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To the literary analyst, all works are [[When All You Have Is a Hammer|ripe for analysis]].
Sometimes, this helps you appreciate a work. Sometimes, it doesn't, but it produces insight into the the thought process and culture that produced the work. Other times, it's misguided
'''Such an attitude may be expressed in several ways:'''
* Insisting that [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]]. ("Every character, scene and action ''must'' have [[wikipedia:Allegory|an inner meaning]].")
* [[Late Arrival Spoiler|Casually revealing major plot twists in discussion of the book]], or even the book's preface or ''[[Trailers Always Spoil|blurb]]''.
* Writing dense dense dense descriptions of what makes the book good in the blurb, which only make sense to someone who has already studied the work for several years.
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You can even get away with missing the point if you're a [[Serious Business|Really Serious Critic]] who wants to reveal all sorts of [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|Family Unfriendly Aesops]] inside a work, whether or not they have anything to do with the actual characters or plot. Goodness forbid that [[They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste|the author(s) wanted you to do so]] ([[Death of the Author|not that what the author wanted actually matters]]). If it does, though, or even quite as possibly if it does not (at least by general agreement), wait for somebody to point out the [[Muse Abuse]].
High school and college students now write long-winded essays about the philosophical and socio-religious undertones of ''[[Harry Potter (
Note that having the plot given away becomes less and less of an issue the older the subject is. Most people who haven't read, for example, ''[[Moby
This is one of the nasty things that can happen when literary analysis becomes [[Serious Business]].
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' has gotten this treatment, of all places, in an economics essay [https://web.archive.org/web/20101206003343/http://www.efn.org/
** Eva's connection with this trope was even referenced in ''[[FLCL]]'', where one of the characters is said to have "written a long book on the deep mysteries of Eva."
** The Eva-effect reaches to the rest of the Super Robot genre. Any Super Robot show made after 1997 is either considered some sort of [[Reconstruction]] of the Super Robot genre, a [[Take That]] to ''Eva'', a [[Poe's Law|parody]] of classic Super Robot shows...or [[Take a Third Option|all of the above]].
* ''[[FLCL]]'' is one to talk: The show is full of such frantic (and hilarious) [[Mind Screw]] that it's not clear if ''anyone'' is even clear on what the plot is, let alone what it's all supposed to mean. Brought to you by the folks who made Eva, of course.
* The last episode of ''[[Bottle Fairy (
* ''[[Naruto]]'' gets a lot of this when it comes to the nation politics, and the use of 12 year old ninjas as living weapons, along with the true meaning of ''Will of Fire''.
* ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' got this treatment, by a fan who was making a valiant attempt to put out some of the [[Flame War|flame wars]] being waged over pairings, and clarify the [[Hidden Depths]] of many characters. You can read the essays yourself [https://web.archive.org/web/20120625222753/http://www.croik.com/essays/gundamwing
* Here's an interesting [https://web.archive.org/web/20090213150740/http://www.dragonsgate.net/dzone/dilandau.html take on anime's most famous pyromaniac], Dilandau Albatou of ''[[Escaflowne]]'' fame (the link is to the first part, but it provides useful context for part 2. The second part is the real nitty-gritty of the analysis).
* ''[[
* ''[[Tokyo Babylon]]'' is a good example of the second point. The french edition's summary used for promotion reveals all the important plot points up to volume 6. Of a 7 volumes series.
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== Comic Books ==
* Alison Bechdel, in her graphic novel memoir ''[[Fun Home]]'', notes how annoyed she was with her college English professors forcing symbolism on everything they read. Probably the funniest panel in the book is a bewildered looking student asking "You mean... like... Hemingway did that stuff on purpose?"
** ...elsewhere in the book, she and her girlfriend analyze several children's books (e.g. ''[[James and
* ''[[Watchmen (
* There is an infamous book, "''[[wikipedia:How to Read Donald Duck|Para leer al Pato Donald]]''" ("''How to read Donald Duck''"), whose basic premise is to describe all comics, especially Disney ones, as tools from [[The Man|the imperialistic gringos]] to deliberately subjugate and dominate the uneducated Latin American masses. It goes down from there.
