Introduction: Since Disney’s creation of a string of WWII propaganda films in the 40s and his later testimony in the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, Disney has been highly political. The media that it churns out imposes an America-Centric, Christian, and middle-class value system, and Aladdin is no different.

In August of 1990, Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait. By January 1991, US troops, along with Saudis and those of other nations deployed their own troops to the tiny Persian Gulf nation. Oft cited as a cause of the interference was maintaining low oil prices (justifying the estimated $60 billion cost of the war, in total?). Also sometimes stated as a cause is the imperial American policy of controlling the price of oil, whether it is high or low. Aladdin, Disney’s first film with an Arab setting was released in 1992, which “coincidentally” derides the Islamic religion, Middle Eastern culture, and generally comes off as thinly veiled propaganda encouraging further intervention in the Middle East, because they want it. And it’s what you should want, spongy young mind.

The Barbaric Middle East – From the very first scene, the theme of the Middle East as a barbaric land is established, with the lyrics in the original opening song: “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face / It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home.” The following scenes of the outdoor market ridicule the merchants hawking their wares, making some out to be dishonest and certainly unjust in their treatment of Aladdin (But how does the Disney corporation treat individuals when you irritate them? Like garbage.) These scenes establish, over and over, that the Middle Eastern world is a senseless one where you are executed or mutilated for the slightest infraction. And most importantly, nobody wants it to be that way.

Please Change Us – All of the characters that we are supposed to like hate the world that they live in, with the possible exception of the Sultan who is depicted as too stupid to understand their qualms.

Jasmine – Our young heroine wants a more democratic legal system that would allow her to marry whoever she wants. She tells her father, “I hate being forced into this. If I do marry, I want it to be for love” and then later, “I’ve never done anything on my own. I’ve never had any real friends.” Consequently, she runs away but is so naive about life in the outside world that she doesn’t realize she needs money to buy things. Then Aladdin comes and helps her escape punishment for giving a hungry little boy an apple, as well as his monkey who has been stealing non-necessary things such as jewelry. It’s presented that lying and stealing are simply necessary in the corrupt Arab world, but people want it to be different (yet Disney donated millions to Dubya’s campaign, who lowered taxes on the rich). Shortly after, Jasmine and Aladdin immediately bond over both feeling trapped. The film is saying that no matter what your status in the Arab world is, you’re trapped in the authoritarian prison. And to salt the wound, their society is keeping true lovers apart.

As for her father, the Sultan ends up changing the laws of the land to better reflect Western values (and personal whim).

Aladdin – Aladdin is downtrodden and trapped, unable to escape life as a “street rat,” and pursued by men who will cut off his hands for stealing a loaf of bread (society is obviously broken). However, he has dreams of being rich. The people, then, are victims of evil rulers that must be overthrown and replaced by good people who embrace western values. An example of this is seeing the Arab prince who only has contempt for the common people starving outside the palace walls (when they aren’t busy getting their hands chopped off), but we cheer when Jasmine rejects him.

In case this message wasn’t clear enough, Jasmine and Aladdin then escape from the palace on his magic carpet and they sing “Whole New World,” on their world tour. In other words, the happy young couple just want to see the world that their totalitarian government won’t let them see. They’re dying for western material pleasures, maybe a trip to Disney World.

The Genie – Not only are the genie’s performances a homage to Broadway, but they also have an element of slapstick comedy, and he’s appropriately voiced by the very American Robin Williams. Furthermore, he wants freedom more than anything in the world, and no master for thousands of years (presumably all Arab) until Aladdin would ever grant him his own wish. It takes an American character to do that, it would seem.

I think that it’s fairly clear that the film is an indictment of Middle Eastern culture, and calls for westerners to come in and change them. Only we can save them!

Muslim Religion – Christianity gets serious treatment in Disney films such as The Chronicles of Narnia (a Christian allegory), but Aladdin mocks and trivializes the Islamic religion repeatedly. Continually, we hear the Muslim characters crying out religions phrases like “As-Salamu Alaykum” and “Praise Allah” as if they were old women playing Bingo. Turbans are set on fire, their feathers fall down into their eyes. The treasure cave that Aladdin goes into calls him an “infidel” for the monkey merely touching a giant ruby. It’s all made to be a comic spectacle worthy of American derision, with obvious patriotic motives toward the recent (and future) operations in the Middle East.

Women and Minorities Need to be Saved – Despite the fact that Jasmine is a strong woman that can reject the substandard suitors that seek her hand in marriage and feel objectified by a group of men talking about who she will marry without her input, in the end she still must be saved by Aladdin. He saves her not only from a life of unhappy marriage, but he literally must save her life in the end. Furthermore, the whole story is implying that an Arab state will naturally lead to totalitarianism if not interfered with. The Sultan even says that the kingdom needs somebody of Aladdin’s character.

