I have at moments felt the story about the zeronis and the yelnats is sort of indirectly about reparations. And how righting the wrongs of the past made things better for both families. Hector found his mother and the Yelnats regained their lost family wealth (ie broke the curse). It’s very much a sort of fairytale ending but the curse of the town and the curse of Stanley’s family were both broken by acts that sort of symbolically corrected the wrongs of the past. The decedent of the man who murdered Sam and forever enraged Kate losing her hold over the land the town once stood on brought the rain back after one hundred years. Stanley carrying Hector up the mountain fulfilled the promise his great grandfather broke. In these ways the “curses” of past wrongdoings start to be lifted.
Wow very insightful! I totally agree. It is a lesson for white people who like to deny reparations because "it's not my fault what my ancestors did." Like Stanley's family who blamed their ancestor for stealing the pig. But justice can only be achieved by actually fixing the damage that was done - when Stanley fulfilled the promise to Madam Zeroni. Stanley and Hector also split the treasure, to end the poverty in both their lives.
Sometimes when an author says there are no intentional allegories in their work, they mean it. Sometimes when they say there are no allegories in their work, they mean "If I told you what this story was about, I wouldn't be allowed to tell you the story."
And also sometimes, in the case of major AAA game developers, it means "there are definite intentional allegories present in our work but we don't want to alienate anyone in order to maximize profit so we're making it as needlessly vague as possible while pretending we're completely apolitical". Or just that they're too ignorant to spot when they've done it themselves.
@@kristavaillancourt6313 Yeah, sometimes authors accidentally touch on a subject, sometimes the viewer just reads into it too much. Sometimes you have situations like Sorry to Bother You where it's a heavy critique of racism and capitalism and that is a hard sell to major corporations
That reminds me of a TV show my grandma used to watch set after the Spanish civil war. There was this one scene that stuck with me, about an author talking about his book, and how he was sneaking in anti-fascist/Republican hints for his main character (saying he'd been shot in the left arm, etc), because writing about democracy in any sort of positive light back then was asking to get your ass hauled to jail or worse. But fuck it if they weren't gonna risk it and sneak it in anyways. So yeah, "no intentional allegories" indeed lmao
All you videos are so good! Like every one. And you keep doing my fav movies. I think we had very similar tastes as children/teenagers. It's so fun talking about how art reflects society and says a lot about it. Matilda
Zero had real life experience that shaped his reactions to things...when a fight broke out in the rec room he knew to grab a pool ball as a weapon, when Stanley was attacked he knew it was better to choke a bigger guy out than try to fight with fists, and most importantly he saw that the counsellor was full of shit and saw him for the kind of shallow, heartless authority figure he really was. He never opened up to him because he knew there was no point. He was just another face in the system, and the counsellors reaction to that showed his true colours.
One thing I remember about the book was that Stanley considers his sentence to be him at "the wrong place at the wrong time." When he gets to Camp Green Lake and writes to his family, he mentions that all the boys in his tent aren't bad guys, but also kids who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the sympathy Sachar extends to them is really powerful there.
@@mooominpapa I love Shawshank. I never made that connection before. Also, the "if only, if only" part of the song is super telling. It's downtrodden people buying the garbage their fed that they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Everyone needs help sometimes and that's okay. Needing help is different from being a leech
in the book, Stanley starts out being quite chubby and through the months of digging loses weight. I read somewhere that the only noticeable difference in the movie to the book was that Stanley began skinny. the director (I think) didn't want a child actor to put on and lose weight for a role so they got rid of that plot point. This movie remains the best book adaptation and I love it so so much
There is a famous story that Shia tried to gorge himself on Twinkies to gain weight, and when the author and director found out, they put a stop to it, telling him his performance was more important than his weight
I think the allegory was intentional. Louis Sachar released a sequel called "Small Steps" which goes into how life is rigged against the boys once they were freed from the facility/camp.
@@Yharazayd Sachar is from Texas. As a Texan, I suspect that if he says what it's about, then they're going to take it off the YA reading lists at schools, etc., bc white conservatives have all the power when it comes to that stuff. They don't stand for anything that vaguely criticizes authority being in reading reach of kids.
@@mxmothmanart Texans often are very adamant about fighting against authority, and schools are hugely liberal owned. So that argument makes no sense on either account. If the school libraries were "owned" by conservatives then Ayn Rand and George Orwell would be required reading and they wouldn't have the communist manifesto and Frida Kalo along with other feminist books. Yet they have tons of communist books.
@@JZStudiosonline *laughs* thank you for this hilarious joke! You have a great sense of humor, but white Texans tend to idealize the police, the military, and the prison system. No idea what you mean about "liberal-owned" schools. Those are mostly in the public sector (meaning subject to upper middle class conservative pressure) or Christian private schools. Also, Orwell was a socialist, but everyone I know who read it in high school had it framed for them as anti-communist when he was really anti-authoritarian. Maybe it's different out west, but it's what the Piney Woods conservatives get up to anyway.
So while the movie doesn't go into modern depictions of racism, I do remember when I was writing a paper about the book's portrayal of penal slavery, they actually got much more explicit about the privilege Stanley had as a white prisoner over the other black prisoners (also interesting that most of the more developed prisoner characters were black which I felt could be seen as showing that there were more black kids than white kids at the camp, but that's speculative). But I remember one particular scene in the book where a few of the kids pointed out that Stanley was acting like a slave master to Zero and that it wasn't fair that he was getting help from him while they had to do their work by himself. The book also makes it a bit more obvious that at least originally Zero was more used as a means to an end and less about helping him for helping him sake. It's absolutely wild how deep this book is and the movie did explore some of the major threads in a very masterful way. Also I'm so glad you talked about Mr. Pandanscki having it out for Zero even more than the rest of the boys. I thought one detail that was extra chilling was that Zero was the only kid that Mr. Pandanscki never called by his real name even though he explicitly said he called the prisoners by their society given names and not their nicknames because he wanted the kids to remember that that was where they were eventually returning.
That made me cry about the 2 black women who got sent to prison cuz they wanted their children to get a good education how are we suppose to break the cycle when we literally get punish for doing so its so upsetting :(
@@papasscooperiaworker3649 their kids were supposed to go to the schools in their district but the mothers signed them for schools in other districts since they were better, they were accused of 'stealing educations'.
It's made even worse by the concept of school "zoning" where even if you live in the school district you can only go to the schools in your "zone". Low income families live in low income neighborhoods and go to low income schools to get subpar education and they don't get a choice. It's classism at its finest
We do that one, too! We used to have a water jug at home as kids. I’d shake the almost empty jug at my brother and say, “Do you hear the empty spaces? Fill it!”
The way that Stanley Yelnats is Stanley Yelnats backwards is one of those things that has been stuck in my brain ever since I was thirteen or so and every so often I'll get get the name stuck in my brain. It's like an intrusive thought except instead of telling me to kill myself or that I'm worthless it's the mental version of one of those rotating animated text gifs.
I'm sure there's a word for what we'd call what you're describing, I did that A LOT when I was younger sometimes to busy myself, sometimes on purpose, sometimes intrusively...I do wonder what that's called now though....
Can we talk abt the ICONIC Eartha Kitt? Madame Zeroni and she was also in Emperor's New Groove, Harriet the Spy (legendary!) AND Earnest Scared Stupid (cult classic!) ...i think this is what gave her a younger/new audience, and I love that. She needs a biopic!!!
The problem of school funding being determined by property taxes is the CORE of every problem in the US. You discussed it really well and I wish it was brought up more often by more people!
Chicken A La King kinda, if a school system works they’ll stop any child from being left behind. Like they’d be able to provide resources that aren’t found at home
I'm afraid it's brought up all the time, especially by those discussing problems of race and class. The problem is that these are examples of systemic racism and a means of marginalizing the poor, and the powerful are the ones who benefit most from these systems. There is no will to change things at the top because if it's changed then the wealthy will be less able to distance themselves from the poor; out of sight, out of mind -and if they can ignore them, they can exploit them. Moreover, it's a form of unwritten segregation; there is no specific rule to make it so, but it's designed in such a way that segregation is the end result. Once redlining was made illegal, they had to abstract their intent into laws that seem innocent on the books, but that in practice sort the wealthy and middle class out and away from the poor because parents are motivated to send their children to the best schools possible. This video demonstrates at 15:00 onward that when the poor try to defy the system, they are heavily criminalized and made examples of -how dare they try and climb the social ladder! And without a large pool of poor, usually minority people to work the lowest paid jobs, they'd have to actually pay decent wages to people working those jobs -then they or their children may be able to ascend to a higher class. Like this, no individual has to make a decision to be racist to a particular target, they only need to let the system run in such a way that advantage naturally accrues to one group at the expense of another. This is how propagandists like Ban Shepiro and Dim Tool can blithely argue that there is no systemic racism because there are no more racist laws, despite the obvious (and deeply connected) examples of school funding, broken windows policing, the prison-industrial complex, etc.
Certainly in the minority of anarchists, if that is the case. Apart from rare acts of propaganda of the deed, anarchist movements have historically been nonviolent.
