Promotion of evil by Disney

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

One of the themes actively promoted by the Disney company, which is systematically found in their products, is the presentation of evil as an ambiguously negative phenomenon. The essence of "good evil" and the layer of ideas behind this tendency will be discussed in detail in this article.

Content:

- The needs of the viewer

- Disney's Good Evil

- What does “good evil” teach?

- Imposing the automatism of the perception of evil as good

- Conclusions

THE NEEDS OF THE VIEWER

To begin with, let's turn to the real needs of the main audience of Disney, children and adolescents, in relation to the content of any information production. One of the tasks of people in the early stages of growing up is to get simple, basic guidelines on the topic of what is good and what is bad in the world and, thus, to find some kind of adequate reality. ideological foundation, which will gradually become more complex: with the development of critical thinking, with the acquisition of their own life experience, etc. Thus, the right products for children / adolescents must set those moral standards and behavioral models that would become a reliable support for further movement along the path of life. The lessons learned by the young viewer from films and cartoons inherently affect the value system that is forming in him, which he will be guided by in the future, and therefore should be understandable, inspiring, helping to develop the best qualities in himself and a little simplified - in accordance with a specific age group, on which product is calculated. As for good and evil: on the one hand, it is difficult to argue with the fact that the topic is really infinitely scrupulous and capable of turning into thick philosophical jungle, but on the other hand, you need to understand that from the point of view of the needs of this group of viewers, the question is posed quite simply. In film and cartoon production for the unconscious, due to the age of the public, the following points are of paramount importance regarding the concepts of good and evil:

1. demonstration existenceopposite categories of good and evil / good and bad / moral and immoral - in principle;
2. showing them clearly separateness … Good is good, evil is evil, these are opposite concepts, between which there is a border separating them;
3. demonstration materialitygood and evil, their ability to have a tangible impact on a person;
4. demonstration of manifestations of good and evil on adequate examples(For example, friendship is an adequate example of the manifestation of the concept of good, theft is an adequate example of the manifestation of the concept of evil. Moral tones in the choice of examples are unacceptable, which is just widely used by Disney and what else will be said later).

At the same time, any ambiguity of evil, its subtleties, philosophical depth are topics that are absolutely not intended for immature minds and hearts. Asking a child or adolescent any difficult things to understand, such as the significance of the existence of evil or the duality of the world, is as unreasonable as sending him at this age not to a kindergarten or school, but to a university. He will simply get confused and will not be able to understand a complex topic at the level of formation and development at which he is. Yes, it is not necessary. The real need of children / adolescents as consumers of information products is to receive such simple and basic ideas and values that would form a reliable ideological basis that can help in the future independently refine their views in the right direction, build a beautiful and harmonious structure of beliefs on the right foundation.

DISNEY'S GOOD EVIL

Disney, on the other hand, is an authority on children's entertainment education, very often portrays the concept of evil in an extremely ambiguous and morally confusing way, mixing it with good or even putting it in the position of good in the final. Not to mention the fact that, as a detailed analysis of their products reveals, behind such maneuvers there may be some underlying disappointing subtext (as, for example, in the movie "Frozen"). This or that controversial evil is present in the next Disney production. least, in brackets it is indicated through which character the idea is transmitted:

• x / f "Cinderella" 2015 (character Lady Tremaine),
• m / f "Fairies: the Legend of the Monster" 2014 (character Count),
• m / f "City of Heroes" 2014 (character Robert Callaghan),
• x / f "Maleficent" 2014 (character Maleficent),
• film "Oz: the great and terrible" 2013 (characters Oscar Diggs and Theodora),
• m / f "Frozen" 2013 (character Elsa),
• m / f "Ralph" 2012 (character Ralph),
• m / f "Rapunzel: a Tangled Story" 2010 (characters Flynn Ryder and the bandits from the pub "Sweet Duck"),
• film "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" 2003 (character Jack Sparrow),
• m / f "Lilo and Stitch" 2002 (character Stitch),
• m / f "Pocahontas" 1995 (character John Smith),
• m / f "Aladdin" 1992 (character Aladdin).

