Joanne Hinkel,
Jul 08, 2009
With their multi-million dollar budgets, special effects, high-tech editing, and beautiful people, it's easy to forget that movies are essentially a means for storytelling. At times these stories function as folktales or fables, imparting invaluable lessons to us moviegoers. Even the summer box-office hit The Hangover has some sage advice for us, something along the lines of ... "Don't go to Vegas with a weird bearded guy you barely know who hangs out pants-less, or bad things will happen."
Some of the best horrors, comedies, dramas, and thrillers in the past decade can fall neatly into the category we're talking about -- that of cautionary tales. Well, horror flicks are almost always cautionary tales: From Freddy Krueger to Jason Voorhees to the guy with the fish-hook hand in I Know What You Did Last Summer, the serial killers aren't usually just bad seeds; they are the byproducts of one person's selfish act or of a wrongdoing by society. Horror flicks aside, we can think of 10 cautionary tales in the past 20 years that taught people a lesson, that left folks scratching their heads and reconsidering their attitudes, long after the lights went up and their popcorn was digested.
TOP 10 CAUTIONARY TALES
1.) American Beauty, 1999
The message: You can never keep up with the Joneses.
Sure, we could have gone with Revolutionary Road or Far From Heaven or even The Ice Storm here -- as each of these dramas articulates how upper middle class suburbia can crush your dreams rather than make them come true, and how the rat race will kill your spirit rather than enliven it. But Lester (Kevin Spacey) and Carolyn's relationship really showed us how by trying to seem perfect to everyone else they leave their own relationship behind.
2.) Election, 1999
The message: Jealousy will ruin you.
Suspicious counting techniques continues to plague many a political election in this country and abroad, but Jim McAllister's (Matthew Broderick) betrayal of "democracy" at his high school's class president election only backfired on him. After throwing away some votes for Tracy Flick he ended up losing his wife, his teaching job, and his dignity. No matter how small or how big the stakes, rigging an election is always a life-altering mistake.
3.) The MatrixTrilogy, 1999 - 2003
The message: Don't let technology take over.
It's already happening, of course. The machines have already taken over. Now trains and planes can automatically operate, robots will vacuum your floors for you, and when the Internet connection goes down we don't know how to function. This trilogy serves as the most important cautionary tale of the new millennium, reminding us to keep humanity intact throughout all this "progress" ... or else.
4.) Traffic, 2000
The message: We need to reform drug policy because it's killing a lot of people.
Really more of a reality check than a cautionary tale, Soderbergh's film pastiche of stories showing the affects of the criminalization of drugs on families and politics offers up a lot of food for thought. By showing us such a complicated web of stories -- from the perspectives of Mexican border cops, suburban teenaged users, politicians, and dealers -- we get to see how ripe for corruption and abuse U.S. drug policies are.
5.) Crash, 2004
The message: Be nice to each other. (Love thy neighbor.)
No matter how isolated and insular our lives may feel these days -- especially as cars and computers keep us at a literal and emotional distance from each other -- we need to take care of each other, 'cause we never know when we'll need each others' help. We're all in this together. When Officer John Ryan (Matt Dillon) helps Thandie Newton out of the car in one of the final scenes, the message really hits home.
6.) 40-Year-Old Virgin, 2005
The message: Don't put anything on a pedestal or you'll miss out on life.
If you've seen the movie you know that Andy (Steve Carell) gets hazed by his co-workers for putting the, ahem, we'll call it "sex," on a pedestal and that's how he wound up 40 years old and still a virgin. Essentially, Andy let fear rule his life -- fear of rejection, fear of a woman's anatomy, fear of not doing things correctly -- and it made him so alone that he had to keep himself company with action figures and superheroes. Don't let fear, of whatever it may be, stunt your development.
7.) V for Vendetta, 2005
The message: Don't let the extremists take over.
Many a dystopian movie has warned us what the future could look like should natural catastrophes and/or evil forces take over. Several of these have considered what would happen should totalitarian regimes overthrow the government -- from Blade Runner to Handmaid's Tale to Children of Men -- but V for Vendetta conveyed the grim darkness of such a reality in a stunning way.
8.) Idiocracy, 2006
The message: Smart people should not wait to reproduce.
This is perhaps the funniest movie that no one has seen (thanks to a lame promotion and distribution deal by Fox) -- and a smart one too. When an "average Joe" (Luke Wilson) is launched into the future he sees the consequences of well-educated people waiting until their early 40s to reproduce ... they don't reproduce and the country is left to the horny, prolific, and idiotic subset of the population to run. Some of the disastrous results: Food crops have dried up because they've been irrigated with Gatorade ("for the electrolytes!"), recliner chairs have built-in toilet seats, and TV is an endless cycle of ridiculous reality/game shows. This could be our future.
9.) WALL-E, 2008
The message: Recycle!
So the more obvious cautionary tale about environmentalism would be An Inconvenient Truth, but let's face it: That documentary was a yawner. This charming computer-animated sci-fi tale has a much cuter and believable style of preaching. If we continue to consume endlessly and not clean up the planet we will ruin planet Earth, and make it a very lonely uninhabitable place.
10.) The Wrestler, 2008
The message: Always have a backup plan, an alternate career path, when you're an athlete or performer.
The message here could equally be "Don't let your career define you." This movie may be the cautionary tale to end all heartbreaking cautionary tales -- I dare you to find a viewer who didn't walk away from watching that movie thankful that wasn't their life. All those times that Randy "The Ram" Robinson chose his moonlighting wrestling life over his daytime jobs, daughter, and responsibilities really came back to bite him in the end.