This is made clear through the characters’ appearances and voices. Aladdin does not look Arab at all, and in fact was intentionally modeled on Tom Cruise. Yes, Disney’s Arab hero is modeled on America’s most famous Scientologist. He and Jasmine both have lighter skin than the rest of the cast and have all-American accents. Meanwhile, the evil Jafar has darker skin than the rest (many of which basically just look Italian). His pet bird is even named Iago, named for the duplicitous character in Shakespeare’s Othello, deepening the western framework for judging these characters.

The Original Aladdin – In the original tale of Aladdin, published in A Thousand and One Nights, Aladdin was a Chinese boy living in China, manipulated by a North African sorcerer to do his bidding. The latter character would actually have represented the west to those in China. Through the help of the genie in the story, he wishes himself a great fortune and marries the Emperor’s daughter, later defeating the sorcerer. It’s clear then that the tale was bastardized to conform to the corporation’s romantic formula and to serve as mainstream commentary on Middle Eastern culture, doing its part to make sure the children of the 90s would support more Middle Eastern intervention.

Introduction – I hope that the reader will realize that I am not trying to crush anybody’s childhood memories, but rather trying to see past the glitz and glamor of one of everybody’s favorite movies. Most people equate Willy Wonka with a life of eternal happiness and diabetes, and until quite recently I did as well. But, in fact, the story has a darker side, both in the literal events, and in the way that it can almost come off as a parody on the rose-colored glasses we wear when thinking about our modern, industrial society.

Post-War, Pre-Hippie – As Todd Gitlin writes in his book The Sixties, “affluence” was the key word to the 1950s and early 1960s. “It was assumed to be a national condition, not just a personal standing…in a society that had long since made material production and acquisition its central activities. The boom of 1945 to 1973…was the longest in American history. Starting late in war-blasted Western Europe and Japan, the boom rolled, however unevenly, through the rest of the industrialized world.” The novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was published in 1964.

In these years, finally breathing after years of war, genocide, and other such horrors, most parents were just glad that the only thing their children had to worry about is which candy to eat and whether or not they will be able to tour the world’s finest chocolate factory. Consequently, we see them indulging their children and letting them go wild in these pursuits, but not Charlie. He’s quite literally on the outside looking in. Nevertheless, his intense desire for chocolate and especially to visit the chocolate factory reflect the pre-hippie ideal of how children should react to the “splendors of affluence.”

But an environment of relative international security is not the only thing that this affluence rests upon.

The Industrial Economy – The novel as well as the film released in 2005 explore the darker side of the manufacturing economy. Interestingly, the manuscript was originally regarded “as similar to a Victorian novel, a parallel which is suggested by Wonka’s “huge iron gates” and “smoke belching from its chimneys” as from an English factory during the Industrial Revolution” (Source). However, the earlier 1971 film chose the non-controversial route and left out these elements.

The three versions’ treatment of Charlie’s father is revealing. The 1971 film omits the fact that his father was a wage-slave in a toothpaste factory and later lost his job when the factory closed down. Instead, it implies that his father is dead and shows his mother working as a laundress to support their large family. This evades the controversy surrounding the Industrial Revolution and its creation of a factory class of citizens, not to mention its other consequences such as urbanization. In the more recent film, his father is shown as losing his job when he was replaced by a machine, only to be redeemed by taking up the occupation of repairing those machines in an uplifting twist not present in the novel.

Whatever the background, Charlie is not able to participate in the materialistic rat race because he is poor. In fact, his family could be described as the system’s victims who happened to have had enough luck to escape the misery of that life. However, this does not stop Charlie from his obsession with emulating the upper class and having a piece of that pie. It’s interesting to note that even after he gains control over the factor, he never uses his position to create jobs; he keeps the Oompa-Loompa system in place.

Inside the Factory –
The multitude would not have bowed their necks to the hard discipline of their new work, if in compensation they had not been liberated from other, more ancient disciplinary restrictions.
-Ancient Rome and Modern America, Guglielmo Ferrero

Let’s face it. Willy Wonka is a reclusive weirdo living with slave-midgets. It’s a well-kept secret that the current novel on the shelves calling itself Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is rewrite of the first version. Originally, the workers in his factory, were based on African Pygmies. That’s right, they were small black people from Africa, and were the only ones willing to live inside of his factory all of the time. Furthermore, they “work for a wage of cacao beans, sing songs that are almost war chants, and allow themselves to be experimented on like laboratory animals” (Source). However, it would seem that it is not chattel slavery, given Wonka’s concessions to them such as maintaining the factory at a high temperature, and the fact that they seem happy to be there. Naturally, however, the

question arises if they would be happier roaming the free world. Of course we’ll never know because they cannot leave.

The novel was revised after great backlash, and Dahl refashioned them into Oompa-Loompas from Loompaland, who have white skin and wear leaves for clothing, which is still a far cry from the circus act that both films make them out to be. Everything is just so grand in the world of abundance that even factory workers are singing midgets!

