The villains were typically hateful white trash. The movie transforms those stick figures and replaces dismissible, definitive thoughts about sexuality and love and fear with the subtle complexities life brings. The arts do that. So much of what we understand or care about, we have come to know through the arts. Read a news account of the ravages of war in Sierra Leone, and you'll take in a few facts.
Art shapes our vision.
It seems more Clinton's face than his real face does. And art shapes our work. A writer reads a collection of another's work for a several days. Next time she sits down at the computer, she hears that writer's voice. Not that all art is about Big Ideas.