Disney's ambiguous ways of presenting evil can be classified as follows: 1) "Good evil" or good in the "package" of evil."Good evil" is built as follows - the viewer is invited a type that, with common sense, does not raise any doubts about his belonging to the evil side … For instance:

A "fairy" who looks like a devil who cursed a child (Maleficent in the film of the same name),

demonic monster (Count in the movie "Fairies: The Legend of the Monster"),

con man and womanizer (Oscar Diggs in the film "Oz The Great and Terrible"),

bandits, killers (the inhabitants of the "Sweet Duck" pub in "Rapunzel: A Tangled Story"),

thieves (Flynn Ryder in "Rapunzel: A Tangled Story" and Aladdin in the film of the same name),

pirate (Jack Sparrow in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"),

alien monster destroyer (Stitch in "Lilo and Stitch"),

invading enemy (John Smith in Pocahontas),

And then the plot depicts that the represented character of the villainous type is kind of good and kind. At the same time, there are no significant stories of the evolution of evil into good (such a topic is serious and needs the same serious disclosure, including the unambiguity of the transformation of bad into good, repentance, full-fledged expression of correction, etc. - Disney in its unambiguous form is never suggested). As a result, all of the listed heroes, remaining in the position of evil by type, but asserting themselves by certain insignificant plot moves that they are good, represent morally very confused images of “good evil”.

The specificity of each product is different, but in general, the method boils down to the fact that instead of the transformation of evil into good, the semantic prefix "kind" is simply deceitfully added to the villainous type of the hero: a kind demonic "fairy", a kind monster, kind swindler and ladies' man, good bandits and murderers, good thieves, good pirate, good alien destroyer, good enemy. To make it clearer, this is about the same as the good devil, the good pedophile, the good maniac-rapist and so on. Good evil is a deceptive oxymoron, a combination of incompatible characteristics and phenomena.

Details about the advancement of evil through Maleficent, Oscar Diggs, Flynn Ryder and bandits, John Smith can be read in the relevant articles.

2) Evil, which was good and became evil through no fault of its own and desire, but because of some sad and uncontrollable events:

Theodora in Oz: The Great and Terrible was a good sorceress, but because of Oz's betrayal she was transformed into the witch of the West, a classic evil character from F. Baum's book The Wizard of the Emerald City, of which the film is a variation

Maleficent in the film of the same name was kind and took the side of evil, like Theodora, because of the betrayal of her lover

The wicked stepmother, Lady Tremaine, in Cinderella is also provided with a sad backstory of her villainous status by the writers - she became angry because of the death of her beloved husband

All three are the "trending" villains of recent years, taken by screenwriters from other stories, where they were simple, homogeneous evil, and deliberately revised towards good / complex evil. In new stories, these characters have become partly (Lady Tremaine) or completely (Maleficent, Theodora) innocent evil, which someone else has brought to villainous status.

This category also includes the original character from the movie "City of Heroes" - Robert Callaghan, who was a kind and decent man, but took the path of evil because of an event that influenced him beyond his control: the loss of his daughter

This pattern of "conditioned evil", repeated in recent years by Disney, although it seems realistic, is not positive from an educational point of view, which will be discussed a little later.

It is recommended to read about Lady Tremaine in conjunction with "complex evil" in the corresponding article.

3) Evil "born this way"(“born this way” trend) - that is, again, evil is out of control, evil is not at will:

Elsa in Frozen (a version of Andersen's Snow Queen, an evil character) was born with magic that is dangerous to humans:

In the cartoon of the same name, Ralph, an inhabitant of the slot machine, was created to play the role of a villain:

Stitch in "Lilo & Stitch" was artificially bred by an alien mad professor and programmed by him to destroy:

The listed heroes are some kind of evil "from birth" (Elsa was born"So" Ralph established"So" Stitch withdrawn "Such"), from which they suffer in one way or another. Like evil with a sad background, this repeatable "standard" is bad in its educational potential, which will also be discussed later. 4) I would also like to highlight as a separate item: use in the image of "good evil" overtly demonic featuresidentified with Satanism - a direction, to put it mildly, very far from the concept of good:

The prototype of Maleficent from the film of the same name is the fallen angel Lucifer, one of the classic faces of the devil

The creature named Count from the cartoon "Fairies: Legend of the Monster" - "Maleficent" for those who are younger. "Good evil" is presented in the form of an eerie monster with an absolutely demonic appearance and ambiguous behavior. Allusions to the fallen angel Lucifer through the Earl are also given

For the most part, plots with complex evil are positioned under the sauce of "imperfect reality": absolute good and absolute evil are rare in life, all bad phenomena have some prerequisites + as for the devil-like appearance with horns and fangs - it is not always possible to judge the content only on the evil cover, and if so, then, it would seem, why not educate youth in this direction? However, it is worthwhile to understand in as much detail as possible what actually constitutes a systematic mixture of evil and good "Disney" for its viewers, children and adolescents.

WHAT DOES "GOOD EVIL" LEARN?

The theme of “good evil” obviously connects the motives of justifying evil, which from an educational point of view is not designed to form a moral type of worldview, since morality is a concept based on the separation of good and evil. "Morality is the spiritual and mental qualities of a person, based on the ideals of good, justice, duty, honor, etc., which are manifested in relation to people and nature." In mixing evil with good, there are no guidelines for distinguishing them in reality as contrasting, morally opposite concepts. And if the ideals of good and the "ideals" of evil are not on opposite sides, then, in fact, the concept of morality, which has lost its important basis, is also swept aside.

It is worth turning to what is so important about the well-known archaic victory of understandable good over understandable evil, everyone's favorite "happy ending": this, firstly, emphasizes the separation of good and evil, points to them as opposite poles (one wins, the other loses), and, secondly, offers life guidelines. The good side in history ("good") in fact = these are just correct life principles, following which in real life will help a person, and the opposite bad side (the same “evil”) = these are destructive life principles, following which will harm a person. And the fact that the understandable good in history triumphs over the understandable bad teaches us to orient ourselves accordingly to the constructive. This is, in fact, the programming of a person for life victories from an early age.

If, like Disney, a thief, a monster, a murderer, an enemy, a demon, and so on is portrayed as good + the story is not seriously devoted to his unequivocal repentance and transformation (and this is not really offered in the cases under consideration), then a positive the landmark is naturally lined up in his direction and in the direction of all those phenomena and concepts that follow his type. Villainous archetypes are always followed by their corresponding meanings, historically formed … Thus, what exactly is hidden behind the deceptively good thieves, good enemies, good demons, what does this mean? The bottom line is that if the hero-thief is good and good, then stealing is behind him, if the enemy is good, then betrayal of the Motherland is a positive phenomenon, if a demonic hero is good, then a positive attitude is drawn to the occult and Satanism, etc. Any type of evil is followed by specific socially accepted meanings, which, in fact, are being labeled as "approved" for the unconscious viewer. In addition, the positivity of this or that evil by Disney stories can also be additionally asserted: for example, very similar heroes-thieves, Aladdin from the 1992 cartoon of the same name and Flynn Ryder from Rapunzel: … endam thanks to the thieves' abilities, rescuing both, even happily leading to true love. Or Casanova Oscar Diggs in the film Oz: The Great and Terrible 2013 - achieves its final success due to the fact that, having “walked” through a number of women, he connected himself with the most suitable one. Obviously, when it rises in such a way, when black and white phenomena are deceptively mixed: "good evil" / "white black" / "moral immorality", then instead of setting on distinguishing between good and bad as mutually exclusive concepts, the viewer is offered morally (but rather Immoral) intermediate value system … The confusion of black and white moral categories naturally turns into gray morality. The phenomena of good and evil are no longer opposed, which means that their separation becomes insignificant, thereby, evil ultimately hides in an ideological fog, as if it were not necessary for discrimination.