@@jonathangiese5727 anarchism is a broad spectrum of philosophy but from what I understand is not inherently nonviolent, rather allows violence only against outside threats of violence (e.g., violent states, or, in kate Barlow's circumstance, the wealthy white class that burned her schoolhouse & killed Sam). I do think that if we're analyzing the full arc of her character, it might make more sense to claim that her rebellion had roots in anarchism in reaction to those events, but she was by no means ever an organizer or pursuing an ultimate goal of overthrowing the state. However, I personally didn't want for this additional analysis because it was a small side quip in a video about a larger issue.
@@jonathangiese5727anti-violence can only be practiced by the aggressor "violence by the state is always seen as enforcing justice, defence against the state is always portrayed as violence"
Sigourney Weaver and Eartha Kitt were so perfectly cast in their parts that it actually gives me chills. I read the book when I was 8, a full year before the movie even came out, and despite not having a clue who either of them were at the time, I still explicitly remember picturing THEM as the Warden and Madame Zeroni, so you can imagine how surreal it was for me to see them literally come to life like that. Those were my two favorite performances in the film, but the same really goes for all of the characters...with the exception of Stanley, who was fat in the book. But honestly, Shia otherwise spoke and acted so closely to how I’d imagined that it didn’t even seem to matter. One of the best-cast film adaptations in history.
Ritz he goes thru a weight transformation, losing a lot of weight at camp. And Shia was actually prepared to gain and lose that weight but the producers decided it was too dangerous for him physically since he was so young
The hatred of Zero is also ableist. Disabled people are more likely to be arrested than non disabled people and they typically are denied their ADA rights to access and are, therefore, denied even the same treatment as non disabled people and denied access to their arrest information.
@@emilykate0835 If I remember correctly, the reason he can't read at the beginning is he has dyslexia - which is a disability. The fact that it went undiagnosed for so long is another example of how the system is a failure.
Now how direct is that ableism? I’m not sure if disabled people are more likely to be arrested because the people in the justice system are ableist (though that may be the case, I don’t know for sure), I have a feeling it’s less direct than that. If I had to guess, it’s probably because standardized education is less suited for the disabled, but specialized education goes underfunded, and since they’re less educated, it’s harder for them to be successful (landing a job, affording a house, etc.), causing them to rely on yet again underfunded federal aid, meaning the only places they can afford to live are in low-income areas and with that comes high crime rates, so disabled individuals end of turning to it as a way to get by. My point is, there’s probably a disproportionate amount of disabled people committing blue-collar crimes due to where they are forced to reside on the socioeconomic ladder.
What I found interesting is that he was sent to that labor camp because it was an "diversion/alternative" to jail. Many people have been pushing for nice sounding reforms to the prison system that actually expand it. I'm thinking of human trafficking intervention courts, where victims who have been arrested, stand trial, and are given the "choice" between jail or counseling (they have to pay for it) and are fined/monitored, or some kind of rehabilitation for "immoral women/ sex workers) which usually involves labor. I think many people got the impression that the premise of the movie was ridiculous but it's actually very real.
It's also kind of an exaggeration of the practice of sending juvenile offenders to "boot camps" as an alternative to juvenile prisons. Which in some cases have been shut down for being abusive, and criticized for increasing the kids' aggression. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_camp_(correctional)#Evaluation
"where victims who have been arrested" agreed. anytime a victim is arrested is a travesty and should be corrected ASAP. however, when a criminal is arrested they should be punished to fit their crime.
Theres a lot of "rehab" places that are used as "alternatives" to prison, and are in reality slave labor camps with no protection for the workers rights. One prominent example is that chicken farm, i cant remember the name but if you search "chicken processing prison slave labor" a bunch of articles should come up
Exactly. It's not kidnapping if you call it a "camp."....well, it actually still IS kidnapping and torture of minors, but calling it "camp" sounds nicer. Stuff like this is very real and pretty common. I was kidnapped and sent to a work camp like this along with dozens of other boys and girls. Most of the victims were told they deserved to be there as punishment for bad grades or doing drugs, or some bullcrap excuse. None of us were allowed to exchange contact information with each other, and were never allowed any pen or paper to write down information the entire time.
@@christian-mx7ml So called "criminals" are always victims of something. Whether that is poverty, childhood abuse, or mental illness. Countries like America make medical care, social mobility and psychological support inaccessible to these people, and many of them end up turning to crime as a result. So many of the people rotting in American prisons would be productive members of society if they had been born in any other country. It is incredibly sad.
This is so great!! I also think the Warden not doing anything specifically racist at the camp shows that racism shows itself in covert, overt abd systemic ways. Its embedded in everything. Racism exists without obvious, outward attacks. And maybe highlights the importance of the class/race convo as, as you mentioned, the movies second half shows the poorer they are, the worse theyre treated (esp Zero)
i love that moment (well, no, it’s really sad but) where zero tells stanley he used to wait at lainey (?) park and stanley says excitedly, “i used to go to lainey park all the time!” and zero’s like, “i used to sleep in the tunnel next to the swinging bridge.” like stanley’s face...he understood his privilege right then
@@Yharazayd EXACTLY OH MY GOD! that line always stuck with me and I thought exactly the same thing of how right then Stanley was really hit with his privilege. It’s like you read my mind! Not just that but the whole video honestly!!
@@Yharazayd This wasn't as obvious since it was in the background, but someone in the movie (I forgot who. It was probably a side character) says something in Spanish. The councilor tells him, "We speak English here, this is America"
I think that in the book, that Zero is said to be much more black than he is in the film, so for me who read the book before watching the movie, it's actually fairy obvious that the reason they hated him is that he's black, not because he can't read (which they wouldn't have known anyways)
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the characterization of Zero there, but I’d argue in the film that Zero being black and poor and illiterate and an orphan could be an allegory for racism in the system that specifically keeps black people in a position of permanent poverty and without a nuclear parental system. Just a thought.
If I remember correctly, in the book, Zero is left at the park by his mom every day while she tried to get a job, one day she didn't come back for him, so he just stayed at the park. They are reunited at the end, Zero hires investigators to find out what happened to her.
Also it shows a vary different path for immigrants who assimilate into whiteness and those who don't. The Yelnats and the Zeronis were from the same country (likely the same village) but over generations they had very different opportunities and ended up in different classes. Even with a cures, the Yelnats did well enough, while the Zeronis struggled.
Nana Adusei oh okay. But even still, it’s not a typical nuclear parental setup. He may have a mom, but no dad, correct? So my thesis could still be valid 🤷🏼♀️ I am just guessing, though.
The symbolic value of the Peach and Onion really grabbed me by the balls and made me think hard. 1. The mixture caused the wealth of the Yelnats family to skyrocket with their new "sweet feet" product. 2. The mixture of when Zero ate the Peaches in the broken Mary Lou, and then the Onions at the top of the mountain saved his life. 3. The archetypes of the exchange of Peaches and Onions to symbolise the love between Sam and Kate Barlow hit deep! In essence, the main heroes of the story are Peaches and Onions.
I had to read the book at two different schools, but both it and the movie mean so much to me, especially because the latter is THE most accurate paper to screen adaptation ever.
Yeah, the only thing they got remotely wrong was Stanley's weight and I read somewhere that was only because they didn't want a child actor gaining or losing large amounts of weight for the film, a very good reason not to include that. I read this one first when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade because my friend was reading it and I ended up loving it, I read it again in middle school for a class. Honestly this was probably the best book I was ever required to read.
one think I always loved about this book and movie is how it took children seriously--it gave them the agency to make these connections while still very much being for children. great great analysis as always! when you include an Angela Davis clip I just know the video will be amazing
very late but kids keep falling in love with sachar's books specifically because he gives agency to children. even before i realized he was the same author who'd written holes, i loved him for his portrayal of the kids in wayside school. it's stupid, really stupid, but every kid's stupid problems are treated with the utmost care, because to kids, things that seem stupid to us really do matter. so we're right there as eric bacon worries about his last name and all the kids are scared of mrs. gorf. it's noteworthy that other fan favorite children's authors are ones that focus fully on children struggling to establish themselves in a world full of adult pushback--authors like andrew clements and beverly cleary. in a world where kids are famously told to shut up and be obedient wallflowers until they're adults, there's something very radical about treating children like they matter, and i could easily identify that in the wayside school series. it was heightened when i read the blurb and learned that sachar used to be a playground monitor as a young adult. and that told me, when i finally pieced together that he'd also written holes, that the kind of characterization the kids in his books have is very much intentional, and it's why i'm convinced that the threads of race and class and incarceration are intentional too: because you don't get that kind of intricate, foundational respect for characters or subject matter unless you put considerable effort into it. i think sachar just can't say so because it'd get his books pulled off library shelves, and that's fine because the work speaks very clearly for itself.
It's worth reading Sachar's follow-up to Holes, Small Steps. It's a very different sort of book, but it's a lot more explicit about addressing structural racism in the present day. Having read a lot of his books, I'm convinced that the themes of injustice in Holes are absolutely intentional, whether Sachar would describe himself as "making a statement" with his books or not.
@@E4439Qv5 I have, but it was a very long time ago so I don't really remember anything about it other than the basic premise. I remember enjoying it, but it certainly hasn't stuck with me the way that Holes, Small Steps, and There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom have.
