This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Just deleted the "Fight Club/Calvin and Hobbes" example. That's not so much a "Jesus in Purgatory" as "crossover fiction/wild mass guessing" example.
The <Blank> is Jesus in Purgatory Game!
Moogle Gunner: Am I the only who has ever played this game with RL friends? It's great fun, really, as long as your friends have a semblance of intelligence.
Sci Vo: I don't get the name.
Alexandra Erin: A combination of two things, as I take it.
The first the tendency for literary critics/analysts to label EVERYBODY and their brother a "messiah" or "Christ figure" Okay, Simon from the Lord of the Flies, maybe... but fricking LENNY from Of Mice and Men? Apparently, all it takes is for somebody to be an innocent in any sense of the word and for them to die before you reach the back cover for them to be fricking Jesus.
The second is summed up by the (now deleted, I think) WMG entry for Harry Potter: "The kids are all dead, and Hogwarts is purgatory. Somebody had to say it."
In other words, when somebody is really reaching to find the symbolism, these are the two places they're most likely to reach.
Though from that analysis, I'd say it should be describing a "What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic??" being perpetrated by the audience rather than the creators, which the first two examples don't seem to bear out.
Air Of Mystery: I'm curious: who started the idea of this in the WMG? I mean, I added a few examples to some WMGs because I thought it was a serious WMG trope by the time I got there. Who did the original one?
Seven Seals: This comes from Final Fantasy VII, which evolved to include the claim that, well, everyone is Jesus in purgatory.
Andyzero: Well, Revolutionary Girl Utena and Haibane Renmei were serious suppositions about the series being in Purgatory. Then someone did My Name Is Earl ; a comedy series with someone being in Purgatory. After that, it started being a joke methinks.
Air Of Mystery: Holy freaking crap! I was the guy who said Sephiroth was Jesus! Sure, it's an obvious thing to say, but man, I helped create a minor in-joke. That's cool.
Khym Chanur: Would this be a cause (perhaps the leading one) of the people who thought that the Harry Potter series were Deep and Meaningful, and were disappointed when it turned out that They Were Only Children's Books All Along?
Pepinson: You say that as if it's a bad thing.
Alexandra Erin: As Hagrid is my witness, this base blasphemy will not stand!!!
- Despite what every English teacher has said Ray Bradbury claims that Fahrenheit 451 is in fact not about censorship but about how tv makes you stupid and less likely to read.
Nezumi: To some degree, this is backpedalling on his part, as a coda written by him and included with the work starting in the 70s very clearly states that it is about censorship, at least in part. And it's hard to read the book and not come to that conclusion. Or his many other works touching on the themes of the destruction of literature. "TV makes you stupid" is surely part of its narrative as well — notice the segments where people just don't care about books when trying to be introduced to them again, or having them mentioned, because they have TV — but to say it's not about censorship is laughable, even coming from the original author of the work.
Andyzero: Heh. It's lies like this that keeps the notion of the writer just being the Literary Agent alive. Aaaaand...if Ray Bradbury is lying about the symbolism in his works, there's nothing stopping anyone else from lying about what their work "really means" either! I love the smell of paranoia in the morning!
Pro-Mole: Actually, I'm just to notice that this trope is one of those I think couldn't be in oblivion forever. And also to know if anybody else heard of real authors flunking in tests about their own works, or that's just a Brazilian Urban Legend of sorts.
Sikon: "Neon Genesis Evangelion. Full stop. Although, that was really the point." What exactly was the point?
Pro-Mole: I guess that's the point.
puritybrown: Cut out this bit:
- *** To be fair, not only was C.S. Lewis a fanatical Catholic, but there's clear allegories and metaphors through-out the entire series. Aslan gets staked to a stone slab, killed, and salvation comes from his resurrection. Not to mention the clear differences and OBVIOUS similarities between the two main cultures (former: Calormenes and Everyone Else) and (latter: Calormen are obviously Turks, down to their clothing style, whilst also encompassing a larger middle-east with their More-Ancient-Than-Aslan god Tash). Not to mention The Last Battle, wherein the devious monkey has everyone accepting him as not only Aslan AND Tash, but as Tashlan, claiming that both gods are one in the same (mirroring the Sympathetic Atheist solution to the Christian-Muslim theological conflict AND God's decree of not accepting false idols, as Aslan very summarily brings down his wrath in a somewhat convoluted but very theologically common way upon the devious monkey and stupid ass that are imitating him—and Tash—and drawing worship from him). This troper believes that C.S. Lewis was totally going for the Full On Allegory. This troper is also an atheist, but enjoyed Narnia immensely, and was the only person in his fifth grade class to raise his hand and ask the teacher if "Aslan was supposed to be Jesus?"