Non-discrimination of evil, unintentional or deliberate, is one of the most dangerous types of its justification. Not distinguishing evil from good means justifying evil, considering it acceptable.

Systematically depicting evil due to some kind of sad background or innateness (Disney characters: Theodora, Maleficent, Lady Tremaine, Robert Callaghan, Elsa, Ralph, Stitch), Disney offers an idea of what kind of evil may not be responsible for its "bearer", but someone else … This evil was born this way, this evil was made this way - and the message is repeated from product to product, hypnotizing the viewer. Superficially, this may seem realistic or even related to the idea of mercy, but from the point of view of education through regular demonstration of forced, conditioned evil to children / adolescents, the idea of responsibility for evil is completely erased. It is presented in such a way that someone else, and not the villainous character, is to blame - and from this follows one of the worst lessons that can only be taught to a person - to transfer personal responsibility to third parties, taking on the role of a victim. It was not my fault, it was me who was made “like that”: others, circumstances, mood, emotions, etc.

And at the same time, behind all the positivization and justification of evil promoted in the media, it is “blurred” why evil characters are needed in stories, what they are in essence. These are not cute and not hopeless guys with the charisma of Johnny Depp or Angelina Jolie, whose sad background you need to inquire about, and then feel sorry for them, understand, love and take as a model, as it is discussed in modern mass culture (and, of course, not only for children, this trend is widespread for all ages). Evil characters, in fact, simply have to carry their homogeneous, very important and very functional role in stories: push away, exponentially lose to positive attitudes carried through the opposite side of good, which teaches, inspires, additionally reinforces the movement towards good (= correct life guidelines). Evil characters show that there is something unacceptable, forbidden, taboo. Evil is not a role model, as destructive mass culture tries to impose on modern man, but an anti-landmark, a scarecrow, a deep abyss for light, morality, harmony, etc. Disney's "complex evil" is deliberately not given a real role for evil. It does not repulse the viewer, but attracts, imperceptibly shifting the function of evil from itself to … the classical, adequate vision of evil - evil, which is implanted by the subtext as a wrong position. And in the end the new "good" offered to the viewer is the pseudo-tolerant acceptance of evil as good, and the new evil is the classical and adequate distinction between evil as evil and its rejection.

(Without) the moral mix of good and evil teaches the viewer to discern evil as a phenomenon and that evil can be good, remaining as it is. And precisely to be, and not to become good, because, I repeat, the stories of the mentioned characters do not tell about the topic of re-education or the transformation of evil into good, but rather speak about seeing evil as good, about which in more detail below.

IMPOSING THE AUTOMATION OF PERCEPTION OF EVIL AS GOOD

With regard to the acceptance of evil as good, one specific plot “mechanism” that systematically appears in Disney production is highly indicative. This the persistent and unfounded attraction of a female character to evil, which is carefully and subtly approved by the plots as a model of perception and behavior. This pattern is repeated in the next Disney production, least:

• Pocahontas 1995
• "Fairies: The Legend of the Monster" 2014,
• "Frozen" 2013,
• "Maleficent" 2014,
• "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" 2003
• "Lilo & Stitch" 2001

The story offers the viewer a positive female character (Pocahontas, Fairy Fauna, Princess Anna, Princess Aurora, Elizabeth Swan, Lilo), who in one way or another chooses some kind of evil - of course, not designed as a homogeneous evil, but mixed with good, which is the result is a narrative confirmation that such a choice is praiseworthy and desirable.

1) Pocahontas sees the arrival of enemies to her native shores, and she is immediately romantically attracted to one of them like a magnet.

It is very easy to trace how this positive model of behavior is in this case - just study the real fate of Pocahontas. The prototype of the cartoon is an extremely tragic story about a young and poorly thinking Indian teenage girl who betrayed her father, her tribe, which ended in nothing good either for her or for her family and friends, but ended well for her enemies. Obviously, this historical episode should scare the children, and not teach them to behave like Pocahontas. How positive the depicted phenomenon - a woman's love for evil - is in this particular case is most clear. And knowledge of the background of this story can help in assessing structurally completely similar plots.

