One: An allegory for modern work and corporate hierarchy.
One man works in the tower, the other on the ground. Both are insane in their own ways.
Two: An allegory for faith and religion.
One man clames great illuminating knowledge, but hords it for himself. The other man resents being kept in the dark.
Three: An allegory for online life.
Two men have stories they believe or want the other to believe. When those stories clash they don’t handle it well.
Four: Running from who we are doesn’t work.
A man isolates himself while running from a horrible act. Tries to make a new life very different from what he had. But he still goes mad and does it again.
Those are the first ideas I had. I’m not confident any of them are the intended meaning. In fact I’m more confident there is no specific meaning and that it’s just abstract painted canvas for us to make of it what we will.
I don’t think the director’s intent is necessary for meaning, so it seems to me like these are all valid things to draw from this movie, and a reasonable basis for calling it a meaningful movie.
Like, reading into a Heinlein story, you can glean a lot about gender that he wasn’t necessarily intending to include, but that doesn’t mean they’re not in there.
I guess I’m thinking, if it’s such a blank canvases that one can put almost any meaning or message onto the movie, then it almost certainly doesn’t actually have one for itself. It’s a hole for us to toss meaning into instead of a fountain pouring it’s meaning out to us.
And some stories say things (or assume them as I believe in Heinlein’s case) that aren’t The Point or the meaning of the story. Those thing certainly date a work of it’s time, because they’re something we impose on them later.
It doesn’t seem we should give credit to the work for something we imposed on it.
I can understand what you’re getting at, but disagree. Even a movie that’s totally meaningless to the writer and director can be meaningful to the audience, because we communicate so much more than we intend to when we create something. A skilled future archaeologist could glean a lot into our society’s values by seeing a Michael Bay movie. Our ability see meanings the director doesn’t intend and different from those of other viewers isn’t indicative of a lack of meaning, but a multitude in my opinion.
I took a literature class in college in which we read and analyzed the hunger games. I have wished over the years that I could talk to the professor about all sorts of things, because he was absolutely brilliant. He broke down so many stereotypes that were intentionally broken or reinforced and how those choices supported the author’s narratives while seeming completely shallow. As I said, I’m not great at analysis, so it may sound like I was just being a rube, but most of the time when people are reading something that’s not there into a work, I can poke holes in it pretty well.
Could you (and anyone else) list any of your possible meanings? Correct doesn’t exist, imo, so no worries if they feel incomplete.
One: An allegory for modern work and corporate hierarchy.
One man works in the tower, the other on the ground. Both are insane in their own ways.
Two: An allegory for faith and religion.
One man clames great illuminating knowledge, but hords it for himself. The other man resents being kept in the dark.
Three: An allegory for online life.
Two men have stories they believe or want the other to believe. When those stories clash they don’t handle it well.
Four: Running from who we are doesn’t work.
A man isolates himself while running from a horrible act. Tries to make a new life very different from what he had. But he still goes mad and does it again.
Those are the first ideas I had. I’m not confident any of them are the intended meaning. In fact I’m more confident there is no specific meaning and that it’s just abstract painted canvas for us to make of it what we will.
I don’t think the director’s intent is necessary for meaning, so it seems to me like these are all valid things to draw from this movie, and a reasonable basis for calling it a meaningful movie.
Like, reading into a Heinlein story, you can glean a lot about gender that he wasn’t necessarily intending to include, but that doesn’t mean they’re not in there.
I guess I’m thinking, if it’s such a blank canvases that one can put almost any meaning or message onto the movie, then it almost certainly doesn’t actually have one for itself. It’s a hole for us to toss meaning into instead of a fountain pouring it’s meaning out to us.
And some stories say things (or assume them as I believe in Heinlein’s case) that aren’t The Point or the meaning of the story. Those thing certainly date a work of it’s time, because they’re something we impose on them later.
It doesn’t seem we should give credit to the work for something we imposed on it.
I can understand what you’re getting at, but disagree. Even a movie that’s totally meaningless to the writer and director can be meaningful to the audience, because we communicate so much more than we intend to when we create something. A skilled future archaeologist could glean a lot into our society’s values by seeing a Michael Bay movie. Our ability see meanings the director doesn’t intend and different from those of other viewers isn’t indicative of a lack of meaning, but a multitude in my opinion.
I took a literature class in college in which we read and analyzed the hunger games. I have wished over the years that I could talk to the professor about all sorts of things, because he was absolutely brilliant. He broke down so many stereotypes that were intentionally broken or reinforced and how those choices supported the author’s narratives while seeming completely shallow. As I said, I’m not great at analysis, so it may sound like I was just being a rube, but most of the time when people are reading something that’s not there into a work, I can poke holes in it pretty well.