@@HarrietCereza ...damn, haven't thought about "Boy in the Girl's Bathroom" in literally _years._ _Totally_ forgot that was one of his. Thanks! Was about to say that my history with Sacker's work was with Holes, Cardturner, and the Sideways Stories books (which are absolutely brilliant.) Those works never struck me as being anything but immersive settings with well-written, strongly-relatable characters... fantastic stuff, but not particularly provocative. "Boy" was suuuuper grounded though, so I might just have to re-think Louis as a heavy-hitter after all.
A lot of other people have covered the intentionality of how Sachar wrote this, so I wanted to add an additional piece: Sachar is a lawyer, his wife is a school counselor, and they work in Texas where the book is set. I think this lends more evidence to him having a good understanding of what happens to young people entering The System. And how, even if he didn't set out to write a story *about* the Prison-Industrial complex, he saw how it couldn't really be separated from the story he was writing.
I think the author had a lot of intention on speaking about the commentary of the prison system. He wrote a sequel called Small Steps about armpit moving on from the camp and trying to get his life together
I always thought they burned down the school bc of the intense racism (punishing Kate for kissing a black man) or sexism (punishing her for rejecting the Warden’s powerful grandfather/jealousy for her picking a different guy), probs both.
yep. the grandfather was trying to get even with Kate for rejecting him for a black man. although, the fact that the man was black was never really mentioned in the movie.
@@jaustengirl441 i suppose the scene in the movie could be a "lynching" looked more like just murder to me. Disney and Sachar was going for an extremes Romeo & Juliette, Kate was a very white blond blue eye while Sam(i can fix that) being a dark skin AA. if Sam had been white i don't believe his killing would have had as big of an impact to the audience.
So I have a social work degree, and you packed a whole semester's worth of social inequality education into a half hour film analysis. You're a fantastic speaker. I'm excited to watch you blow up.
Also this movie was the first time I ever felt viscerally afraid watching media. The lizards, snakes, curses, violence, unforgiving desert, those damn poison nails, etc etc it was all so disturbing to me, but I think that feeling was an important precursor to developing empathy as I got older.
The fact that Stanley and Hector were both poor and came from rough upbringings but Stanley realized his privilege when talking to hector about the play ground they both went to a lot as a kid but when hector told Stanley it wasn’t just a playground to him it was his home as well.
So many thoughts about this movie... The cast is one of the all time best. Kate's death scene is so amazing, it still gives me chills. The fact my 4th grade teacher (Mrs. Landon) read this too the class and then we got to see the movie at the end of the year was awesome. The deeper running themes something I never got as a child, but now as an adult. Wow. This essay was amazing, thank you.
I have to say that my dad worked on one of the songs for holes, he produced for shaggy and one of the songs in the little mermaid, so every time you guys watch that movie my family gets a small number in royalties so thank y’all for still watching this movie and helping out a lowkey struggling fam 🥺🤝😤
Literally like 2 weeks ago I stopped in the middle of my kitchen and yelled "HOLES IS ABOUT THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX" and that's when I realized this movie is the root of my passion for social justice. Yeet
Fantastic video. Never saw the movie because I was afraid it would suck even as a middle schooler, having read the book twice in fourth and fifth grade, but I can tell it is faithful, and as soon as I saw the title of the video I got excited immediately recognizing the connection in a way I couldn't have thought about having not reread it in so long (but it left a strong impression). I learned a lot of particular details about the history of the prison industrial complex from this too which was helpful (most of what I knew came from the System of a Down song Prison Song lol)
fun fact, the guy who wrote donnie darko was originally commissioned to write the script for this movie, but when he came back with an r-rated post apocalypse script where's stanley's original crime is murdering his sister. disney said no, but the script is still floating around on line if you want to see it, it's wild.
"Masterpieces don't have to be perfect grow up" thank you. Someone had to say it. Great video, I look forward to binge watching all your past videos now!
So happy to find another person who loves Holes as much as me!! I also think this is one of, if not the best book to movie adaptation ever. I remember in 5th grade we got to pick the books we wanted to cover for our book reports and we also got to dress up as a character from the book when we presented to the class, I chose Holes and dressed up as Kissin Kate Barlow. Still one of my proudest moments haha
I think the racism in the 'modern age' of the movie is definitely there, though it is covert much like a lot of racism in the 2000s. All authority figures are white, the only black character that isn't dehumanized by authority is a celebrity athlete. It is not blatant like the past, but it's there.
To me, the dried up lake was always a metaphor for the long term impact of history and how racism in the past like slavery and Jim Crow laws are still felt and affect the society and environment we live in. The racism of the present as it is ingrained in the justice system, policing and prison industrial complex is also a direct product of the old brand of racism in the country. The movie shows a direct correlation between a family's history and their generational wealth. The warden is a direct descendant of her ancestors' wealth but also their crime. She is cursed by the acts of her family and causes more harm to try to get what she wants instead of, like Stanley, fixing things and setting them right by sharing his newly found family wealth with Zero. The warden was never able to break the cycle whereas Stanley did. I feel like a lot of elements in this movie can be interpreted as metaphors for larger issues. There's more than one possible reading and that's what makes it great.
So many times it's disappointing to watch nostalgic movies. I appreciate Holes and other genuinely good movies so much more now that I can understand and explore it's themes and stories. Thank you for this.
"There's no message" is the official line. If there were a message, the book would be routinely banned. I grew up in a socially segregated prison town in the southwest. It was when I was a college student in a different, much whiter, state that I realized my classes still had more ethnic minorities than the advanced courses at my 1/3 Mexican-American high school.
It kind of goes both ways, tbh, but you're mostly right. Because there's literally no correlation at all between U.S Government policy and the opinions of 99+ percent of the public, they have a tendency to suddenly make extremely unpopular and seemingly inexplicable calls pretty often, and these are *usually* conservative or reactionary. Occasionally, though, you get something like the Civil Rights Act - it's worth remembering that up until Nixon, the South was the democratic party's core base of support.
I can’t explain it, but I cry everytime at the end when X-Ray and Stanley embrace. The development of X-Ray is so beautiful. P.S. this has been my UA-cam account name for years and this is one of the best video on it
Remember that three strikes was passed to fill newly built but vacant prisons in the 90s by retroactively counting prior misdemeanors into felonies to get someone a life sentence.
my teacher read the book to my class in sixth grade, a couple chapters everyday, and it was the best. when the three main plotlines all converged and we found out what happened to kate's treasure and zero's backstory and how stanley and zero survived the yellow-spotted lizards and zero using the reading lessons to see stanley's ancestor's name on the treasure box, my little mind was blown. i need to buy a copy for myself and re-read it
I also love the scene when Zero and Stanley were in the pit with the lizards and treasure. They didn't stay in the pit because they were afraid of moving and upsetting the lizards, they stayed in the pit because they were afraid of the adults outside. The lizards were their protection as evidenced when they simply walked out as soon as the attorney arrived.
My middle Language Arts teacher pronounced it as suh-CAR, but I've heard also it pronounced SAH-CURR and SAH-CHURR. But yeah, SAH-CURR is the correct one.
I tell everyone that this is my favorite movie and people think I'm joking. It seriously is a really good book-to-movie adaptation with interesting themes
14:15 I think Zero’s illiteracy and the fact he doesn’t have a family is also significant in Pendanski’s cruelty because it means that Zero can’t tell the outside world about his abuse. He has no one to tell, no one outside who would care, and not being able to write means he’s rendered completely voiceless. Learning to read isn’t just about increasing his prospects once he gets out or about soothing his ego when his intelligence is constantly insulted, I think it’s also him taking back his voice. I don’t think it’s a coincidence he starts talking more and making genuine connections with others once he starts reading. Idk may be reading into things but that’s how I like to interpret it, especially considering how revolutionaries historically have talked about literacy as a tool for the masses to take back their power and reclaim their freedom.
I remember this being one of the only books I was assigned at school that I forgot I was reading for school. It was captivating and the film was great. Thanks for this video, a lot of depth I hadn't seen before.
The fact that you can face ANY jail time for trying to send your kid to a better school should be a sign that education isn’t a right. A right can’t be gatekept based on ability to afford it.
just another reason holes is amazing, Madame Zeroni is played by Eartha Kitt, who is literally one of the most iconic people to live. ua-cam.com/video/5JrtRhsxWyY/v-deo.html
As a poor-ish young girl with no cable but a select few vhs tapes, Holes has lived deep in my heart as one of the few movies I can quote word for word. This was such a great analysis.
I watched Holes as a young child at my older cousin’s birthday party. I was the only one still awake at the end and it was a VHS- I remember being too scared to even get up and turn off the staticky television when the tape ran out. Combined with the fact that I lived in Arizona at the time and the desert was practically my backyard, this movie terrified the living daylights out of me as a kid. I had actual nightmares about it. I vowed to never watch it again, but this video has really piqued my interest. I kinda want to watch it now, which is boggling my mind. Thank you for this illuminating look at Holes (and the Prison-Industrial Complex)!
