Spoilers for Encanto which is a movie I’m still obsessed with.
[screencaps from animation screencaps dot com]
A disorganized list of things that make Encanto so great:
All the dancing, including Antonio’s new room dancing with most of the family, Dolores’s Bruno verse dance, Isabella rocking out with the flower mic, and obviously Félix and Pepa’s dance while not talking about Bruno
Every single character, including but not limited to Coffee Child, Overly Excited Child, Guy Who Can’t Stop Talking Tactlessly, Guy Yelling About Donkeys, and Antonio
Antonio (has to be included twice)
The donkeys (especially the donkeys in the band on the Madrigal Titanic)
Comedy toucan
Comedy capybara
“Helpful” coatis
Helpful rats. Does affinity for animals run in the Madrigal genes? It certainly seems to. When the rats grab the shards of Bruno’s vision, I guess at his request, that’s pretty impressive
The soup at the disastrous dinner, where there’s either half a corn cob or a whole corn cob in each bowl. I want to find a vegan recipe of that soup, it looks so good
Men and boys being affectionate and supportive. I mean, Augustín? Félix? Camilo? Antonio? The adults show romantic affection for their wives which is nice, but then there’s also familial affection and general supportiveness all around. Augustín especially is a nice change of pace for a Disney dad, managing to be accident-prone but not useless, and even stands up to Abuela on behalf of Mirabel. Bruno, too, as soon as he comes back to the family, immediately goes into affectionate and supportive mode
Compassionate examination of intergenerational trauma
How is it so easy to ache for Mirabel, but remain understanding of Abuela, even at her worst? Ahh, nuance and no villains, I love you
Connection within Pepa’s family: Félix barges into Mirabel’s hushed conversation with Pepa having overheard them through a closed door, and before that, Pepa comes into the room already upset because she overheard Mirabel muttering to herself about Bruno. These are the parents of Dolores, and that makes perfect sense. Dolores for her part can hear rats talking in the walls worrying about the house – so either that’s Bruno, or she also can understand animals, just like her brother. Camilo shifting into Mirabel and Bruno when he hears that Mirabel is in Bruno’s vision, shifting through all of the adults in his life after being zapped by lightning, and shifting into someone with a baby head reminds me of Pepa not being able to keep her feelings to herself, always with the weather overhead. Antonio being the cutest, most empathetic cousin and nephew reminds me of Félix always looking out for and pacifying Pepa
Connection within Julieta’s family: All three sisters are being crushed under the weight of familial pressure, each according to her gift (or non-gift). Luisa is struggling to do all the heavy lifting and feels like she’d be nothing if she couldn’t keep up with the work. Isabella is struggling to remain perfect and pretty, which is an identity she’s been forced into, and to fulfil a vision of a perfect future she doesn’t even want. I think it’s deliberate that out of the grandkids, Isabella looks the most like young Alma, and Mariano looks a lot like Abuelo Pedro. Mirabel has to keep pretending that she’s fine even though she is NOT. When the sisters have brief but honest conversations, these things start unraveling almost right away. Mirabel is the key, a lot like Julieta, being a healing presence. Julieta is concerned about Mirabel the whole time, always knowing when something is wrong even when Mirabel insists she’s fine. Mirabel, after talking to Luisa, worries about her throughout the rest of the film, taking note whenever she sees her struggling. Once she tells Augustín about it, he does the same thing. Both Julieta and Augustín stand up to Abuela the way Mirabel eventually does, but, like, more
The part where Antonio tells the jaguar not to eat the rats
In the past, we’ve made posts about how when you screencap certain goofy moves (Hercules only), the results are goofy. Looking at still images from Encanto featuring Bruno is a little different though. Some insights:
Bruno’s a Frozen fan
So there’s a bit of goofiness here. I do wonder why he’s still wearing the bucket, but then, he’s been in the walls for a while. Coping mechanisms become habitual. But there are more interesting insights to be gleaned than occasional goofiness.
This scene where Bruno revisits his vision goes by pretty quickly but when you slow it down, you can see some clear enthusiasm here, uncharacteristic for Bruno (or at least for what we’ve seen of him so far). His perpetual sadness makes a lot more sense when you consider that he might truly enjoy having visions, but the way everyone always reacts in such negative ways eventually ruins his enjoyment of his own power.
Eeeevery time.
He was so happy to come up with a clear and “easy” solution for once: hug your sister! “That’s great!” But Mirabel is furious with that result. Poor Bruno.
It adds a layer to the general sadness of Bruno, who lives in the walls where he can sort of sit with his family for meals but not really.
Lay it on thick, Encanto.
But there’s also reunited-with-family Bruno:
All right, enough, we don’t talk about him for a reason and the reason is that IT’S TOO EMOTIONAL.
That’s it. Will try to blog about something else next time.
Last time on Owlmachine, I’d barely started watching Encanto at the theatre before the power went out. Today I saw the whole thing and jsfdnojawiouwnqfjncsjdk njgkrwdfjjfvnsjdfnvk. So.
will be dancing to this for weeks, thanks LMM and Carlos Vives
I’m of the Disney musical proclivity anyway, so obviously I was going to love it. Apart from being typically great animated fare, Encanto is special because, to me, it seems like out of all the Disney musicals, this is the one that would make the most sense on stage. I know The Lion King killed it, and I’ve never seen any of the others but I’ve heard good things, and some “meh” things, about all of them. I’m not sure how Frozen’s stage version was received generally, but that one likely ended up on stage more because it was a guaranteed money-maker than its material being well suited for live stage production. I’d still have gone to see it if it came here because I’m exactly that sucker, and also who wouldn’t want to see Frozen performed live?
But with Encanto, the way a larger cast participates in multiple numbers, and how Mirabel’s two sisters get songs of their own, and how the most popular song features a healthy chunk of the family singing about another family member, it just feels like this was meant to go on stage eventually. “Dos Oruguitas” could easily be sung by one or more of the children or grandchildren, the way Angelica sings “It’s Quiet Uptown” in Hamilton. (DO NOT listen to “Dos Oruguitas” in advance if you plan to watch the movie ever. Hear and see it first in its proper context.) And “Colombia, Mi Encanto” could easily fit in anywhere sung by anyone or, better yet, everyone.
Animation is probably my favourite medium for visual story-telling though, so as much as I would see Encanto on stage 36 times in a row and then some (if the funds for me doing that existed somehow) if the stage version existed this animated version would always be superior. As much fun as “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” would clearly be performed live, in the animation it was transporting as only animation can be.
It’s good, music is obviously amazing, the animation is amazing, the characters are instantly adorable, parts of it are REALLY sad and the resolution hits the spot. It has a fantastic message. Also the intergenerational trauma raccoon short that plays before it made me ugly cry, twice. The first time I saw it I ugly cried just because it was raccoons. I CAN’T DEAL with raccoons. The second time it was because the actual story that’s being told is very moving, and also again just because it was raccoons.
Ahh what a sweet movie. I mean. I could have done without all the dead/dying fish, but otherwise, it was very cute.
I just wish I’d seen it in theatres. I can’t even remember what the last movie I saw in a theatre was, but the experience of a new Disney/Pixar/any animated movie really in theatres is unbeatable and it has been too long.
A new romance blossoms. But alas, it is threatened. Danger and power-hungry villains trashing monuments lurk in the shadows, but the tender new romance’s main foe is something much smaller, much more personal, and, with much more specific stakes.
The man has been lying, the whole time, to the woman.
It’s OK, though, she’s bound to forgive him.
I wanted to look at the sometimes bizarre, potentially weird, probably problematic dynamics of a couple of deception romances that occur in some animated classics. Just for fun. Not to judge anyone for liking them (I like them too), nor to suggest that these romances have produced a problematic blueprint that vulnerable child viewers might use when forging their own relationships. I do think media representations matter, but I also think that interrogating media you engage with and enjoy is the best way to make sure you don’t replicate its problematic elements. Also I doubt anyone is really trying to emulate someone like Dimitri IRL, but then, who knows.
Speaking of which…
Anastasia and Dimitri
Let’s set aside the objective fact that this movie really shouldn’t exist and that even the way it does exist, with blatant reimagining of real historical events, it’s eyebrow-raising at best. The characters are likeable. Some of the songs are good. The outfits rock. We can set the real history of it aside for 90 minutes.
What I can’t set aside is my befuddlement at the love story. I remember quite enjoying it when I was a kid and a teenager. Back then, if a romance wasn’t enemies-to-lovers or didn’t involve belligerent sexual tension, I wasn’t interested. I’m not sure why that held appeal for me, though I am inclined to think it’s because those tropes are kind of juvenile. I’m still down to engage in some slow-burn misrepresentation, miscommunication, misunderstanding, and mind-changing, but the clear dislike and trading of insults that happen between Anastasia and Dimitri when they are new acquaintances no longer does it for me.
