[quote=@stone] I wonder if that's intentional - using the fantasy "races" to explore real world race conflicts and problems (interracial marriage, stereotypes, etc.) [/quote] Sometimes it's intentional, though even when intentional it's necessarily a good comparison. It's very different, say, for racist analogs in something like X-men to be afraid of the people they are being "racist" towards, than for actual racists to show xenophobia and the like. After all, it's different being afraid of someone for the color of their skin, versus being afraid of people who have the power to end all life on Earth on a whim. At the same time though, I also can't stand it when people start attributing meaning to or interpretation of art, then claiming it is there when it is evidently against what the author wanted to express. It's one thing to point out that [i]Beauty and the Beast[/i] resembles stockholm syndrome as a joke or a theory, it's another entirely to claim that is actually what is going on there and that the story is therefore problematic, when any resemblance to that is evidently incidental and not the point, or worse even, start making claims about the writer due to one's own imagined interpretation of the story.