4

The Cat In The Hat Criticizes Christian Values

Random House, Houghton Mifflin

Though it's widely known that Dr. Seuss. loved to bury lessons and meaning in his mind-bending children's books, The Cat In The Hat doesn't appear to have anything deep to say. A clinically insane feline turns up unannounced at the house of two siblings who are stuck inside because it's raining, makes a mess, and cleans it up just before mom comes home. It is a much-loved book which was made into a film that still makes me terror-vomit.

3

WALL-E Retells Noah's Flood

Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios

WALL-E prepares kids for the end of the world by having humans flee garbage ball Earth and chill in space for a few centuries until the coast is clear. You know, the way all good stories are supposed to scare the shit out of children.

Our hero, WALL-E, spends centuries alone building soaring towers of crap while sifting through the junk for anything interesting. On the day we meet him, he finds a plant growing among all the shit. He has no one to show this to until EVE, a technologically superior robot, arrives. I can't think of a single thing that could symbolize.

Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios
Nope, no symbolism there at all. Not one symbolism.

The discovery of WALL-E's green shoot kick-starts a whole series of events, reveals a plot to keep our species fat and pacified (sort of like if HAL 9000 had been made by McDonald's), and ends up showing our tubby descendants that our planet is ready for us to fuck it up once more.

WALL-E is clearly a modern retelling of Noah's flood. EVE represents Noah's dove. She's white, for starters, with little winglike hands, and she finds the plant (olive branch) which means the world is ready to sustain life again. Okay, WALL-E finds it, but she gets it to where it needs to go, because WALL-E is a worthless little bastard.

Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios
"You're still here? Christ."

2

Pulp Fiction Is A Parable Of Saul's Conversion

Miramax Films

Putting the obvious Ezekiel 25:17 quote to the side, there's a subtler biblical reference in Pulp Fiction. Jules' turning to the light is a reference to the conversion of Saul, who gave up persecuting early Christians to become the Apostle Paul.

At the beginning of the film, Jules clearly persecutes those who are smaller and weaker than he is, scaring the shit out of them not only with his voice, but also with actions and sweet, angry sideburns. With his wing man, Vince, they go into a yuppie apartment, and after some heated exchanges on the nature of breakfast nutrition and Bible passages, they start shooting people.

Miramax Films
This is basically how Jehovah's Witnesses do it in Jersey.

Turns out there's another yuppie hiding in the kitchen, and he's packing. Once he's finished emptying his bladder, he empties his gun, but every single bullet misses Vince and Jules. After this incident, which Jules refers to as a "miracle," his worldview changes and he decides to be a shepherd of the Lord, just like Paul, by "walking the earth" and "getting into adventures and shit." Paul had a similar experience on the way to Damascus, where a light from Heaven flashed and an image of Christ appeared to him. And he was all like, "Whaaaaaaaaaaat?"

So Saul/Paul literally saw the light. He accepted this as a true revelation, and spent the rest of his days doing God's work, "to open [people's] eyes and turn them from darkness to light." Jules echoes this when he tells Vince at the end of the movie that, "Me, my eyes are wide fucking open." A line that would have made Saul's story way more fun to read.

Miramax Films
The dorky shirt couldn't hurt, either.

1

Children of Men Is A Dystopian Version Of The Nativity Story

Strike Entertainment, Hit And Run Productions

Children Of Men, like the novel it is based on, sees society crumble after humanity has been completely sterile for 18 years. Kee is the first pregnant woman in a generation. Now, she may not be a virgin (something she makes a joke about halfway through the film), but Children Of Men is clearly a retelling of the Nativity -- the story of Jesus' birth -- just in a much gorier, realistic, and therefore terrifying way. It's not exactly something you'd want your kids making costumes for in the annual Christmas play. Though, to be honest, it would make it way more awesome.

Strike Entertainment, Hit And Run Productions
The first two rows of parents are dead, but we got a standing ovation!

The entire film leads up to the birth of a child who, if the Human Project can solve the problem of our infertility at the end, will literally go on to save the world.

To do this, Kee (as in, the key to our salvation, geddit?) and surrogate father Theo (which is the Greek root for God) must find a safe place for the birth, and ends up bringing the child into the world in abject squalor on a dirty mattress in a run-down building, inside an internment camp. Which would have been much closer to the reality of the stable that Mary and Joseph ended up in than the bright, clean images we all grew up with.

Strike Entertainment, Hit And Run Productions
What, no myrrh?

In an interview with Cinematical, director Alfonso Cuaron explains in detail some of the religious imagery that was used:

"So I will give you an example: They exit the Russian apartments, and the next shot you see is this woman wailing, holding the body of her son in her arms. This was a reference to a real photograph of a woman holding the body of her son in the Balkans, crying with the corpse of her son. It's very obvious that when the photographer captured that photograph, he was referencing La Pieta, the Michelangelo sculpture of Mary holding the corpse of Jesus. So: We have a reference to something that really happened, in the Balkans, which is itself a reference to the Michelangelo sculpture. At the same time, we use the sculpture of David early on, which is also by Michelangelo, and we have of course the whole reference to the Nativity. And so everything was referencing and cross-referencing, as much as we could."

As if that wasn't hammering home the point enough, the film was released on Christmas Day.

Drops mic.

See how some religious families will kill their own children for the sake of religion in 6 Realities In A Super Religious Family That Wants Me Dead, and see how Robocop is an allegory for Jesus in 6 Famous Movies With Mind-Blowing Hidden Meanings.

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