That’s not even the issue. If it were, I might say, “Well, I don’t really understand at what point they stop hating each other’s guts. Is it when Anya wears a dress? When he sees her in something not ridiculously oversized he falls in love with the shape of her or whatever? And she reciprocates because she likes dancing with him? That’s kind of weak, but, OK.” And that wouldn’t be worth a blog post.
No… it’s more the fact that Anya overhears her grandmother reaming Dimitri out for being a heartless con man, having held auditions for someone to play Anastasia only to take the grieving but hopeful Dowager’s reward money and run, which is exactly what he was planning on doing. This is his plan literally all the way up until he realizes that Anya is actually Anastasia, not just a good lookalike with convenient and manipulatable amnesia.
At that point, he forgets all about the reward money, because suddenly a future with Anya isn’t possible so it no longer matters. I understand why this changes things for him, but I do wonder what his plan is before he realizes the truth. Does he really think Anya would be fine with their scamming the Dowager, or that she’d never realize what they were doing? I guess it doesn’t matter, because Anya is Anastasia, so we never have to find out.
“Princesses don’t marry kitchen boys,” Dimitri laments. Right, but big-hearted women marry con men who deceive them and any other nearby emotionally vulnerable women for cash? Sounds plausible.
As a random aside, I hear a lot of complaints about Naveen from Princess and the Frog. Personally I like Naveen, but I guess I see where those complaints are coming from. OK not really. Flynn/Eugene from Tangled is pretty much the same person, just minus the royal blood and adding in thievery and one brief anecdote about being a poor orphan, and everyone loves him. My semi-relevant point is, Naveen, who has personal growth, who demonstrates an actual change in heart over a prolonged period of time in his movie, is waaaaaaaaay better than Dimitri here. I do get what Anastasia is going for and it has limited time to truly flesh it out, but I’m struggling to think of one Disney dude who starts out half as bad as Dimitri. Not even Nick Wilde, or Kuzco, for that matter. OK. Maybe Kuzco. But his ENTIRE movie was about making him into a better person. Dimitri gets one line.
Dowager: Why the change of mind?
Dimitri: It was more a change of heart.
He fell in love and is now a good person.
Well gosh golly me. That’s not how that works.
It’s particularly annoying because all Anya wants is to find her family. Now there is that “found family” element to the Dimitri thing, sure, but I’d buy that more if she ran off with Dimitri plus Vlad and… Sophie, I guess. Or if she ran off just her and Pooka, which would be the ideal ending in my opinion. Instead she just gets married, promising to see her grandmother again soon, and it doesn’t feel great from my perspective.
Before the murders, she’s shown making promises with her grandmother to be “together in Paris.” This phrase turns into the only clue she has about her family after she suffers from amnesia. When she learns that she really is Anastasia, she has to contend with the fact that her parents and siblings are dead, not that the movie is all that interested in that. Still, she has finally found what she says she wants in her “I Want” song, “Journey to the Past.” Comrade Phlegmenkoff says she always acts “like the queen of Sheba,” and high society walking, dancing, eating, and giving orders come naturally to her throughout. Are we really supposed to believe this girl doesn’t want the royal life the second she gets it back? “Once Upon a December” displays the luxurious parties that, by the end, she for some reason is no longer interested in. It also shows her enjoying herself with (I think) her sisters, and dancing with her father. Even if she doesn’t care about parties and gowns, she has found the one surviving member of her family and has only just got back the confidence to believe the memories that are now coming back to her, and she leaves her and everything else instantly to elope with the con man who spent most of the time they’ve known each other so far lying to her and manipulating her so that he could scam money off an old lady.
What.
What we see in this song? This is a character AND a movie that deserves a different love story and a different ending.
Megamind and Roxanne
My feelings towards Anastasia might be lukewarm to vaguely/nostalgically fond, but I LOVE Megamind. Does that love I have for it mean that I’m less weirded out by Megamind’s deception of Roxanne? No. But the fact that the movie frames it a little bit differently than Anastasia does… does.
A) There’s a lack of (real) belligerence. This may be enemies-to-lovers, but it’s a pretty unique version of that in that Megamind likes Roxanne from the beginning. Does he know he likes her? Probably not. Self-awareness is definitely not a strength Megamind has. But everyone else knows he likes her, or, at least, the audience does. For Roxanne’s part, she’s shown being not at all afraid of Megamind, even when he has kidnapped her, even when he’s finally succeeded and has taken over the city. She’s irritated, amused, and then sad and angry, but never scared.
“Please talk slower.”
B) He doesn’t set out to deceive her, he’s just stupid and ends up piling on the lies because he has no reason to tell her the truth. Or does he? Roxanne blatantly asks him, “Do you really think that I would ever be with you?” And he says, “No.” (It’s a very good scene). Minion previously tells him, “The bad guy doesn’t get the girl!” a statement Megamind echoes later (“I’m the bad guy. I don’t save the day, I don’t fly off into the sunset, and I don’t get the girl”), not long before he does save the day. To Minion, before his disastrous date, he says, “Maybe I don’t want to be the bad guy anymore!” But instead of doing the right thing and telling Roxanne who he is, he just carries on as he is, pretending to be a Metro Man historian or whatever that dude is supposed to be.
While he doesn’t mean to deceive Roxanne, there’s a point at which he decides to carry on the lie because it’s rewarding for him – specifically because he knows he actually has a chance at romance with Roxanne while he’s not the supervillain.
C) There’s a much more prolonged “crap I screwed up” part in this movie, compared to whatever strife Dimitri goes through. He loses everything except his terrible plan to turn Hal into a hero. He leans all the way into it, and things get even worse. He finally has to seek out Roxanne just to fix his mess. (Though he does bring up their catastrophic “breakup” at this point. Just once. Maybe the thing he says about not getting the girl is a second mention of it. Maybe he is a bit mopey. But allegiance-changing and heartbreak are tough.)
D) Though it’s not explicitly stated, when Roxanne asks Megamind to save her and he does, I think he does it without expectation that she’ll take him back afterwards. My justification for this belief is that he seems surprised when she turns off his hologram/deception device and is happy to see him. It’s minor but it exists.
(1:59)
E) It’s Megamind’s story, whereas in Anastasia it’s not Dimitri’s story. Megamind is a supervillain who slowly turns into a superhero. We expect him to misstep on his way to becoming good, so his follies are easier to forgive than Dimitri’s are as far as I’m concerned.
Aladdin and Jasmine
I had forgotten about this one, as the deception in this romance barely registers, but it’s definitely there, so let’s discuss.
When Aladdin first meets Jasmine, he likes her right away, and she lies by omission by not just telling him she’s the princess. He does find out shortly afterwards. When he next meets her, he’s dressed as a prince and pretends to be a whole other person. She shortly afterwards figures out she’s already met him, at which point he makes the frankly ridiculous choice to continue to lie to her. “I sometimes DRESS as a commoner.”
As the audience, we know that Jasmine doesn’t care about prince pedigrees. She does live under a law that requires her to marry a prince, though. Does this mitigate the lying? Maybe. Might not Jasmine have worked with Aladdin to keep up the façade, if Aladdin had told her the truth? Probably. Also, the Sultan just changes the law in the end so… what was the point?
The movie makes it clear that Aladdin’s deception is a bad thing, but it’s only partially about building a healthy foundation for their budding romance. The rest of it is that Aladdin is determined to continue to use the Genie to continue to deceive everyone into thinking he’s a prince, which means reneging on his promise to free the Genie. “She has to marry a prince.”
Of the three movies I’ve talked about so far, this is the one with the least reaction from the lady. Jasmine is just like, “Woah, didn’t see that coming,” and then she never mentions it again. It sort of makes sense, because, as stated above, she doesn’t care about royal blood. Jafar tells her in his irritating but amazing “Prince Ali Reprise,” so there’s a good chance that the medium is more infuriating to her than the message is. It does really seem that Jasmine doesn’t care that Aladdin lied to her. But. Who could stay mad at that face?
Conclusions
Well.
Deception in romance goes down easier if the main character is the deceiver. In both Aladdin and Megamind’s cases, it’s easier to empathize with their deception as they are the protagonist.
It’s sort of contradictorily better both when the woman doesn’t seem to care at all, and when she’s mad for a longer period of time. Jasmine is barely phased, and Roxanne is mad about it until the final showdown with Hal.