I read the book first and fell in love with the story. Usually, the movie that follows a book doesn’t keep up, but this one definitely did. But that’s a key part of it, too: the director and script writers did an excellent job interpreting the book and bringing it to the screen, and then the cast was also *chef’s kiss.* one of my favorite roles for Shia LeBeouf. Thank you for creating these in-depth analyses of our childhood/teenhood movies! Shining a light on that added layer of meaning and complexity. Love your channel!
Wow, so much I didn't pick up in my first watch, I kinda wanna go back and watch this. The view on racism really does fall into that erasing narrative many of us grow up learning in school. Excellent analysis :)
I haven't thought about this movie or the book in so long, I was absolutely obsessed with it when I was younger, it was the first book that left a real impact on me and that I related to the world around me. It is one of the best book-to-movie movies ever in my humble opinion, so perfectly executed when it could have gone so poorly.
I just found this video and I rewatched holes the same day it was uploaded. Thank you so much for talking about this movie, I don’t think it gets enough praise🙏💖💖
I haven’t seen this movie in so long and I barely remembered anything from it except the names and...holes of course, but I’ve always remembered it fondly. And now I need to watch it again ASAP lol. Great video❤️❤️❤️
i've actually never seen this film but we studied this book in y7 english and it was such a incredible tale that i just never revisited. i'd love to reread the novel and watch the film. might just do both right now.
Connecticut has such a wide weath gap that no one outside of it seems to really know about, so I appreciate you mentioning CT specifically! This review is really great! I haven't seen your stuff before but now I'm gonna go watch the rest of your work!
Yhara you are quickly becoming one of my favourite video essayists on here, love and support every one of your takes and can't wait for more! Also ty for reminding me what a brilliant film this is/what a crazy amazing cast it has wowww
I must’ve read this book about a dozen times before I was eleven years old. I fuckin’ LOVED Holes, and I’ve only come to appreciate it more now that I’m a socialist. It’s a book about private interests in prisons, corruption, the disproportionate incarceration of the poor and people of color, and how reparations are the only way to set right historical wrongs. Not a bad bunch of moral lessons for an eight-year-old, even if Sachar doesn’t think he wrote in any overtly political messages, which...I doubt. I mean, I’ve read the sequel. It’s about recidivism. I’ll bet that Sachar is just being coy as to not blacklist himself, or something.
socialism is evil and only a tool the government uses to keep people brainwashed on the promises of getting free stuff. it is absolutely NOT about any of the things you want it to be about. ESPECIALLY reparations(which would never set any injustices right). none of the moral lessons you think you got from this book (which Sachar has literally said wasn't any) should be taught by you to ANY 8 yo. only God knows what you think is moral but i would guess it is align with far left sentiments.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick and you must think that the UA-cam comments section is some sort of CHAZ "safe place". it is ironic that you chose the Captain American shield as your thumbnail pic. as he would be against everything you stand for other than your freedom of speech. which it seems you don't believe any other's should be expressed if they don't agree with you. replace that star on that shield with a hammer & sickle.
christian Y’mean Captain America? The ORIGINAL Antifa Supersoldier? The man who was periodically written in the comics to exile himself from the United States when his faith in the country is shaken, such as after Watergate, and the Ronald Reagan presidency? The man whose entire ethos is being compassionate, and selfless to a ridiculous degree, who despises people who exploit their arbitrary authority over others? He’d have YOUR perspective? But what am I doing, you’re obviously just trolling.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick i troll stupid. and in your case your house is built on top of my bridge. CA is only ANTIFA in name. while he wouldn't believe in the far right-wing views his only similarities with the left would be freedom for ALL Americans as long as it aligns with the moral views of America. he damn sure wouldn't be socialist. taking goods or whatever else from someone that has worked hard to obtain them and giving it to a person that choose not to work is theft plain and simple. theft is morally wrong and CA would agree. as for the times he was "written" out of some comics, unless he broke the 4th wall, that's just the writer of the current issues opinion of what they want to do. lastly ANTIFA is just as fascist as the people they hate.
I was a really dyslexic kid but I read that book cover to cover in primary school and it low key radicalize me. I actually went to my backyard and dag a hole all day to understand what the characters went through
I have at moments felt the story about the zeronis and the yelnats is sort of indirectly about reparations. And how righting the wrongs of the past made things better for both families. Hector found his mother and the Yelnats regained their lost family wealth (ie broke the curse). It’s very much a sort of fairytale ending but the curse of the town and the curse of Stanley’s family were both broken by acts that sort of symbolically corrected the wrongs of the past. The decedent of the man who murdered Sam and forever enraged Kate losing her hold over the land the town once stood on brought the rain back after one hundred years. Stanley carrying Hector up the mountain fulfilled the promise his great grandfather broke. In these ways the “curses” of past wrongdoings start to be lifted.
absolutely yes! do you mind if i pin this? because it feels like a huge theme of the story and i’d like more people to see it
Feel free!
great take, i totally agree!
i was thinking the same thing!
Wow very insightful! I totally agree. It is a lesson for white people who like to deny reparations because "it's not my fault what my ancestors did." Like Stanley's family who blamed their ancestor for stealing the pig. But justice can only be achieved by actually fixing the damage that was done - when Stanley fulfilled the promise to Madam Zeroni. Stanley and Hector also split the treasure, to end the poverty in both their lives.
"I can fix that" is peak romance.
💯 imagine anything sexier? I cant
But👏can👏sam👏fix👏my👏crippling👏depression
even sexier than "as you wish"
Tied with "As you wish" for me tbh
Makes me cry every time
Sometimes when an author says there are no intentional allegories in their work, they mean it. Sometimes when they say there are no allegories in their work, they mean "If I told you what this story was about, I wouldn't be allowed to tell you the story."
damn
And also sometimes, in the case of major AAA game developers, it means "there are definite intentional allegories present in our work but we don't want to alienate anyone in order to maximize profit so we're making it as needlessly vague as possible while pretending we're completely apolitical". Or just that they're too ignorant to spot when they've done it themselves.
And sometimes the author's intent is divorced from the text.
@@kristavaillancourt6313 Yeah, sometimes authors accidentally touch on a subject, sometimes the viewer just reads into it too much. Sometimes you have situations like Sorry to Bother You where it's a heavy critique of racism and capitalism and that is a hard sell to major corporations
That reminds me of a TV show my grandma used to watch set after the Spanish civil war. There was this one scene that stuck with me, about an author talking about his book, and how he was sneaking in anti-fascist/Republican hints for his main character (saying he'd been shot in the left arm, etc), because writing about democracy in any sort of positive light back then was asking to get your ass hauled to jail or worse. But fuck it if they weren't gonna risk it and sneak it in anyways.
So yeah, "no intentional allegories" indeed lmao
all the times zero was ready to fight >>>>>>
zero hitting mr. shitass with a shovel was the best moment of my childhood
Zero choking Zigzag to defend Stanley!
All you videos are so good! Like every one. And you keep doing my fav movies. I think we had very similar tastes as children/teenagers. It's so fun talking about how art reflects society and says a lot about it. Matilda
Zero had real life experience that shaped his reactions to things...when a fight broke out in the rec room he knew to grab a pool ball as a weapon, when Stanley was attacked he knew it was better to choke a bigger guy out than try to fight with fists, and most importantly he saw that the counsellor was full of shit and saw him for the kind of shallow, heartless authority figure he really was. He never opened up to him because he knew there was no point. He was just another face in the system, and the counsellors reaction to that showed his true colours.
from Zero to Hector the Hero. Him being there saved the whole story.
One thing I remember about the book was that Stanley considers his sentence to be him at "the wrong place at the wrong time." When he gets to Camp Green Lake and writes to his family, he mentions that all the boys in his tent aren't bad guys, but also kids who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. I think the sympathy Sachar extends to them is really powerful there.
In that regard, Holes is kinda like Shawshank but for a younger audience.
Exactly! The world needs more empathetic people honestly. Tired of all the apaths who think (petty) criminals deserve their harsh punishments.
Did anyone watch dog pound with the guy from degrassi
@@mooominpapa I love Shawshank. I never made that connection before. Also, the "if only, if only" part of the song is super telling. It's downtrodden people buying the garbage their fed that they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Everyone needs help sometimes and that's okay. Needing help is different from being a leech
@@snickeridooo5467 ,
When we read the book in class I got to be the voice of Kate Barlow and the Warden and I never let that go
Chase that high til the day you die
big flex💕
My Excuse Me is unrivaled
That radiates the biggest bde
Same! I also got to be Cherry Valance, so I'm pretty sure I was the favorite.
in the book, Stanley starts out being quite chubby and through the months of digging loses weight. I read somewhere that the only noticeable difference in the movie to the book was that Stanley began skinny. the director (I think) didn't want a child actor to put on and lose weight for a role so they got rid of that plot point. This movie remains the best book adaptation and I love it so so much
There is a famous story that Shia tried to gorge himself on Twinkies to gain weight, and when the author and director found out, they put a stop to it, telling him his performance was more important than his weight
It makes me so happy to see a production that actually cares about the well-being of their child actors
Ahhh, this is so nice oh my god.
