I watched Cars for the first time tonight. I never in a thousand years expected to find such an excellent moral tale in a movie about anthropomorphic cars.
At the beginning of the movie, the main character is already competing to be the very best of the era. He makes a 3-way tie just barely (if we're being honest, in sort of a dodgy way) and is on his way to get another chance. His hyper-competitiveness leads him and the people around him to take stupid risks, which lands him in trouble.
Over the course of his penance for his mistakes, he discovers that he's in the company of someone who achieved everything he ever wanted and more, who he thought initially was just a loser. Kids wouldn't get this, but I really liked this part because it shows that the shiny goal you're working so hard for isn't necessarily going to sustain you throughout your entire life. It's one milestone along a long road of life.
At the end of the movie, he's about to win, but goes back to do the right thing instead of seeking immediate glory, and ultimately gets third place, but in so doing earns the respect of the crowd and his peers while the actual winner looks like a knob and is largely disregarded.
I know it seems really strange to put that much thought into a movie about anthropomorphic cars, but having listened to too much podcast of the lotus eaters and Jordan Peterson, I've come to believe that the allegorical lessons in the media we present to our kids is equally important to the content itself. It's ok for some media to have weak lessons or to just be fun (Frankly, I feel like the adventures of Tom Sawyer is largely just fun stories about being a kid, and I think there's value in that too, showing that it's ok to be a kid and have adventures and interact with the world, a lesson I expect current younger generations will need to learn), but good lessons are important.
As an aside, he really likes the graphics in Elemental right now, but I hate that movie's moral lessons. The inciting incident of the story is the main character losing her temper, and at several incidences she loses her temper again and again and never really pays penance for it or learns from it. The moral lesson of the movie seems to be "the reason you're so mad is you're not getting what you want, so just get what you want" which is sociopathic and it's no surprise such a movie was made by Hollywood in 2022. the only thing that saves it a bit is the filial piety from the fire people really having a lot of asian characteristics, but that's a peripheral theme and not a core lesson.
At the beginning of the movie, the main character is already competing to be the very best of the era. He makes a 3-way tie just barely (if we're being honest, in sort of a dodgy way) and is on his way to get another chance. His hyper-competitiveness leads him and the people around him to take stupid risks, which lands him in trouble.
Over the course of his penance for his mistakes, he discovers that he's in the company of someone who achieved everything he ever wanted and more, who he thought initially was just a loser. Kids wouldn't get this, but I really liked this part because it shows that the shiny goal you're working so hard for isn't necessarily going to sustain you throughout your entire life. It's one milestone along a long road of life.
At the end of the movie, he's about to win, but goes back to do the right thing instead of seeking immediate glory, and ultimately gets third place, but in so doing earns the respect of the crowd and his peers while the actual winner looks like a knob and is largely disregarded.
I know it seems really strange to put that much thought into a movie about anthropomorphic cars, but having listened to too much podcast of the lotus eaters and Jordan Peterson, I've come to believe that the allegorical lessons in the media we present to our kids is equally important to the content itself. It's ok for some media to have weak lessons or to just be fun (Frankly, I feel like the adventures of Tom Sawyer is largely just fun stories about being a kid, and I think there's value in that too, showing that it's ok to be a kid and have adventures and interact with the world, a lesson I expect current younger generations will need to learn), but good lessons are important.
As an aside, he really likes the graphics in Elemental right now, but I hate that movie's moral lessons. The inciting incident of the story is the main character losing her temper, and at several incidences she loses her temper again and again and never really pays penance for it or learns from it. The moral lesson of the movie seems to be "the reason you're so mad is you're not getting what you want, so just get what you want" which is sociopathic and it's no surprise such a movie was made by Hollywood in 2022. the only thing that saves it a bit is the filial piety from the fire people really having a lot of asian characteristics, but that's a peripheral theme and not a core lesson.
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