In Megamind and Anastasia, forgiveness is sped along because of the villainous guy trying to ruin everyone’s day. In Aladdin there is also one of those but there seems to be nothing to forgive from Jasmine’s point of view.
But really, the only interesting conclusion I have to draw is this:
“Princesses don’t marry kitchen boys.”
“I’m the bad guy. I don’t save the day, I don’t fly off into the sunset, and I don’t get the girl.”
“I’m a street rat, remember? And there’s a law. She’s got to marry a prince.”
Megamind can choose to become a hero. Neither Dimitri nor Aladdin can do anything about the class structure (but the Sultan can) (awkward but I’m going to say it anyway… so can the Bolsheviks). All three feel that they are something that is unchangeable, but the reality is, all three of them are in stories that are about (or adjacent to historical events that suggested that) people can be more than what society tells them they are. In Anastasia’s case it’s just sort of incidental, but still.
Megamind is clearly the winner here. Believing that since infancy he has been destined to battle Metro Man on the side of “evil,” losing his nemesis and later losing his chance at romantic love compel him to rethink his identity.
Aladdin runs a close second. He’s the “diamond in the rough,” someone who is much more than what he seems. I believe this is about how he uses his third wish to free the Genie because the Cave of Wonders had decided that Genie enslavement isn’t cool anymore, but in any case, people tell Aladdin he’s a worthless street rat and the movie says, “he’s poor and almost homeless but that’s not the same as worthless” which is kind of nice.
And Anastasia has Dimitri start as a kitchen boy, but he’s not really a kitchen boy in the end. Not anymore. But that’s awkward because the teenage girl who was a real live person and who this is loosely based on was murdered in the power struggle, so let’s just end the post.
There’s a lot of old Disney animated (and non-animated) movies I’ve never watched. This one is logged under “Halloween” movies, so let’s go.
I like Sleepy Hollow, I guess. Mr. Toad is the only thing I liked about The Wind in the Willows, so I have high hopes.
The most fabulous character in English literature, you say? Yeah, Mr. Toad seems about right.
And of course, it’s animals acting like old men. Redwall does it better. (Ooooh, Disney’s Redwall. I’d watch that.)
Toad and Cyril the horse’s song is good. “Though the roads are perpendicular.”
I was not prepared for this
So, I’m sorry, am I supposed to be sympathizing with Rat, Mole, and MacBadger? Because I’m not. Except Mole, maybe. He’s cute.
The court case has started, and with all of Mole’s waving and tongue-sticking-out at the prosecutor, I now love him.
My new animated crush.
I don’t actually understand being attracted to animated anthropomorphic animal characters (no, not even the fox Robin Hood). To each their own, of course, but it’s not for me. Though I do have to admit that this Mole guy is a charmer.
Now Cyril is on the stand, interrogated by the prosecutor about where Toad got the car. “The only way a gentlemen gets anything. The honest way.”
“And what is the honest way?”
“Ha ha, I thought you wouldn’t know that, guvnor!”
Roast him, Cyril!
Yeesh, the speciesism re: “deceitful” weasels. I well remember it from Wind. And Redwall, to be fair. The weasels should be allowed to keep Toad Hall and I bet they don’t. It’s a shame.
Ah, you see, the human barman is actually the evil one. Humans are the only species worth distrusting. And the overreaction to Toad’s prison escape is a poignant reminder that the criminal justice system all over the world has been in dire need of reform for a long time.
Oh wow, Toad just almost drowned himself. He is stupid.
WTF is that roast Rat and Mole are eating? That’s not a thing. Neither is MacBadger’s Scottish accent, lol.
Why didn’t they just confirm that the weasels bought Toad Hall? Yeah, the criminal justice system in Wind in the Willows land is bad.
There was an extended action sequence and after that I must say that Toad doesn’t deserve Mole and Rat as friends.
OK that was good. Sleepy Hollow time.
Ichabod is described, rudely.
Some guy named Brom gives a horse and dogs beer. Don’t do that.
And now a song about Ichabod, also rude.
Now this happens:
What. Am I watching.
Katrina’s introductory song is also kind of rude.
And it’s over!
It was bizarre, and entertaining, and it didn’t end like I thought it would. I’m actually surprised to find it’s pretty much loyal to the source material.
(please excuse the title, i can’t and won’t attempt to explain myself, just place me under a rock and ignore everything i ever say ever again)
I watched Sinbad recently. I had a lot of thoughts about the titular character and how irritating it is that he doesn’t really ever grow up.
That probably requires explaining, because in this movie Sinbad actually gets down on his knees and puts his head on an executioner’s block, fully, legitimately, intending to die for a crime he didn’t commit, to spare his friend.
He’s still a baby man, though, and I would like to go into it. But it’s going to have to wait, because before I can focus on Sinbad, I want to discuss this movie broadly.
And by “discuss this movie broadly” – I of course mean “write gibberish about Eris.”
Eris. Is ALL. That matters.
Eriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis.
(eris)
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas has one of the best animated villains… ever.
Showing a still image of Eris is egregious. She has to be seen in motion to be truly appreciated, but this movie is one of the hardest to find clips of on Youtube (at least, it was when I stared writing this. Now there are a bunch! Go watch them).
Whoever animated her should have been given Oscars. They should simply have been handed Oscars. All of them – if The Academy actually cared or understood anything about animation, they would have done so, I say.
She’s also voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer, which is great because Michelle Pfieffer may actually be the best.
Well voiced, well animated, and, completing the trifecta: she’s well written. Somehow, miraculously, they got this character right.
Eris is the goddess of discord, and she has big plans to throw the world into chaos by getting the new heir to Syracuse wrongfully executed through a little manipulation of the flawed status quo. She flirts and whooshes around while she’s doing it all. She changes her size like Alice does in Wonderland – but she does it on purpose, to great effect. She’s murderous and sneaky and spiteful and extremely feminine, and the hero she’s up against who eventually gets the better of her is one of those *adorable* sexists, and yet, somehow, Eris works.
So Disney women villains.
Disney women villians, yes.
YES.
LET US COMPARE.
(the isolation delirium has set in, I believe)
The Powerful
I’m pretty sure Eris is more powerful than any Disney villain. Ursula is quite formidable once she has the trident and is not to be messed with even without it, but she’s a demoted goddess if anything, and she can be killed with a boat. Maleficent is scary and effective, but she’s no goddess. Those are the only two I’d say come anywhere close.
But Eris is the literal goddess of discord.
The Calculating
Nobody is more calculating than Lady Tremaine. The Evil Queen is a bit calculating for sure, but Lady Tremaine is maybe the only real match for Eris.
But Eris’s schemes are on a whole other level – Tremaine wants her grandson to be king, but Eris wants to topple whole governments, and her plan is way more sound than Lady T’s is.
The Sneaky
So… hold on to your hat, I have a bit of a revelation for you: all of the Disney canonical women villains are sneaks. I think we’ve found the answer to the “how does the culture view women” question.
The Evil Queen masquerades as a harmless beggar woman with a harmless basket of apples to appeal to Snow White’s kind heart.
Lady Tremaine does a lot of little subtle things that neither Cinderella nor any onlooker who isn’t a mouse can call out as unfair or straight up abuse without sounding at least a little bit paranoid.
Cruella sidles up to Anita and Roger trying to buy the puppies, and when rebuffed, hires people to steal them.
Madame Mim cheats in her wizard duel.
Maleficent, in the scene that is only not the standout scene because of the cake scene, pretty much seduces Aurora into touching a spinning wheel from the shadows.
Ursula disguises herself as Vanessa, but also, her entire deal is emotionally manipulating people into selling their souls to her so that she can put them in a garden for seemingly no other purpose than to be extremely fracking scary.
Yzma invites Kuzco to dinner to show there are no hard feelings – fully intending to murder him and take his place on the throne.
Mother Gothel steals a baby and raises her to be obedient because she needs her magic to stay young. She also very cleverly manipulates the Stabbington Twins.
And Assistant Mayor Bellweather! You know what she does.
There are plenty of male villains who are also sneaky. But there are also a lot of male villains whose sneakiness is 10000% bad-dad specific. They are just pretending to be a better person than they really are, to the complete and utter disappointment of whoever the hero of the day is (Pixar likes this one: Up, Monsters Inc, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Coco, etc). Their de-maskings are often kind of devoid of flair, like Ernesto’s kind of was in Coco.
Some male villains are just evil, but with less lofty evil goals than the likes of Maleficent or even Mim (such as Ratcliffe, or Frollo). Now, those ones lie, and they emotionally manipulate, but it’s to serve their larger purpose of… genocide. So. And they really don’t sneak the way other villains sneak. They believe they are in the right and most of the bad things they do are them trumpeting all about how right they think they are.