This makes Wonka appear like an eccentric narcissist, but the plot thickens. Wonka care little for those in the outside world. He has little sympathy for children and merely stands by as if he were a neutral observer as they destroy themselves while trying to fulfill their dreams through his factory—Violet is turned permanently blue, Mike ends up ten feet tall, etc.

To me this represents the advertising industry and the culture of consumerism. It draws you in with promises that your dreams will come true, and once you are sucked in, you’re spit out as damaged goods. Even Charlie can never leave the factory again, at least not until Willy Wonka dies. The worst part is that it’s a candy factory with no real benefit to society, and indeed probably has a negative effect (diabetes, etc). This is the sinister nature that I think the 2005 movie was trying to portray. Welcome to Hotel California, Charlie.

And what are Wonka’s goals? First and foremost, the whole scheme of the factory tour was a way to create demand for his product. Secondly, he tells Charlie that he needs a child to take over his factory, rather than a adult who would impose his own views and opinions on its operation. In other words, he wants to perpetuate himself. Charlie, then, can have a piece of “the promised land” in turn for servitude. Everybody in Wonka’s world must be controlled by him and they are kept happy by their own isolation and addictions. How very healthy.

Again, this is what happens to us in reality. A good example of this is the first scene in the 1971 film version where we see all the children running out of school and into a candy store while the candy man begins to sing to them as he sells them candy, giving them the old razzle dazzle. Children can be very profitable.

The Children: Augustus is a gluttonous boy who constantly engorges himself on sweets. Veruca is spoiled and as soon as she gets what she wants, she has new demands that must be fulfilled. Mike is lazy and potentially violent. And Violet perhaps more than anybody represents the modern capitalistic spirit—the need to win at irrelevant and meaningless pursuits, such as chewing gum. Meanwhile, Charlie is a humble and unspoiled little boy. On the surface, then, we have the timeless story of a good person in a bad world.

However, while it’s clear that the other parents are creating entitled monsters, Charlie’s own family is filling his head with the heroism of industrial giants (Wonka), and his teacher decides to dismiss class and run to the factory himself when he first heard that Wonka would be permitting some to enter. Once they are in the factory, the parents often behave as children themselves and fail to stop their offspring from signing a contract that none of them can read. There are no positive examples for these children.

It’s interesting, though, that the story can condemn the people that the system produces, but never the underlying system that defines the goals and ends up leading Charlie to emulate the very people that he condemns.

The Contradictory Ending – I cannot be the only one who finds the ending to be contradictory, especially in the 1971 version. First, we hear throughout the film that greed is bad, and that people should be humble, especially in the character Veruca with her “I want it now” song. But then in the final elevator scene, Wonka asks Charlie what happens to the boy who gets everything he ever wanted. He lives happily ever after. Either commercial pleasures make you happy or they don’t! End.

For a quick background on myself, I am a former currencies trader, and nearly everything that follows are things that I learned from others in the industry, most of them who made far more money than I ever did. You will probably never be taught this in economics class

Let’s start with the base unit of money, the dollar. In the past a currency used to be a tangible thing—a gold coin, a goat, etc, and many people today blame the shift away from the gold standard as the fundamental change in the nature of the monetary system, but they are wrong. The fundamental change is not that it’s not backed by a hard-asset (this credit system of money has been around for thousands of years), but that it has entirely been removed from the physical world and exists in the unconstrained digital world. Today, money is nothing more than a computer input on a complicated excel spreadsheet.

Most popular economic schools of thought use logic from the pre-Information Age to describe the digital world, meaning that their conclusions are utterly wrong. For example, to talk in terms of the government “printing more money.” What the government (Federal Reserve, actually) does when it wants to “print money” is add more zeros to a given amount on a computer. There are no physical limitations to the amount that a person can possess, transfer, owe, etc.

In fact, this is why the United States has been the true winner with its trade deficit in recent years. We have had less zeros on our spreadsheet, but more physical goods and services (up until recently). Meanwhile, the rest of the world’s governments have had more zeros over the past few decades, but have lived in greater destitution. We were literally getting something for nothing. Everybody was perfectly happy to go along with it until the greed increased and the masses stopped getting the benefits.

So, what actually happens when you deposit money into a bank in US Dollars? Every bank holding USD has an account with the Federal Reserve (and it works the same with other currencies in their equivalent central banks). To simplify matters, let’s say that you deposit $100,000 in Bank of America. BoA, in turn, holds an account with the Fed. Now BoA decides to loan $80,000 to a farmer. All that’s happening is that $80,000 is being transferred to BoA’s savings account from its checking account. See below:

And here’s the vital point to understand, so long as the transaction always remains in USD, nothing ever leaves the Federal Reserve. The net change is zero. This is called double-entry bookkeeping. 

