Popular movies with a subversive subtext

Sad Professor

Subversive ideas are often consciously or subconsciously inserted into the subtexts of popular film by filmmakers. Usually such subtexts are something that would be disturbing or offensive to the film’s audience if they were aware of it. Other times the audience may be subconsciously aware of it and actually enjoy it for exactly that reason, but whatever you do don’t tell them that!

One filmmaker who consciously did this was Hitchcock. Vertigo he liked to say was really about necrophilia. Jimmy Stewart’s obsession with the ghost of a dead women can be read as a desire to have sex with a dead body. A lot of people dislike this interpretation, but "romantic necrophilia" is probably the most concise description of what the film is about.

What other popular films have a subversive subtext?

Harry Palmr

Duel is not a film about a man being terrorised by a truck, it's about an slightly insecure middle aged man being beaten by modern life and his redemption.

lazybones32

I can't think of any popular ones that have a well disguised subtext. Mostly, the propaganda or message is too plain to see imo...a person could interpret certain films as carrying a deeper message but it doesn't mean that it was the original intention.
The matrix
Invasion of the body snatchers.
(The one where the wtestler can see aliens when he has glasses on...can't believe i've blanked that name)

fruvai

lazybones32 wrote: »

(The one where the wtestler can see aliens when he has glasses on...can't believe i've blanked that name)

They Live?

Ipso

Robocop.

lazybones32

fruvai wrote: »

They Live?

Bingo.

Lorelli!

Labyrinth with David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.

The character Sarah is only fifteen. There are more details in the book but her mother left her father for an actor who is depicted in a picture on her mirror along side her mother. The picture is of David Bowie who also plays the Goblin King, Jareth. She's now living with her father and step mother and their child, Toby which she resents.

There is a romantic element to the relationship between Sarah and Jareth in the film. It can be interpreted as the much older Jareth seducing Sarah and Sarah's reactions to understanding her own sexuality. It could just be her fantasy or there could be some reality to it connected to her mothers lover.

Lorelli!

And of course... Top Gun! only messing

JohnFalstaff

Ipso wrote: »

Robocop.

Verhoeven's work is often imbued with a subversive edge, but if I had to pick one of his films that best suits the topic at hand it would have to be Starship Troopers. It's a send-up of right wing militarism wrapped up in crazy, lurid sci-fi spectacle. The fact that it was taken at face value by many viewers and critics speaks to the vapidity the movie skewers.

I'd also include some of Scorsese's work in the discussion - Taxi Driver in particular. The Wolf of Wall Street is another interesting one in terms of its depictions of capitalist debauchery and excess. Wolf of Wall Street went on to become Scorsese's highest ever grossing film at the worldwide box office, but I would worry that many of those in the audience missed Scorsese's point entirely!

Sad Professor

Lorelli! wrote: »

And of course... Top Gun! only messing

Definitely counts, even if it wasn't deliberate. I'd argue, however, that Top Gun reflected that '80s obsession with male bodies and hyper-masculinity that was all about trying to be the best, etc. The later tendency to interpret these films as having homoerotic undertones probably said more about '90s lad and frat boy culture than it did about Top Gun. Although there's undeniably a homoerotic subtext in some of those films. Point Break, for example.

Sad Professor

JohnFalstaff wrote: »

Verhoeven's work is often imbued with a subversive edge, but if I had to pick one of his films that best suits the topic at hand it would have to be Starship Troopers. It's a send-up of right wing militarism wrapped up in crazy, lurid sci-fi spectacle. The fact that it was taken at face value by many viewers and critics speaks to the vapidity the movie skewers.

I'd also include some of Scorsese's work in the discussion - Taxi Driver in particular. The Wolf of Wall Street is another interesting one in terms of its depictions of capitalist debauchery and excess. Wolf of Wall Street went on to become Scorsese's highest ever grossing film at the worldwide box office, but I would worry that many of those in the audience missed Scorsese's point entirely!

See also Fight Club. Even some of its biggest fans don't seem to get it.

jcsoulinger

JohnFalstaff wrote: »

s. Wolf of Wall Street went on to become Scorsese's highest ever grossing film at the worldwide box office, but I would worry that many of those in the audience missed Scorsese's point entirely!

Yep the amount of people who missed the obvious point of the movie is crazy, in the closing scene it's almost like Scorsese is openly mocking them.

jcsoulinger

Very interesting thread.

One film I saw lately which you wouldn't expect a subversive message was Dinner For Schmucks (2010).