Then there are just those who are not sneaky at all: Shan Yu, Callaghan (wearing a mask is just not fabulous enough to count as sneaky), The Horned King, and Gaston (“elaborate” plan aside. I don’t think he’s smart enough to truly be sneaky).
Some sneaky male villains include Jafar, Scar, King Candy/Turbo, Edgar, and Hans. Leaving Hans aside, what we have here are four rather effeminate male characters.
I’d love to go into great detail with all the Disney (and Pixar!) villains and discuss which ones are maybe feminine and which ones are maybe queer-coded, but for now, I’m going to leave it at this: the sneakier you are, generally, the more feminine you are, as well.
And that one holds for Eris.
What I like specifically about Eris’s sneakiness is that she delights in it. Playing Sinbad, she has this grin on her face that does the job of convincing the witness that she really is the devil-may-care thief, but she’s really just smiling because she LOVES PLAYING PRETEND.
The joyous female villain who has fun while she does villainy! So necessary. And I don’t think we’ve seen her since Snow White’s step mom laughed for forty years while she prepared a poisoned apple, in 1930.
The Sexy Ones
???
So………….
OK.
Disney likes to do a thing with their female villains, and that thing is that they desexualize them.
This can be a lot of fun, sometimes. Sexy female villains are often kind of upsetting to watch and/or read because as we have said so many times before, they are bad and badly written because sometimes you can’t help but pay some attention to the misogynist male writer behind the curtain who writes them as a weird kind of revenge porn, so, at least Disney doesn’t tend to do that. And throwing up a towering image of a powerful woman who is at the top on her own, without any sickly sweet romance, without some man – barking out orders, actually, at men – wielding awe-inspiring amounts of power – yeah, that’s fun to watch. That they all fail is less fun. That sometimes the desexualizing is done in the form of jokes about their appearances is also less fun. That their evil and their power is tied, inextricably, to their being sexless is not fun.
Of course, there’s Ursula*. Ursula is sexy. I don’t know that the movie knows that she’s sexy, but, she is.
But Ursula is unconventionally sexy. She’s fat, and wants to be fatter, and in 198whatever when this movie came out right through to 20whatever year this is now, “fat” and “sexy” – especially for women – only go together if you’re working against the overarching cultural narrative that there is one body type alone that can be considered sexy and attractive.
There are two women villains that are could be considered sexy in theory. There’s Madame Mim** in “beautiful” mode. She does a little dance and everything. I don’t think this counts because the point of it is that she turns back immediately into a shorter, fatter version of herself that we are meant to understand is the True Mim. Vanessa is another take on exactly this, but I kind of think everything Vanessa does is way less sexy than anything Ursula does, which is kind of cool.
There’s also Mother Gothel***. She’s like the Evil Queen in that she’s conventionally attractive, but the True Mother Gothel is old and aged. This is like how the “True” Evil Queen is sort of the form she both takes the most joy in and dies in, which is also aged and old.
Also I don’t know that Mother Gothel is animated in a sexy way at all. Her voice is certainly there, but she seems pretty asexual to me, and I’m using that term not as in that’s what I think her sexual orientation is (but, yeah, I do think that, sorry), but that she just isn’t doing anything sexual, at all, ever, on the screen. Even though she’s in love with her reflection.
*Ursula: unconventionally sexy and the movie either doesn’t think she’s sexy or is deliberately like, “yeah, she’s sexy, but unconventionally, OK.”
**Mim: she’s only doing an act; she pretty much states herself that it doesn’t count
***Gothel: she has time for one thing and one thing only: chasing, imprisoning, and keeping eternal youth even though she’s barely satisfied, and also her “true” form is old which, according to Disney and a lot of other jerks, can never be sexy
Eris is sexy in a way that doesn’t require an asterisk, because she’s got a conventionally attractive body type and she has a conventionally attractive face with conventionally attractive amazingly animated fluid lustrous beautiful hair AND Michelle Pfeiffer’s voice SO.
Ahem.
She might as well be in charge. We have basically arrived here as a society anyway.
Eris in her own right
OK so.
Eris’s elaborate scheme is ruined by Sinbad being simultaneously stupid and noble. His nobility: he decides to go and die for a crime he didn’t commit so that his friend, the heir to a throne, won’t. His stupidity: he never realizes that in doing so, he’s conning Eris into keeping her word and giving back the book of peace.
“…………… I didn’t lie!” No shit, Sherlock. Isn’t this man a cynical con artist thief type dude?
Anyway he had to be such a dummy, because if he had known that Eris was never going to let him die, so long as he went back and pretended to be willing to die, then he’d still be lying and she would have been well within her rights to keep the Book of Peace. In order for everyone to live happily ever after, the main character has to do a stupid, basically.
I’ll return to Eris’s palpable, beautiful frustration in this scene in a moment. First, I want to talk about her amazing plan before it was ruined.
Peace in Syracuse + Syracuse’s friends and allies is dependent on a magical Book. As soon as that Book gets stolen, everyone loses their minds. The criminal must be brought to justice so they can get their Book back.
Let’s see if I have this straight:
1. Accost the likely thief
2. Behead him when he won’t give up the booty
3. ?????????
4. Peace restored
It gets more hilarious, though. Eris’s true plan isn’t even about the Book. She knows that Proteus, noble heir apparent, was Sinbad’s childhood friend, and will believe him when he says, truthfully, actually, that he didn’t steal the book. He’ll step in, and the stupid laws of Syracuse will state that if the true criminal doesn’t return WITH the stolen object, the stand-in gets beheaded.
1. Imprison the heir to the throne as a stand-in for the likely real criminal who has refused to give up the booty
2. Execute the heir when the guy who already wouldn’t give up the booty WHEN HE WAS IMPRISONED AND HIS OWN LIFE WAS AT STAKE doesn’t show up with the booty
3. ?????????????????????
4. Peace restored
I’m not doing a CinemaSins thing. Yes, this makes no sense, but I think the movie is so much better because of it.
Sinbad’s whole deal is “the freedom of the sea” (and also “the freedom of a life of crime and casual misogyny” but we won’t talk about that), directly compared to Proteus’s life of noble duty and sacrifice. Proteus even discusses this with Marina, the principled and antagonistic love interest. The conflict is more pronounced in Marina – she loves the sea (and for some reason, Sinbad) but she also feels that she has a responsibility to stay on land and be a politician. In the end, boringly, she chooses Sinbad and the sea, while Proteus is happy for them from his life on land as a public servant monarch.
And before this, everyone, including the king, is super frustrated with the confines of the silly law that have them needing to execute their heir, who is a principled, good politician, even though it will right zero wrongs. But they still go along with it, because it’s “the right thing to do??????????!”
I’m going to suggest that it’s not.
The charm and romance of Sinbad’s pirate life is enriched by the restrictions apparent in civilized society, which is one great thing about this movie. Then at the extreme end of the spectrum, there’s Eris, in all of her chaotic glory.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t help sympathizing A LOT with her. She sees some silly rules and restrictions, sees how incredibly easy they’d be to shatter, and goes for it. She’s like a cat, spying a battable object close to an edge. Of course she’s going to swat it off and ruin everyone’s day.
Here’s a statement that I’ll apparently make: Eris’s attempt to bring down Syracuse is more fun, clear, engaging, and has way more to say than the Joker’s similar attempt at Gotham in The Dark Knight. (In my opinion. But I’m correct.)
If I’m only correct for one small detail, it’s this: Eris would absolutely have succeeded if not for the change of heart of one itty bitty man. The Joker is proven wrong by whole groups of people (some do try to prove him right, granted, but ultimately they cooperate and prove him wrong). If Sinbad hadn’t felt all his pesky feelings (and he tried really hard to not feel all his pesky feelings – EVEN MARINA, who is likely the reason he’s feeling all his pesky feelings, tried to convince him to not go back) Eris would have succeeded. Everyone else, all the principled political class of Syracuse and surrounding, were apparently fine to let the good prince die, because them’s the rules. They were apparently giddy to play right into Eris’s hands.
And this is why when Eris is fuming, sneering, scowling, and then, eventually, gracefully disappointed but moving on to new projects, it’s so easy to sympathize. You were so close, lady. I feel your pain.
BECAUSE NOBODY LEARNED ANYTHING.
Is it not, then, that it is you, Syracuse, and not Eris, who are the real agent of chaos????????
At least at the end of Aladdin, another story where some rando exploits the silliness of the ruling class for his own gains, the Sultan is like “Oh wait I can just change the law.”