You’re now ready to understand why the national debt is a scam on the American people. Oh, but the US is borrowing money from China, you may protest. Actually, the way that the US “borrows” money is in “selling” Treasury Securities to other nations. The whole transaction is done in USD so, again, nothing ever leaves the Federal Reserve. But most importantly, the only thing that paying the national debt consists of is transferring money from a savings account into a checking account:

The Chinese are not staring into an empty bank vault wondering when the US will give them money to fill it back up. This is why nobody is actually worried about China taking over the USA due to its massive “holdings” in this country. The Fed can nix that plan in an instant. Actually, the entire national debt could be resolved in 60 seconds. Remember when the president of Ecuador declared that he wouldn’t pay his debts to the United States and got away with it?

Similarly, foreign banks offering USD accounts, or even that can receive wire transfers in dollars, will have an account in the United States with what is called an “intermediary bank.” This bank, in turn, will have an account directly with the Fed, so it’s all linked, and it’s all centrally controlled. Thus, the debt is a scam; the government actively chooses to be in debt.

So what are our taxes paying for? Nothing, actually. To say that the government must levy income taxes to pay for roads, education, or health care is yet another sleight of hand. It should be clear now that the government never needs to touch your bank account to have money to pay for these programs. If they want something, they can have it. So why are we taxed so much? Taxes directly control inflation, which hurts the 99% when when the price of goods increases while their salaries do not.

Taxes are the government’s way of doing damage control from the bank’s actions, and it works for them because the harder times get, the more desperate people are to believe in politicians for change. It’s also useful to have a poor population for a number of other reasons—they are unarmed, uneducated, and can’t leave. Going back to how the Federal Reserve works, the only thing that happens when you are taxed is that X amount is debited from your account and transferred into another’s checking account, all in one internal transaction. I’ve heard that the IRS literally will burn cash if you take it to them, though I’m not sure that this is true. However since the only thing they would do is count the cash, and change the amount that shows up in the system, it is possible, and for this reason perhaps they discourage you paying in cash.

So why are people charged for criminal tax evasion and other such trumped up financial “offenses?” The reason for criminal tax evasion was originally to slam people for unrelated crimes that the government cannot prove. The first person to be charged with criminal tax evasion was Al Capone, and even in the pre-digital world it was recognized that this money wasn’t directly needed to fund anything. Since then, things have really gotten out of hand. Taxes are also useful in forcing people to rely on the single, central currency (directly benefiting the Federal Reserve), even though it’s already been proven that it’s not necessary to have a single currency for a country to operate effectively, as most of the world once lived this way.

To further elaborate on this control structure, it’s the banks who also control exchange rates, thanks to the system of floating exchange rates. The government and its banking friends like to perpetuate the myth that this actually means that the rates are controlled by an ambiguous entity called “the free market,” when in reality, the rates are set by a small group of banks that participate in the Interbank Market. They thus control how much your assets are worth, and even purposefully destabilize markets to force you to pay them more money to reduce your own risk. This affects your daily life more than you realize, and, naturally, they make billions off of you whether the price moves up or down.

And really, with this system, why would the 1% want to change it in any way? They have all the upside and none of the downside. When things go wrong and their bubbles inevitably burst, austerity measures are imposed on the 99%, while their lives continue on pretty much the same. When they get tired of the grind, they get appointed to governmental offices. This system is why the Democrats can comfortably work with the bankers, creating government programs and bailing out the institutions that are “too big to fail,” only increasing their power and arrogance. This is why the Republicans can promise more deregulation and lower taxes, letting them run even more wild. This is why the people will continue to support the system, believing it’s a benign form of capitalism that will “trickle” down to them, even though it never really does.

That’s why they are laughing at the protestors and toasting them with champagne. So long as this centralized form of control remains, they will continue the tragic charade. Indeed, the rabbit hole goes far deeper than I’ve presented here, but hopefully this has been a good primer on how taxes and currencies really work. If you want to know more, read up on Modern Monetary Theory. I want to clarify that I do not agree with the recommendations of these economists, but the way that they describe the monetary system is correct.

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Overview – To briefly summarize, the lessons in the novel are:
1) This book is wise, and if you can’t see that you’re a stupid barbarian
2) Nature gives you legitimate and accurate signals based on your personal affairs
3) The universe will conspire to give you what you want
4) You should act on your dreams (literally)
5) You become a part of the Soul of the Universe (?) by chasing these dreams

Hopefully this list alone has illustrated while I believe the novel to be a pile of sanctimonious crap. I want to clarify that I am not against people working toward achieving their goals; I myself have a passion and dreams I’d like to accomplish. However, that is not what I believe the book actually promotes.