@@bookmovietvworm that literally made my day i had no idea about this and now i have even more respect for the director and author omg
@@bookmovietvworm 🥺 no wonder I love this movie sm
kissin’ kate barlow said “eat the rich”
zero said amab (all marions are bastards)
Smooch the rich with your teeth
@@threadcreature4927 Kill 'em, then smooch 'em.
me when i consume my landlord
@@Joffy pay your rent serf
One of my favorite details was the running joke of the Warden’s “this ain’t Girl Scout camp” and afternoon the closure, it became a Girl Scout camp
Holes radicalized me.
Same
To what 🧐
Same. The system is so fucked
based
U bet, I read holes and then small steps back to back in middle school and was like 😰
The fact that the "yellow-spotted lizards" are just beardies but painted will be endlessly hilarious to me
I think the allegory was intentional. Louis Sachar released a sequel called "Small Steps" which goes into how life is rigged against the boys once they were freed from the facility/camp.
was just thinking about this! to be as vague and non-spoilery as possible, I distinctly remember a scene with the police that drove this point home
Whatttt, I did not know there was a sequel
THERE'S A SEQUEL???
TheSongwritingCat it doesnt follow the characters from the first one, but yes. small steps is really good
@@TheSongwritingCat Yeah but Armpit (from camp) is the main character this time!
Louis Sachar says he doesn't write about particular issues intentionally, but the follow-up to Holes really makes me think he knows what he's doing
i’m saying! like somewhere deep down he must know...
@@Yharazayd Sachar is from Texas. As a Texan, I suspect that if he says what it's about, then they're going to take it off the YA reading lists at schools, etc., bc white conservatives have all the power when it comes to that stuff. They don't stand for anything that vaguely criticizes authority being in reading reach of kids.
@@mxmothmanart Texans often are very adamant about fighting against authority, and schools are hugely liberal owned. So that argument makes no sense on either account. If the school libraries were "owned" by conservatives then Ayn Rand and George Orwell would be required reading and they wouldn't have the communist manifesto and Frida Kalo along with other feminist books. Yet they have tons of communist books.
@@mxmothmanart He's basically Rick Riordan, but he's stuck in Texas.
@@JZStudiosonline *laughs* thank you for this hilarious joke! You have a great sense of humor, but white Texans tend to idealize the police, the military, and the prison system.
No idea what you mean about "liberal-owned" schools. Those are mostly in the public sector (meaning subject to upper middle class conservative pressure) or Christian private schools.
Also, Orwell was a socialist, but everyone I know who read it in high school had it framed for them as anti-communist when he was really anti-authoritarian.
Maybe it's different out west, but it's what the Piney Woods conservatives get up to anyway.
This movie just gets better the older I get, that's the sign of a true masterpiece.
I'd go so far as to say it's sacred. Holy, even
Just like Ratatouille.
@@dddmemaybe The Princess Bride is another one that I enjoy more the older I get
So while the movie doesn't go into modern depictions of racism, I do remember when I was writing a paper about the book's portrayal of penal slavery, they actually got much more explicit about the privilege Stanley had as a white prisoner over the other black prisoners (also interesting that most of the more developed prisoner characters were black which I felt could be seen as showing that there were more black kids than white kids at the camp, but that's speculative). But I remember one particular scene in the book where a few of the kids pointed out that Stanley was acting like a slave master to Zero and that it wasn't fair that he was getting help from him while they had to do their work by himself. The book also makes it a bit more obvious that at least originally Zero was more used as a means to an end and less about helping him for helping him sake. It's absolutely wild how deep this book is and the movie did explore some of the major threads in a very masterful way.
Also I'm so glad you talked about Mr. Pandanscki having it out for Zero even more than the rest of the boys. I thought one detail that was extra chilling was that Zero was the only kid that Mr. Pandanscki never called by his real name even though he explicitly said he called the prisoners by their society given names and not their nicknames because he wanted the kids to remember that that was where they were eventually returning.
"IF ONLY IF ONLY," THE WOODPECKER SIGHS "THE BARK ON THE TREES WAS AS SOFT AS THE SKIES"
AS THE WOLF WAITS BELOW, HUNGRY AND LONELY, HE CRIES TO THE MOON, "IF ONLY, IF ONLY."
I use that phrase occasionally when feeling futility.
One of the best Soundtracks ever. I love almost all the songs from that movie.
I always loved how haunting that song sounds
When we read this in school, my teacher always picked the same kid to read this when it came up because he would sing it so beautifully.
That made me cry about the 2 black women who got sent to prison cuz they wanted their children to get a good education how are we suppose to break the cycle when we literally get punish for doing so its so upsetting :(
That’s so upsetting. I’m so sorry for them and their children.
Wait what why were they imprisoned for wanting that
@@papasscooperiaworker3649 their kids were supposed to go to the schools in their district but the mothers signed them for schools in other districts since they were better, they were accused of 'stealing educations'.
Seriously, fucking infuriating.
It's made even worse by the concept of school "zoning" where even if you live in the school district you can only go to the schools in your "zone". Low income families live in low income neighborhoods and go to low income schools to get subpar education and they don't get a choice. It's classism at its finest
My mom and I reference the "well, that's too damn bad" line almost every day. I guess this is a sign I need to watch Holes again.
Tatiana W quotes you can hear!
We do that one, too! We used to have a water jug at home as kids. I’d shake the almost empty jug at my brother and say, “Do you hear the empty spaces? Fill it!”
The way that Stanley Yelnats is Stanley Yelnats backwards is one of those things that has been stuck in my brain ever since I was thirteen or so and every so often I'll get get the name stuck in my brain. It's like an intrusive thought except instead of telling me to kill myself or that I'm worthless it's the mental version of one of those rotating animated text gifs.
That was relatable and hurt me.
I laughed out loud at this an totally relate
Man, silly intrusive thoughts are a rare treat. I hope the other ones are being less terrible!
I'm sure there's a word for what we'd call what you're describing, I did that A LOT when I was younger sometimes to busy myself, sometimes on purpose, sometimes intrusively...I do wonder what that's called now though....
Till this day I like to read people's names backwards just because 😅
Can we talk abt the ICONIC Eartha Kitt? Madame Zeroni and she was also in Emperor's New Groove, Harriet the Spy (legendary!) AND Earnest Scared Stupid (cult classic!) ...i think this is what gave her a younger/new audience, and I love that. She needs a biopic!!!
If I may add to your list, she was also Vexus in My Life as a Teenage Robot.
@@batgirl1321 loved that show!
And never forget her time as CatWoman on the original Batman, she never missed a BEAT with her roles.
Go listen to her music if you've never heard it.
And Eric the Viking.
The problem of school funding being determined by property taxes is the CORE of every problem in the US. You discussed it really well and I wish it was brought up more often by more people!
YES!
Every problem?
Idk about every.... but it's a huge problem so no real argument here
Chicken A La King kinda, if a school system works they’ll stop any child from being left behind. Like they’d be able to provide resources that aren’t found at home
I'm afraid it's brought up all the time, especially by those discussing problems of race and class. The problem is that these are examples of systemic racism and a means of marginalizing the poor, and the powerful are the ones who benefit most from these systems.
There is no will to change things at the top because if it's changed then the wealthy will be less able to distance themselves from the poor; out of sight, out of mind -and if they can ignore them, they can exploit them. Moreover, it's a form of unwritten segregation; there is no specific rule to make it so, but it's designed in such a way that segregation is the end result. Once redlining was made illegal, they had to abstract their intent into laws that seem innocent on the books, but that in practice sort the wealthy and middle class out and away from the poor because parents are motivated to send their children to the best schools possible. This video demonstrates at 15:00 onward that when the poor try to defy the system, they are heavily criminalized and made examples of -how dare they try and climb the social ladder! And without a large pool of poor, usually minority people to work the lowest paid jobs, they'd have to actually pay decent wages to people working those jobs -then they or their children may be able to ascend to a higher class.
Like this, no individual has to make a decision to be racist to a particular target, they only need to let the system run in such a way that advantage naturally accrues to one group at the expense of another. This is how propagandists like Ban Shepiro and Dim Tool can blithely argue that there is no systemic racism because there are no more racist laws, despite the obvious (and deeply connected) examples of school funding, broken windows policing, the prison-industrial complex, etc.
This movie aged like fine, socialist wine
Or Sploosh ;)
I love these comments. We need more female/woman video essayists. I’m dying to hear their perspective
@@elijahplummer3655 there's lots
@@taliakellegg5978
Yea.... But we need MORE!!!!!
Based wine
"Kissing Kate Barlow is an anarchist" wasn't the take we expected but you've blessed us anyway
Certainly in the minority of anarchists, if that is the case. Apart from rare acts of propaganda of the deed, anarchist movements have historically been nonviolent.
@@jonathangiese5727 anarchism is a broad spectrum of philosophy but from what I understand is not inherently nonviolent, rather allows violence only against outside threats of violence (e.g., violent states, or, in kate Barlow's circumstance, the wealthy white class that burned her schoolhouse & killed Sam). I do think that if we're analyzing the full arc of her character, it might make more sense to claim that her rebellion had roots in anarchism in reaction to those events, but she was by no means ever an organizer or pursuing an ultimate goal of overthrowing the state.
