This is one of the looniest analyses of Donnie Darko I’ve read. The author somehow argues that really the whole thing is about Donnie’s repressed sexual urges towards his sister. Say what?
Important Note
This site features content going all the way back to 2000. The posts you’ll read reflect my views and writing style at the time. While I have gone back to clean up a few of them, I think it’s important not to sanitise too much. This site is a record of who I am and how I’ve grown. Any blog post written years ago may not reflect who I am today, nor how I would write about the same topic today.
Comments
One response to “Say what?”
I’m currently working up an absurdly extended critique of Donnie Darko for the web-log that will take into account an area of inquiry universally ignored in contemporary debates about the movie. To wit – historical context! To listen to even the director’s commentary on the dvd, and hear him say that the 1988 political climate has nothing to do with the movie is wholly absurd.
You don’t just set a movie a week before the 1988 presidential election and not have larger significance! Also, all the commentary about attitudes toward September 11 are not only anachronistic, but well, anachronistic. In 1988, if an air-born vehicle crashed to earth, the cultural milieu would more immediately suggest the Challenger disaster of two years previous, not a terrorist action some 20 years in the future.