Cartoon "Monsters on Vacation": Raising Tolerance to Evil

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The messages of the cartoon are more than understandable: confusion of the concepts of good and evil, discrediting the image of a large family, teenage perverted "love" and the fact that parents should accept such "features" of their children and in all ways contribute to their unconventional "happiness."

As part of the preparation of the public consciousness of the population for a soft perception, until recently, alien to us "culture" of monsters, zombies and ghouls, the second part of the cartoon "Monsters on Vacation" was released, in which all kinds of villains are presented as cute and kind creatures. Renunciation of the will of parents, vulgarity, perversion, death as a reason for jokes - all this, unfortunately, has even become familiar, is present in the new creation of the American film industry. But to understand the brainwashing technology used, let us examine this picture in detail. The cartoon "Monsters on Vacation" (in the English version - "Hotel Transylvania") tells about the son of Vlad Dracula - Dracula Jr. and his adult daughter Mavis.

In the first part, the Count, fearing people, hid his daughter from the outside world in the Hotel Transylvania, which is comfortable for all monsters, where witches do the cleaning, the hunchback Quasimodo cooks with his adored rat Esmeralda, sings the Phantom of the Opera, and zombies do the rough work. But on her daughter's 118th birthday, two troubles happen: first, a person gets into the hotel, Jonathan is an American tourist; second - Mavis falls in love with this very Jonathan. In the second part of the cartoon, the main characters, the vampire Mavis and the human Jonathan, got married and gave birth to a child, Denis. Dracula tries to make a true bloodsucker out of his grandson, but the latter behaves like an ordinary person, and the Count takes the risk to "awaken the power of a monster in his grandson and teach him to be a monster." Actually, being a monster in a moral and ethical sense is the main thing that the picture teaches.

To begin with, the number of deaths and frankly unpleasant scenes, from which even an adult viewer frowns, is simply off scale in the cartoon. For example, in the first part, the werewolf simply ate a flock of sheep, which was blocking the way for the main characters, belching wool with relish. In the second part, the young viewer will hear just such a lullaby - "zombies will come, and they will tear off their heads, their arms and legs in half …". Well, and an endless number of falls, slaps, blows - including in the groin area, followed by a demonstration of the heroes' suffering. And this is what a vampire girl's birthday cake looks like.

The second thing to note is a huge amount of vulgarity. For example, in a very “funny” way the kids were shown the wedding night of invisible people - a squeezed bed and “smacking” sounds. In another scene, a local doctor began to pester the Count, dressed up as a woman, looking exclusively at the ass of the former. There is also a skeletal woman with her jealous husband and hints of necrophilia - when in the first part a woman's mannequin is carried away by a zombie, the Count demands that he leave his burden and calls the ghoul a “necrophile”.

Let this not surprise you, but so far we have touched only the tip of the iceberg of destructive programs inherent in this Hollywood product for children around the world. The outer side of the plots may seem quite nice. In the first part, the main message is connected with the fact that children cannot be kept in their closed world, since they will still want to "fly out of the nest" and start their own family. The second part tells that it is impossible to remake children for themselves. But what happens in the picture by default, completely negates all positive meaning, turning it into a kind of "information cover" for destructive ideas that are embedded in the mind of the viewer:

• Everything traditional is outdated and outdated, fortune is on the side of the new fashion, the new world, the new order.
• Love (more precisely, attraction at first sight) is stronger and more important than anything else, the “call of the heart” in their children must be interpreted by a parent as great love and accepted by absolutely anyone, even if it does not coincide with his worldview, social laws and common sense …
• Love has no "norm", you can even be in love with a dog, or a monster of an incomprehensible race - that's your right.
• One child is the norm for a family; more children is a disaster.
• It is necessary to tolerate any deviations from the norm, avoiding giving moral assessments of "good / bad".

