You’re Reading Too Much Into It
When we wake up from a strange and vivid dream, listen to a politician avoid a simple ‘yes or no’ question, or read a news story that has inconsistencies we try to make sense of their elusiveness. We try to interpret and find explanations using the clues available to us. There may not be definitive answers or meanings behind every puzzle or story, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting to uncover them.
Kids’ movies and TV shows are designed to be clear and direct for their young viewers to understand. The messages and morals they exposit are spelled out as simply as they can — there’s little room for mistaking the creators’ intentions. At the end of an episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, where He-Man addresses the viewer and explains the merits of teamwork and sharing, no interpretation is necessary. There’s no underlying, unspoken second meaning to the cartoon.
When we grow up we learn how to say one thing but mean another. Sarcasm, innuendo, implication, suggestion: language can no longer be taken at face value. We learn to pay attention not only what is being said, but also what is left unsaid.
Our maturing and understanding of meaning also applies to cinematic language. Over its lifetime film has developed into a world of subtexts, allegories, commentaries, satire and symbolism. Film scholars and film enthusiasts alike have devoted entire essays, dissertations, analyses, and documentaries exploring the underlying meanings of its texts and the intentions of their authors.
There are commonly accepted readings of filmic texts, and then there are more divisive and outlandish theories which are voiced by the minority. The problem with examining films and generating ideas about them is, how do we know or interpret a film as having subtext? How do we decide which titles have deeper meanings and which titles do not?
The problem with analyzing any text is our own subjectivity — we may see more or less in the body of a work compared to someone else. There are no absolute wrong viewpoints. It all depends on which theories sound more believable or more far-fetched to us, and how much evidence can be gathered to support them. To many people critical analyses can read meanings into texts that aren’t there, or the persons forwarding such readings are taking great liberties in their interpretations. A common reaction of people listening to these ideas follows along the lines of, “You’re reading too much into it.”
I’ve been described as having a tendency to over-analyze films, providing them with subtexts and meanings that don’t exist. In some instances I will admit I’ve gone overboard with my ideas about what films really mean, but I am not alone in this respect. (Room 237 is a prime example of how viewers can assign extreme readings to a text, exemplified in the documentary as several people each analyze Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of The Shining.)
Unraveling meaning in films can be both informative and entertaining. On the other hand it can also lead to pretentiousness and elitism, used to divide viewers into those who ‘get it’ and those who don’t — emotional content gives away to intellectual superiority. (I appreciate the depths filmmaking can involve, but I don’t view my opinion as being any more worthy than someone else’s.) The question remains: how do we find meaning in a film?
The first step is to go to the source; a film’s authors. The screenwriter(s), the director, the actors, the cinematographer, the composer — beyond the text itself what have the creative forces behind the scenes revealed, hinted at, or admitted in discussions, interviews and panels? Do they correspond to the ideas and theories supported by audiences and academics?
Some filmmakers are reluctant to elaborate upon the themes and underlying meanings of their work, preferring to leave their intentions vague and open to multiple readings. To these creators it is not their job to explain themselves or their films, but for viewers to extract and reach their own conclusions. The films of David Lynch and the aforementioned Stanley Kubrick have been and continue to be dissected and puzzled over by avid fans (including yours truly) and film theorists.
The opposite also occurs: filmmakers may be overeager to publicly share what their intentions are, or their films’ subtexts, allegories and symbolism are so blatantly obvious that closer examination is unnecessary. Not-so-subtle imagery and on-the-nose dialogue can make audiences feel like filmmakers are talking down to them. Being subjected to pontificating writers and directors does not make us value the film any greater — it generates the opposite effect. There’s no mistaking what parallels James Cameron’s Avatar is alluding to in his visuals and dialogue (the bad guy uses “shock and awe” without a hint of irony), and the film’s unsubtle message is expressed like a figurative bomb exploding. (Alfonso Cuaron’s as-subtle-as-a-brick womb symbolism in his 2014 film Gravity is another sore point of mine.)
(In 1987 filmmaker Derek Jarman made the experimental The Last of England, and wrote an accompanying book analyzing his own text. It remains the only film to have ever caused my body to react on account of how angry it made me. Minutes after watching it, while I was venting my rage to those around me, my nose started to bleed. The film and its forced symbolism caused me physical harm.)
When asked about the meanings behind their work some filmmakers have no answers. They don’t explore or ruminate subtext on a conscious level where they know exactly what their films are trying to say — they’re just as in the dark as the rest of us. “I don’t know” may not be the answer we’re looking for, but at least it’s an honest answer devoid of hubris or pomposity.
In the event when authors cannot or choose not to explain their films it is left to the viewers to decipher them. The analysis of a text can be split into two groups: researching beyond the film using what information is available pertaining to its creation; or using only what is found within the film to construct a theory, based on either historical or contemporary trends in society and culture. The latter approach has enabled people to invent new readings to texts that were never imagined before, but which has also attracted the greatest level of derision. Slavoj Žižek’s documentaries The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) make astounding claims about a diverse group of films, including how in The Sound of Music Catholicism enables hedonist and atheistic living. (They are both, however, very entertaining.)
Post-structuralist theories place minimal value to the designs and intentions of filmmakers, choosing instead to create readings and meanings independent of their authors. But in a world where the filmmaker is not the supreme authority to the meaning of a text, who’s to say when analysis has gone too far? I once wrote an essay describing how John Carpenter’s The Thing can be read with a feminist viewpoint, citing the transforming alien as being the monstrous feminine threatening to take over masculinity. I concede this reading of The Thing is tenuous at best, but I did have a lot of fun writing it — I might publish the essay online to see what people make of it, and whether it’s able to convince anyone. Many of the ‘out there’ theories depend on selectiveness, picking which elements support an idea but ignore everything else.
As audience members we want storytelling to be more than skin deep, but we’re divided about who we should be listening to, and the extent to which we accept their ideas. Filmmakers diverge on how much or how little they’re prepared to aid in our readings of their texts, deciding either to keep us in the dark, reveal only parts of the mystery, or lecture and pander to us. Hosts of writers and theorists have done away with the filmmakers, contextualizing their works through the lenses of sociology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and semiotics, to name a few.
One of the greatest appeals of reading films is how it can be personalized — one person can take away something entirely different than someone else does. We have the choice of finding the meaning on our own terms. Earlier I described subjectivity as being the problem with film analysis, but it’s also what makes debating film so engaging and rewarding. You can agree with everything that I’ve written about films and their creators, you can half-agree and dispute the rest, or you can discard every last word. And if you want, you can change your mind. Art gives us that freedom and fluidity.
How do we find meaning in a film? It’s all up to you.
Coming soon: Taking the Leap Into Acting
