You see this sort of thing in many places. For instance I loved the Chronicles of Narnia as a child and was somewhat astonished to see their overtones of evangelical Christianity as an adult. Of course at the time this was lost on me, despite my having occasionally been to church (so presumably being a child open to this symbolism).

Did this series have any larger effect on my thought? Do I see the world as bipolar and messianism as the answer in a way I otherwise might not have? Interesting question, which I obviously can't answer. Around the same time I also was making my way through the Greek myths, the Icelandic sagas and pre-adolescence -- ideologically speaking, quite the primeval soup. 

I think there's also an interesting question here for adults. How to interact with a book, or a work of art, with which you disagree on certain major ethical points? You can't exactly interact with a work of art from a completely critical place. You want to absorb something of its sensibility, get into its rhythm, understand what it is saying about the world on a deep level. This requires a certain amount of trust in your guide. Now, suppose on certain ethical issues you disagree with this guide. Do his/her greater artistic ambitions transcend this? Obviously, there are certain major dealbreakers, for me at least -- probably for everyone. But there is also a large grey area. How do you trust the artist or author enough to allow them to show you something when the trust is obviously violated right from the start? But on the other hand, we all know from experience that if we limit ourselves to people with whom we agree, even on fundamental issues, we cut ourselves off from many interesting voices -- people we might never want to have dinner with but who can nonetheless show us something useful about the human condition. 

Of course, this becomes even more complicated for children: how to explain that people can be wrong about some things and right about others without making everything seem relative.

I had a similar experience recently watching "The Long Hot Summer," with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Orson Welles. It's a fantastic movie and impeccably drawn, down to all the Southern period details -- the black servants, the patriarch's speech (Welles) about how he wants SONS.

Now somehow for me watching a movie with these problems is less difficult than reading a book with them. I would be interested to know if this is also true for others. I think that a movie, if done well enough and seamlessly enough, ultimately has an effect much closer to that of a photograph. Yes, you know the photographer is saying something by framing the shot in a particular way; but when you come right down to it those people in the picture actually, in some sense, exist. The photographer is just capturing them. And if s/he captures them in a way which shows something indelible about the way human nature reacts to a particular circumstance -- well, I am somehow much more inclined to be charitable to the photographer: yes, this is actually the way things were at this particular sunny afternoon in Mississippi -- we can learn from them.

Whereas I think on some level (and again, it would be interesting to say why) I hold an author accountable for the people he or she creates -- I really feel that he or she has some power over them. Somehow with a book, even a book which is objectively true to life, there is a feeling that the author actually actively created. Maybe this is because in a movie you can look at anything you want to: the edge of the frame, at the lilac bush in the distance during the close-up for the kiss. Whereas in a book you feel that there is no escaping looking in a particular direction.

Or perhaps: there's no escaping your own participation in imagining, in making these characters exist -- you can't as easily stay out of it. You can't just watch.