Religion – “I realized that the symbolic language that used to irritate and disorient me so much was actually the only way of reaching the Soul of the World.” (Note that this and all of the following quotes are my own translations)

Coelho is little more than Ron Hubbard (creator of Scientology). He has consciously drawn from major religious to create a cult-like element to his “teachings.” From the Buddhists he has borrowed the use of vague language—such as their Om chant. From religions such as Wicca we have the story’s magic and soul of nature. For example, to become a member of the “alchemist-cult” you must learn to read the “signs” of the universe, which can be in the form of a fortune-teller, birds flying overhead, a horse’s braying, or the wrinkles on a stranger’s hands. There’s actually a clinical term for seeing meaning in meaningless actions—delusions.

One particular quote stood out to me: “He was penetrating the Language of the World and everything on this earth made sense, including the flight of the seagulls.” This almost harks back to the Romans examining pig intestines to determine if war would come to the Italian peninsula. It occurred to me more than once that the title should have been “If J.K. Rowling was a World Religions major.”

Seeing as he is from Brazil, and his works are immensely popular in the surrounding Latin American nations, he has drawn most heavily from Catholicism. Not only is the main character’s name Santiago (a Catholic saint), but he’s a shepherd (“The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” and of course we do see Coehlo say that nobody can ever want if they’re following their dream). His recruitment of the poor and needy is also taken from Christianity, seemingly giving purpose and meaning to their destitution.

Fascinatingly, however, Coehlo has updated these belief systems. If you’ll notice, most major religions require you to make a sacrifice in turn for getting something from the gods, whether it’s a blood sacrifice, following a rigid moral code, paying tithe, committing suicide, etc., but in Coehlo’s world, the only thing you have to do is chase your dreams in an all-encompassing way, and, of course, put a sanctimonious twist on your motivations. “Oh, no, I don’t want to be the richest man alive. I want to connect with the Soul of the Universe!” Another interesting thing about this cult is that at the very beginning of the book he lists one of the authors who has reached this state of consciousness is Ernest Hemingway. Who knew one of America’s most renowned drunkards was really a prophet?

Thus, with these elements taken together, it creates a belief system for Christians who aren’t satisfied with a miracle-free world and want more of the divine; it’s also for atheists who (knowingly or unknowingly) want more of the divine. The result is an interesting, if incoherent, amalgam of paganism and Christianity; or even mystic pantheism, perhaps (the universe is God and God is magical). I will admit the man is clever.

Aside from the overt religiosity of the novel, he also draws from various stock settings and figures from other books or films—the desert oasis, abandoned churches, Oscar Wilde, Hemingway, Narcissus, the lush fields of Spain, Egyptian pyramids, etc. For better or worse, his books sales show that he has indeed been successful in creating his own mythology.

Romanticism – “Dreams are the language of God. Only He speaks the language of the world, I just interpret it. But if you speak the language of your soul, only you can understand it.”

Over and over Coelho implies that books are worthless, though it’s really no wonder he thinks this given that he himself says he spent years and years reading books on magic, alchemy, and religion. The heroic characters are portrayed as trusting in their instincts and being in touch with the universe, while the intellectuals around them are like closed-circuit retards; it would seem only primitive mysticism can be trusted. This message has mobilized millions of people who are not regular readers (at least not of non-fiction) to buy his books.

Much of Latin America is still agricultural and many people, though they may not be farmers, are still linked to the countryside. It is more meaningful to this population to read that Santiago believes that his sheep can understand him and rejects the incomprehensible world of thick books. Of course, it also provides us with the overused (but successful) archetype of the simple guy dragged into the larger world for which he’s unprepared.

The romantic ideal is thus that the greater wisdom is that the greater wisdom is in simplicity, and a lack of education can be a virtue. People should be looking outward toward Nature, and not inward to their own intelligence and rationality. However, it’s simply an ideal, and I think in practice the result is that the population is dumbed down. (see: MTV reality shows, or perhaps more relevantly, the fact that dictators in Latin America tend to be celebrated, at least up until their plans of genocide kick in). Coelho writes, “If today I became a monster and decided to kill them all, one by one, they wouldn’t even realize what was happening until almost the whole heard was exterminated [or had bought my books].” Touche.

Entitlement – “Over time a “mysterious force tries to convince you that it’s impossible to realize your Personal Legend…they are forces that seem bad, but in reality are…preparing your spirit and your will, because a grand truth exists on this planet…it’s because of this desire that you were born in the Soul of the Universe.”

Santiago tells himself that his real life goal is just to travel. The story begins with him as a shepherd, which he originally thought would fulfill him but it does not. He then goes to live in Africa, and that’s not enough. He travels in a caravan and meets the girl of his dreams, and that’s not enough either. This behavioral pattern combined with the fact that he later settles down in the oasis, would seem to reveal that his real goal is not to travel, but to get his treasure. Isn’t the real lesson here that we can’t predict what will make us happy? If this were a true story, the ending would be that he goes to sleep on his wedding night and has another dream of treasure in the Americas.