However, I personally didn't want for this additional analysis because it was a small side quip in a video about a larger issue.
shes not..she just feels guilt...i get her character
@@jonathangiese5727anti-violence can only be practiced by the aggressor
"violence by the state is always seen as enforcing justice, defence against the state is always portrayed as violence"
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Holes is a masterpiece and the greatest film Disney has ever produced fight me.
Yes.
I nominate as challenger "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey"
EXACTLY
@Man with hair why?
Sigourney Weaver and Eartha Kitt were so perfectly cast in their parts that it actually gives me chills. I read the book when I was 8, a full year before the movie even came out, and despite not having a clue who either of them were at the time, I still explicitly remember picturing THEM as the Warden and Madame Zeroni, so you can imagine how surreal it was for me to see them literally come to life like that. Those were my two favorite performances in the film, but the same really goes for all of the characters...with the exception of Stanley, who was fat in the book. But honestly, Shia otherwise spoke and acted so closely to how I’d imagined that it didn’t even seem to matter. One of the best-cast film adaptations in history.
Ritz he goes thru a weight transformation, losing a lot of weight at camp. And Shia was actually prepared to gain and lose that weight but the producers decided it was too dangerous for him physically since he was so young
@@ahhh4117 Couldn't they have just put him in a fat suit?
MoonLight in the desert with all that padding? That would be dangerous too xD
The hatred of Zero is also ableist. Disabled people are more likely to be arrested than non disabled people and they typically are denied their ADA rights to access and are, therefore, denied even the same treatment as non disabled people and denied access to their arrest information.
Yes, absolutely! That’s definitely the impression I got.
How is Zero disabled?
@@emilykate0835 If I remember correctly, the reason he can't read at the beginning is he has dyslexia - which is a disability. The fact that it went undiagnosed for so long is another example of how the system is a failure.
Zero was my favorite character in both the book and the movie I didn’t know that people be hating on my boi
Now how direct is that ableism? I’m not sure if disabled people are more likely to be arrested because the people in the justice system are ableist (though that may be the case, I don’t know for sure), I have a feeling it’s less direct than that. If I had to guess, it’s probably because standardized education is less suited for the disabled, but specialized education goes underfunded, and since they’re less educated, it’s harder for them to be successful (landing a job, affording a house, etc.), causing them to rely on yet again underfunded federal aid, meaning the only places they can afford to live are in low-income areas and with that comes high crime rates, so disabled individuals end of turning to it as a way to get by.
My point is, there’s probably a disproportionate amount of disabled people committing blue-collar crimes due to where they are forced to reside on the socioeconomic ladder.
What I found interesting is that he was sent to that labor camp because it was an "diversion/alternative" to jail. Many people have been pushing for nice sounding reforms to the prison system that actually expand it. I'm thinking of human trafficking intervention courts, where victims who have been arrested, stand trial, and are given the "choice" between jail or counseling (they have to pay for it) and are fined/monitored, or some kind of rehabilitation for "immoral women/ sex workers) which usually involves labor. I think many people got the impression that the premise of the movie was ridiculous but it's actually very real.
It's also kind of an exaggeration of the practice of sending juvenile offenders to "boot camps" as an alternative to juvenile prisons. Which in some cases have been shut down for being abusive, and criticized for increasing the kids' aggression. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_camp_(correctional)#Evaluation
"where victims who have been arrested" agreed. anytime a victim is arrested is a travesty and should be corrected ASAP. however, when a criminal is arrested they should be punished to fit their crime.
Theres a lot of "rehab" places that are used as "alternatives" to prison, and are in reality slave labor camps with no protection for the workers rights. One prominent example is that chicken farm, i cant remember the name but if you search "chicken processing prison slave labor" a bunch of articles should come up
Exactly. It's not kidnapping if you call it a "camp."....well, it actually still IS kidnapping and torture of minors, but calling it "camp" sounds nicer.
Stuff like this is very real and pretty common. I was kidnapped and sent to a work camp like this along with dozens of other boys and girls. Most of the victims were told they deserved to be there as punishment for bad grades or doing drugs, or some bullcrap excuse. None of us were allowed to exchange contact information with each other, and were never allowed any pen or paper to write down information the entire time.
@@christian-mx7ml So called "criminals" are always victims of something. Whether that is poverty, childhood abuse, or mental illness. Countries like America make medical care, social mobility and psychological support inaccessible to these people, and many of them end up turning to crime as a result. So many of the people rotting in American prisons would be productive members of society if they had been born in any other country. It is incredibly sad.
This is so great!! I also think the Warden not doing anything specifically racist at the camp shows that racism shows itself in covert, overt abd systemic ways. Its embedded in everything. Racism exists without obvious, outward attacks. And maybe highlights the importance of the class/race convo as, as you mentioned, the movies second half shows the poorer they are, the worse theyre treated (esp Zero)
i love that moment (well, no, it’s really sad but) where zero tells stanley he used to wait at lainey (?) park and stanley says excitedly, “i used to go to lainey park all the time!”
and zero’s like, “i used to sleep in the tunnel next to the swinging bridge.”
like stanley’s face...he understood his privilege right then
@@Yharazayd EXACTLY OH MY GOD! that line always stuck with me and I thought exactly the same thing of how right then Stanley was really hit with his privilege. It’s like you read my mind! Not just that but the whole video honestly!!
@@Yharazayd This wasn't as obvious since it was in the background, but someone in the movie (I forgot who. It was probably a side character) says something in Spanish. The councilor tells him, "We speak English here, this is America"
@@yellow_hearts1723 I think it's one of the main characters.. I mean the group of boys, maybe it was Magnet.
I think that in the book, that Zero is said to be much more black than he is in the film, so for me who read the book before watching the movie, it's actually fairy obvious that the reason they hated him is that he's black, not because he can't read (which they wouldn't have known anyways)
I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know the characterization of Zero there, but I’d argue in the film that Zero being black and poor and illiterate and an orphan could be an allegory for racism in the system that specifically keeps black people in a position of permanent poverty and without a nuclear parental system. Just a thought.
He isn’t actually an orphan, I think he got separated from him mother I’m not sure. But at the end they were reunited
If I remember correctly, in the book, Zero is left at the park by his mom every day while she tried to get a job, one day she didn't come back for him, so he just stayed at the park. They are reunited at the end, Zero hires investigators to find out what happened to her.
Also it shows a vary different path for immigrants who assimilate into whiteness and those who don't. The Yelnats and the Zeronis were from the same country (likely the same village) but over generations they had very different opportunities and ended up in different classes. Even with a cures, the Yelnats did well enough, while the Zeronis struggled.
Nana Adusei oh okay. But even still, it’s not a typical nuclear parental setup. He may have a mom, but no dad, correct? So my thesis could still be valid 🤷🏼♀️
I am just guessing, though.
his characterization in the movie is pretty dead on
The symbolic value of the Peach and Onion really grabbed me by the balls and made me think hard.
1. The mixture caused the wealth of the Yelnats family to skyrocket with their new "sweet feet" product.
2. The mixture of when Zero ate the Peaches in the broken Mary Lou, and then the Onions at the top of the mountain saved his life.
3. The archetypes of the exchange of Peaches and Onions to symbolise the love between Sam and Kate Barlow hit deep!
In essence, the main heroes of the story are Peaches and Onions.
I had to read the book at two different schools, but both it and the movie mean so much to me, especially because the latter is THE most accurate paper to screen adaptation ever.
Yeah, the only thing they got remotely wrong was Stanley's weight and I read somewhere that was only because they didn't want a child actor gaining or losing large amounts of weight for the film, a very good reason not to include that. I read this one first when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade because my friend was reading it and I ended up loving it, I read it again in middle school for a class. Honestly this was probably the best book I was ever required to read.
Yeah apparently the author Louis Sachar wrote the screenplay himself! He did a great job and I'm glad he had creative control
Ambria Now see, that makes so much sense! Thank you, I had no idea
25:54 he took the time to gingerly untangle his curls from the bush. true king shit 👏🏿👏🏿
one think I always loved about this book and movie is how it took children seriously--it gave them the agency to make these connections while still very much being for children. great great analysis as always! when you include an Angela Davis clip I just know the video will be amazing
very late but kids keep falling in love with sachar's books specifically because he gives agency to children. even before i realized he was the same author who'd written holes, i loved him for his portrayal of the kids in wayside school. it's stupid, really stupid, but every kid's stupid problems are treated with the utmost care, because to kids, things that seem stupid to us really do matter. so we're right there as eric bacon worries about his last name and all the kids are scared of mrs. gorf. it's noteworthy that other fan favorite children's authors are ones that focus fully on children struggling to establish themselves in a world full of adult pushback--authors like andrew clements and beverly cleary.
in a world where kids are famously told to shut up and be obedient wallflowers until they're adults, there's something very radical about treating children like they matter, and i could easily identify that in the wayside school series. it was heightened when i read the blurb and learned that sachar used to be a playground monitor as a young adult. and that told me, when i finally pieced together that he'd also written holes, that the kind of characterization the kids in his books have is very much intentional, and it's why i'm convinced that the threads of race and class and incarceration are intentional too: because you don't get that kind of intricate, foundational respect for characters or subject matter unless you put considerable effort into it. i think sachar just can't say so because it'd get his books pulled off library shelves, and that's fine because the work speaks very clearly for itself.
