There is a word in the human language that many who discuss film on a regular basis like to use, 'allegorical'. They use it when seeing a movie or story as representing something beyond what's presented on the screen, an added dimension that can only be seen by the culturally well grounded or cinematic astute.

Film reviewers love the 'allegorical' angle, because it's like they can sell some sort of magic spectacles to the myopic public, allowing them to see more clearly the symbolism inherent in these works. Except, often it's entirely rubbish, where they apply an understanding to something that they've entirely misinterpreted or was not intended.

To better understand how this works, let us imagine that, instead of being released in 1981, Raiders Of The Lost Ark came out today. There's a classic scene in the film where Harrison Ford is confronted by a scimitar-wielding Arab in Cairo, and promptly shoots him dead. Reviewed today, that scene would be seen as representing the disdain that the West has for middle-eastern culture, a representation of 'might over right' and a stereotyping of foreign nationals.

That would slightly ignore that the movie is set in the early 30s, where an entirely different dynamic existed in respect of race and culture.

Except that, if you know a bit more about this movie than what appears on the screen, you might know that originally a long a complicated fight was intended to be at this part, and the reason it doesn't appear in the movie is that the day of the shooting Harrison Ford was struck down with rampant digestive problems. Therefore, rather than him have an unfortunate accident or wait for him to recover, they shot the scene as presented. That understanding might generate the same socio-political backlash, but it's why the movie is actually the way it is.

Where things get even more clouded is when people start to apply their thinking to movies where those responsible have long passed on, and can't really reject their view or present an alternative understanding. I've seen at least a dozen breakdowns of Citizen Kane, the 'true' meaning of Rosebud and what Orson Welles was really making reference to. But the only person who really knows is no longer available for comment, and, as frustrating as it is, he's the one who ever really knew.

But there are even those who, when confronted with the director saying, '"No, I didn't mean that," still refuse to accept that they've somehow missed the point. Their argument often resolves around 'subliminal' impressions or sub-conscious actions on the part of the creative people, like most film directors wander around listening to their own inner child like it's a sat nav.

As by way of presenting the absurdity of how some of these interpretations go entirely beyond what the creators intended (consciously or unconsciously), while I was a film student I wrote a lengthy dissertation entitled 'The Sexual Imagery of Star Wars'. To put this into context, the film degree course I was attending in the earlier 80s had a very left wing-orientated perspective, and much of the first year I recall being bombarded not with the works of great filmmakers, but selectively those with a strong socialist feminist bias.

Being a white, middle class heterosexual, it was effectively a guilt trip where the ills of society where laid at my feet with the strong inference that, as being part of the dominant social segment, it was actually all my fault.

As I recall, I didn't baulk at everything they presented, but I did wonder in the second year why so many of that year's entrants appeared to have gained entry on their sexual orientation rather than actual abilities. But I digress, back to the erogenous zones of Star Wars.

With its generally misogynist overtones (as they saw it), science fiction wasn't a popular subject and a number of papers I created around that subject were given low marks. Seeing where this was potentially going, I decided to play the course tutors at their own game, and penned the provocatively titled 'The Sexual Imagery of Star Wars'. It was really meant to be broadly satirical, but I got the highest score any of my written work achieved that year with it.

In it I proposed the notion that all the Rebel ships have phallic symbolism, while all the Empire's have female iconography (triangles, spheres). I even pointed out that the X-Wing has a foreskin, and in the climactic battle it's required to enter the trench (ooh...but will they still respect it in the morning?) and 'impregnate' the Death Star, causing the orgasmic explosion. Therefore, one interpretation is that the Rebel Alliance rapes the Empire by 'force', causing its ultimate destruction.

It is, however, if you hadn't guessed, complete garbage that I thought up while under the influence of copious amounts of Fullers ESB (a lovely beer) and not remotely what George Lucas had on his mind when he created Episode IV: A New Hope.

What it proved to me, personally, was that, if you make the sorts of noises that your audience is receptive to, then you can interpret a film in the most perverse and obtuse fashion and they'll see value in what you're proposing. Equally, if you're not 'on message', then you're interpretation will be rejected however soundly built on logic and reasoning, because it's not what they want to hear.

So, am I suggesting people stop analysing movies? No, not in the slightest. What I'm directing my bile at is those people who create an interpretation of a movie that fits a model in their heads about how the world really is, or was, and glue it to the work of another who lived in a different era or had an entirely different mindset.

That last point is very important, because the idea that you can apply moral and social standards of today to films made 70 or more years ago is a remarkably stupid premise.

The world was a very different place when, in 1946, Walt Disney released Song Of The South, but these days the company considers the movie so racially insensitive that it has never been released in its entirety on home video in the USA. Just to put anyone straight on this I have no truck with any form of racism in my house as we're an ethnically mixed bunch, but equally we can't see that Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah is likely to generate a spontaneous race riot.

Song Of The South needs to be seen in the context of the era from where it came, and the source material on which it's based. Yes, it does give a curiously incongruous view that slavery was somehow a mutual support system, that black people appreciated being part of. But many people also forget that James Baskett received a special Academy Award for playing Uncle Remus, the first black person ever to be awarded one. Admittedly, it wasn't a competitive award, like best actor, but the fact it was awarded at all suggested that, in post war USA, the social boundaries were shifting, if slowly.

Myself, I find the reviewing of movies and TV to be much more about the emotional response of the viewer and less about how the man in the story really represents Richard Nixon, or that the seven dwarfs are all symbolic penises that need to be scrubbed clean, or Kirk and Spock are really gay, or whatever the spontaneous imagination of those who demand attention regurgitates.

Those who try to look for convenient connections between their own social and political agendas in the films they see are just seeing the world the way they want it. As much as it might bolster their own ego, it doesn't actually make them any more intuitive than any other viewer, and in many respects, much less so. My message is to enjoy movies for what they are, not as a modern form of the public dissections physicians once performed.