There’s none of that here. I guess it wasn’t important.
That of course means that if Eris ever tried again, this time knowing not to rely on someone like Sinbad to stay selfish, she’d DEFINITELY succeed.
Really want to get into the hospital to see what’s happening for yourself, don’t you. And to take half the road with you. “Best Human in the World” award forthcoming for you, pals.
A bunch of Sonny with a Chance episodes.
I like this strange Disney channel sitcom. The characters are great. It’s often genuinely funny. I don’t understand why there are so many meat references, though. I don’t actually think most sitcoms reference meat as much as this show does. I could be wrong, of course. I’m not a sitcom connoisseur.
Most of the shelter animals getting into foster homes.
Many rescues, and even some shelters, operate majorly through the use of foster homes. We use them for certain cases, like animals with broken limbs that need excessive amounts of time to heal, and kittens, and puppies. In general, though, animals that come to our shelter stay in our shelter until they’re adopted.
But people stepped up, possibly because they have nothing else to do right now, and the shelter is almost a ghost-town. It’s great to know the critters don’t have to wait out the pandemic in their stupid cages.
People still being snippy with grocery store workers.
Guys. Come on. Seize this opportunity to learn and grow as a person in this one respect. It’s just basic human decency and you can’t even manage.
People thanking grocery store workers.
I guess that’s the counterpoint. Hopefully when this is all over, the workers will remember a lot more positivity and professed gratefulness than the jerks being jerks. Also, if essential workers could be paid a fair, actually livable wage, that too would be great.
The Kim Possible episode “Rappin’ Drakken”
I’ve seen a lot of KP episodes, but never “Rappin’ Drakken.” I’d heard the episode title and that alone made me chuckle, but I didn’t really want to actually watch it.
Anyway I have Disney+ access now, so in my scrolling I saw this episode, complete with the summary: “Drakken’s new mind-control shampoo fails to fly off the shelves,” or something along those lines, and I was delighted. The episode itself is similarly delightful. I can’t believe I waited so long to watch it.
Kim Possible holds up, man.
The Kim Possible live-action Disney Channel movie.
I liked it! They had to wait this long to do it, I believe, because they needed CGI tech to improve. Rufus was ADORABLE, where, in years passed, he would have been creepy at best.
I like that Kim got to be more human/teenage girl, complete with flaws and somewhat surprisingly drawn-out despair, than her cartoon superhero self. I do love the cartoon superhero version too, but I like that they gave their new version a real purpose for existing by making her a little more real.
I like that a grandma makes an appearance, too.
Insomniaaaa
Only on the days I have to get up for work! When it’s my weekend, it’s like my body doesn’t know there’s a mode of existence beyond sleep. Way to be, self. Way to be.
After a post about intrusive dark thoughts during this season, maybe it’s time to do a coping mechanism.
I like to watch fictional people do things carefully and log what they’re doing. Usually that just means I pay attention to what I’m watching, but this time, I’ll make an actual list of all the things they do.
Here’s Jack Skellington trying to figure out Christmas via science experiments.
He gets all of his equipment together. He starts with the microscope, looking at a holly berry. He cooks/electocutes (?) a candy cane, which loses its red stripes and becomes spaghetti. Cool trick.
Then he does a Nailed It challenge with cutting out a snowflake, but it turns out to be a spider. He incises a teddy, and looks at some fluff with a microscope. He crumbles up a red and gold striped ornament, places it in a thing of boiling water (?) and it flashes green.
This teaches him nothing.
Next is Sally:
She funnels some sort of liquid into a bottle. Then scoops a powder in as well, and corks it. She places the bottle in a gift basket with… I’m not sure what. Then she uses her sewing machine to drop the basket out the window safely.
She follows it by just jumping. To put herself back together, she pulls out needle and thread from behind her ear and pocket, then starts with her arm, and then her leg. Then she heads over to Jack’s.
It’s annoying that the part where he opens the bottle and there’s a smoke butterfly isn’t here, but that’s what happens.
This is a really menial thing, but it manages to focus the mind on something else. It’s not “just” a distraction – it’s a, “look, the thing you’re thinking about is self-destructive. There’s nothing constructive about it. Focus on something else and move on.”
Also, this task is helpful because Youtube will probably one day remove those videos, but there’s a full description of them there anyway, even if the videos are just grey space.
Maybe in the spring I’ll do this again with the cake and dress scene in Sleeping Beauty.
It was only just this past February when Pixar released a new short (SparkShort?) called Kitbull. But it feels like it has already been feeding away on my soul for decades.
This features some of the best cat animation I’ve ever seen. The dog is very well-done, too, though I’m less impressed by that because dogs are simpler. They just are – it’s not a put-down, just a fact. Once you have studied the musculoskeletal systems of dogs and cats side-by-side, you can never be the same.
The story is what you expect. A kitten and a pitbull? Well, they have to become friends. The kitten is a shy goofball. And the pitbull is being exploited.
I didn’t expect it to be as dark as it was, though. I thought he would just be a typical backyard pitbull, wanting to be included, but never allowed inside. But, alas, he’s being used in fights, which is horrifying. The fighting itself isn’t what got to me (you don’t actually see it, anyway). It was the discarding afterwards, the complete disregard for feelings and for suffering.
In real life, I wouldn’t trust a dog who was trained to fight with any animal other than human beings – at least, not without a lot of good, positive training, and supervision. But in this Pixar short, you’d better believe I bought their friendship right away, which ultimately was about much more than lonely neglected animals being lonely and neglected.
The kitten is a typical semi-feral street kitten, but she is more than that. She is afraid of others and retreats to the solitary comfort of what she knows, and this lends itself to an allegory for human viewers about opening yourself up, relaxing out of your shell a little bit, and being brave enough to reach out to connect, and to help, even when it’s scary.
A fighting dog is a good allegory for human viewers for when everyone wants to fit you into a specific, limiting, and also bad box which is damaging to you, and potentially to others, and it blocks you from making connections that you might want to make.
Luckily they both transcend their figurative and literal boxes and escape the stupid backyard, and then get adopted in a really funny and yet also extremely wrenching scene.
Everyone who made this almost succeeded in murdering me – death by drowning in tears, like Alice that one time.* Thanks.
*I do want to talk briefly about that: the fact that Kitbull got to me, and still gets to me, months later, is nice. It’s very annoying, too, because I hate crying in front of people but I also wanted to make everyone I know watch it, so I had to contort my face into weird expressions to stop myself from crying, and it didn’t really work, but I still think it’s nice.
The daily slog is sometimes not great. Today, in particular (2019/08/02, you can burn right out of the history books) was pretty bad. People neglect their animals, who do nothing to deserve their bland, everyday apathy. And then we, who chose to work in a field that takes a huge emotional toll, have to step in and act as the caregivers, making difficult decisions and being unable to help. Even if the animals don’t feel their own abandonment, we feel it for them. When the animals are going to be euthanized, they don’t know it, but we know it for them. It becomes, as time goes on, harder and harder to care as fully as we used to. The sadness for the animals, the empathy, is too rich and takes too much time to unravel, so instead we just feel quick bursts of anger at people and their apathy, and let that anger fuel us for a day, or an hour, or fifteen minutes. But why do the job when it doesn’t pay and it just makes us angry?
Shorts like Kitbull and Gift, that one awful sequence in Fox and the Hound, the whole opening of Oliver and Company – it’s kind of stupid, but, after a day like today when all I wanted to do when I got home was numb everything with a drink and something boring on Netflix – these are actually what I need. What we do matters. These stories remind me.
Picture yourself trying to write about cool things, needing a still image or two from Disney’s quite frankly AMAZING(ly awful but still AMAZING) Hercules, heading over to disney screencaps dot com which is now animation screencaps dot com, and finding this.
This brief snippet of Cerebrus fighting himself over a steak is always a favourite of mine whenever I watch Hercules and it looks so fluid and cool animated but stilled it’s just the gift that keeps on giving.
A few years ago, my younger cousin was beginning to doubt, so one day, finally, he went to his mother for reassurance.
“Mom? Do you believe in Santa?”
This is a tough situation because, first of all, the kid has trusted you with one of his innermost fears, a sneaking doubt that he wishes would just evaporate, a sneaking doubt that he never used to experience when he was younger. Now you have to answer properly because this is a big deal question and it has taken a lot of courage for him to trust you with it.
Next, it’s hard because he’s at the age where it’s too early to just rip the band-aid off and admit the truth, but at the same time, he’s too old for a bald-faced lie because he’s going to remember asking this question and that you bald-face lied and he won’t trust you ever again.