== Film ==
* In the [[Criterion Collection]] DVD of Fritz Lang's classic ''[[
* This is taken even further in the old VHS collector's edition of ''[[
* Is ''[[Blazing Saddles]]'' a serious deconstruction of the Western and a profound statement on race relations in America, or just a lowbrow genre parody? Depends on who's asked; of course, [[Take a Third Option|"both" is a viable answer.]]
* For a double-dose of this concept, feel free to read [http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=29_0_2_0 this article] which asserts that ''[[Fight Club]]'' is ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' grown-up. Not that the comparison is [[Crazy Awesome|without merit]].
* This is talked about in the movie ''[[Fame]]''. Music student Bruno argues with his instructor, Mister Shorofsky, that if Mozart were alive today, he'd be cranking out rock and roll songs, not chamber music and symphonies, because Mozart wasn't doing it to be "artistic", but rather just to put bread on the table.
* The [[Coen Brothers]]' films are much analyzed for their [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|symbolism and subtexts]], but the brothers themselves just respond [[Shrug of God|"Well, if you say so."]]
* Satirized brilliantly by [[Steve Martin]] in ''[[
{{quote|
* ''[[
** The movie itself is basically just a [[Take That]] aimed at wealthy, somewhat unpopular media mogul William R. Hearst, filmed by [[Orson Welles|a guy known for doing whatever the hell he wanted to]].
** It's worth mentioning that a good portion of the blame for the film's financial failure can be directly traced back to threats made by Hearst towards local theaters. Not only ''Kane'', but a number of other movies from the same company were also threatened if any of the theaters dared to go against it. It arguably said more about the man's power in how effectively he was able to crush it than anything in the movie itself. Keep in mind, only '''''one theater in the United States''''' ran the film - and it was rented independently by Welles and the Mercury Theater themsleves.
*** Which brings us to one reason why the movie is - arguably - as momentous as many claim.
** Serious film critics will concede that the plot of ''Kane'' is actually pretty simple, and that its genius lies not in what it is about but ''how'' it was done. The first thing that most beginning film students learn is that all art, including movies, is composed of both ''form'' and ''content'' (the ancient Greek dramatic terms ''diegesis'' and ''mimesis'' being roughly analogous), and that it is ultimately the form that determines the nature of the content, not the other way around. ''Kane'' is special not because it tells an effective story (although it does, as any good literary critic will tell you), but because Welles filmed it in a highly imaginative style (visually, orally, continuity-wise, you name it) that was groundbreaking in his time - and that, truth be told, is not often seen in American cinema even today. That is what makes ''Kane'' unique - and for most jaded film critics, uniqueness is the thing that really makes them sit up and take notice.
* In his Top 10 80's Movies video, [[Benzaie]] seems to take ''[[Heavy Metal (
== [[Literature]] ==
Welcome to Lit. Class.
* ''[[The Scarlet Letter]]''. What was once a simple romance novel about two adultering people in early Puritian society has been examined and re-examined to death since the 1850s, trying to find hidden meanings. The biggest offender is the notion of Hester's daughter Pearl being one giant symbol rather than an actual character.
* [[Johann Wolfgang
{{quote
* [[Vladimir Nabokov]] explicitly disliked people's tendency to overanalyse ''[[Lolita]]''.
* Some of the newer editions of Penguin and Oxford World's Classics have started to give a warning that the preface reveals major plot details, likely because of complaints about this tendency.
* Steven Brust, the author of the ''[[Dragaera]]'' series, is part of an informal group of writers who call themselves the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, in reference to their perception that [[James Joyce]] started a trend in literary criticism which believes that meaningful works were meant to have obscure language and lots of symbolism and anything well-plotted was not in this category.
* A school of thought sprung up around ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' in which it was "proven" to be an allegory for [[World War II]]: the Shire was England and the hobbits were the English, the elves were the French, [[Mordor]] was [[Nazi Germany]] and Sauron was [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]], and the [[Artifact of Doom|One Ring]] was the atom bomb or nuclear power. Not even [[
** Eventually, Tolkien went as far as to write an outline of what the book would have been like if he had meant it as a [[World War II]] allegory. Among other things, Saruman would not have been counted on as an ally, and Sauron would have betrayed ''him''; Saruman would have tried to make his own One Ring; and in the end the Fellowship would have had to use its power to win. It's also noted that both sides in that conflict would have held Hobbits in hatred and contempt, and they wouldn't have survived long even as slaves.