because a) C. S. Lewis wasn't Catholic; b) he wasn't "fanatical" either; c) the Narnia books are not strictly speaking allegories, they're stories about a parallel universe in which Christ appears in the form of a lion; d) while there are some superficial resemblances between the Calormenes and various Middle Eastern cultures, they're derived from Arabian Nights-style fairy tales and not from the real world — they're more like a literary homage than an allegory; e) besides, this trope is supposed to be about implausible symbolic/allegorical interpretations of texts, not blindingly obvious ones. The theory that the White Witch's reign refers to Stalin is a good example; "Aslan is totally Jesus!" isn't. Because Aslan is Jesus.
Indigo: X-Men is not a metaphor for homosexuality — or, more accurately, it wasn't, originally. Humans vs. Mutants was the civil rights struggle. Charles Xavier was Martin Luther King Jr. and Magneto, Malcolm X. The movies were more a metaphor for homosexuality given director Brian Singer is gay himself.
Darkblade: It's been like that in the comics since the late 80s when characters like Northstar and Pixie started showing up and subsiquently coming out. The Ultimate universe defidently plays the homosexual angle over the race angle.
Po8: IMHO the state of this page is pretty awful, and I'm tempted to clean it up. Take most of the "This editor" stuff into a separate page, probably in WMG. Move most of the content of some of the more elaborate entries (e.g. Narnia) onto the page for the work in question. Any opinions?
Po8: Changed my mind. Way too much work, and I'm not sure exactly what I want to do yet. But I still think the page is a mess; maybe someone else will take it on.
Pro-Mole: So, I started the thing, but then someone added up (it's highlighted for your convenience) and now I'm confused:
- And this editor reached the conclusion that lycanthropy is J. K. Rowling's metaphor for AIDS. Think of it: it's infectious by contact with blood, almost no one refers to the condition straight-forwardly, and it is a big deal that Voldemort threatens to let Greyback loose near people's kids. To end the tree epilepsy, Greyback is probably also a metaphor for pedophilia. Of course, most werewolves act like this.
Do they? As far as I remember, Greyback is notable for planning his attacks (by staying close to his victims near the full moon) and also for preferring children as victims. Would I be incredibly wrong?
- - - - George TSLC: Have just combined a "Pardon me, you must not have read the book" natter into text. Particularly unfortunate since the disagreement was with Martin Gardner (as reported by the wikipedia) who most certain HAS read the Alice books@
Meta Four: Some relevant song lyrics. I'ma just dump them here rather than turning the front into more of a quote fest.
- "Hey man did you write it for me?
It seems like it, it spoke to me."
"You made it up, you made it up,
You made it up, you made it up."— Starflyer 59, "M23"
fleb: Your restraint is admirable, applauded, and hopefully imitated.
fleb: Removed the link to Yahoo News, infamous for expiring their links and thus screwing over everyone who ever links to them. It's from almost a whole year ago. Original version:
- * Take your pick with Harry Potter. An allegorical polemic against the UK's strict gun laws. A diatribe against Thatcher's Britain
. A foaming defense of fascism. Praise for a class society. Subversive feminism. Subversive racism. Subversive Marxism. Damaging society by making nerdiness cool and desirable instead of a cause of beatings to minimize its destructive influence. Damaging society by projecting and propagating the domination of sport over superior influences such as nerdiness.
slb: That New York Times article in the Metal Gear Solid 4 section is ridiculous. Although the games' inner plots consist of Thirty Xanatos Pileups, the overall themes are dead-obvious in each one. The columnist shrouds each game in "mystery" to cater to the idea that "games are just something we older folk can't get." MGS 1 warns about reckless nuclear proliferation and not allowing your heritage/genes control your life — nobody needs to see more than the ending movie to figure that out. MGS 2 is about the dangers of censorship and the superpowerful U.S. government. They're clearer than any movie I've seen, yet the mainstream media cries the mantra "Video games! All is smoke and mirrors! All is mystery! The new generation speaks a foreign language! We understand nothing!" Of course, why bother doing the research for video games, a childish medium that no one takes seriously, right?
BritBllt: Removing this one...
- FLCL It's about puberty, isn't it?
Not because it's wrong, but because it's right, which is exactly what this trope's not about. FLCL's pretty anvilicious about the puberty metaphor. It'd have to be something crazier, like "it's really about Kamon, who's dreaming about being his nonexistent son Naota after being hit in the head by a guitar thrown into a mosh pit" to fit.