2) Fairy Fauna from the cartoon "Fairies: The Legend of the Monster" loves to violate social prohibitions, which is quite reminiscent of Pocahontas, who violated her father's prohibition to contact the British, enemies. The fauna secretly raises a hawk chick when, like adult hawks, they eat fairies, which is portrayed as an interesting and adventurous act on her part.

If you think about it - then this is a suicidal act, absolutely identical to adherence to the enemy - attraction to something that wants to destroy you … They try to call the fauna to sanity, but in vain. She finds herself no longer a hawk chick, but a terrible demonic monster, about which there is a terrible legend in her society. However, again: she is attracted to him like a magnet, despite what they say about him, despite his terrible demonic appearance and ambiguous behavior.

As a result, the story is brought to a happy ending. Baseless attraction to a monster that looks like a real demon from the underworld is presented as a positive "pattern." Everything is OK, everything is fine, don't listen to anyone, this evil is safe, come to him, love him, help him.

3) Elsa from "Frozen" is actually a version of Andersen's Snow Queen, a homogeneous evil character who creates a conflict in the story, freezes hearts and plunges the living into a deadly cold - which Elsa, in fact, does in m / f. If we discard the added subtleties of the plot ("sisters", homosexual subtext), which do not improve the situation at all, then this standard again comes to light: a woman's attraction to the evil side. The second heroine, Anna, is enchanted and positively drawn to Elsa, who froze the kingdom + brought serious harm to her personally. Anna decisively, without any doubts and hesitation, goes to distant lands in order to persistently hand over her love to the one who wronged her, who is unequivocally considered all evil and who was unequivocally evil in the original story. It is also worth noting what changes the plot has undergone, having migrated from Andersen's fairy tale to Disney scriptwriters: if earlier it was a love story with the kind Kai and Gerda and the evil Snow Queen opposing them, now three heroes have been replaced by two. Evil integrated good: Gerda became Anna, and Kai and the Snow Queen are united into one character - suffering evil-good Elsa. It is clearly seen here that "good evil" is, in fact, ideological smuggling for bringing evil to the viewer's acceptance.

4) The newborn princess Aurora in "Maleficent", lying in the cradle, laughs and smiles happily at the woman who cursed her, in fact to her killer, the same happens years later: the grown Aurora, having officially met the terrible "fairy" who cursed her, automatically believes that that her kind godmother, although it is obvious that the strange behavior and frankly demonic, frightening appearance of the heroine are very unlikely to cause such associations.

As with Frozen, in the original story, The Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent was a common evil character. And again a similar rearrangement of characters: if before there were three - the rescued princess, the prince-savior and the evil opposing them, now there are the killed and rescued princess and the new "2-in-1" - savior + evil by smuggling in one character.

5) Elizabeth from the first part of "Pirates of the Caribbean", the daughter of the governor of an English city, has been raving about pirates since childhood, and pirates, remember for a second, are sea bandits, thieves and murderers. And again the same theme: a noble girl, as a given, groundless, magnetically attracts to evil. She sings a pirate song, with which the film begins, receives a pirate medallion around her neck, teaches the pirate code of rules, takes an interest in them in every possible way, and as a result “happily” finds herself in their company - both physically and mentally.

At the end of the story, the girl revealingly confesses her love for the young man only after he becomes a pirate (= evil). At the same time, her father utters a phrase that perfectly characterizes Disney's lessons about evil: "When the struggle for a just cause (= good) makes you become a pirate (= evil), piracy (= evil) can become a right thing (= good)." … When the struggle for good makes you become evil, evil can become good. Good … makes you become evil? Those. again there is no border between good and evil, no moral guidelines. Shadow value system. Evil can be good while remaining evil. 6) The girl Lilo from the cartoon "Lilo and Stitch", having come to the shelter to choose a dog for herself, gets into her arms an aggressive evil alien, who does not even look like a dog (= again nondiscrimination). It is absolutely obvious that something is wrong with him, he is behaving strangely and angry, but she, as if by magic, really likes him.