@@darlingdannid oh i love this analysis. i was a HUGE wayside school fan as well and never made that connection!
"As you wish" walked so that "I can fix that" could run.
It's worth reading Sachar's follow-up to Holes, Small Steps. It's a very different sort of book, but it's a lot more explicit about addressing structural racism in the present day. Having read a lot of his books, I'm convinced that the themes of injustice in Holes are absolutely intentional, whether Sachar would describe himself as "making a statement" with his books or not.
Maybe he views himself as not making a statement but giving insight to reality so idk that’s food for thought
Possibly Sachar is being literal when he says he doesn't need to make a statement, as in, any additional statements, if the work speaks for itself?
Any chance you've read "The Cardturner"?
@@E4439Qv5 I have, but it was a very long time ago so I don't really remember anything about it other than the basic premise. I remember enjoying it, but it certainly hasn't stuck with me the way that Holes, Small Steps, and There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom have.
@@HarrietCereza ...damn, haven't thought about "Boy in the Girl's Bathroom" in literally _years._
_Totally_ forgot that was one of his.
Thanks!
Was about to say that my history with Sacker's work was with Holes, Cardturner, and the Sideways Stories books (which are absolutely brilliant.) Those works never struck me as being anything but immersive settings with well-written, strongly-relatable characters... fantastic stuff, but not particularly provocative.
"Boy" was suuuuper grounded though, so I might just have to re-think Louis as a heavy-hitter after all.
A lot of other people have covered the intentionality of how Sachar wrote this, so I wanted to add an additional piece: Sachar is a lawyer, his wife is a school counselor, and they work in Texas where the book is set. I think this lends more evidence to him having a good understanding of what happens to young people entering The System. And how, even if he didn't set out to write a story *about* the Prison-Industrial complex, he saw how it couldn't really be separated from the story he was writing.
I think the author had a lot of intention on speaking about the commentary of the prison system. He wrote a sequel called Small Steps about armpit moving on from the camp and trying to get his life together
how does it end?
@@cal3ya spoiler alert but from what I remember,
His ex nearly gets killed by her step-dad
Your voice sounds how laying in a warm bed during a thunderstorm with a great cup of tea feels.
Very poignant!
I always thought they burned down the school bc of the intense racism (punishing Kate for kissing a black man) or sexism (punishing her for rejecting the Warden’s powerful grandfather/jealousy for her picking a different guy), probs both.
Both.
yep. the grandfather was trying to get even with Kate for rejecting him for a black man. although, the fact that the man was black was never really mentioned in the movie.
@@christian-mx7ml Yeah...because it’s Disney. It depicted a lynching - they even showed the murdered donkey :(
@@jaustengirl441 i suppose the scene in the movie could be a "lynching" looked more like just murder to me. Disney and Sachar was going for an extremes Romeo & Juliette, Kate was a very white blond blue eye while Sam(i can fix that) being a dark skin AA. if Sam had been white i don't believe his killing would have had as big of an impact to the audience.
@@jaustengirl441 The rawness of it is really genius:
So I have a social work degree, and you packed a whole semester's worth of social inequality education into a half hour film analysis. You're a fantastic speaker. I'm excited to watch you blow up.
Also this movie was the first time I ever felt viscerally afraid watching media. The lizards, snakes, curses, violence, unforgiving desert, those damn poison nails, etc etc it was all so disturbing to me, but I think that feeling was an important precursor to developing empathy as I got older.
And on the other side of the spectrum, I thought the setting was basically just Australia, but West Texas.
The fact that Stanley and Hector were both poor and came from rough upbringings but Stanley realized his privilege when talking to hector about the play ground they both went to a lot as a kid but when hector told Stanley it wasn’t just a playground to him it was his home as well.
I want an “ACAB for Cutie” tattoo
I read that as “Assigned Cop At Birth” sjskkskdkdjdjdjd
@@hanstans7309 This is such an abundant joke in the trans community I can't need read it as that
“I can fix that” is on the same level as “as you wish” to me. The holes movie had no right being as brilliant as it was. ❤️
So many thoughts about this movie...
The cast is one of the all time best.
Kate's death scene is so amazing, it still gives me chills.
The fact my 4th grade teacher (Mrs. Landon) read this too the class and then we got to see the movie at the end of the year was awesome.
The deeper running themes something I never got as a child, but now as an adult. Wow. This essay was amazing, thank you.
I have to say that my dad worked on one of the songs for holes, he produced for shaggy and one of the songs in the little mermaid, so every time you guys watch that movie my family gets a small number in royalties so thank y’all for still watching this movie and helping out a lowkey struggling fam 🥺🤝😤
Can I keep the movie on repeat will that help
- heart eyes filter and “holes is a masterpiece no really I mean it” - I’ve never felt so seen. Holes is unironically my favorite movie
Literally like 2 weeks ago I stopped in the middle of my kitchen and yelled "HOLES IS ABOUT THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX" and that's when I realized this movie is the root of my passion for social justice. Yeet
Fantastic video. Never saw the movie because I was afraid it would suck even as a middle schooler, having read the book twice in fourth and fifth grade, but I can tell it is faithful, and as soon as I saw the title of the video I got excited immediately recognizing the connection in a way I couldn't have thought about having not reread it in so long (but it left a strong impression). I learned a lot of particular details about the history of the prison industrial complex from this too which was helpful (most of what I knew came from the System of a Down song Prison Song lol)
Louis Sacher wrote the screenplay too, so it's definitely faithful.
Make sure you watch '13th' on Netflix for more info on the Prison Industrial Complex. Also, The New Jim Crow is a great read on the same subject.
The place I leasy expect to find Diginee here lol
Oh shit hi Digi I guess you've got good taste in new video essays too. Nice.
fun fact, the guy who wrote donnie darko was originally commissioned to write the script for this movie, but when he came back with an r-rated post apocalypse script where's stanley's original crime is murdering his sister. disney said no, but the script is still floating around on line if you want to see it, it's wild.
"Masterpieces don't have to be perfect grow up" thank you. Someone had to say it.
Great video, I look forward to binge watching all your past videos now!
So happy to find another person who loves Holes as much as me!! I also think this is one of, if not the best book to movie adaptation ever. I remember in 5th grade we got to pick the books we wanted to cover for our book reports and we also got to dress up as a character from the book when we presented to the class, I chose Holes and dressed up as Kissin Kate Barlow. Still one of my proudest moments haha
I think the racism in the 'modern age' of the movie is definitely there, though it is covert much like a lot of racism in the 2000s. All authority figures are white, the only black character that isn't dehumanized by authority is a celebrity athlete. It is not blatant like the past, but it's there.
To me, the dried up lake was always a metaphor for the long term impact of history and how racism in the past like slavery and Jim Crow laws are still felt and affect the society and environment we live in. The racism of the present as it is ingrained in the justice system, policing and prison industrial complex is also a direct product of the old brand of racism in the country. The movie shows a direct correlation between a family's history and their generational wealth. The warden is a direct descendant of her ancestors' wealth but also their crime. She is cursed by the acts of her family and causes more harm to try to get what she wants instead of, like Stanley, fixing things and setting them right by sharing his newly found family wealth with Zero. The warden was never able to break the cycle whereas Stanley did. I feel like a lot of elements in this movie can be interpreted as metaphors for larger issues. There's more than one possible reading and that's what makes it great.
So many times it's disappointing to watch nostalgic movies. I appreciate Holes and other genuinely good movies so much more now that I can understand and explore it's themes and stories. Thank you for this.
"There's no message" is the official line. If there were a message, the book would be routinely banned.
I grew up in a socially segregated prison town in the southwest. It was when I was a college student in a different, much whiter, state that I realized my classes still had more ethnic minorities than the advanced courses at my 1/3 Mexican-American high school.
this channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites on the platform right now
I feel like there's a pattern in history of "we were just about to make some progress.. but then the president decided to go make it all worse"
It kind of goes both ways, tbh, but you're mostly right. Because there's literally no correlation at all between U.S Government policy and the opinions of 99+ percent of the public, they have a tendency to suddenly make extremely unpopular and seemingly inexplicable calls pretty often, and these are *usually* conservative or reactionary. Occasionally, though, you get something like the Civil Rights Act - it's worth remembering that up until Nixon, the South was the democratic party's core base of support.
@@iusethisnameformygoogleacc1013 I believe you must take into account the political party Ships of Theseus.
Will I ever not cry at “SAMMMMMM”. .. no
I can’t explain it, but I cry everytime at the end when X-Ray and Stanley embrace. The development of X-Ray is so beautiful.
P.S. this has been my UA-cam account name for years and this is one of the best video on it
So glad YT showed me your channel. Your analyses are always on point.
"Actually you don't have to imagine, here's a chart" A++ line
Remember that three strikes was passed to fill newly built but vacant prisons in the 90s by retroactively counting prior misdemeanors into felonies to get someone a life sentence.
