How does the writer impact the story?

[CryptofCthulhu]

Amen. I had a college literature class that I had to suffer through because of this. The whole point was to apply different "theories" to interpret the author's work. Like feminist theory, queer theory, Marxist theory, etc., regardless of whether or not they were actually applicable to the subject matter. So essentially it was a class on how to look for things that just weren't there and try and make stories seem to be about things that they aren't.

Yeah, I was mostly thinking of academia in my response, haha. I remember one class in college, we read Death Comes for the Archbishop and it seemed that the answer to every analytical question one could muster came back to the professor saying, "Well remember, there's a good indication that Willa Cather was a closet lesbian."

"Why do you think she decided to write about a white bishop in the American Southwest?"

"Well remember, there's a good indication that Willa Cather was a closet lesbian."

It always amazed me that he could not only connect two unrelated points and always make it about her sexual orientation, but that he would do it while being completely uncertain on whether his claim toward her being gay was true. At some points, I think it was just an easy answer for him, rather than actually having to do some critical thinking.

And these people are actually paid to teach this crap. I enrolled in a class at college that was all about Hitchcock films. I was really excited until the first day when I realized that it was basically taking Hitchcock and filtering his work through a feminist lens. It was a long quarter to say the least. I mean there is making observations based on gender, and there is making observations based on gender that are so outlandish that you don't know how the person teaching the class can keep a straight face. I can entertain the former but not the later.

Never ceases to amaze how people can ruin culture by making it all about political ideology and not the craft itself.

[marshall_lamour]

To this day I'm not so sure what Scorcese actually thinks of a man like the Wolf.

Not so coincidentally, "Taxi Driver" was very much a similar case. It was definitely more of a character study than either a moral repudiation or glorification of Travis Bickle--meaning it's essentially both.

This is reminiscent of what often happens in war films. While the creators are typically known to hold antiwar stances, the films have a proclivity to glorify the subject matter. I believe Anthony Swofford made this observation in his book, "Jarhead," noting how religiously warfighters internalize the themes of such films (Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, etc.) to very much the opposite effect as presumably intended. This is probably owed to the filmmaker's own empathy for the enthrallment of combat upon its participants. In such a case, I think it's clear that the intent is at odds with the message manifested, but they are both relevant to understanding the value of the work.

[Yora]

My (German) history teacher said "There is no american anti-war movie".

It took me a long time to figure out whether Starship Trooper was genuine or satire. Now being older and having lived through recent history it's totally obvious, but back in the 90s I really wasn't sure if it's a braindead action movie or all one big joke.

[marshall_lamour]

My (German) history teacher said "There is no american anti-war movie".

It took me a long time to figure out whether Starship Trooper was genuine or satire. Now being older and having lived through recent history it's totally obvious, but back in the 90s I really wasn't sure if it's a braindead action movie or all one big joke.

It was a pretty ham handed way to parody the source material though. Heinlein's vision was hardly dystopian, and Verhoeven really seized on a level of fascismo barely portrayed in the text. His failure to grasp the significance of the powered armor is reflected in his inability to grasp that of the social order of the Terran Federation--the two being alike in their necessity for human survival against the Bug and the latter doubly so for human survival in the aftermath of WWIII.

Verhoeven not only fails to convincingly parody Heinlein's militarism but also softens and makes light of the fascist potential of wartime politics. The resulting film works reasonably well as a standalone, campy, sci-fi action romp but does massive disservice to a novel which was far better thought out.

Edit:
It was almost like the filmmaker was embarrassed to be making the film and was scared to give any impression of taking the source material seriously or that he was somehow righteous in not doing so.