* ''[[Mark Twain|The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' starts with a death threat aimed at anyone who tries to analyze it. This is [[Forbidden Fruit|often taken as an invitation to do so]].
** The author of the blog [http://slacktivist.typepad.com Slacktivist] once compared reading [[The Bible]] as the writers of ''[[Left Behind]]'' do to "seeing a homosexual subtext in ''Huckleberry Finn''". This has been done, in an infamous paper called "Come Back to the Raft, Huck Honey!".
* Nick Cave's novel ''And The Ass Saw The Angel'' is a giant [[Mind Screw]] set [[Through the Eyes of Madness]], brimming with [[Faux Symbolism|confusing religious symbolism]], right down to the title. In an interview, he told everyone [[MST3K Mantra|not to read too much into it, and just to enjoy it]].
** The original story may be found [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers%2022:1-35 here].
* The original ''[[Dracula (
** [[Older Than You Think|Vampires had been a sexual symbol well before Dracula]] - they were a popular symbol for "deviant" sexuality in the Victorian times. ''Carmilla'' features the world's first [[Lesbian Vampire]] and in Dr. Polidori's ''The Vampyre'' the titular vampire, Lord Ruthven is modeled after certain [[Byronic Hero|Lord Byron]], and is depicted as a sexual predator.
*** Geraldine from Coleridge's "Christabel" is even older.
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** Some people (and more than a few high school text books) say that a great deal of it is based on math and logic. In his day, [[Lewis Carroll]] was known for publishing mathematical treatises under his real name, Charles Dodgson.
** "The Jabberwocky" is one of the better known poems written by Carroll and one of the most often analyzed independently. Some academics claim that the poem is a satire of bad poetry or an example of how not to write a poem. Others claim that Carroll is commenting on the nature of language by using nonsense words that seem like real words. Still others have more far-fetched analysis.
*** A few of them are now real words, most famously 'chortle'. (If you're a gamer, there's also 'vorpal' blades being enchanted for more likely decapitations.)
** As for [[The Hunting of the Snark]], Carroll explicitly said that if there was a meaning to it, he didn't know what it was.
** All of which does nothing but skim over the fact that Alice was originally just a silly story he made up on the fly to entertain the three daughters of a friend while in a rowboat. One of the girls loved it so much she asked him to write it down, and he did so, eventually refining and publishing it. Later in life, Carroll would reportedly claim it was, and always had been, a hidden tract against "new math" and how people ascribing to it lived in a world of neither rhyme nor reason, which may actually make him a victim of this trope in regards to ''his own work''.
* The foreword to ''[[The Flood]]'' by Ian Rankin mentions how the author attended a lecture on his book, and was surprised at the things that were being read into it, most of which he'd never consciously included.
* ''[[Twilight (
** Though, according to a lot of current and former Mormons that have read the books, there ''are'' a lot of things in the books based on Mormon ideology/culture. However, the general consensus is that it isn't intentional proselytizing, just the author writing what she knows. For specific examples see this [http://stoney321.livejournal.com/317176.html hilarious series of posts].
** [[Cleolinda Jones]] recently blew her own mind when she realized that the Quil/Claire "relationship" (the one where the teenage werewolf imprints on a two-year-old?) may actually be named after/inspired by Clare Quilty in ''Lolita''. [http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/901129.html#cutid1 Cleo believes this might be some sort of cosmic joke.]
* One edition of ''[[The Moonstone]]'' added a footnote to highlight a sentence that had been dropped from certain editions of the book because it made the solution to the mystery too obvious. Which, of course, flagged it as a vital
** A very similar thing happened in an annotated copy of ''The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories'', in the story ''The Picture in the House''. It mentioned a dropped line that "disastrously telegraph[ed] the climax", and then went on to list the line, which did indeed ruin the ending. Of course, you really shouldn't read footnotes of annotated editions on the first reading.
* Decades after it was published, it was "discovered" that ''[[
* S. E. Hinton started to write ''[[The Outsiders]]'' when she was ''sixteen''. To ''vent''. Which really makes you wonder about how much symbolism ''she'' stuck into it.