It was an odd experience reading the book and 2 years later getting sent to a 'wilderness program' in the Utah desert, as a teen.
my teacher read the book to my class in sixth grade, a couple chapters everyday, and it was the best. when the three main plotlines all converged and we found out what happened to kate's treasure and zero's backstory and how stanley and zero survived the yellow-spotted lizards and zero using the reading lessons to see stanley's ancestor's name on the treasure box, my little mind was blown. i need to buy a copy for myself and re-read it
I also love the scene when Zero and Stanley were in the pit with the lizards and treasure. They didn't stay in the pit because they were afraid of moving and upsetting the lizards, they stayed in the pit because they were afraid of the adults outside. The lizards were their protection as evidenced when they simply walked out as soon as the attorney arrived.
Just want to mention that Sachar is pronounced like sacker.
i’m embarrassed 😂😂thank you for letting me know
My middle Language Arts teacher pronounced it as suh-CAR, but I've heard also it pronounced SAH-CURR and SAH-CHURR. But yeah, SAH-CURR is the correct one.
I tell everyone that this is my favorite movie and people think I'm joking. It seriously is a really good book-to-movie adaptation with interesting themes
If people think you're joking, they clearly have bad taste in movies.
Holes is just SO GOOD. I think about it all the time and finally someone has articulated its greatness
14:15 I think Zero’s illiteracy and the fact he doesn’t have a family is also significant in Pendanski’s cruelty because it means that Zero can’t tell the outside world about his abuse.
He has no one to tell, no one outside who would care, and not being able to write means he’s rendered completely voiceless. Learning to read isn’t just about increasing his prospects once he gets out or about soothing his ego when his intelligence is constantly insulted, I think it’s also him taking back his voice. I don’t think it’s a coincidence he starts talking more and making genuine connections with others once he starts reading.
Idk may be reading into things but that’s how I like to interpret it, especially considering how revolutionaries historically have talked about literacy as a tool for the masses to take back their power and reclaim their freedom.
Louis Sachar is pretty much a genius when it comes to children's books
I just realized why I loved Holes so much as a kid. This "because I said so" attitude was exactly the mindset I was raised under.
when matilda was listed in the movies we look fondly at from childhood i was so happy i could never get tired of watching it
Ok i read this in school, and only remembered that i shipped Zero and Stanley, and had no idea there was a movie, but man am i glad there is.
You were woke before most of us.
I always shipped them too
But Sam can you fix my heart? :( I forgot how tragic that scene was, that's wild for a "teen" movie. Great vid!
HOW HAVE I ONLY JUST REALISED THAT STANLEY BREAKS THE CURSE BY CARRYING ZERO UP THE HILL OMG WHAT
I remember this being one of the only books I was assigned at school that I forgot I was reading for school. It was captivating and the film was great. Thanks for this video, a lot of depth I hadn't seen before.
Ahhh!!! So excited to see you brought it back!!!❤❤❤
im only 5 minutes in but i had to stop and check if that scene from the lifetime movie was real?!?! WTF was that lmao
and it's not even ended yet. they're still making faces at each other.
The fact that you can face ANY jail time for trying to send your kid to a better school should be a sign that education isn’t a right. A right can’t be gatekept based on ability to afford it.
just another reason holes is amazing, Madame Zeroni is played by Eartha Kitt, who is literally one of the most iconic people to live. ua-cam.com/video/5JrtRhsxWyY/v-deo.html
As a poor-ish young girl with no cable but a select few vhs tapes, Holes has lived deep in my heart as one of the few movies I can quote word for word. This was such a great analysis.
"Acab for cutie" I'm making a shirt that said that
I watched Holes as a young child at my older cousin’s birthday party. I was the only one still awake at the end and it was a VHS- I remember being too scared to even get up and turn off the staticky television when the tape ran out. Combined with the fact that I lived in Arizona at the time and the desert was practically my backyard, this movie terrified the living daylights out of me as a kid. I had actual nightmares about it. I vowed to never watch it again, but this video has really piqued my interest. I kinda want to watch it now, which is boggling my mind. Thank you for this illuminating look at Holes (and the Prison-Industrial Complex)!
I read the book first and fell in love with the story. Usually, the movie that follows a book doesn’t keep up, but this one definitely did. But that’s a key part of it, too: the director and script writers did an excellent job interpreting the book and bringing it to the screen, and then the cast was also *chef’s kiss.* one of my favorite roles for Shia LeBeouf.
Thank you for creating these in-depth analyses of our childhood/teenhood movies! Shining a light on that added layer of meaning and complexity. Love your channel!
Rebecca Woolf I didn’t know that, thanks for sharing!
ITS BACK, ITS BACK ITS BACK YEEEEEESSSSS, I’ve been looking this video up every few weeks hoping it gets put back up yeeessss
Forgot Dulé Hill was in this 😍 any other Psych fans?
Me!
You know thats right !
You heard about Pluto, right?
_That's messed up._
@@E4439Qv5 oh, Gus. Don't be this crevice in my arm.
You know that’s right
Wow, so much I didn't pick up in my first watch, I kinda wanna go back and watch this. The view on racism really does fall into that erasing narrative many of us grow up learning in school. Excellent analysis :)
Good comment.
I’ve never clicked so fast on a video omg. I’m only a minute in but I know I’m gunna love this.💖💖💖
SAME ☺️🙌🏾
Samesies
I haven't thought about this movie or the book in so long, I was absolutely obsessed with it when I was younger, it was the first book that left a real impact on me and that I related to the world around me. It is one of the best book-to-movie movies ever in my humble opinion, so perfectly executed when it could have gone so poorly.
Excuse me while I go rewatch holes at 1:30 in the morning.
I just found this video and I rewatched holes the same day it was uploaded. Thank you so much for talking about this movie, I don’t think it gets enough praise🙏💖💖
21:57 Side note, those lil bearded dragons each deserve an Oscar
"1. Holes is a Masterpiece" and that was the moment I knew I had to sub
I haven’t seen this movie in so long and I barely remembered anything from it except the names and...holes of course, but I’ve always remembered it fondly. And now I need to watch it again ASAP lol. Great video❤️❤️❤️
i've actually never seen this film but we studied this book in y7 english and it was such a incredible tale that i just never revisited. i'd love to reread the novel and watch the film. might just do both right now.
One small nitpick: they do get lunch breaks while digging.
Connecticut has such a wide weath gap that no one outside of it seems to really know about, so I appreciate you mentioning CT specifically!
This review is really great! I haven't seen your stuff before but now I'm gonna go watch the rest of your work!
Yhara you are quickly becoming one of my favourite video essayists on here, love and support every one of your takes and can't wait for more! Also ty for reminding me what a brilliant film this is/what a crazy amazing cast it has wowww
Holes is the Shawshank redemption you're allowed to show kids.
I must’ve read this book about a dozen times before I was eleven years old. I fuckin’ LOVED Holes, and I’ve only come to appreciate it more now that I’m a socialist.
It’s a book about private interests in prisons, corruption, the disproportionate incarceration of the poor and people of color, and how reparations are the only way to set right historical wrongs.
Not a bad bunch of moral lessons for an eight-year-old, even if Sachar doesn’t think he wrote in any overtly political messages, which...I doubt. I mean, I’ve read the sequel. It’s about recidivism. I’ll bet that Sachar is just being coy as to not blacklist himself, or something.
socialism is evil and only a tool the government uses to keep people brainwashed on the promises of getting free stuff. it is absolutely NOT about any of the things you want it to be about. ESPECIALLY reparations(which would never set any injustices right). none of the moral lessons you think you got from this book (which Sachar has literally said wasn't any) should be taught by you to ANY 8 yo. only God knows what you think is moral but i would guess it is align with far left sentiments.
christian You must be in the wrong comments section.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick and you must think that the UA-cam comments section is some sort of CHAZ "safe place". it is ironic that you chose the Captain American shield as your thumbnail pic. as he would be against everything you stand for other than your freedom of speech. which it seems you don't believe any other's should be expressed if they don't agree with you. replace that star on that shield with a hammer & sickle.
christian Y’mean Captain America? The ORIGINAL Antifa Supersoldier? The man who was periodically written in the comics to exile himself from the United States when his faith in the country is shaken, such as after Watergate, and the Ronald Reagan presidency? The man whose entire ethos is being compassionate, and selfless to a ridiculous degree, who despises people who exploit their arbitrary authority over others? He’d have YOUR perspective?
But what am I doing, you’re obviously just trolling.
@@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick i troll stupid. and in your case your house is built on top of my bridge. CA is only ANTIFA in name. while he wouldn't believe in the far right-wing views his only similarities with the left would be freedom for ALL Americans as long as it aligns with the moral views of America. he damn sure wouldn't be socialist. taking goods or whatever else from someone that has worked hard to obtain them and giving it to a person that choose not to work is theft plain and simple. theft is morally wrong and CA would agree. as for the times he was "written" out of some comics, unless he broke the 4th wall, that's just the writer of the current issues opinion of what they want to do. lastly ANTIFA is just as fascist as the people they hate.
I was a really dyslexic kid but I read that book cover to cover in primary school and it low key radicalize me. I actually went to my backyard and dag a hole all day to understand what the characters went through