So what do you do?
My aunt, thinking quickly (and amazingly), said, “… I believe… in the… spirit… of Santa.”
And he nodded sagely and said, “Yeah, I believe in the spirit of Santa too.”
Belief is a pretty big deal this time of year – not necessarily in Santa, or even in the religious aspects. I always try to believe in the spirit of the season, and the importance of family and friends, or whatever. The inherent gentleness inside all of us. The potential for peace. That stuff is what all of the songs are about, anyway.
This year I’m in a bit of a funk. It’s not down to any one thing, but these days it seems like it’s a little difficult to believe in all of that in general. Due to that, I wanted to look at the Christmas animated movie that is entirely about belief, but that also leaves me with too many questions to be comfortable.
If you want to be an awful cynic about it, you can do a surface reading of The Polar Express (the movie, anyway – I haven’t read the book and I don’t know if or how it differs) that goes like this:
The Pol Ex tells kids it’s a buzzkill to be skeptical
No, really. Main Boy is always questioning Main Girl and it’s depicted as if Main Boy is a huge buzzkill and Main Girl is always right anyway and all his questioning does is make her doubt herself, but what if she one day is wrong? Is she really not supposed to listen to criticism or “sober second judgement” ever? So when her ticket says “LEAD” at the end, what, is she supposed to be a dictator?
Billy is told to just buy into Christmas™ because everyone else is doing it, it doesn’t matter what his lived experiences are
Billy is told to trust some elves and a magical gift dude who has never given him a present before because everyone else is doing it, it doesn’t matter what his lived experiences are, and also, all of those previous Christmases that didn’t work out were… his fault?
There’s a ghost on this train
No, really, there’s a ghost and he’s extremely creepy, and there’s also a room full of terrifying marionettes and the ghost makes one of Scrooge move and yell existentially terrifying things at Main Boy for kicks
There are so many potentially child-murdering fuckups on this magical journey, and the conductor, engineers, and all of the elves should get fired
But I’m not an awful cynic. All of the “don’t be skeptical” messaging that seems to be going on is rather undercut by Fourth, Arrogant Kid’s entire existence. It’s not that you shouldn’t be skeptical or curious or even self-conscious and doubtful – all of those are essential things. It’s just that there are times, such as when you’re about to die for the fifth time in a row on this bullshit train journey, that you need to kind of just trust yourself. And your friends. And, I guess, God, or something. Whatever your guiding light is. And on Christmas Eve at 5 minutes to midnight, your guiding light is “The Spirit of Christmas.”
Billy’s subplot is strange, though. If you’ve got nothing productive to say about poverty or neglect or whatever is going on with Billy, then, um, maybe don’t include it and give it a simplistic magical solution.
As for the ghost and the terrifying stuff, I really like it. I find it quite comforting, actually. Whenever the ghost shows up I feel inexplicably safe (yes, even when he’s marionetting Scrooge). It’s likely because the ghost’s entire existence is to mock the kid for being skeptical. Sometimes skepticism needs to be mocked (because you’re being a dick, Declan), and the times to mock skepticicm are basically Christmas time.
I also like all of the almost-death because it’s fun to watch, so sue me. I’m not a fan of “In the real world these people would be so fired” criticisms in general because, first of all, duh, this is a movie, if you meant to watch real life for an hour and a half you took a wrong turn somewhere, and second of all, IDK, have you seen the White House lately aidhfjsdnkandcka
But here’s some less awful cynical critique.
The culmination of Main Boy’s doubt vs belief conflict has him turn away from struggling to see Santa behind columns of elves, and turn away from reindeer anxiously trying to fly while their bells jingle absolutely silently, and close his eyes. “OK. OK. I believe. I… believe…”
It’d be a pretty shallow movie if just seeing Santa confirmed Santa’s existence. It’d be pretty shallow too if the sound of the sleigh bells is what did it. But no, it’s neither of those things. Main Boy can’t hear the bell until he lets himself believe, tells himself he believes, insists that he believes. It’s more about the fear of believing in something in case it turns out to not be true, or if it turns out to not be all you imagined, and you get hurt.
The sound of the bell becomes concrete evidence of Main Boy’s belief, instead of being concrete evidence of the existence of Santa and all of the magic around him. This is all well and good, because although concrete evidence of the magic is what Main Boy has been looking for this whole time, finding that evidence can’t possibly give him what he needs. The problem is, once you prove something with concrete evidence, you can’t really believe it anymore, not truthfully, because then it’s just a fact. “The Spirit of Christmas” is something you believe in, not something you prove.
What I don’t like about the sound of the bell is what’s said about it at the very end of the movie. Main Boy, having grown up into Tom Hanks (like everyone else in this universe), talks about how his friends and even his sister all one by one found that a year finally came around when they could no longer hear the sound of the bell, but Main Boy always could. That’s the part that just doesn’t work for me, because if it’s supposed to be a point about kids having a specific way of believing as opposed to adults, then Main Boy Who is Now Tom Hanks should really not be able to hear it as an adult. And if instead it’s supposed to be about how the Polar Express experience itself was a lasting thing that ensured he would always be a little bit more childlike and believey than everyone else, I’m not a fan of that either, because that’s weird, and the train almost fell through ice and went down a roller coaster, and, I don’t know, it just doesn’t work for me.
Maybe they just didn’t know how to end it otherwise, so they went with, “Our parents couldn’t hear it but we could but then all the other kids grew up and couldn’t and while I grew up into Tom Hanks I still could, TA-DAAAA.”
(that has nothing whatsoever to do with this, nothing at all, but I can’t even think the “word” “ta-da” without thinking about this so)
I’d rather think about the duality of what’s strictly, factually real here, and what’s not but still kind of is. All of that junk is firmly on my playlist: magical realism, Life of Pi, etc. When Main Boy wakes up on Christmas morning, he rips his pocket, even though at 5 to midnight the night before he already ripped his pocket as he made his way outside to see the train. There’s some concrete evidence that the polar experience was a dream.
But then his sister finds the bell wrapped under the tree, with a note from Santa referencing that he lost it the previous night.
Two pieces of evidence, proving two different and conflicting realities.
Their mom comes over and asks what he’s got, and asks who it’s from.
“Santa!” they tell her, and her “Santa, really?” answer sounds really skeptical. I don’t know how it’s possible to instruct an actress to read that short little line and somehow convey that she knows Santa isn’t real while humouring her kids and being a little bit confused but not overly worried about it, but, they did it. Or maybe I’m just reading that into it, but it really does sound like she’s doing double duty there.
And if she doesn’t believe in Santa, and if it’s her and her husband who are putting the gifts under the tree and pretending they’re from Santa, and if the bell is not from her and her husband, then Santa is both real and not real in this universe, which is… interesting.
Belief is a tricky little abstract concept. The duality of “Santa is real!” and “But he’s not, actually!” and then again “But he still kind of is, ultimately!” is interesting but it doesn’t have much to contribute on the subject. It probably comes back to the important climactic moment where Main Boy decides to believe. Deciding to believe in something is big, important, crucial, but in this movie, it also happens right before Main Boy sees Santa up close and actually talks to him. Metaphorically it’s nice I guess; it grants catharsis. But choosing to believe in something, even if it’s “The Spirit of Christmas,” is not a thing that you do one time and then that’s it, you’re set. Faith gets shaken. Time moves on, you get older, you lose people, unexplained things happen in “free and fair” elections, and it takes near-constant work to remain believey, no matter what it is you happen to choose to believe in.
I’m of two minds, fittingly. I like that The Polar Express illustrates belief the way that it does, but I also think its conclusion is a little too simplistic for the big concepts it’s trying to discuss. It’s why I prefer A Christmas Carol and Arthur Christmas – both of those have pretty simplistic ideas at their hearts. A Christmas Carol meshes generosity of spirit (and wealth) with the Christmas season, and Arthur Christmas is about doing your job for the right reasons and very much masculinity all day with the masculinity oh my God it’s entirely about masculinity. Simple ideas expanded with detailed stories and characters. Pol Ex is more about simple characters grappling with big ideas, and, maybe it’s just me, but I like the “simple ideas, complex characters/exploration” type better. They seem neater, cleaner, and ultimately more satisfying.
But there’s really nothing like the train materializing out of the mist.
I wanted to write a whole thing about this animated cat to end all animated cats and how he’s like the Cheshire Cat if the Cheshire Cat had been on Alice’s side but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without just stating facts.
Instead, here are some of my favourite caps of the Coraline cat. They’re from Disney Screencaps once again, the site which, apparently, doesn’t stop at Disney.
