Folks at Accredited Online Colleges did a great piece on Classic Films Allegories.

They asked me to share this with you, and I thought it was a nice read.

Ten Classic (or soon to be) Films With Allegories

1- Metropolis (1927) Directed by Fritz Lang: The movie’s bleak take on class and class relations, and while not explicitly Communist (or even sympathetic to the cause) it still contains a few narrative elements easily interpreted as such.

2- The Wizard of Oz (1939) Directed by Victor Fleming: L. Frank Baum’s beloved children’s classic film adaptation is a satirical allegory for the Gilded Age.

3- Gojira (1954) Directed by Ishiro Honda: The horrors that resulted from the nuclear bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 eventually inspired an entire science-fiction subgenre.

4- The Seventh Seal (1957) Directed by Ingmar Bergman: Bergman meant for the film to explore mankind’s relationship with religion, pondering whether or not any sort of god or gods exist to distribute rewards and punishment.

5- Blade Runner (1982) Directed by Ridley Scott: Ridley Scott interpretation of the narrative still sparks plenty of provocative questions regarding the relationship between technology and humanity.

6- The Wall (1982) Directed by Alan Parker:  In the brutal, intense movie, central figure Pink realizes the blind fanaticism with which the world follows him grants fascist, dictatorial power — easily abused, manipulated and exploited — and illustrates the extreme dangers of unquestioning adoration. These days, Waters also thinks the struggles depicted in The Wall can easily represent other major isolating rifts, particularly between nations and religions.

7- Fight Club (1999) Directed by David Fincher: Beyond the explicit violence and sex lay an immensely dark comedy laden with metaphors regarding everything from consumerism to contemporary perceptions of masculinity to the conformity of nonconformity.

8- The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003) Directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski: Some may make comparisons to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” while others see protagonist Neo as a Messianic figure.

9- X-Men (2000) Directed by Bryan Singer: Comic book creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched the young team in 1963 as a rumination on marginalization and the anxieties of growing up. “Mutants” have, over the years, served as allegories for minorities, LGBTQIA, teenagers and anyone else feeling out of synch with the prevailing cultural hegemony.

10- District 9 (2009) Directed by Neill Blomkamp: Big Apartheid metaphor; film film uses aliens as a stand-in for the minorities forced into ghettos during European rule.

What do you think about these films allegories and metaphors?

Let me know in the comments section.

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