Similarly, if Santiago is the romantic ideal of the adventurer looking for treasure, what’s the analogy in reality? The conquistadores, who raped, pillaged, and wrought mass destruction on the native peoples of the Americas, because of their own dreams of treasure. Honestly, how would this book have turned out if the Alchemist started to tell Coehlo he had to exterminate the Egyptians to get his treasure. He probably would have done so. I mean, the Soul of the Universe made him do it.

Speaking of which, the entire argument in the book between whether we have control over our lives, or if fate controls us makes absolutely no sense. We first learn that Santiago is a maverick who goes out to trek his own path, but then we learn that the universe conspires to make everything happen for him. I mean, he’s either taking control of his fate, or the universe is compelling him to a certain direction. You can’t have it both ways. I think the answer to this, in the logic of the novel, would be that it only steps in to help us when we really want something, not to hurt us (in the long run). I guess the people in Stalin’s Gulag, who have aids, and children who have died tragic deaths just didn’t want success enough. There are more graveyards than halls of fame in this world.

Thus, all that Coelho selling is optimism and entitlement. Welcome to the ranks of those who have enriched themselves off of other people’s blindness, dear Sir. The book should really be titled, “The Romance of the Sucker,” as our modern day Don Quixote 1) Buys into the appearance of numerous lifestyles only to be dissatisfied by them 2) Believes what gypsies say 3) Believes what random old men calling themselves kings say, and more. And at the end, Coehlo tries to sell us the message that life is fair.

Give me a break.

Overview – Pulp Fiction is a tragedy without the sadness and a comedy without the comic plot line. And at the same time as it portrays itself as a champion of those who want to escape the world of political correctness and limitations, it also mocks the dissociative culture that tends to come along with it, lamenting the American Wasteland. In other words, by pretending to have no moral message it only makes it hit harder. I also believe that the film was written with modern media criticism in mind and purposefully exaggerates the ever-criticized aspects of movies, such as jumping from scene to scene with no apparent reason, and throwing together a mishmosh of genres.

Philosophy and Criticism – In Ancient Rome and Modern America Guglielmo Ferrero wrote that, in contrast to the pre-Gutenberg world in which a maximum of time and effort would be put into each written work, today “a wolfish, insatiable hunger for printed paper and reading” has overcome society and is the “scourge of our civilization.” He goes on to say that in the midst of such a society, “we, who wish to fill the world with riches” have disfigured it and made it hideous.

Tarantino first brings this cultural effect to the surface by recalling the phenomenon of pulp fiction, works churned out of the press at bullet speed, printed on inferior paper. He’s implying that the film is also a work of little substance, put out to meet people’s insatiable demand for the new, the entertaining and the stimulating. But, of course, the film aims at more than that.

The movie also aims to spin media criticism on its head. For example, in My Pilgrim’s Progress, George Trow wrote, “Television will not allow you to follow a story. Each broadcast is self-contained…they value and love the episodic possibilities within the news.” Hence, Pulp Fiction employs several broadcasting techniques—jumping from story to story with no apparent link between them, and yet ultimately brings them into a unified whole.

Another example would be Neil Postman’s commentary that in the modern media world, “We are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness, that is to say, news as pure entertainment.” I think that Pulp Fiction seeks to rebel against this as well, because it’s a large theme in the movie that ultimately you must deal with the consequences of your actions. For example, we see Jules and Vincent cleaning up the car after they accidentally kill a man in broad daylight, rather than using the deus ex machina of the commercial break, off-scene action, or cutting to black, cleansing the mental palate.

Tarantino also heavily exaggerates the clashing of genres, playing on the postmodern theory of hyperreality. “The striking aspect of the whole is not the quantity of [genres] plundered from half of Europe, the nonchalance with which the artificial tissue seamlessly connects fake and genuine, but rather the sense of fullness, the obsessive determination not to leave a single space that doesn’t suggest something, and hence the masterpiece of bricolage, haunted by the horror vacui that is here achieved.”

This quote from Umberto Eco’s Travels in Hyperreality originally referred to Hearst Castle, which threw together Greek artifacts, medieval convent floorings, and newly dried neoclassical paintings, but I also think it applies to Pulp Fiction which mashes together the genres of comedy, satire, mystery, tragedy, and even gangster films and film noir.

The tragic genre is particularly notable to me. The entire film I was reminded of Shakespeare’s tragedies, probably because I recently wrote a series of essays on them. Just one example is King Lear, in which most the good, central characters die tragic deaths, though one lives on, jaded by the world around him, to become the next King of England. Similarly, many of the characters in the movie either die or suffer tragic fates in another way (overdosing, rape), while Jules lives on as a seemingly reformed hit man.