Let's follow with specific examples how exactly these semantic blocks reach the mind of a young viewer

1. Everything traditional - old and unnecessary, fortune is on the side of the new fashion, the new world, the new order. The entire first part is devoted to how the young guy Jonathan, the only young man in the hotel of monsters, arranges a party for Mavis' coming of age. He arranges dancing, skating and games, instead of boring exercises, instead of a blues ballad, he sings rock. He earns recognition and respect from all the monsters, and Mavis finally falls in love with him. And it's not that different personalities have different tastes: in the cartoon, everything is shown as if this is the only norm, and everyone agrees with Jonathan, even the Earl. Everything that is considered classic, calm, traditional, meaningful is instantly swept away by the power of youth.

2. Love (more precisely, attraction at first sight) is stronger and more important than anything else, the “call of the heart” in their children must be interpreted by a parent as a great love and accepted by absolutely anyone, even if it does not coincide with his worldview, social laws and common sense. This is the main message of the first part of the film. At the very beginning of the picture, the Count's wife dies at the hands of people, but it is the person who must be accepted into his family by the sudden will of his daughter. Moreover, the love of Mavis and Jonathan was not proven by any test, only the Earl did everything for this love: he changed his principles, read a long and pretentious speech in front of other monsters who were afraid of people for hundreds of years, and now they must find a person and bring him to his House. And all this is simply because the Count's daughter said that in her heart she had "Tink" (a symbol of love, according to the plot of the cartoon). This mythical "tink", which arose practically out of the blue, became the main argument for the violation of the entire established order. If earlier in cartoons, in order to show the emergence of love between the characters, the writers forced them to pass tests proving the strength of their feelings, now the heroes just need to say about the "tink" in their hearts, and everyone around them must risk their lives and break the way that has developed over the centuries. The apogee of this absurdity is the phrase from the second part of the cartoon: - You would not want me to marry a man … - A man, a vampire, a unicorn - if only you were happy!

3. Love has no "norm", you can be in love even with a dog, or a monster of an incomprehensible race - that's your right. In the second part, negative tendencies, justified by the “power of love,” are brought to their logical conclusion. In addition to the demonstrated inter-monster-human marriages among the secondary characters, it is made clear that Denis - the son of the main characters Mavis and Jonathan - has sympathy for the humanoid she-wolf Vinnie. The fact that something more than friendship is happening between the two characters is noticeable in the way Vinnie constantly licks Denis, and the villain's attempt to push her finally includes vampire forces sleeping at Denis, which did not wake up the whole cartoon, despite the efforts of relatives. The constant touching and final hugs of these heroes also betray that the third part is likely to be about the love of a human vampire and a humanoid wolf.

4. One child is the norm for a family; more children is a disaster. Volfych is a family man. He always looks tired, stooped and "rumpled (shabby)" family life.

He has many children. They endlessly play pranks, indulge in, fight and naughty others, for which Volfych always has to apologize or pay for the damage caused. And this is how each night passes:

An obviously discrediting image of a large family is also demonstrated when they are shown asleep: a father with red eyes from lack of sleep endures the fact that the children surrounded him and sometimes suck on his fur, sometimes salivate, or just sleep on it with the whole bunch, not letting him fall asleep. In one of the final scenes of the first part, it turns out that the scent of a wolf is needed. In response, Volfych declares that he has changed diapers for so many years and has already lost all his nose, and when he tries to call his children, no one except the only girl Vinnie listens to him. The image of the protagonist's father, who is depicted as a real “ancestor” (if in youth slang), does not command respect either: he is old-fashioned, a little tough in terms of the concepts of the modern world, a kind of “eccentric” who absolutely does not understand modern adolescents.

5. It is necessary to tolerate any deviations from the norm, avoiding giving moral assessments of "good / bad". And now the most important thing: in the center of the plot, the story is about what has always been considered evil and has corresponding images: vampires, zombies, skeletons, snow monsters and others. By definition, all these heroes are brutal and bloodthirsty killers. Their appearance is the personification of negative qualities; in the fairy tales of most peoples, they have always served as a dark force that opposes good. But in the cartoon "Hotel Transylvania" everything is turned upside down: Dracula is a diligent and responsible father; Frankenstein is an eccentric, kind uncle; mummy is a merry fellow; a werewolf is an exemplary family man, etc. That is, deliberate evil is endowed with good qualities, and our characters are presented as role models. People are shown at the beginning of the film as evil, cruel and wild, they destroy anyone who is not like them.

