MarxSchmarx
26th February 2012, 05:41
So I just finished watching the Disney movie "Tangled" based on the Rapunzel fairy tale.
This movie left me with a deeply sour taste. In particular, one cannot help but feel sorry for the supposed main villain, Gothel. This quite apart from the deeply problematic fact that she (apparently a greedy hoarder) is the most Semetic looking character in a sea of Aryans.
That in itself would be problematic. But more substantively, I found the film to have a deeply deus-ex-machina quality to it. The main conflict is presented as one of a young adult yearning to be free. But I didn't see that as the conflict. Rather, I saw the main conflict as what one would expect any decent human being to have - to love the parent that raised you, however flawed. The film tidily resolved that conflict by summarily killing off the Gothel character through no fault of the heroine. The glibness with which the heroine accepts the death of the Gothel character is just deeply troubling. Moreover, her supposedly cathartic rant chastising the villain seems, how shall I say, incredibly contrived. One cannot help but get the impression that the "ungrateful child" charge actually resonates.
Disney in all its usual saccharine melodrama glosses over this as a happy ending. I am not so sure. I came away from the film with a strong dislike of the heroine, whose virtually unmitigated hatred for the woman who would travel three days to get her favorite paint and for all her faults gave her a decent life strikes me as profoundly artificial.
More to the point, the film raises a question of why people have children in the first place.
The Gothel maternal character nakedly exploited her daughter. At the same time, were not the Aryan monarchs eager to have a successor? Indeed, ultimately they too sought a form of immortality - the very thing for which we are supposed to despise the Gothel character. But why are their motivations any less selfish than the supposed villain?
On some level I can dismiss this as the usual disney crap. But this kind of absurd and, yes, morally unsatisfying storyline belongs in the 1930s disney, not in 2010.
And what troubles me even more is that in googling around critics of the film have almost universally failed to comment on this, focusing instead on the aesthetics of the film, the musical numbers, and in essence matters of technique, not of substance of plot or character.
I guess I should never have really expected more, but it's yet another reason to be deeply skeptical of movie critics.
What is most disheartening is that it seems most viewers who have been bothered to post on the interwebs about this film share a reaction of OMG that witch had it coming, basically echoing the critics. What a shame that the dominant reaction to this film seems to be "oh they lived happily ever after given that the heroine was absolved the responsibility of her mother's death", rather than a more nuanced appreciation that celebrating the death of a villain who was quite nurturing by disney standards should make us ashamed.
Anyway if anyone else has seen this film, I'd be interested in your reactions. I think it is all to easy to dismiss it as the usual Disney claptrap, because the fact that almost universally the Disney claptrap is swallowed hook line and sinker even after all these years I think says something quite damaging about our society.
This movie left me with a deeply sour taste. In particular, one cannot help but feel sorry for the supposed main villain, Gothel. This quite apart from the deeply problematic fact that she (apparently a greedy hoarder) is the most Semetic looking character in a sea of Aryans.
That in itself would be problematic. But more substantively, I found the film to have a deeply deus-ex-machina quality to it. The main conflict is presented as one of a young adult yearning to be free. But I didn't see that as the conflict. Rather, I saw the main conflict as what one would expect any decent human being to have - to love the parent that raised you, however flawed. The film tidily resolved that conflict by summarily killing off the Gothel character through no fault of the heroine. The glibness with which the heroine accepts the death of the Gothel character is just deeply troubling. Moreover, her supposedly cathartic rant chastising the villain seems, how shall I say, incredibly contrived. One cannot help but get the impression that the "ungrateful child" charge actually resonates.
Disney in all its usual saccharine melodrama glosses over this as a happy ending. I am not so sure. I came away from the film with a strong dislike of the heroine, whose virtually unmitigated hatred for the woman who would travel three days to get her favorite paint and for all her faults gave her a decent life strikes me as profoundly artificial.
More to the point, the film raises a question of why people have children in the first place.
The Gothel maternal character nakedly exploited her daughter. At the same time, were not the Aryan monarchs eager to have a successor? Indeed, ultimately they too sought a form of immortality - the very thing for which we are supposed to despise the Gothel character. But why are their motivations any less selfish than the supposed villain?
On some level I can dismiss this as the usual disney crap. But this kind of absurd and, yes, morally unsatisfying storyline belongs in the 1930s disney, not in 2010.
And what troubles me even more is that in googling around critics of the film have almost universally failed to comment on this, focusing instead on the aesthetics of the film, the musical numbers, and in essence matters of technique, not of substance of plot or character.
I guess I should never have really expected more, but it's yet another reason to be deeply skeptical of movie critics.
What is most disheartening is that it seems most viewers who have been bothered to post on the interwebs about this film share a reaction of OMG that witch had it coming, basically echoing the critics. What a shame that the dominant reaction to this film seems to be "oh they lived happily ever after given that the heroine was absolved the responsibility of her mother's death", rather than a more nuanced appreciation that celebrating the death of a villain who was quite nurturing by disney standards should make us ashamed.
Anyway if anyone else has seen this film, I'd be interested in your reactions. I think it is all to easy to dismiss it as the usual Disney claptrap, because the fact that almost universally the Disney claptrap is swallowed hook line and sinker even after all these years I think says something quite damaging about our society.