BLOGTEMPEST SIX: I AM NOT A GUN.

     History's most underrated animated film, The Iron Giant, harkens back to simpler times, when a protagonist could be named Hogarth, and animated movies were actually animated, and hearing Vin Diesel's velveteen voice didn't make one's guidance systems fail.  This film pretty much marked the end for hand-drawn features playing to any audience on the big or small screen, which gives CP an empty, staring into the abyss feeling.  In retrospect, this makes the already incredible movie that much more endearing, like revisiting memories of this really awesome friend of yours that is pronounced dead because he/she's lost at sea but in your core of cores you know he/she is still out there and you're kind of reluctant to miss but you do just the same.

     Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, TIG is as relevant as it ever was, touching on topics such as pacifism, sentience, sacrifice, militarism, anachronism, artistic expression, non-traditional familial schemas, laxatives, Maine, governmental failings, the soul's permanence, and how watching a giant robot blow things up is incredibly rewarding regardless of medium. As per most children's movies, there is some heady, complex stuff going on at all times.  Does the Iron Giant assume a patriarchal or friendly relationship in regards to Hogarth?  How do possible messianic implications affect this dynamic?  Who names their kid Hogarth?  Is the Iron Giant in fact a trope for human experience, thrust into a ferocious, chaotic world that works only to destroy what truly makes him human, with internal programs that work solely towards his own undoing, and it takes meeting a nuclear warhead head-on at the cusp of the Earth's atmosphere to achieve any sort of real happiness, freedom, peace both inner and outer, well, does it?  Only you can and should decide.

      This was also before Jennifer Aniston decided to relinquish any potential acting credibility (i.e. see anything post-The Good Girl), so there's that, too.  Ted Hughes, who's children's book, The Iron Man, is the film's source material, heartily approved of movie, on top of directly contributing if not actually murdering Silvia Plath, although Carmen doesn't think Ted would do that no way.  Ted Hughes has a really good poem called The Minotaur.  It can be Googled.