Only Had a Heart”.) ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/84 "2009-08-10T11:01:43Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > Wow. I agree with you. I’ve never heard of a director so egregiously missing the point of his own film. Heh, of course on the SDMB people would feel this way. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/85 "2009-08-10T11:03:08Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Fuck all this crap about Superman being a Jesus figure. He’s clearly a _ **MOSES** _ figure. Lousy co-opting Christians claiming pop culture as their own… Who does he lead out of the desert and give laws to? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/86 "2009-08-10T11:08:57Z")
Pan’s Labyrinth The magic is real, but it is waning from the world as humans are becoming more cold and methodical (fascism). Fascism is stripping the magic from the world. Life and magic sort of being synonymous as the magic is required to save the Mother, but she would rather die than believe in it. That’s how I saw it at least. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/87 "2009-08-10T11:20:51Z")
I am concerned that Charlie was singled out to be our “hero” in **Charlie and the Chocolate Factory**. Charlie’s main qualification is that he is poor. I know that child worship is a popular theme in stories but is being poor really a virtue? Running a large factory requires business and acumen and good organizational skills. Willy Wonka made some decisive labor moves by recruiting the Oompa Loompas. From what we know about Charlie, he has a very poor family background to succeed in business. His father not only works in a toothpaste factory but managed to stagnate at the level of toothpaste cap screwer. He is an able-bodied white male. Something is terribly wrong there and his bosses are probably picking up on it. The family is pitifully poor because of this and seems to be unable to make good life choices to save their lives. We can’t really blame the current generation though, both sets of grandparents are horrible example and just lay around in bed all day sucking the life out of the current generations. Charlie demonstrates his own irresponsibility tainted by a culture of poverty by running out and buying a chocolate bar as soon as he got any money at all. I am pleased that it worked out for him and he got a golden ticket but his behavior is akin to people running out and buying lottery tickets as soon as the welfare checks come in. Most disturbing however, is Charlie’s lack of charisma. The boy simply has no personality. His shtick is being the “nice boy” and we all know that nice guys lose the girl and finish last. Running a chocolate factory like that requires huge vision, grand imagination, and cutthroat business skills. Charlie has none of that. I think the smart choice would have been to choose Veruca Salt to run the factory. She comes from a family in the food business and has been exposed to large-scale management. Most importantly, she is a nasty little bitch and could deal with any Oompa Loompa insurrections. I also think she would have good vision for new products unlike Charlie who would probably just watch the existing markets slowly decay. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/88 "2009-08-10T12:30:10Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > The problem here is that there’s no reason for her to perceive her escape through her fantasy filter. People create that sort of coping mechanism for two reasons: they are either trying to deny the horrors that surround them by creating a world in which those horrors don’t exist, or they are trying to cope with those horrors by creating a world in which they have power over them. The second explanation works well for all of the girl’s “fantasies” up to this point, but here, there’s no reason for her to create an alternate explanation. She’s clearly not trying to deny reality, because even in her fantasy, she’s still risking her life to save her infant brother from her psychopathic stepfather. In that regard, the fantasy is no better than the reality. But neither does it make sense to explain it as a way of giving herself power she lacks in the real world. She’s actively working to thwart her stepfather, and she’s being successful at it. There’s no reason for her to invent a magical explanation for things she’s actually capable of doing. There’s every reason to perceive the escape through her fantasy filter. She built up the courage to do those things only after having sunk into her fantasy world. [As I saw it](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=424249&highlight=pan%27s+labyrinth), the belief of achieving something better was what gave her the courage. It’s the same primal religious impulse that does so much good and ill in the world, just filtered through the active imagination of a young girl fond of fairy tales.And Jesus fuck, that ending tore me up. I’m tearing up again just thinking about it. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/89 "2009-08-10T18:12:39Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Who does he lead out of the desert and give laws to? I’ve heard it more as Superman’s birth = Moses’s birth. Baby Superman gets sent adrift by his parents, and ends up being raised by strangers. He grows up, realizes his true heritage, and saves people. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/90 "2009-08-11T00:54:00Z")
> [@Scissorjack](#): > > **The Lord of the Rings** is not an allegory of World War 2. It is however an allegory of World War 3, in which Old Europe and the New World must unite against the soulless, godless, bestial, mechanised hordes of the East, with their dark-skinned subhuman slave-men. Hobbits are English, Elves are French, Dwarves are German and humans are American, but all must unite under the leadership of an American to defeat the Red Menace, and althought they are ultimately successful, Old Europe is fast fading from importance, with the Elves departing, the Dwarves and Hobbits beginning an inexorable slide into irrelevance: the end of the Third Age signals the dawn of the Pax Americana. > > If you doubt this interpretation, consider that Tolkien explicitly alluded to socialist in “The Scouring of The Shire”, in which the gatherers and sharers are derided as doing a lot of gathering but no sharing: hell, they even collectivise agriculture in The Shire. Nah, the Scouring of the Shire is about the post-WW2 socialist government in Britain. Except in real life Sharkey won. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/91 "2009-08-11T03:34:25Z")