** Not as much as ''Taming The Star Runner'', written twenty years later. It's about a sixteen-year-old who writes a novel and struggles with father issues. He goes to live with his uncle after fighting with his widowed mom's abusive husband. The uncle and the boy are basically both Expy's of the author at different points of her life.
* ''[[The Confidence
* Everyone has a high school English teacher who thinks every word of every book is ''dripping'' with meaning. The best is when the story actually does have an [[Anvilicious|obvious moral]], but the teacher is so busy hunting for [[Alternative Character Interpretation|some other theme]] in insignificant bits of imagery that he/she misses the point. Like, deciding that the main theme of ''[[The Stranger]]'' is something about nature.
* A recent{{when}} printing of [[Jane Austen]]'s ''[[Pride and Prejudice]]'' contains an "introduction" that discusses the story and compares and contrasts it with Jane Austen's other works. It manages to spoil not only the plot of ''Pride and Prejudice'', but also ''every other Jane Austen book'' while comparing and contrasting it.
* The Bantam Classic printing of ''[[Great Expectations]]'' has a lengthy introduction by [[John Irving]] that ''does'' spoil the whole plot before page one of chapter one, ''does'' compare the book to various other works of Dickens, and ''does'' go into way too much scholarly analysis, but at least doesn't go into much [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory]].
* Bill Denbrough, one of the primary protagonists in Stephen King's [[IT]], addresses this ("can't you guys just let a story be a ''story?''") Being laughed at by his incredulous writing course instructor, said protagonist leaves the university to become a successful horror novelist.
* The original ''[[Winnie the Pooh|Winnie-the-Pooh]]'' novels have dozens of serious or semi-serious works written about them such as ''The Tao of Pooh'' or ''Pooh and the Philosophers.'' Usually these are written with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, though, so they can often be quite entertaining (the Disney version does not get the same treatment; if these books mention it at all, it's usually in
* There are pieces of literature that are standard reading for all IB students, including: ''[[
* [[Salvador Plascencia]] made a complaint in one interview about how people were trying to find a metaphor in ''everything'' mentioned in ''[[The People Of Paper]]'': "These mechanical turtles are really mechanical turtles; they are not a symbol. People ask me, "Were they Volkswagen bugs?" I'm like, "No! They're mechanical turtles." They're looking for the metaphor." Though considering how he admits in the same interview that even ''he'' [[Mind Screw|gets confused about his confused book]] and that said book features [[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|a blatant Jesus parallel]] in {{spoiler|the resurrection of Little Merced}}, you probably can't blame said readers for thinking that the mechanical turtles symbolize something deep.
* ''[[The Old Man and
* There's an analysis of ''[[Harry Potter]]'' entitled ''Harry Potter and International Relations'', which looks at how IR theory relates to the ''Harry Potter'' universe.
== Live-Action TV ==
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** There's a reason for this, that was part of their video used to sell the idea to the network execs long ago before the pilot ever was made. So the reason why it seemed they were selling something, is because they were.
* Parodied in ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'', where a murder mystery about railway timetables is given an inane analysis by "Gavin Millarrrrrrrrrr". An excerpt:
{{quote|
** Not to mention the analysis of "Le Fromage Grand," a [[Le Film Artistique|pretentious French film]] with a ridiculous shortage of dialogue:
{{quote|
== Magazines ==
* Parodied by ''[[The Onion]]'' on at [https://web.archive.org/web/20100225050652/http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27794 least] [https://web.archive.org/web/20100224123311/http://www.theonion.com/content/node/25742 three] [https://web.archive.org/web/20100219050358/http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39205 occasions].
** Made all the more hilarious by an AP English test from a few years back that involved analysing an Onion article.
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* Just about everything [[Bob Dylan]] ever wrote. It doesn't even seem to matter what he says in interviews about what a song does or doesn't mean (although more often than not now he just avoids those sorts of questions altogether).
** The Bob ''never'' answered those questions; he's just more subtle now. Ed Bradley asked him in the 2000s if his latest album was a new departure, and Bob ran Bradley into the dirt with a story about how an old jazzman showed him this "mathematical chord progression" that emotionally effected the listener every time. Back in 1965, some (even more) hapless reporter asked Bob about his "message," eliciting the scathing reply:
{{quote|
* Isn't It [[Irony|Ironic]], [[Alanis Morissette|don't you think?]] Alanis was initially evasive, but later on claimed that it was the ''use'' of "ironic" that was the irony; "it was specifically written from the standpoint of someone like a teenage girl writing in her diary." She intentionally misused ironic IN an ironic way. Alanis was twenty-one when that album came out, so she could very well have been a teenage girl herself when she wrote the song. It ''is'' ironic, however, that an entire song about irony wasn't actually ironic, the question is only in intent.
