Allusions+in+Movies



The Disney movie of //Snow White// alludes to the biblical story of Adam and Eve. Biblical allusions are found most often, even in the pop-culutre of today. The story of Adam and Eve is told in the book of Genesis. Adam is the first man and Eve the first woman. The two live happily together in the Garden of Eden, where they can live freely. God has one strict rule for the two: not to eat fruit off of the Tree of Knowledge. Satan, in the form of a serpent, draws Eve in, however, and convinces her to commit the first sin by eating the forbidden fruit. Eve convinces Adam to do the same. The two are condemned and exiled out of the Garden of Eden, where they must work to survive for the rest of their days. In the movie //Snow White//, Snow White is a innocent girl who lives in the forest. An evil witch, who can be seen as representing Satan, tricks her into eating an apple, referring the the forbidden fruit. The apple is poisonous, and after eating it Snow White falls into a deep sleep. The similarities between the two stories are evident. Who would have thought that a story from thousands of years ago could be incorporated into a modern story? It's possible!

// Pleasantville //:



The movie //Pleasantville// is also an allusion to the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genisis, proving that the same story can be alluded too, but in different ways. Each artist, director, or author has their own interpretation of a particular story they are alluding to. In the movie, a brother and sister from the 1990s mysteriously find themselves sucked into a 1950s TV show called Pleasantville. Pleasantville is a town where everything is perfect and there is no dualism- it's a world of gray. This is similar to life in the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve- a perfect world in which there are no judgements. As the two siblings continue to live their lives in the TV show, Pleasantville slowly gains color (the first sign of color being a red rose), its black and white fading. The young people of Pleasantville begin to break the rules and defy tradition, and the color continues to grow. As Adam and Eve broke the single rule of not eating off the tree of knowledge, suddenly their world became subjective as well. Both Adam and Eve and the people of Pleasantville could differentiate between good and evil, beautiful vs. ugly and have prejudice as well.

// Epic Movie //:



A movie with more obvious allusions would be //Epic Movie//. This movie is a parody of several different movies, incorporating them into a broad plot. A paradoy is often a hint to an allusions as most of the time they are making fun of a particular event or work of art. Allusions can be more discrete such as the ones in //Pleasantville// and //Snow White//, and others can be easy to find such as Epic Movie. The movie incorporates multiple movies including //The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe//, //Nacho Libre//, and //The Pirates of the Caribbean//. All of the these movies and more are alluded to in //Epic Movie//, the writer incorporating them in a clever, original way. He makes fun of the various movies by weaving them into his own storyline. The movie is meant to make fun of all of the different movies that came out that particular year, whether they were action or a comedy. Epic Movie is a great example of a movie that inorporates current works of art into pop-culture- not all works simply allude to works and events of the past.

// Cloverfield //:



The movie //Cloverfield// can be seen as an allusion to a more recent event, the 9/11 attacks, with a creative twist.. As the city of New York comes under attack by a mysterious and vicious monster, the 9/11 attacks are clearly related. The terrorists who had hiijacked several planes could be seen as the vicious monster of the movie, destroying a part of the city by crashing into the Twin Towers. As the city comes under full attack of the monster, panic is ensued as the threat of the city and the whole nation grows. Will the monster (or terrorists) be attacking other cities in the country as well? Will the entire nation be threatened? The head of the Statue of Liberty is ripped off in the movie (depicted in the picture above), symbolizing an end to an iconic symbol of American freedom and prosperity. As the terrorists attacked the Twin Towers as well as the Pentagon, the question of whether the freedom of the nation would survive was most often asked as many did not know if the country would be taken over and fall to the mysterious terrorists who had been willing to sacrifice their lives in order to wreak havoc upon America.

// The Day After Tomorrow //:



The end of the world has been expressed in numerous differnt ways, many of them in the Bible. The movie //The Day After Tomorrow// can be seen as representing one of the numerous prophecies predicting how and when the world is going to end. In the book of Luke, the end of the world is marked by severe changes in the weather as well as many devestating natural disasters, wiping out the human population. In the movie, extreme weather spreads across the world. A giant snowstorm hits New Delhi, a hailstorm completely destroys Tokyo, and numerous tornadoes wreak havoc upon Los Angeles. Three super hurricanes form as well, the eye of the storms having the power to freeze over entire cities. New York City is hit with one of theses massive hurricanes and people struggle to survive in the the extreme conditions. The Bbile explains that "the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken//."// As depicted in the picture above, monstrous waters engulf New York, similar to "the sea and the waves roaring." All the other various disasters that shake the world are "those things which are coming on the earth." The connections between the book of Luke and the movie are uncanning as they both refer to the end of the world by means of extreme and destructive natural disasters, wiping out entire populations.