The movies that 'slipped one past us': from The Apartment to Jurassic Park

From classic cinema to the blockbuster: when the message started slipping in

The first film where someone noticed something being slipped past them was not a recent release. According to the most frequently repeated account in the thread, it was Jurassic Park, in 1993: the clever, brave girl, the useless boy, and a cast that was no longer what it used to be. A viewer who had read Michael Crichton's novel spotted the role reversal at nine or ten years old. To him, it was no coincidence; it was the beginning of something.

The discussion about when cinema stopped being entertainment and became a vehicle for messages has its own archaeology. And that archaeology does not begin in 2015 or with Me Too. It begins much earlier, according to participants.

The Apartment (1960) and Billy Wilder's turn

Some place the turning point with The Apartment, from 1960. In the Hollywood of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, the mistress was by definition the villain of the movie, one forum user notes. In Billy Wilder's film, the mistress is a good girl in love, and the villain is the man. The shift is subtle, almost imperceptible, but it is there. The film was a success and won Oscars. Wilder got emboldened, and in his next picture, Kiss Me, Stupid, he threw in a vvife-swapping plot. Total failure. He was nearly stoned in the street.

The pattern this participant describes: the message comes in through the back door, with critical success, and audiences accept it as long as it is not too explicit. When it becomes obvious, the box office responds.

The Pink Panther and the ridiculous policeman

In The Pink Panther (1963), the thieves are seductive and refined, while the clumsy, ridiculous character is the policeman. Someone points out this would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. The role reversal was not an isolated accident, according to that reading: it was a trend. The revisionist western of the 60s, with its ideological baggage, is another example of how the genre was rewritten from within.

The question hanging over it all is whether that was propaganda or simply narrative evolution. The answer depends on whom you ask.

Titanic, Alien and the catalogue of suspicions

The catalogue grows over the years. Titanic appears as the textbook example: Jack's sacrifice on a plank that supposedly had room for two. Alien makes the list for a heroine who survives while the rest of the crew, including the male lead, falls; and for a monster whose head is read as a phallic symbol. Terminator 2 too: an empowered, muscular single mother, a Black scientist who created the chip, and a bratty delinquent but pacifist John Connor.

The interpretation varies. Some see all this as simple script evolution. Others see a deliberate pattern.

Cinema as propaganda: the underlying thesis

The most sceptical camp holds that cinema has always been propaganda; it just used to disguise it better. Burroughs is quoted: when talkies arrived and the image was perfected, the movies became as boring as looking out the window. The underlying idea is that the medium was born as a novelty and, once domesticated, was fitted to ideological parameters. Hence its predictability.

It is not a new thesis. It is the recognition that entertainment was never neutral, not in the 60s and not now, according to those who defend it. The difference is the volume.

The dark decade and the viewer's awakening

The conversation drifts toward more recent times. One decade, the 2010s, is described as a primordial soup from which emerged retreaded products with leads who did not match what the viewer had come to see. The feeling that something died during those years prevails. Along with the suspicion that the worst was yet to come.

The consensus, if there is one, is that the phenomenon did not start yesterday. It started sixty years ago, with a Billy Wilder film and an Oscar, according to the thread's accounts.

With all this on the table, the question is not whether cinema sends messages. It is how long it takes audiences to notice. The answer, according to the accounts, ranges from one decade to three.