Film is an educational and informative tool. Sometimes this is overt, as is the case with documentaries or films made specifically for academic use. Film can also be educational and offer insight in a subtler manner. Let's take The Lion King, this is Hamlet told through the animal kingdom of Africa. Now the whole 'Is Hamlet crazy?' theme is not as prevalent. But other themes are still there: Simba is trying to find his place in this crazy world, like Hamlet; revenge is obviously still a big theme; the importance of birthright. When I first saw this movie in the summer of 1994, at 11 years old, I didn't know any of this. I knew that Unlce Skar was a real sonofabitch and that Simba needed to man up and be the king that he really was. (Here is the theme of royal birthright in the outcast, which has been a literary theme since at least The Castle of Otranto).
This is all to say that these themes and basic lessons underscore all films even if unintentional, we can't escape our racial memory. These archetypes have been the vehicles of morals and messages for centuries. They are the equivalent of brand recognition, we know what to expect. Spring is rebirth, winter is death. (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). The quest myth (The Lord of the Rings, Shaun of the Dead) has been used in countless stories.*
My point here is that works of art draw on our racial culture and memory and that they evoke these archetypes, morals and messages regardless of intention. The artist doesn't matter. Once the art is out there it sprouts its own tentacles independent of any pencil or celluloid.
*References to these myths and archetypes are pulled from Northrop Frye's The Archetypes of Literature