For Lilo's perception, the cosmic evil mutant, programmed for destruction, automatically becomes an "angel", and there are no semantic prerequisites for this.

As a result, all the plots, of course, subtly and captivatingly lead the choice of a female character of this or that "ambiguous" evil to a happy ending, how else? But the fact remains: this theme of a laudable and unjustified attraction of a female character to this or that evil, built as a good evil, can be traced steadily through the years and as if on tracing paper. And it's actually a big symbol of what the industry of which Disney is a part is striving for. What does this line mean metaphorically - female character choosing evil? It can be interpreted as follows. There are so-called feminine and masculine "principles", called in some traditions Yin and Yang.

The male principle is action, the expression of oneself outside, the material realization of something, and the female principle is the opposite in meaning. This is a kind of passive, internal action in different variations: attunement to your feelings / acceptance as such / preservation of something / filtration of the external through your perception / art of discrimination. The extremely important manifestations of the feminine principle are discrimination and choice. In the spirit of the above examples, a female character evaluates and chooses something. So a well-functioning feminine principle (= well-functioning perception and assessment) leads a person to an adequate orientation in the world, helps to build a better life. When the principle is violated, a person is not able to qualitatively “filter” the external through his perception, he is not able to distinguish between “good” and “bad”, “yes” and “no,” thereby, and is not able to choose the good, filtering out the bad. Disorientation begins, and life becomes chaotic at best, and at worst leads to hopeless dead ends, from which it is difficult to get out. And Disney, over and over again offering this stamp in its products, automatism the perception of evil as good, clearly works for the early knocking down of the principle of evaluation and choice in people. The company, choosing obvious villains as models of behavior for young viewers, is trying to destructively encode their filters of discrimination, adjusting the adequate perception of good and bad, good and evil in life. When you get used to seeing evil as good on the screen, you automatically begin to be guided by this in life.

CONCLUSIONS

Mixing good and evil through good villains + the idea that responsibility for evil can be somewhere far beyond the bearer of evil + programming for the automatism of the perception of evil as good => lead to the formation of non-discrimination of evil in the audience + automatic perception of evil as an insignificant phenomenon and as a result - an appropriate way of life, not associated with morality, a concept based on the separation of the phenomena of good and evil.

Through the trend of complex / good evil in general, we get education in viewers of what today has a name "Moral flexibility" … Moral flexibility is a kind of worldview based on the insignificance of evil - when the ethical, moral principles on the basis of which a person acts are never definitively defined and can always be revised depending on anything: a situation, mood, order of a boss, fashion or something more. Good, evil - all the same, you can show "flexibility", as in the stories of "Disney":

“It was not heroes or villains who reconciled the two kingdoms. She reconciled in whom both evil and good were united. And her name is Maleficent "; in the first part of "Pirates of the Caribbean" at some point Elizabeth asks: "Whose side is Jack on?" (pirate captain), implying whether he is on the side of good or on the side of evil, and then, without even finding out the answer, boldly rushes to fight on his side. Good, evil - the heroine, set as a model for the viewer, does not matter. Good and evil are combined into a common, morally gray plane. On a scale, through faith in such inseparability of the phenomena of good and evil, their insignificance from a moral point of view, you can successfully get generations of morally flexible, loyal to anything people who are ready to accept without judgment what someone suggested to them. Such people, who are not used to operating with moral principles, are very convenient for manipulation.

What is especially cruel, Disney, as the main children's media authority, “catches” its destructive information agenda in the net at the most vulnerable stage - at the beginning of the journey, in the period of maximum susceptibility and defenselessness. And when children's / teenage films and cartoons should be good helpers for growing up, should inspire, motivate, help form the first best qualities, qualities of winners, Disney's visually beautiful, but meaningfully destructive stories from the point of view of the formation of the ideological basis are something like rotten scaffolding, which will surely "drop" the viewer who confided in them on his life path.