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Good essay. And so true: once you've seen it you can never watch movies the same way again. For me it was American Beauty. I was not yet consciously conservative, and the guy I was dating at the time pointed out that the Marine is of course the repressed, evil bastard... the pot head is the good guy, typical Hollywood... and it was like a light bulb went on over my head.

It does affect your viewing. I just saw Pan's Labrynth not long ago and it is indeed a very good movie. Beautiful, tragic, hypnotic, mesmerizing, all that. But you can't help but notice that the fascists are the bad guys (well, yes, they are) and the communists are the good, noble, selfless, brave heroes (now wait a minute.)

And once you are awake to manipulation, you can never fall asleep again. In Pan's Labrynth, when the bad guys kill off the wounded after a battle, you see it. They put the gun to someone's head and BANG! you flinch as they execute victim after victim.

But a half hour later, when another skirmish ends with the communists in possession of the field, the same thing happens. The winners go around and polish off the wounded, but the camera lifts up to the sky, slowly panning across the leaves as if sighing with relief... little things like that, you notice.