From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihnp4!ixn5c!inuxc!pur-ee!mj
Newsgroups: net.movies
Title: Re: ET as JC (superstar or astronaut?) - (nf)
Article-I.D.: pur-ee.679
Posted: Sun Nov 21 18:34:08 1982
Received: Mon Nov 22 02:38:30 1982

#R:nsc:-23500:pur-ee:7000024:000:1968
pur-ee!mj    Nov  7 00:36:00 1982

	These parallels between the movie E.T. and the life of Christ
are certainly interesting, and they may have been intentional.  
If they weren't intentional, I think you would have the basis for a 
very interesting discussion on the strange property of works of art 
that say more than they were meant to say.

	For example, a couple of years ago, I saw SUPERMAN II. Not 
a fabulous movie, by any means, nor a particularly important
artistic accomplishment.  But as my friends and I left the theater,
we began to discuss some of the **ideas** that made the movie appealing.
SUPERMAN II dealt not just with Superman and Lois Lane finally discovering
each other, but with people's feelings about love, power, and the 
meaning of courage.  The 'traditional' macho image of masculinity
sees love for a woman as a weakness, but this DUMB movie shows us
that the greatest strength of all is gained by avoiding the urge to destroy
the forces that we fear most, and and to see love not as a weakness but as a 
great strength. Pretty heady stuff for a comic strip.

	I think that E.T. may have a lot in common with many other movies
in this respect. The elation we experience because of a movie like
this is not so much that E.T. is terribly appealing, or that it is
full of 'deep' and 'important' symbolism, but that it is a human
story that speaks to the basic philosophies that are the infrastructure
of our lives. This serendipitous 'accidental' symbolism is the earmark 
of true creativity. Whether an artist makes a song, poem, painting, or movie,
if the artist is using the intuition with the mind to create symbolism,
some of the artist's personality and view of the world is bound to leak
out unintentionally. 

	On the other hand, a lot of this can be attributed to the observer
who projects his own thoughts and emotions onto the subject, extracting
meanings from it that were never intended.

	I'm getting a headache....


						Mark Johnson
						decvax!pur-ee!mj