As for why I believe that the film is also a satire, I feel that it mocks the people who idolize characters such as Scarface, or in the film, Vincent and Jules. I’ve met heroin and coke addicts, and, I definitely would not consider them heroes or people to emulate in any way; they say that every alcoholic takes six people down with them. In other words, it holds people up as celebrities, and then mocks the kind of people that would buy into this lifestyle. But let’s look a little closer at the women and men that we meet.

Vincent – Most of the main characters are not heroes, or anti-heroes, they are objects of satire on modern psychosis. Vincent’s disassociation from his own actions allow him to argue about the morality of killing a man after massaging his wife’s feet, while himself on the way to commit cold-blooded murder. We also see Vincent enraged at the thought of his car being keyed, but does not question how his much more violent actions might make others feel. Another example of this behavior is his criticism of Marcellus’s wife for ordering a five-dollar milkshake, which is almost anti-consumerist, when money clearly is important to him if he’s working as a hit man.

Thus, Vincent is a satire on our own skewed moral systems, and also that people are looking to the wrong places for help. When Marcellus’s wife is overdosing, instead of taking her to the hospital, he takes her to his heroin dealer. Meanwhile, Samuel L. Jackson’s character believes that he was saved by divine intervention. In reality, the only thing that happened was a near-death scenario wakening him to his own life’s circumstances. He caught a glimpse of reality, not God.

Jules – Clearly then, this hypocrisy and lack of awareness also plagues Jules, which is why we see him using a Biblical passage as his death message. Going back to the idea of a Shakespearean tragedy being invoked, Jules is simply playing a role in the theatrum mundi (world stage), that of preacher and deliverer of vengeance, without any recognition of the significance of this. Playing these roles has lost its meaning, especially in the film in which genres are being slapped together like a Frankenstein Barbie—or the woman in the film May. They are living in a world of abandoned shells.

To further elaborate on this idea, Ryan Holiday wrote that one example of an abandoned shell is the widespread use of the laurel leaves icon that was originally the symbol of a film having been entered into an important film festival, meaning that the film was likely to be original and lacking studio commercialization. However, over time this symbol has been commercialized to the point where the icon is meaningless. Slapping this badge on a film has become a trite, routine event.

In fact, I think that this argument can go even further. Laurel leaf wreaths were once the symbol of imperialism, having graced the heads of Roman emperors. Using Roman imagery reemerged in more modern times with the rise of the humanities and the Enlightenment age (think Napoleon wearing these laurel leaves once again as “emperor.”) However, by around 1830, Greek imagery replaced Roman as the preferred classical throwback, and of course since then most all classical imagery as a whole has been commercialized to the point of emptiness. Now laurel leaves are something that we stamp on any old movie with no hesitation.

In any case, Jules’s use of the book of Ezekiel (millions having died over time for Biblical words) is also an abandoned shell

“Pumpkin” and “Honey Bunny” – The first two characters we meet feel no guilt about robbing innocent people in a diner, and in fact are proud of themselves for conceiving the idea. They antisocially flip an inner switch and begin terrorizing the restaurant. Shakespeare also often included common people in a play dominated by aristocrats (big time, mob-men would be the aristocratic version of diner robbers) to give you a sense of context. The context, then, is that the central, gangster characters are not isolated, debased men in a moral world, it’s that they are from a larger corrupt world. Wasteland America.

Manliness – Manliness is another major theme in the film, and this is the key to understanding the Golden Watch plot line, in which we see a young Butch given his father’s watch after it lived for seven years between two different men’s ass cheeks. The two men fought in the Vietnam war, and Butch himself grew up to be a fighter, though in the artificial environment of the boxing ring.

Man-to-man dueling was once done on the basis of honor. For example, the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. In the Empire of Liberty, Gordon Wood wrote that “honor was the value genteel society placed on a gentleman and the value that a gentleman placed on himself. Honor suggested a public drama in which men played roles for which they were either praised or blamed.” And a face-to-face duel was the height of this honor.

However, in the film we see that dueling, which in the modern world amounts to a fist fight (and in Butch’s case, purely for money), this value has been lost. Along these lines, at the beginning of the film Marcellus tells Butch that “pride is nothing compared to money,” yet he obviously does not hold this belief because after his rape, he allows Butch to leave with the money earned from his betrayal, so long as he keeps the rape a secret—safeguarding his pride. Perhaps what Tarantino is trying to say, then, is that proper outlets for manliness have been taken away from men.

How delighted would be all the kings, czars, and fuhrers of the past…to know that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourses takes the form of a jest?
-Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Overview –Clueless is an interesting social experiment. The producers deliberately set out to make new trends for teenagers, even releasing a Clueless-inspired line of Barbie dolls, and these efforts were wildly successfully. But, at the same time, the film is a satire on the very people it was marketed to. It depicts a Huxleyian (as opposed to Orwellian) dystopia. We do not have to fear Big Brother as much as we have to fear the golden fetters of Clueless, the myth of human progress through material goods which drives us to laugh and dance all the way to slavery.

