The ever-controversial Moral

It's staunchly maintained by the intelligent elite that art is not supposed to have morals. To question that is to be didactic and boring and adds an agenda to art that art is not supposed to have.

I find that utterly naive.

All art has a moral, even if it's unintended. Stories are moralistic, some more than others, some almost not at all. (There's barely a moral to all those kids stories like Red Riding Hood -- morals are about what the story, or maybe more accurately the telling of the story, glorifies and vilifies, but a story like Red Riding Hood is just a string of events that happen to a girl who perhaps unwisely strays from the path. Cautionary tales rarely teach anyone anything.) Anyway, back on point, I'm interested to hear what people's favourite morals are in any artistic medium, be it movies, TV, music, etc.

To start off I'll mention my favourites. My favourite movie morals by far are all from Pixar movies.

The moral of WALL-e is about imagination, and why imagination is so wonderful and blind adherence to routine is so ugly. (There's an environmental issue in there as well, but it's a secondary issue.) I can elaborate on this.

The moral of The Incredibles is that it's good to be special. If you're not special, be boring. Be special.

Ratatouille, funnily enough, is about art. It's about the creation of art and the truth that art doesn't come from recipies and lessons, but from inspiration. It's also about having the courage to take risks in order to make great things.

Discuss. Treat this as if it were an AI discussion. I expect something like this to stir up some debate.

I am going to take satisfaction in the disappoint you must feel because I am the first to post in this thread. That aside, I got to ask what if the artist didn't intend for their creation to have a moral? What if the audience just interrupts a moral based on their own feelings? Would that make the audience, not the art, moral or amoral?

I just think that's an irrelevant distinction. A movie or book or song is what it is independent of the artist's intention. If a movie glorifies violence, it doesn't matter if the writer/director's response is "Oh, I didn't mean for it to do that, I just think blowing people up is cool".

Storytelling entails judgment. Sometimes it's almost invisible, and sometimes, more often (like my Pixar examples), it's the whole purpose of the artwork, and little attempt is made to hide the fact.

I really enjoy the morals from modern day remakes of Halloween and Friday the 13th such as treat others as you wanted to be treated, and living out as a productive and beneficial person may delay your inevitable flying axe to the back or getting choked in the back of a carpeted van.