Get you a cat in case of other-dimension monsters with nefarious intentions for your eyes.
Finishing the week off with a bang, like the bang of a burning boulder landing inches from your foot after a cry of, “I AM NOT TOPH! I AM MELON LORD! MUAH HA HA HA!” is our appreciation of Toph Beifong, the greatest earth bender in the world.
We’ve said before (and we’ll say again) that we love watching women go on power trips. Toph is the ultimate woman on a power trip. Always on a power trip, all the time.
(^^^ a nice compilation to that effect)
You might assume that Toph was a spirited kid who eventually had to grow out of her in-your-face personality. Right?
Wrong.
(^^^ have we perfected the astral plane marriage thing so that we can each marry this 2D animated old lady yet or what)
(OK maybe one of us can marry the elbow leech)
In the cameo-to-end-all-cameos, Toph shows up in Korra as a very grumpy, very irresponsible, very talented old woman living in a swamp because obviously she would live in a mystical swamp by herself. She has literally not changed even a little bit, despite having a couple of kids and starting a metal bending academy/police force.
Her version of motherly affection? How about this speech to Lin in “Operation Beifong:” “Look, I know I wasn’t a great mother, but one way or another, I ended up with two great kids. Good enough to risk my bony old butt for, anyway. If you can just find some way not to hate me, maybe that’s enough, at least for me.”
This was a bold move for the writers of Avatar (but… no one should be surprised by that). Allowing your female character to be perpetually brash and angry and not-nurturing and basically the antithesis of rigid femininity is something that we don’t get to see very often, especially in a protagonist role. Or in any role.
Our love for Avatar knows no bounds, so we’re spending 30 days celebrating various aspects of both shows because why not?
*If you haven’t seen The Last Airbender or The Legend of Korra yet, well, please do yourself a favour and get on that. We will be talking about majorly spoilery things (not in this one, but sooner or later we will), and it would be a shame if glancing at one of our posts got in the way of your perfect enjoyment of watching some of the greatest television ever. Ever. EVER. We do not exaggerate. You need to watch this show. Once you do, you won’t even understand how you got by as a person who’d never watched Avatar before. It happened to both of us, it will happen to you. Go forth and live your best life.*
With all of that said, here’s the first of our 30 days’ worth of Avatar love.
Week 1: Friends of the Avatar
Day 1: Katara
Day 2: Sokka, Bolin, and Mako
Day 3: Toph
Day 1: we start a bit small with Katara’s magical ability to sell whatever stupid fake name her compatriots come up with in the moment.
In Book One, while Katara’s water bending is still nothing special, her major skill of making obviously fake names seem believable is already fully developed.
In “The King of Omashu,” Aang gets carried away because he’s disguised as an old man using Appa’s shed fur and comes up with an elaborate pseudonym.
“Name’s Bonzu… Pippin…paddleopsicopolis… the third!”
Now this surly guard would surely have turned the Gaang away if not for Katara stepping up immediately with a most natural, “Hi. June Pippinpaddleopsicopolis.”
The guard says, (more or less), “Well that sells that. Enjoy Omashu.”
In “City of Walls and Secrets,” Katara gets to make up pseudonyms of her own for herself and Toph when Long Feng of the Dai Lee won’t leave them alone. She comes up with “Kwa Mai” for herself and “Dum” for Toph, and apart from getting her hair pulled by an irritable Toph, she’s pretty much sold it.
If Aang or Sokka had been around to make up the names Long Feng would definitely have ended the game much sooner than he did – although we’re sure he knew from the start who these two ladies really were. You can’t pull one over on Long Feng… unless you’re Azula.
Still, Katara made it easier for him to play along, because Long Feng just couldn’t stomach a “Bonzu Pippinpaddleopsicopolis the third.”
Finally Katara once again is called upon to wow us with her acting skills in Book Three’s, “The Headband.” She and Sokka pose as Aang’s concerned and disappointed parents when he enrolls in a Fire Nation school and accidentally beats up a bully using diversionary air bending techniques (as you do).
By now you’d think they’d have learned to let Katara take the lead but Sokka’s having so much fun that he SUPER GLUED THE BEARD AND MUSTACHE TO HIS FACE.
The Headmaster says, “Thank you for coming, Mr. and Mrs…?”
Sokka: “Fire. Wang Fire. This is my wife, Sapphire.”
And without missing a beat, Katara says, “Sapphire Fire. Nice to meet you.”
The Headmaster seems a little annoyed by their last name but up against Katara’s amazing “selling the stupid fake names” skills, he doesn’t stand a chance.
So apparently some excellent people have created transcripts of the episodes online which proved very useful for this post. Here is the one for “The Headband” but simply google the word “transcript” and any episode title you like and the information is at your perfectionist fingertips! Thanks, excellent people at the Avatar Wiki!
Here are some more mundane tasks that Disney movies jazz up.
*Disclaimer: I went through YouTube to find all of these clips I wanted to talk about, but at some point, some of these videos may be removed abruptly from YouTube because, well, Disney. Posting straight clips like this doesn’t count as fair use because they aren’t transformative… but they’re so short I personally doubt that they cause any financial harm to the behemoth that is Disney. But. Copyright law is important.
Anyway, if one of these is missing but my hilarious descriptions of what goes on make you want to watch that clip RIGHT NOW just search YouTube. Someone will probably have reuploaded it by then. Or, if you’re like me, you already have access to all of these on DVD or Bluray or something, so hakuna matata.*
It’s always nice to take a break from cleaning to talk to woodland critters and daydream a bit. Even better, I think, if it’s outside and there’s a well involved. On the other hand, when some jerk comes up suddenly behind you that’s a bit less stellar.
In real life this would suck. Large. But hey, good for Snow I guess. It’s what she said she wanted, after all.
Cleaning the floor
Snow and Cinderella could stand to invest in a mop.
But also, this scene is fabulous. And it’s cool how Lucifer ties it all together as he does. There is nothing more magical than a cat ruining your clean floor – because at least it’s not a dog. Dogs are worse.
“Doing your chores” while finding time to “study”
Dogs are worse.
Little Brother may be one of the top three Disney dogs. Also, Mulan’s a genius for saving time by cheating and by tying chicken feed to her dog. Although she still ended up late. But hey, she’d be much later if she had actually studied thoroughly enough to not need her notes, and if she’d carefully fed the chickens herself.
Dig dig dig dig dig dig digging in a mine the whole day through/commuting
Mining is awful. Don’t ask how I’d know, because I don’t. But I’m assuming it’s awful. It’s probably not as glittery as this. Also walking to and from work is less than ideal.
Street performance
It’s rough being a street performer. Don’t ask how I’d know, because I don’t. But I’m assuming it’s rough. Here, it’s not as though Esmeralda has it easy, but on the other hand, until the stupid guards show up and apart from the occasional glimpse of hereditary bigotry, it seems like it’s going OK. Except maybe don’t have Djali be the one in charge of carrying the money.
Washing someone else’s stupid dishes
This is a better method. Why we don’t all just do it this way is beyond me.
Also the way Merlin says, “Rubbity scrubbity sweepity, flow,” makes me laugh. I think he’s a little too into it.
“Gathering corn”
The magic here is in having a friend that doesn’t drop you when you a) only pick one thing of corn, and b) didn’t tell her about the invader you met and befriended the other day so that she’s stunned when he shows up and you run off with him like it’s nothing and ask her not to do anything about it. Please.
Cleaning someone else’s ridiculous mess
This is a little too much fun to truly be a parody of Snow White at the dwarves’ house. It’s more of an updated version that acknowledges its relentless cheeriness but doesn’t apologize for it.
I know I’m a little out there with my lack of hatred for cockroaches but still, I’d be thrilled if a cockroach/pigeon/rat team showed up to help with the housework.
Cooking
Remy loves cooking but I’d prefer if the food would just magically appear on dishes that would magically clean themselves afterwards. But this, and all of the other Remy-cooks-something scenes, make me appreciate the actual act of cooking.
Still. If Remy wants to invade my kitchen and become my personal chef, that’s more than fine with me.
Making gumbo
Princess and the Frog focuses less on food preparation than does Ratatouille, but it still makes cooking seem magical and not tedious by highlighting the “good food brings people together” thing that Tiana is obsessed with as an adult without quite understanding what it means to her now that she’s grown.
Making gumbo as a frog in a swamp
Cooking is annoying enough as a human with opposable thumbs and… appliances, and stuff. But again, the movie shows it as being something that connects people, even if Tiana’s the one doing all of the hard work, like figuring out how to heat a pumpkin. In the middle of a swamp. As a frog.