It's probably quiet an obvious one but I think the contrast between Steve Carells character and Jermaine Clements character provide quiet a good critique of modern art. The guy who people think is an idiot is probably more of an artist than the well known guy who has his work in a gallery.

judeboy101

The wizard of Oz. Take your pick from the following:

A critique of Americas interventionist policies in foreign countries.

A tale of a cruel murderess intent of killing off a whole family of green skinned women.

A moral tale about the illusion of power and free will

Harry Palmr

Ah now you can only have subversive context at the time, not retrospectively! Unless it's a critique of Teddy Roosevelt's policy in North Africa which seems unlikely!

judeboy101

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Ah now you can only have subversive context at the time, not retrospectively! Unless it's a critique of Teddy Roosevelt's policy in North Africa which seems unlikely!

Panama, Philippines, ww1 take your pick. Massive foreshadowing of what was to come.

sabat

Project X is an anarchist satire of property ownership and the US housing bubble.
John Rambo is about the Kissinger Doctrine.

Wedwood

Kong: Skull Island.

A very deep rooted and subtle rebuke of modern right wing politics hidden inside a dumb popcorn monster flick pretending to to have a less than subtle satire on Vietnam era right wing politics.

Arghus

There's always Alien: fear of male rape.

buried

Tim Burton's 'Batman'. Traumatised psychopath goes around attacking socio/psychopaths which adds further fuel to the grim environment to create even more psychopaths. Burton was the only one to properly showcase this. "You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?"

dr.fuzzenstein

Adams Family Values.
No, seriously!

http://www.therobotsvoice.com/2014/09/8_ways_addams_family_values.php

Lorelli!

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Adams Family Values.
No, seriously!

http://www.therobotsvoice.com/2014/09/8_ways_addams_family_values.php

I had to laugh at point number 4 :pac:

buried

lol I must watch that film again. I always knew there was something about it but I always thought it was just Joan Cusack's very pretty face + that unreal glorious cleavage

Lorelli!

The Shining was a veiled confession by Stanley Kubrick for his part in directing the fake moon landing :pac:

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/www.seeker.com/amphtml/faked-moon-landings-and-kubricks-the-shining-1765004443.html

astrofool

Lorelli! wrote: »

I had to laugh at point number 4 :pac:

The "It's a bomb! " scene in it was brilliant.

Victor

The Accountant - if Batman only had one knife and fork.

Sad Professor wrote: »

See also Fight Club. Even some of its biggest fans don't seem to get it.

But Fight Club is overtly anti-capitalist.

The subversive irony is that people are happy to have mentally unstable people as leaders.

Sad Professor

Victor wrote: »

But Fight Club is overtly anti-capitalist.

The subversive irony is that people are happy to have mentally unstable people as leaders.

Yeah the anti-capitalism is way too explicit. I was thinking more of how the homoerotic undertones and Tyler's many contradictions (e.g. criticising Calvin Klein underwear models for not looking like real men despite looking like an underwear model himself) undermine the film's anti-capitalist, anti-consumer, anti-feminist rhetoric.

However, Fight Club deals more in irony than subtext and I mentioned it more as an example of viewers missing the point of a film. There's a long history of viewers focusing only on the way they perceive the text to be glorifying a certain type of character and ignoring what it is actually saying about them. Gordon Gecko, Tony Montana, Don Draper, etc. I think this has a lot to do with the power of the moving image and the way cinema romanticises everything, even when trying to do the opposite.

Lorelli!

Was gonna put this in another thread but I think it fits better here. I was reading something on Don Logan's character in Sexy Beast. I'll put it in a spoiler.

At the beginning of the film, a huge boulder comes down from the mountains and into the main character, Gal's pool. This represents Don's unwanted arrival. The boulder is him personified. Water, in film can sometimes be used as a metaphor for sex.

Gal is living happily in his villa with his gf and they are close to Don's old friend and his gf, Jackie. He has given up gangster life but Don comes and tries to torment Gal into doing a job back home. Throughout the film, it is revealed that Don's main motive for going there was because he had unrequited feelings for Jackie who he had a brief history with.

Don ultimately ends up buried under the pool which represents his repressed sexuality.

Could just be that the boulder lands in the pool so there ends up a convenient spot to bury Don but I thought it was an interesting take on it.

mikhail

As its 30th birthday approaches, Predator. Elite US soldiers are slaughtered by an enemy they can't see in the jungle. Made just over a decade after the Vietnam war.