a mistake to insist too much on this aspect of the movie..." Other critics are more demanding. M. Keith Booker writes: For their part, the Coens deny any intention of presenting an allegorical message. They chose the detectives' names deliberately, but "we just wanted them to be representative of the Axis world powers at the time. It just seemed kind of amusing. It's a tease. All that stuff with Charlie – the "Heil Hitler!" business – sure, it's all there, but it's kind of a tease." In 2001, Joel responded to a question about critics who provide extended comprehensive analysis: "That's how they've been trained to watch movies. In Barton Fink, we may have encouraged it – like teasing animals at the zoo. The movie is intentionally ambiguous in ways they may not be used to seeing." Slavery Although subdued in dialogue and imagery, the theme of slavery appears several times in the film. Mayhew's crooning of the parlor song "Old Black Joe" depicts him as enslaved to the film studio, not unlike the song's narrator who pines for "my friends from the cotton fields away." One brief shot of the door to Mayhew's workspace shows the title of the film he is supposedly writing: Slave Ship. This is a reference to a 1937 movie written by Mayhew's inspiration, William Faulkner, and starring Wallace Beery, for whom Barton is composing a script in the film. The symbol of the slave ship is furthered by specific set designs, including the round window in Ben Geisler's office which resembles a porthole, as well as the walkway leading to Mayhew's bungalow, which resembles the boarding ramp of a watercraft. Several lines of dialogue make clear by the film's end that Barton has become a slave to the studio: "[T]he contents of your head", Lipnick's assistant tells him, "are the property of Capitol Pictures." After Barton turns in his script, Lipnick delivers an even more brutal punishment: "Anything you write will be the property of Capitol Pictures. And Capitol Pictures will not produce anything you write." This contempt and control is representative of the opinions expressed by many writers in Hollywood at the time. As Arthur Miller said in his review of Barton Fink: "The only thing about Hollywood that I am sure of is that its mastication of writers can never be too wildly exaggerated." "The Common Man" During the first third of