Being forced to appreciate art
This is a bit much. They’re kittens.
Indulging in every hobby
Even though Rapunzel is just feverishly trying to give her life meaning, I admire her daily productivity and aspire to it. An achievable goal, if ever there was one.
Indulging in your hobby with just a dash of self-loathing on the side
“No face as hideous as my face was ever meant for heaven’s light.” Aw, come on, Quasi.
The whittling of the Esmeralda figure is the best thing. And it’s much better than the smoke version of her that Frollo conjures up, because Frollo is and will always be the worst.
Indulging in your totally normal, not concerning at all hobby
Lady.
Why can’t you make skiving snackboxes or something.
Here’s a handy but incomplete list of mundane tasks that a Disney movie makes look like magic.
*Disclaimer: I went through YouTube to find all of these clips I wanted to talk about, but at some point, some of these videos may be removed abruptly from YouTube because, well, Disney. Posting straight clips like this doesn’t count as fair use because they aren’t transformative… but they’re so short I personally doubt that they cause any financial harm to the behemoth that is Disney. But. Copyright law is important.
Anyway, if one of these is missing but my hilarious descriptions of what goes on make you want to watch that clip RIGHT NOW just search YouTube. Someone will probably have reuploaded it by then. Or, if you’re like me, you already have access to all of these on DVD or Bluray or something, so hakuna matata.*
Getting up in the morning
The upside of dying in your sleep is that you never have to get up in the morning ever again. Getting up is terrible. Everything you have to do during this new day has yet to be done. Some days, the worst part about getting up is that you have to do all of the things and can’t sleep again until they’re all done, but some days are much worse. Sometimes you wake up to a cat violently vomiting – but at least she’s vomiting off the side of the bed, so whatever. Just don’t step in it, I guess. Sometimes you wake up to a giant centipede crawling up your wall. Sometimes you wake up and you were supposed to be at work ten minutes ago. It’s great.
Cinderella just deals with it. The various clothed animals help, I guess. None of them are vomiting. My goal in life is to be as chill about having to get up as she is. She’s just a tad disgruntled and sort of tells off a clock. I’ll get there someday.
Baking
I like pie but making pie is terrible. The crust is finicky. The filling is sometimes a soup. If you want lemon meringue but you’re a vegan you need to open a can of chickpeas and whip up the slop they come in for upwards of ten minutes and it’s weird. If you want tourtierre but you haven’t eaten pork in ten years you also need chickpeas, and some mushrooms. There are too many steps and too many dishes to wash and all of the counter space gets covered in flour.
But this little scene is awesome. To be as serene as this while making pie? Snow White must be a saint.
Packing
Why can’t it be this simple?
Also, Higitus Figitus and Madam Mim are the only reasons for this movie to exist.
Cleaning up someone else’s ridiculous mess
This may be the highlight for a scene that makes cleaning look like fun.
Hunting/Gathering
Well. Maybe everyone’s in a good mood just because the warriors have returned. But still.
Being trained on a new job
Being a new hire sucks. Colette’s training style would not help. However, as time goes on and as both Linguini and Remy listen and learn from her, she gets friendlier. She just needed to be sure that she would be treated with the respect she deserves.
Working two jobs
Plain and simple: when she falls into bed only to have the alarm go off seconds later? That is my nightmare.
Tiana’s life looks busy. Stimulating, enjoyable much of the time, but also miserable in a few significant ways. This scene manages to show the mix.
Working out
Working out is stupid. But there’s something quite satisfying about watching Herc pick up that giant arm statue by the fingertip.
Working out
… working out is very manly, and… tough.
Seriously though, this is my favourite progression scene. The Hercules one is also a lot of fun, and the Ratatouille one is great in a subtler way. Maybe it’s easy to make hard work look great when you can also show the results.
Poisoning your elderly employer’s cats
This… is my favourite part? He’s awful and all, but that dish looks so good. Even if all it is is cream, various spices, and way too many sleeping pills.
I’m trying to write a thing about portrayals of animals and nature in animated films – specifically Finding Nemo and The Lion King – since Andrew Stanton gave that interview saying his reaction to the “circle of life” philosophy in Le Roi Lion was a major influence to how nature is portrayed in Trouver Nemo. I keep getting stuck, mostly because how I feel about those portrayals is tied up in how I feel about how society perceives nature in general and then I go off on huge barely-related tangents about humpback whales and I think it’s going to turn into a massive manifesto.
So for now I wrote this thing about Louis and Pascal and how they do somewhat unethical things so that their princesses can achieve their dreams without moral ensulliment. Mmhm.
Recent Disney princesses have occasionally relied on reptilian enforcement for maximum dream achievement. Let’s discuss.
Louis is the definition of non-threatening. He shows up right after truly threatening gators attack our frog heroes, but all he wants is to play his trumpet in accompaniment to Naveen’s spider webbed-branch. Actually, all he wants is to play among the great (and human) jazz musicians on the riverboats. So Louis is both non-threatening and Ariel.
“Oh I tried once.” That part is probably the funniest thing in the movie. Tiana’s “And we talk, too,” is also good, but that’s not the point.
Louis asks Mama Odie to give him a human body so that he can safely jam with the big boys, but she apparently isn’t one for simple, straight-up magical transformation and tells him he just needs to find what he needs. Which ends up simply being that he needs to be friends with some powerful and influential people who own a restaurant by the end of the film, because as we see during the finale, Tiana lets him play for her patrons.
But to get to this point, first we need non-threatening Louis to be a true American Murder Log.
You’re better off where you’re at.
The Fenner brothers probably weren’t supposed to accept another offer after agreeing to sell to Tiana, but since she hadn’t signed the papers yet it wasn’t technically illegal. I like this because it’s a lot more realistic than having them just be outright evil schemers denying Tiana her dream property. They’re just not good people, even though what they’re doing is within the law.
I mean, the above is clearly a death threat though. I’m fine with it (sometimes you have to force people to not do terrible things), but, it’s a death threat. Damn, Disney.
Worth it.
I’ve been to Florida many times and I’ve never seen an alligator in the wild. I’m mostly OK with that, because if I happen to meet one and it decides to eat me then I think I’m eaten. But it would be interesting to see one from a safe distance. They are the living dinosaurs, after all (I mean so are birds but we’re not ready as a culture to accept feathered dinosaurs yet so whatever).
I’m grateful for Princess and the Frog’s portrayal of alligators. Louis is genuinely lovable, and gators don’t get enough appreciation, which is a shame. I personally find it hard to appreciate them because they’re dangerous and they eat animals I like better than them, but despite all of that, when I found a lovely shop display of decapitated baby alligator heads in multiple souvenir shops in Florida, I was unimpressed. To say the least. When we allow ourselves to project evil onto an animal just because it’s deadly and doesn’t make cute facial expressions, we end up allowing the worst kinds of exploitation. From the footage I’ve seen, snakes and alligators in the skins industry and sharks in the fin industry are treated with excessive cruelty, and it’s almost as though the people doing it think they’re obligated to harm them with such spite because of how hated they are by random facets of human society.
Anyway that’s depressing, but the point is, I’m always up for a beautiful Disney movie creating a lovable character out of an animal that is hated and misunderstood in real life. Threatening sleazy real estate agents with death and all.
So I saw Trolls at lunchtime on opening day and I liked it.
Disclaimer: there is, as you know if you’ve seen the trailers, a bit of crude humour in it. It’s DreamWorks. But as usual, unless it’s Shrek or something, it doesn’t take over the movie and is clearly just there to make the kids laugh, so whatever.
And maybe spoilers.
Factors that probably influence my liking it:
The trailer looked bad. And therefore, low expectations.
Pretty. VERY pretty.
Fun music. I wasn’t expecting it to be mostly original songs, so that was a nice surprise. There were some covers too and it ended up being a good mix.
It’s a story about happiness being a choice, or something someone can help you find if need be.
It’s a story about choosing not to eat sentient beings.
It’s a story about finding happiness without exploiting others to get it.
Poppy’s version of an I Want song is pretty fun and her character gets eaten multiple times as she’s singing it and even that doesn’t slow her down. (Which is the joke. But still.)
Branch.
Whatever that worm thing is that James Corden’s character is always holding.
Emphasis on, “I don’t think, I hope” and “I don’t think, I feel.” Thinking is great and all but with Inside Out and this, it’s nice to see emotional intelligence or morality or whatever it is being valued in kids’ films.
Sincerity.
Someone at DreamWorks is clearly a hopeless romantic, and it’s cute.
Final Note: DreamWorks maybe needs a new marketing department. Unless this movie is ultra successful, I suppose.
owl machine 