Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special surprise today — a guest post from Mara Scudder, co-writter of the Story Fortress blog! They do absolutely great work there, analyzing popular movies, books, and television and explaining just how writers can imitate the techniques that make our favorite stories work.
Mara is a Christian artist, violinist, and blogger. She loves acting (especially musical theater) and is the co-founder of a small stage productions group at her church. She’s an adventurous entrepreneur and a fierce negotiator who loves debates. But most of all, she loves good stories, and makes a point of learning something from every story she encounters, sharing the tips and tricks she picks up through her blog.
Villains are a subject I have talked about before. Mara has also written excellent articles on that topic, and today, she brings us one exploring the change in Disney villains over time, and how that reflects some important changes in our culture.
Without further ado…
I did not grow up watching many of the classic Disney movies. Although I read retellings of the original tales and loved some of the modern adaptations, (Brave and Tangled will always be personal favorites), until recently I had never seen classics like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and even The Little Mermaid.
But last year, I decided to change that and see each of these at least once. And while I expected the Grimm tales to be, well, especially ‘Grimm,’ I knew that many of the Disney retellings had understandably toned down the horror of the originals to make them more palatable for children. That was certainly the case with Tangled and most of the more recent fairy tale retellings.
And while that impression was mostly true, one thing that surprised me was how dark the villains from the Disney versions still were. Ursula feeds off of the souls of young people, trapping them after death to become servants of her whim and preventing their souls from reaching the afterlife or doing anything but subsisting as desperate worms awaiting her next demand. Maleficent relishes keeping her enemies alive and in torturous conditions just to mock them for decades on end, watching as they gradually lose both youth and hope. In the dungeon beneath the wicked queen’s palace in Snow White, skeletons are chained to the wall, the remains of subjects she captured and restrained until they literally rotted away. Without a doubt, the villains of the classic Disney movies are the darkest aspects of those stories.
The standards and expectations for children’s movies have clearly shifted dramatically, even in just the 36 years since The Little Mermaid was released. Modern-day villains are at least evil without being scarring, and it has been pointed out time and time again that most recent Disney villains are written as shades of gray, not intended to be seen as even completely evil. The ones that are – like Mother Gothel from Tangled or King Magnifico from Wish – still don’t begin to compete with the pure darkness of many of the classic Disney villains.
I find this contrast fascinating. It made me wonder what it says about our culture as a whole, and whether the shift away from dark villains shows a better sensitivity towards the innocence of children, or something else altogether?
I think the beginning of the answer to this question comes when we understand how the shift away from darkening villains changes the balance of an entire story. Because, when your villain isn’t the darkest part of your story, sadness fills that role more often than not. The darkest part of Encanto is when Mirabel loses her home and Casita crumbles, taking her family’s miracle with it. The very worst moment of Raya and the Last Dragon occurs as Raya grapples with grief and betrayal, when the last hope of her people dies by accident, leaving her hopeless and alone. The darkest moment in Wish is when Asha faces the impending reality of watching her entire kingdom fall to a dictatorship.
Almost across the board, modern Disney movies have moved away from writing evil as the darkest part of their stories, and instead allow sadness to fill that role, writing it as the most oppressive, most difficult point in their characters’ lives.
It’s worth mentioning that, for some people, it absolutely is.
For some, the darkest part of their story is wrestling with grief, or bearing incredible burdens of sadness. We need stories like Encanto and Raya and the Last Dragon to inspire those people, to give them hope in a world where incredible pain often comes not as a direct result of another’s evil, but rather because the world is simply a very broken place.
But I think it becomes dangerous when that is all we write about.
When the darkest part of every story is when the protagonist is sad or in pain, the underlying message becomes that pain or negative emotion are worse than evil. When a culture becomes saturated with these stories, the next generation is raised with the same belief. When they come across hardship, they understand it as the worst thing they could experience. They see it as the darkest moment of their story, and can’t imagine that it could get any worse. Because of this, they go to great lengths to mitigate their sadness and difficulty. When they see evil in others, they minimize it, because as long as that person is happy, their story isn’t really that dark.
Discussions like this are important. Both evil and sadness are generally acknowledged as bad, and in fact sadness often comes as a direct consequence of evil. The two more often than not are closely intertwined, and to add to how complicated this issue is, the truth of the matter is also counterintuitive. Evil is deceptively sweet. Sadness is so oppressively painful in its purest form that truly nothing feels worse.
But I think that deception is what makes these conversations so important. It’s that ambiguity that calls truths that may seem otherwise too unimportant to be said out loud. It’s the muddiness around this entire issue that makes it all the more necessary to clarify.
Because ultimately, there are greater things at stake than our feelings. We absolutely cannot afford to have even one generation who would rather be evil than sad, because they will end up sacrificing everything – even their moral compass – for the sake of pleasure. And without that moral compass to guide us, all else is lost. The world becomes one grand bid for material gain and pleasure, regardless of the suffering of others. Our lives become small and pointless, geared toward nothing but our own satisfaction. Storytelling itself disappears as people fail to value great acts of courage or incredible sacrifices, and they become diminished in favor of fleeting pleasure.
It sounds ridiculously obvious to say it out loud, but it’s true: on Judgment Day, your eternal destination will not be based on whether or not you enjoyed life. Ultimately, your feelings on the matter become irrelevant. Instead, your actions, your choices, despite or occasionally in direct contradiction of your feelings, become what matters.
The darkest parts of our lives are when we sin – even (and perhaps especially) if we felt joy while doing it. The moments when we do good, despite incredible difficulty and pain, become shining gems in God’s eyes. It is those moments that forge our character. It is those moments that most matter to God. And it is those moments, despite how painful they are, that ultimately define us.
We desperately need heroes in our stories who are sad, who struggle with massive emotions that weigh them down and make taking action almost impossible, and yet also choose to do the right thing. We need protagonists who would a thousand times over take another obstacle, another blow, another hardship, if it means that they get to do right, to stop more evil, and make the world a better place. We need heroes who have looked evil in the face, have seen how truly devastating it is, and are willing to do anything to stop it — even if that means enduring unbearable sadness.
And that means we need stories that show the coming generation just how much darker evil is than sadness.
Those stories define our culture, society, and the values of the coming generations. Without them, our culture will fall to ruin, yet another casualty of the often-violent rush for pleasure at the expense of goodness.
But with them, we will raise a generation of heroes.
Amen to that! I’m reminded of some lines and themes from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World — of John the Savage claiming the ‘right to suffer,’ or of the verses in the Bible that God assured us we will have suffering if we are his true followers. The world would love to promote a sheltered lifestyle of hedonism and self-seeking. But following those sirens is not our call. We are to be gold refined in the furnace, glittering and pure after it has endured its trial.
“When you cannot rejoice in feelings, circumstances or conditions, rejoice in the Lord.” – A. B. Simpson
Everyone, please give Mara lots of love in the comments for volunteering her time and effort to write something inspiring and beautiful for us. I hope you all have a fantastic week.
Keep shining, friends.
Cheers!
i never thought abt this before!!! very insightful article!!! thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it.