how to misunderstand movies

In their desperation to politicize the analysis of popular art, culture critics seem to me to mistake the stage for the drama. 

Analysing say, Double Indemnity, as about the evil incentives of the insurance industry, money and patriarchy is like analysing Star Trek as being about space ships of the future. The space ship is just a stage for the human drama. Double Indemnity is a classic tragedy -- the everyman hero through his flawed humanity gets entangled in a web of deceit and murder, eventually has to pay for his mistakes. To blame this on capitalism and its insurance business and patriarchal notions of marriage is to miss the universal tragic drama entirely. After all, the E.G.Robinson character is also in the insurance claims business, but is a model of morality, decency and loyalty. (If there's anything to analyse here it's the dangers of lust over the virtues of loyal friendship.) Capitalism and insurance and patriarchal notions of marriage -- these are the stage and props. Every drama has to have a stage. To the extent that the stage reflect real life, if it happens in today's world, its backdrop will be our culture, our economy, our social failings. But one should be able to distinguish between a classical human drama and a political parable criticising those failings. Glen Gary Glen Ross might be such a parable. It's much more believable if taken as a parable of the cut-throat capitalist market than as a drama about realtors. As a character drama it's a bit too extreme and depressing for drama, but as a parable of corporate competition and its consequences for the human experience, it's spot on. 

Sci-fi movies are often such parables and allegories for our social ills, abuses of power, cultural narrowness, and some dramas, say Miller's All My Sons manage both parable of a social ill and personal tragedy. But sometimes the social ill is just the stage & props.