Charlie’s qualification in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory isn’t that he’s poor, it’s that he isn’t greedy and actually loves Chocolate. Willy Wonka wants to leave the factory to someone who will love his creation, not a board of directors that will care only about the bottom line and gut everything inside the shell of the brand. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/92 "2009-08-11T05:53:56Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Fuck all this crap about Superman being a Jesus figure. He’s clearly a _ **MOSES** _ figure. Lousy co-opting Christians claiming pop culture as their own… Yeah, what a crock. Everybody knows the Jews own pop culture. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/93 "2009-08-11T06:37:25Z")
Not sure how popular or unpopular an interpretation this is, but here is my interpretation of Bateman’s killing spree in _American Psycho_: He didn’t kill anyone. He’s just so unhinged, he’s convinced himself that he has. The reason he’s never caught, is because there’s no reason for him to be caught. As for Fight Club, I’m a big fan of the Calvin and Hobbes interpretation of the movie. Basically, the main characters are the kids from Calvin and Hobbes, grown up. Ed Norton is Calvin, Marla Singer is Suzie, Bob is Moe, etc. As far as the book goes, I’m a big fan of the Chuck Needed A Freaking Editor interpretation. StarShip Troopers Marauder: [Spoiler]Admiral Phid, for all of her manipulative back-stabby power-mongering craziness, she was an improvement over Sky Marshal Anoke, who was a brain-washed slave of the Bug God of Gods. Also, the scene where Rico’s Marauders tear up the bugs to save Beck and Holly was supposed to represent the Apocalypse, from a Bug religious POV.[/spoiler] Seeing as I am the only person I’m aware of who actually freely admits to watching, let alone enjoying, StarShip Troopers Marauder, basically any interpretation I produce will be an unpopular one by definition. 😃 I have also driven friends insane with my Tron-Terminator-Matrix-Dune meta-chronology interpretation (all those movies/books are in fact in one long timeline) ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/94 "2009-08-11T06:51:41Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I think the smart choice would have been to choose Veruca Salt to run the factory. She comes from a family in the food business and has been exposed to large-scale management. Most importantly, she is a nasty little bitch and could deal with any Oompa Loompa insurrections. I also think she would have good vision for new products unlike Charlie who would probably just watch the existing markets slowly decay. Obviously, Charlie ends up hiring on Veruca to run the internals of the business for him while he goes forth to be the face of the company. Eventually they get married (Sure, she’s a bitch, but I’m told that angry sex is awesome) and have kids, who eventually inherit the company. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/95 "2009-08-11T07:34:58Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > Not sure how popular or unpopular an interpretation this is, but here is my interpretation of Bateman’s killing spree in _American Psycho_: > > He didn’t kill anyone. He’s just so unhinged, he’s convinced himself that he has. The reason he’s never caught, is because there’s no reason for him to be caught. I agree with you. There’s no other explanation for… the police disappearing after he’s holed up in the hotel. I know some people like to hold up that scene as a comment on how self-absorbed the 80s were (“Even the police won’t hang around more than a few hours to catch a mass murderer!”), but that is such a lame explanation I can’t believe anyone buys it. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/96 "2009-08-11T07:55:29Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > Obviously, Charlie ends up hiring on Veruca to run the internals of the business for him while he goes forth to be the face of the company. Eventually they get married (Sure, she’s a bitch, but I’m told that angry sex is awesome) and have kids, who eventually inherit the company. A little hijacky, but you just made me realize something: Veruca got off easy in the book. All the others, as far as I can remember, had to suffer some kind of physical alteration to get them out of the predicament they got themselves in. The Salts? They just got “covered in garbage”! One shower (okay, maybe five or six, if they’re clean freaks, which as wealthy folks they might well be) and they’re back to normal. Oh, and the clothes, which may or may not be ruined, and that they may or may not care about. I wonder if this is supposed to be significant, or because Dahl couldn’t find a way to get a similar consequence out of the whole squirrel sequence… ETA: To address this particular point, I’m not sure Veruca would make the best manager. Doesn’t being awesomely spoiled lead to a “my way or the highway” certainty that can make for spectacularly bad business decisions that no one is able to prevent? ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Shine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr_shine/32/464_2.png) [@Mr\_Shine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Shine)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/97 "2009-08-11T07:58:30Z")
In Star Trek V, I believe that the creature on the planet was indeed “God”, and responsible for all the Abrahamic religions on Earth, plus their equivalents on Vulcan etc. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/98 "2009-08-11T08:08:16Z")
To be fair, Verruca did get a rather scarier ride than the others, with the risk of being incinerated, and all. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/99 "2009-08-11T10:30:45Z")
> [@Mr\_Shine](#): > > In Star Trek V, I believe that the creature on the planet was indeed “God”, and responsible for all the Abrahamic religions on Earth, plus their equivalents on Vulcan etc. Why does God need a starship? ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2009, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194/100 "2009-08-11T11:29:54Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Why does God need a starship? And why are we talking about movies that were never made? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-unpopular-interpretations-of-creative-works-spoilers/505194.md?page=6)