I’m working on my Moneyball paper, and I’m afraid I’m about to argue myself out of the point I’m trying to make.  I want to argue that Moneyball isn’t really about money; it’s about worth, something for which money is merely a symbol.  But the evil little Marxist inside my head keeps saying that everything is about money, and that by silencing the issue, the film is complicit in the economic disparity it initially gestures toward critiquing.  I think the evil little Marxist’s argument is reductive, but I don’t know how to refute it.  I just can’t buy that everything is about money.  Similarly, as intrigued as I am by Freud’s ideas, I just can’t buy that EVERYTHING is a phallic symbol.  Someone did a presentation on Star Wars yesterday in which it seemed that pretty much every scene was a castration, and I was really frustrated.  I think I just need to get OUT OF HERE and back to people who talk about normal stuff.