* [[
== Theater ==
* [[
** The book version of the Reduced Shakespeare Company's play, ''The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)'', ruthlessly [[Deconstruction|deconstructs]] the sort of forewords usually included in Shakespeare reprintings. Not only does each member of the troupe get a foreword, there's a foreword to the foreword, an afterword to the foreword, a foreword by the publisher, a foreword by Shakespeare (in which he gives special thanks to the Dark Lady), and even a foreword by the ''reader'', in which he (read: you) complains that the endless forewords are getting annoying and demands that the book [[Get On With It Already]].
** [[Isaac Asimov]] had a little something to say about this, in his short story [http://www.angelfire.com/weird/ektomage/otherwriting/bard.html The Immortal Bard].
** ''[[
* There's an argument that virtually every play by Henrik Ibsen lacks an [[Aesop]], instead showing characters in conflict and letting the audience decide who's right and who's wrong. Didn't stop a fair number of people from being utterly appalled by the ending of ''[[A
* Played with at the opening of ''[[
{{quote|
== Video Games ==
* This amazing deconstruction of ''[[Sinistar]]'' entitled [https://web.archive.org/web/20130921115041/http://onastick.net/drew/sinistar/ I Hunger, therefore, I live.]
* The [[Moviebob|Game Overthinker]] makes a habit of doing this to video games. See for example his episode ''Super Mario and the Sacred Feminine''.
* [[
** One of the arguments given is that {{spoiler|the three gurus are named Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar...}} which is actually a [[Woolseyism]] inserted in the English version. In the original Japanese, they are named the much less impressive Gash, Mash, and Bash.
* The [[MOTHER]] fandom has this in spades.
** GIYGAS IS A FETUS.
*** Even if Giygas isn't a fetus, he sure does [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13790475/Giygas.png look like one]{{Dead link}}.
* Many of the articles on www.insertcredit.com, and even more so on its spiritual successor, www.actionbutton.net, indulge in this trope in DROVES.
* ''[[Halo|HALO: Combat Evolved]]'' [and only ''Combat Evolved''] is a post-modernist work of art, comparable to the Iliad, the Chief descended from Rambo AND Captain America, and... look, you just [
** It's ''specifically'' features religious references all over the place. Heck, even the main theme is ''Gregorian chanting''.
* [[
** [[Your Mileage May Vary|Especially if they also like masses of baseless conjecture with no in-game basis.]]
* Most of the reviews for ''[[Doom: Repercussions of Evil]]'' parody this trope.
* There are a few people who analyze the living crap out of [[Alice: Madness Returns]], as can be expected given that it's a [[Darker and Edgier]] sequel to [[Alice in Wonderland]].
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'':
{{quote|
* Anything ''[[Starslip]]'''s Vanderbeam analyzes becomes saddled with more symbolism than it deserves. Taken to extremes:
** On one occasion, Vanderbeam escapes a villain's mind control by realizing that the mind control technique "shifts the context to a metadiscussion on the commodification of power."
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** He later defeats a villain by analyzing the artistic and cultural significance of the design of the villain's ship.
* Parodied in ''[[SMBC]]'': [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2112#comic\]
{{quote|
* One fan of [[
{{quote|
== Web Original ==
* ''[[Something Awful]]''
* Some of the very pages on [[TV Tropes]] are ''extremely'' detailed for popular mainstream works. See [[Trope Overdosed]].
** A number of the [[Worse Than It Sounds (Darth Wiki)|Worse Than It Sounds]] entries are send-ups of this idea.
** Invoked, Exaggerated and of course {{spoiler|[[Played for Laughs]]}} [[TV Tropes|On This Very Wiki]] with [[The Ugly Barnacle
* [[Uncyclopedia]]'s [http://uncyclopedia.