Cher and Tai – Cher is one big walking and talking advertisement. In fact, the very first line in the movie is: “You’re probably going, ‘Is this like a Noxema commercial or what?’” The young aristocrats drive around in expensive cars, go shopping, and worry about how they are going to manipulate the people around them to their own ends. Friendships are generally based on understanding “what it’s like to have people be jealous of us,” but Cher’s friendship with Tai has a different motive: changing her to validate her own existence. In fact, Tai is even more removed from reality than Cher. She is proud of her sexual conquests at fifteen years old, and is already into hard drugs. In fact, at the end of the movie she rejects much of Cher’s world and chooses instead to be with a lazy, mildly-retarded drug addict. This is the American microcosm; we’re supposed to be proud and feel touched by this choice because she’s being “true to herself.”

Toward the end Cher seeks to redeem her meaningless existence through charity (reflecting her aristocratic position in society), but in the end, it’s still all about herself. She cannot escape her narcissism as everything becomes a reflection of her. In fact, she’s so idealistic that her ideal man is a gay guy.

When the masses first saw the aristocracy up close with the advent of photography and the paparazzi, they were revolted at their conspicuous consumption and the sharp contrast with their own grueling factory life. But now that we’ve been tamed, we seek to emulate them. Thus, though we can see that Cher is in fact an immature, materialistic, and often bitchy teenage girl, she’s widely admired for her glamor. However, the joke is on us all as we all become slaves to material pleasures.

Josh – Like Josh, you may be thinking “I’m smarter than this. Just because an actor wants me to buy something does not mean I will.” But that’s the most insidious part of the system, and the meaning of the character Josh (to me). There’s another advertising niche that plays on this kind of self-congratulation—extremely expensive universities, post-modern newspapers, granola, glossy hardback copies of Nietzsche, and beanie manufacturers. Josh is simply conforming to another prepackaged, commercial mold.

Debate Class and Authority – Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business largely without protest or even much popular notice. – Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman

The scenes in the debate class are some of the most interesting and revealing in the film. Cher obviously is ignorant when she compares giving Haitian refugees shelter with her millionaire father’s birthday party, but why should she not view this as the proper way to debate? She has learned jury manipulation from her father, and from the media she has observed the way that American politics is not much more than a play on emotion and crowd sentiment, versus practical debate. It’s hard to imagine, say, Lincoln spitting out a speech of Cher’s caliber, but it’s not difficult to imagine George W. Bush speaking as she does.

Further, the educational system is obviously failing when the students file their nails, listen to CDs and check their pagers during her speech, but in the end she’s enthusiastically applauded for her vapidness. Meanwhile, while her teacher will not give her an unfair grade, he does not offer any constructive criticism. With this societal feedback, what other lesson could she extract from the experience other than the world is being unfair to her and she must manipulate her miserable teacher for justice? We also later see her manipulations rewarded.

Their family lives do not seem to offer any solid role models either. Christian is from a broken home, Cher’s mother died while getting one of many plastic surgeries, and “Daddy” refers to his own parents as “brain-dead low lives” suggesting that he himself comes from an emotionally empty background. Josh’s home life consists of a fourth step-father who constantly criticizes him, and dinner at the Horowitz’s consists of everybody jumping to answer their cell phones. And let’s not forget Cher and Josh were once step-brother and step-sister, possibly suggesting a perversion of family life as well.

What I’m getting is that these teenagers are being thrust into an adult world, but their frivolous education and hobbies have failed to teach them to make mature decisions. As we saw earlier, Tai has been thrust into a world of sex and drugs, Dionne and her boyfriend act out an adult fantasy in their relationship, Cher childishly imitates her father’s legal jargon by asking her debate teacher, “do you recall the dates of these alleged tardies?” and, most humorously, Christian is imitating the Rat Pack by speaking and dressing like a forty-year old man from another era. Indeed, they are all playacting.

Society and Soma – Their escape (or is it?) from this world is consumerism. In Brave New World, Huxley depicts a society that should no longer have to fear anything, or worry about their basic needs being met, and yet, depression is a problem only able to be solved by the drug soma. Indeed, Brave New World was inspired by the rampant consumerism and lax morals in American society.

The problem is that it becomes an addiction. Whenever Cher gets depressed, she goes to the mall. When Cher is robbed in the Los Angeles ghetto, her biggest concern is that her designer dress will be ruined. When she’s at a party and a guy spills a drink on her shoes, she melts down like a Frenchman storming the Bastille. Her addiction to material goods must continually be fed or else her mental state goes awry. In other words, we pay a hefty price for the snake oil dreams that manufacturers and the media have dreamed up for us.

Conclusion – Don’t get me wrong, I find Clueless to be a hilarious movie, and I enjoyed watching it, but I find the aftertaste to be far more bitter than sweet.