Count Dracula and his wife lived happily in their castle, but people, having learned that they were vampires, attacked the castle. The count tried to talk to them, to tell them that he was not bad and did not drink human blood for centuries, but people did not care, they set fire to the castle and thereby killed his wife, leaving Mavis an orphan. The same theme continues when Jonathan tries to get Mavis' hand from the Earl: - It's the 21st century. People have changed! - Are you saying that now there will be no one who will not hate us? - No … you're right …

That is, there is a substitution of the concepts of good and evil. What porridge of moral assessments will be in the mind of a child after watching such cartoons?

If you dig deeper and look globally, then - monsters are a minority that hides from the evil majority (people). And this evil majority will have to change and accept a minority, which, although it looks like outright evil, is in fact supposedly sweet and kind (does it resemble anything from the modern trends promoted by the West in the gender sphere?). At the end of the first part of the cartoon: people help and support Dracula so that he can find John, and his daughter is having a wedding with a man. In the second part, people and monsters already coexist peacefully. That is, during the entire cartoon, we observe the complete recognition of some by others, and vice versa. Thus, the idea is promoted that it is necessary to tolerate any deviations from the norm, avoiding giving moral assessments of "good / bad". The creators of the cartoon, in fact, tell us: let monsters live among people, and people among monsters, what's wrong with that? A kind of symbiosis of good and evil … This is a kind of "underwater behavioral mine", accepting which a person loses the ability to distinguish good from bad and, as a result, loses any understanding of what the norm is. Having sown such a grain in the mind of a child, in the future it will already be easy to convince him of anything.

Thus, the messages of the cartoon are more than understandable: mixing the concepts of good and evil, discrediting the image of a large family, teenage perverted "love" and the fact that parents should accept such "features" of their children and in all ways contribute to their unconventional "happiness". Especially against the backdrop of an evil and cruel world that does not accept dissidents. Finally, we will demonstrate the abrupt change in Dracula's facial expression that periodically occurs in the cartoon. During a conversation, he is usually absolutely calm, benevolent and smiling … But very often, literally for a few seconds, he becomes like that. And then his face returns to its previous state again

Violence: Many scenes with murders, violence, fights, the main characters are monsters. Dried talking heads, which have their mouths sewn up so that they chat less, or the scattered limbs of some zombie in the hall - for monsters, as it were, the norm, but for the child's psyche, such a "norm" does not carry anything good.

Drugs: None. [box color = yellow]

Sex: A few vulgar hints, including perversion.

Moral: 1) Absolute confusion of the concepts of good and evil. 2) The father has no chance to understand his child. The parent must obey the will of the child, not try to change his inclinations, this topic goes side by side with the promotion of various kinds of perversions and deviations from the norm. 3) A large family is torment. 4) Numerous jokes like: farting is funny; wag the fifth point in front of everyone, causing laughter from others; hitting the crotch between the legs and watching someone's pain are also quite funny.

The following signs of a harmful cartoon were identified in the Monsters on Vacation cartoons:

- The main characters of the cartoon behave aggressively, cruelly, maim, kill, cause harm. Moreover, all the details of this "savor", even if all this is served under the guise of humor. - The plot demonstrates dangerous behavior, in case of attempts to repeat it in real life, for health or life. - In the cartoon, the characters are characterized by behavior that is non-standard for their gender: male characters behave like women, women - like men.

- The plot contains scenes of disrespectful behavior towards people, animals, plants. This can be a mockery of old age, weakness, weakness, physical disabilities, social and material inequality.

- The heroes of the film are unsympathetic and even ugly. For children's perception, for easier orientation in who is "bad" and who is "good", it is necessary that the positive hero is attractive and outwardly pleasant. Then it will be easier for the child to understand which of the heroes should be imitated, and which on the contrary.

- In the cartoon, an idle lifestyle is cultivated, the ideal of "life is an eternal holiday" is promoted, the policy of avoiding difficulties and achieving goals in an easy way, without labor or even deception. - The film contains storylines that defame and contemptuously describe everything related to motherhood and birth, raising children. Maternal images look repulsive, their way of life is shown as flawed and inferior.