* [[Todd in
**
* ''[[Homestar Runner (Web Animation)|Homestar Runner]]'' of all things is given this treatment by [[The Wiki Rule|The Homestar Runner Wiki]].▼
* [[Confused Matthew]]
** [[Word of God]] (of the two films mentioned) would [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r5In4Vagas say] [http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0069.html otherwise].
▲* Invoked, Exaggerated and of course {{spoiler|[[Played for Laughs]]}} [[On This Very Wiki]] [[The Ugly Barnacle|here]]
▲* ''[[
* Mocked in the [[Whateley Universe]] when Phase takes a World Literature class on the epic. The papers written on the classical Greek and Roman epics are all flamed by fellow student Majestic. Who happens to be the incarnation of Hera/Juno and ''might actually know more about this than anyone else in the class''.
* Mocked in [[videogamedunkey]]'s video ''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz6jHTpi6zw Click]'', a [[Dramatic Reading]] of Amazon reviews of [[Click|the Adam Sandler movie]], where he found [http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3CM6Z8JL40CVW a lengthy review analysis]:
{{quote|"Jesus Christ, this guy fucking dissected the entire movie of Click. This is like a professional film thesis.. on Click."}}
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[Fillmore!]]!'' has an episode where the Book Club try to steal the best books from the library for themselves. The head of said club when he is collared and sent to detention rants about how the Book Club deserve them more than others as they are the only ones who appreciate them in the right way and understand things like the subtext of [[Judy Blume]]. Ingrid Third points out, "Judy Blume doesn't ''have'' a subtext, but she ''is'' very good."
* A [http://waluigious.blogspot.com/2008/03/in-which-i-analyze-mama-luigi.html serious investigation] into the "deep philosophical significance" hidden between the lines of the ''[[Super Mario World (
* ''[[Scooby Doo]] and the Loch Ness Monster'' is at least a little about scientific skepticism, isn't it? Anybody?
** Pretty much every version of [[Scooby Doo]]. Whether intentional or not, the fact that every villain in Scooby Doo episodes is a normal person masquerading as a supernatural monster is very much in line with the typical skeptical mindset, which feels that a naturalistic explanation (Old Man Johnson scaring people away from the pirate treasure by dressing up as a werewolf) is much more reasonable and likely than a supernatural one (werewolves exist).
* [http://cartoonoveranalyzations.com/ The Journal of Cartoon Overanalyzations] thrives on, and parodies, this trope.
* ''[[South Park]]'' parodied this in the episode ''The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs'', in which the boys write a book of absolutely horrible depravity with the express purpose of outclassing ''[[
** This can also be seen as a parody of ''[[South Park]]'' itself, and its critics. [[Mind Screw|The really ironic part about that is that it adds another layer of meaning to the episode and arguably takes it from "funny" to "brilliant."]]
* In 2005, the journalist Wilker de Jesus Lira wrote a monograph called "O merchandising capitalista no desenho Bob Esponja" (''The capitalist merchandising in the [[SpongeBob]] cartoon'') where he attempts to show that [[SpongeBob]] preaches the American capitalism that predates the lower classes, saying that "[[SpongeBob]] is the perfect capitalist employee, who doesn't rebel against his chief and accepts everything, even if he lives with a misery salary".
* People love applying this to ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
* ''[[Animaniacs]]'' actually lampooned this sort of thing with the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNJ6dFwh8a4 Please Please Please Get a Life Foundation], an [[Tropaholics Anonymous| in-universe support group]] for people who take cartoons too seriously.
== Other Media ==
* Improv comedy troupe/public pranksters Improv Everywhere parodied this trope by setting up a New York subway station as an art gallery, where preexisting objects like trash cans, advertisements and passing trains were the "art". See a video of it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6NU5K3k8Xo&feature=player_embedded here].
* Aversion: Freud would say that unconscious conflicts resolve themselves by being expressed through symbolic stories. So, the fact that an author denies the presence of any deeper meaning to their work (as in the aforementioned ''[[
* Any series that maintains a solid internal consistency can be subject to this. It becomes easy to find how a throw-away remark or the viewpoint of an isolated character becomes supported by all the other elements of the work, even if the author never intended or agreed with such statements.
* ''The Official Couch Potato Handbook'' has a page deconstructing ''Gilligan's Island'' in terms of Freudian symbology. It's disturbingly plausible.
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